Russia has revealed that it was “outrageous” that a Ukrainian man that served in one of Adolf Hitler’s Waffen SS units during the Second World War had been introduced to Canada’s Parliament recently as a hero.
During a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka received two standing ovations from Canadian lawmakers. The speaker of Canada’s Parliament has since apologized to Jewish groups for that.
While talking to reporters, Russian government’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the episode revealed a careless disregard for historical truth, and that the memory of Nazi crimes must be preserved.
He said: “Such sloppiness of memory is outrageous. Many Western countries, including Canada, have raised a young generation that does not know who fought whom or what happened during the Second World War. And they know nothing about the threat of fascism.”
During the visit, Speaker Anthony Rota introduced Hunka as “a Ukrainian Canadian war veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians” and “a Ukrainian hero and a Canadian hero.”
During the Second World War, Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union and some Ukrainian nationalists joined Nazi units because they saw the Germans as liberators from Soviet oppression.
According to the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish human rights group that demanded and received an apology from Rota, Hunka served in the Second World War as a member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS.
Rota said: “I have subsequently become aware of more information which causes me to regret my decision to [honour Hunka]. I wish to make clear that no one, including fellow parliamentarians and the Ukraine delegation, was aware of my intention or of my remarks before I delivered them.
“I particularly want to extend my deepest apologies to Jewish communities in Canada and around the world.”
The event plays into the narrative sponsored by Russian President Vladimir Putin that he deployed his army into Ukraine last year to “demilitarize and de-Nazify” the country, a European democracy whose Jewish president lost family members in the Holocaust.
Peskov stated further that Russia was waging an “irreconcilable fight” against fascism that was “trying to find its feet in the centre of Europe, in Ukraine.”
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