A video shared broadly on social media Thursday purportedly reveals aged Ukrainian Jews who determine themselves as Holocaust survivors making impassioned pleas for peace from a bomb shelter in Kyiv. Recalling their experiences in Ukraine's capital through the Second World Warfare, they demand that Russian President Vladimir Putin take away his forces from Ukraine and cease his artillery barrage on the nation, repeating in unison "We would like peace!"
CBS Information can't independently confirm the video, which had been seen nearly 1 million instances after being tweeted by retired U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, former director for European affairs of the U.S. Nationwide Safety Council.
"Holocaust survivors in a bomb-shelter in Ukraine, cursing Putin and asking for peace," Vindman labeled the clip.
One of many aged girls within the video identifies herself as Lukash Tamara Oleksiivna. She says she was born in 1939 and lived in Kyiv earlier than World Warfare II began. She describes the present bombardment of the town as "a horror."
"Putin, I want so that you can die. Depart us, you b*****d," she says to the individual recording the video, earlier than everybody within the shelter chants, "We would like peace!"
All three of the audio system within the video say their family members have been killed within the 1941 Babyn Yar bloodbath, when Nazi forces murdered 34,000 Jews on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who's Jewish, known as a Russian missile strike that hit the Babyn Yar memorial this week "past humanity."
Putin has invoked the horrors of the Holocaust to justify his invasion of Ukraine, claiming his aim is to "demilitarize" and "denazify" the nation.
On Thursday, Russian Overseas Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Zelensky of permitting "a society the place neo-Nazism is flourishing," suggesting fascists have been "marching overtly" in Ukraine.
Whereas Russian-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian troops within the nation's east since Putin final invaded in 2014, there have been no credible experiences to again up Russia's claims that Ukraine has dedicated atrocities towards ethnic Russians within the area.