(Jewish Group) Putin's Despicable Attack on Zelensky's Jewish Identity

A year and three months into the brutal war in Ukraine, one might think there was no lower for Vladimir Putin to sink. But Putin’s remarks a few days ago at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, in an answer to the moderator’s question about how the Kremlin’s claims about a Nazi regime in Kyiv could be reconciled with the fact that President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish, managed to reach a new level of deplorable.

Putin said: “I’ve had a lot of Jewish friends since childhood. They say, ‘Zelensky is not a Jew, he’s a disgrace to the Jewish people.’ And this isn’t a joke, it’s not irony, you understand?...

Today, Ukraine elevates neo-Nazis, Hitler’s leavings, to the pedestal of honored heroes. Six million Jews were destroyed in the Holocaust, a million and a half died in Ukraine, first and foremost at the hands of the Banderovites [Ukrainian nationalists].”

Putin added that he expected such a question and had asked his assistant to prepare some materials. After reading exterminationist antisemitic comments from two World War II-era Ukrainian nationalist figures and telling an emotional story about the murder of a Jewish family, Putin suggested that the current government in Kyiv endorsed Holocaust denial (“We’re talking about the Holocaust. How is it possible to deny that?”) and reiterated that Zelensky was using his Jewish background to “give cover to these neo-Nazi freaks.”’

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