Prime Minister Justin Trudeau criticized Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for recent comments about the country's goal of "discrediting" Ukraine and the claim that Adolf Hitler was Jewish.

Lavrov was asked during an interview with an Italian news channel on Sunday how Russia could claim to be ridding Ukraine of supposed Nazis if President Volodymyr Zelensky himself is Jewish.

He said, speaking to the station in Russian, dubbed with Italian translation, that Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to portray the invasion as a fight against Nazis in Ukraine, relying on Russia's history of helping to defeat Hitler's Germany in World War II as a means to boost domestic support and gain public opinion backing.

Trudeau said at a press conference in Ontario on Monday, "The comments are ridiculous and unacceptable." "Canada and all right-thinking countries around the world and Canadians and everyone who stands against the horrors of the Holocaust and the huge rise in hate crimes, whether anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or racism against Blacks, we need to stand in stronger condemnation than ever of Russia's ridiculous and unacceptable positions."