Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi criticized Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for his statements in an interview with Italian television.

“Our country allows you to freely express your opinions, even if they are clearly false and erroneous. I think what Minister Lavrov said is wrong," he said.

As for the mention of Hitler and the fact that Hitler had Jewish blood, "that is really obscene,” Mario Draghi told a press conference on Monday.

On May 1, on the air of the Rete-4 channel of the Mediaset television corporation, Lavrov outlined the main positions of Russia regarding what is happening in Ukraine, pointing out that the Ukrainian side, with the support of the United States, who single-handedly seek to resolve all issues, does not want to continue talks, and also pointed to unreliable information disseminated by the Western media, and explained a number of decisions of the Russian leadership.

Lavrov made another assertion when he was asked why Russia said it needed to “denazify” Ukraine if the country’s own president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was himself Jewish.

“When they say ‘What sort of nazification is this if we are Jews’, well I think that Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it means nothing,” Lavrov told Rete 4 channel, speaking through an Italian interpreter. “For a long time now we’ve been hearing the wise Jewish people say that the biggest anti-Semites are the Jews themselves,” he added.