The besieged president of Ukraine has called on the world's Jews to speak up for Ukraine as his country is battered by intensifying Russian attacks.

In a statement addressed to the world's Jews this morning, Volodomyr Zelensky said:"I am now addressing all the Jews of the world. Don't you see what is happening? That is why it is very important that millions of Jews around the world not remain silent right now," he said.

"Nazism is born in silence. So shout about killings of civilians. Shout about the murders of Ukrainians."

Yesterday, Russian forces bombed a memorial to one of the largest massacres of the Holocaust in their intensifying assault on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

The Chief of Staff of Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky confirmed in a tweet that a missile hit the Kyiv park where the Babyn Yar memorial complex is located.

In a statement, Ukraine's president Zelensky said: "To the world, what is the point of saying 'never again' for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar?"

To the world: what is the point of saying «never again» for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar? At least 5 killed. History repeating…

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 1, 2022

The attack was confirmed by the Babyn Yar memorial chairman Natan Sharansky, who said in a statement: “Putin seeking to distort & manipulate the Holocaust to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign democratic country is utterly abhorrent. It's symbolic he starts attacking Kyiv by bombing the site of Babyn Yar"

Launching the assault on Ukraine last week, Vladimir Putin said that he was 'de-nazifying' Ukraine, despite it being the only country in Europe with both a Jewish president and prime minister.

Babyn Yar is widely considered to be one of the bloodiest massacres in the Holocaust as well as a mass grave for tens of thousands of Jews and Russians killed by the Nazis between 1941 and 1942.

More than 1 million Jewish Ukrainians were killed during the Holocaust including several ancestors of President Zelensky.