On Nazi veteran honoured in Canada parliament, Kremlin's response: 'Outrageous'

The Kremlin said that it was "outrageous" that a Ukrainian man who served in one of Adolf Hitler's Waffen SS units during World War Two had been presented to Canada's parliament as a hero. Yaroslav Hunka, 98, received two standing ovations from Canadian lawmakers during a visit by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. The speaker of Canada's parliament apologised to Jewish groups for the incident.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the episode showed a careless disregard for historical truth. 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,” Dmitry Peskov said.

Read more: Trudeau slammed as Nazi veteran honoured in Canada Parliament: ‘Embarrassing’

Canadian parliament speaker Anthony Rota introduced Yaroslav 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 World War Two, when Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, some Ukrainian nationalists joined Nazi units. Yaroslav Hunka served in World War Two as a member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, according to the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group.

Russian president Vladimir Putin said that he sent his army into Ukraine last year to "demilitarise and denazify" the country. Earlier this month at a televised meeting with historians, the Russian leader stressed that "local nationalists and anti-Semites" had played in the murder of 1.5 million Jews in Ukraine during the Holocaust and said "this has a direct relation to the present day".

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