• Russian leader Vladimir Putin spoke of the war against Nazism in his speech on Victory Day.
  • Hours before, Ukraine said Russia shelled a cemetery filled with Jewish victims of a 1918 pogrom.
  • Russia has repeatedly tried to portray Ukraine as a neo-Nazi state to justify its invasion.

Speaking on Victory Day, Russian President Vladimir Putin once again depicted the war in Ukraine as part of Russia's fight against Nazism.

The Russian leader made the link during Monday's annual military parade, which commemorates the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.

Hours earlier, Ukraine's Minister of Culture and Information Policy Oleksandr Tkachenko said that the same Russian forces Putin praised in his speech had also shelled a Jewish cemetery in Hlukhiv, in northeastern Ukraine.

Tkachenko said the cemetery contained the bodies of the victims of a 1918 pogrom. His report of the shelling has not been independently verified.

"Another proof that the racists are no different from the fascists who exterminated the Jews 80 years ago," Tkachenko tweeted, tagging the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

If true, the shelling would make for an untimely attack as Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia commemorated the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation on Sunday — held the day before Victory Day — to honor the lives lost during World War II. 

Since the start of the war, Putin has sought to paint Ukraine as a state ruled by neo-Nazis in order to justify Russia's invasion. However, while there is a neo-Nazi presence among Ukraine's forces, notably in its far-right Azov Battalion, the country's leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish.

In his speech on Monday, Putin repeated oft-heard Kremlin talking points, labeling the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as the indirect aggressor in the war and claiming that Russian and pro-Russia separatist troops in Ukraine were fighting for their "homeland."

However, the Russian leader did not announce future war plans as some expected him to.

Read the original article on Business Insider