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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bombing Sunday of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, is garnering comparisons to Nazi Germany’s actions at the start of World War II.
“This reminds you of something doesn’t it?” Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya said at an emergency meeting of the U.N. General Assembly on Monday. “Indeed, very clear parallels could be drawn to the beginning of the Second World War.”
KREMLIN SENDS 400 RUSSIAN MERCENARIES ONTO KYIV ON MISSION TO ASSASSINATE ZELENSKYY: REPORT
Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya speaks during Security Council meeting on situation on Ukrainian-Russian borders at the United Nations.
(Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“The most recent example,” he continued, “the Russian army shelled with Grad multiple rocket launcher systems the residential area of the city of Kharkiv – the second biggest in Ukraine.”
“The level of the threat to global security has been equated to that of the Second World War, or even higher, following Putin’s order to put an alert to Russian nuclear forces – what a madness,” he added. “If he wants to kill himself, he doesn’t need to use nuclear arsenal. He has to do what the guy in Berlin did in the bunker in May 1945.”
Kharkiv came under intense rocket fire Monday as Ukrainian and Russian officials met for peace talks near Ukraine’s border with Belarus. Those talks ended Monday without a deal being reached.
Ukraine officials said dozens of civilians were killed and hundreds more injured in the Kharkiv attack after Russian forces bombed residential areas and apartment complexes.
Vladimir Dubinin, a Ukrainian man hiding in a bomb shelter in Kharkiv, phoned into Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” on Monday following the bombing attack.
“Everything [is] not so bad as it was several hours ago when Putin’s troops attacked the civilians in our city,” he said. “Right now we are – it looks OK, but we are waiting [for] a new attack anyway in several hours.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses an extended meeting of the Russian Defense Ministry Board in Moscow on Dec. 21, 2021.
(Mikhail Tereshchenko, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Russia hoped to quickly take Kharkiv, a predominantly Russian-speaking city just miles from the Russian border, but Ukrainian fighters put up a massive fight and regained control by late Sunday. The fighting is expected to continue there as Russia slowly advances on the capital city of Kyiv, located about 480 miles west of Kharkiv.
Comparisons to WWII and Hitler have been a common theme since Putin invaded Ukraine five days ago. When the attacks started Wednesday, air raid sirens rang out in Kyiv and multiple other cities for the first time since WWII.
Many journalists compared photos of Ukrainians hunkering down in underground metro stations to those taken of Londoners during The Blitz – Hitler’s eight-month bombing campaign against the U.K.
The Blitz ended up being a strategic failure for Nazi Germany, costing blood and treasure while achieving no military objectives. World leaders hope the same will be the case for Russia after meeting tougher-than-expected resistance in Ukraine.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba made a Nazi Germany comparison on Thursday after Russia’s first attacks on Kyiv.
“Horrific Russian rocket strikes on Kyiv,” Kuleba tweeted. “Last time our capital experienced anything like this was in 1941 when it was attacked by Nazi Germany. Ukraine defeated that evil and will defeat this one. Stop Putin. Isolate Russia. [Sever] all ties. Kick Russia out of [everywhere].”
Meanwhile, Putin has tried to justify his attack on Ukraine as an effort to “denazify” the country, repeating an old line that plays on the Russian public’s lingering hatred for the Nazi regime.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and had family members perish in the Holocaust, but Russian officials have compared him to Jews who were forced to collaborate with the Nazis.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stands alongside other government officials in a video posted to social media Friday, Feb. 25, 2022, vowing to defend the country from a Russian invasion.
(Armed Forces of Ukraine)
“The misinformation campaign is long in the tooth,” Ret. Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, a military analyst with experience on the ground in Russia and Ukraine, told Fox News Digital on Friday. “Keep in mind Putin’s puppet was jettisoned by the Orange Revolution and that made it necessary for the Kremlin’s tyrant to find a way of delegitimizing Zelenskyy.”
“So, Putin launched a GRU-hosted misinformation effort to color the Zelenskyy government as anti-Russian and anti-separatist,” he said. “His use of ‘Nazi’ resonates with many Russians because of the slow-healing scars still plaguing the Russians from World War II.”
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At least one aspect of the Russian war against Ukraine that cannot be compared to WWII is Switzerland’s response – the neutral country on Monday announced it will adopt European Union sanctions against Russia over Putin’s “attack on freedom, an attack on democracy, an attack on the civil population, and an attack on the institutions of a free country.”
Putin has responded to the sanctions from Western countries by ordering his nuclear forces to be on high alert.
President Biden on Monday downplayed the possibility of nuclear war with Russia, answering “no” when asked if that is something that should concern Americans.
