Flares burn in the empty square of Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre to mark the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day in Jerusalem amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions around the country April 21, 2020. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

The head of Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum Yad Vashem condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the accompanying use of “propagandist discourse.”

“Yad Vashem deplores the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which will inevitably lead to dire consequences,” Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem, wrote on Twitter on Sunday. “We fear in particular for the wellbeing of innocent civilians and deplore any deliberate endangerment of their safety.”

“Moreover,” Dayan said, “the propagandist discourse accompanying the current hostilities is saturated with irresponsible statements and completely inaccurate comparisons with propagandist and actions before and during the Holocaust.”

“Yad Vashem condemns this trivialization and distortion of the historical facts of the Holocaust,” he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has depicted Ukrainian leaders, including the country’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as Nazi sympathizers.

In an appeal on Friday for Ukrainian military officers to launch a coup against their country’s leadership, Putin stated, “It seems like it will be easier for us to agree with you than this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.”

Zelensky has responded angrily to the Nazi comparisons, pointing to his grandfather’s service in the Soviet Army during World War II.

“How can I be a Nazi?” the Ukrainian leader asked in a televised address on Thursday. “Explain it to my grandfather, who went through the entire war in the infantry of the Soviet army, and died a colonel in an independent Ukraine.”