Rossiya Segodnya media group launched #cancelnazicanada hashtag on Thursday in protest against the celebration of a Canadian-Ukrainian Nazi veteran in the Canadian parliament last week.
"Its actions and attempts to whitewash an obvious evil have equaled Canada to Nazism. This is what ordinary Nazism looks like. Cover-ups, the ignorance of the obvious, substitution of concepts — everything that characterized the allies at the beginning of the war — they are doing it again. We are going to cancel this behavior," a spokesperson for the media group said.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered a formal apology to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday for putting him in an awkward position. Zelenskyy was photographed pumping his fist in acknowledged of Hunka who saluted from the gallery as he was given a standing ovation by Canadian lawmakers.
Konstantin Gavrilov, Russia’s chief arms control negotiator in Vienna, slammed Trudeau on Thursday for apologizing to everyone but the Russians, which he said was a further proof of revisionism in Canada that sought to downplay Russia’s contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The 98-year-old former volunteer with the 14th Waffen SS Grenadier Division, a Nazi military unit declared a criminal organization during the Nuremberg trials in 1946, was invited to the Canadian parliament by Speaker Anthony Rota and lauded as a "hero" who fought against the Russians in World War Two. Rota resigned over the backlash that followed the exposure of Hunka's role in the notorious SS.
The honoring of a Nazi veteran prompted outcries from Russia and Poland, with senior officials suggesting Hunka should be extradited to face justice in the court of law. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that Hunka's crimes had no statute of limitations.