Berlin has reportedly told officials to expel Russian and Belarusian delegates from Victory Day celebrations

Germany is following in the footsteps of its Nazi predecessors by reportedly banning Russian and Belarusian delegates from its 80th World War II Victory anniversary celebrations, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

On Friday, Berliner Zeitung reported that the German Foreign Ministry has spread classified memos stating that delegates from Moscow and Minsk will not be invited to this year’s commemorations. The confidential document recommended that local institutions expel any Russian or Belarusian representatives from the events, according to the media outlet.

“The very fact that the ideological heirs and direct descendants of Hitler's executioners will ‘expel’ Russians from the Victory Day celebrations already looks like a blatant insult,” Zakharova commented on the article in a statement on Saturday.

“However, even here, [German Foreign Minister Annalena] Baerbock and her Einsatz team are not original, but almost verbatim borrow the experience of their predecessors,” she said.

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Nazi Germany’s Einsatzgruppen – its paramilitary death squads, responsible for mass murder during World War II – first interned civilians in ghettos based on their ethnicity or nationality; they were later sent to death camps, she noted.

Expelling people from events commemorating this year’s Victory Day anniversary based on their nationality “recreates” these “inhumane practices,” the spokeswoman said.

Last year, Bild reported that the German foreign minister’s late grandfather Waldemar Baerbock was an ardent Nazi and decorated officer of the Wehrmacht during the conflict.