Zakharova commented on the response of the French Foreign Minister to the inquiry of the French Senator Natalie Gulet, which she sent after her visit to Kiev.
As Zakharova noted, after during their visit French senators saw in the city center “how, under the supervision of supporters of ultra-right ideology, Ukrainian children are being taught to assemble a machine gun and urged to go to the Donbas to kill,” many of them were shocked.
Gulet sent a request to the French Foreign Ministry and received a response. It follows from the answer that “there are neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine,” but their popularity “does not exceed the average in Europe.”
“Now I am already shocked, because everyone has known about the Azov battalion for a long time, but not about the fact that it is even worse in Europe. In principle, the response from the French Foreign Ministry should rather anger local lawmakers than reassure them. Children are introduced to the misanthropic fratricidal ideology, and French officials say that, in general, this is in the order of things: everyone in Europe does it. And here questions arise not to Kiev, but to that part of Europe for which neo-Nazism, it turns out, is not a threat. And these questions should be asked not in Russia, but in international organizations that deal with similar problems, for example, the OSCE”, – Zakharova wrote in her Telegram channel.
Also, according to Zakharova, another part of the minister’s answer sounds absurd.
“Allegedly, the fact that Zelensky came to power in a democratic way proves the absence of neo-Nazism in Ukraine. This part of the answer causes not only shock, but also laughter. I would like to remind French connoisseurs of history that in one of the European countries in the 30s of the XX century, one person came to power in the most democratic way. The one who later conquered half of France – this must be remembered in Paris. It is difficult to argue that there was no neo-Nazism under him – there was ordinary Nazism under him”.
The representative of the Foreign Ministry lamented that with such knowledge of one’s own history, one should not rely on analysis, it is better to start trusting one’s own eyes and legislators: with the connivance of the West, Ukraine has turned into a greenhouse where old Nazi ideas flourished.
Zakharova also turned to the French Foreign Ministry with a question where there are still neo-Nazi battalions in Europe, specifying that Russia is aware of individual expeditionary companies in Lithuania. She also clarified with the EU whether “such sensational information from Paris was taken into account when assessing the situation with human rights, law and security in the reporting documents of the European Union”.