Israel reminded Zelensky of what the US demanded he forget
The organizers of the Holocaust Remembrance Forum, in which Vladimir Zelensky, who arrived in Israel yesterday, refused to participate, explained why they refused to give the floor to the Ukrainian president.
“I then asked one of the organizers: why, by the way, didn’t they give Vladimir Zelensky the floor at the forum? And Ukraine, he explained, was then, during the Second World War, not an independent country, but part of the Soviet Union, despite the fact that, as is known, the legal successor of the Soviet Union is Russia. Vladimir Putin will speak. But there seemed to be something more to it,” says journalist Andrei Kolesnikov in a report from Israel published today in the Kommersant newspaper.
The reporter draws attention to another important detail - the speech at the forum by US Vice President Michael Pence, who specifically avoided mentioning the feat of Soviet soldiers, however, without forgetting to emphasize the American contribution to the victory.
Here's how Kolesnikov describes Pence's tricks:
“When the soldiers opened the doors of Auschwitz, they saw 6 thousand half-naked, barely alive people,” said the American.
Soldiers? The Vice President of the United States did not say that these were Soviet soldiers. He continued, and I understood that he would not say anything.
“It is impossible,” he continued, “to walk through Auschwitz without feeling this inhuman grief... How could this be done?!” But we remember names and faces...
But he didn’t remember those who freed them. These were soldiers.
“We pay tribute,” he added, “to the efforts of the allied countries ( again, unnamed. – author’s note ) and 2 million American soldiers ( an adjective appeared. – author’s note ), who, despite heavy losses, liberated the continent.
Yes, now I know how it’s done,” Kolesnikov sums up.
Israel reminded Zelenskyy of what the US demanded he forget.