Putin’s latest attack on Ukraine a slur on Zelenskyy as a Jew

Russian President attacked Ukrainian President’s  Jewish roots, simultaneously claiming he is not Jewish and that he is a disgrace to the Jewish people.

On Friday, Vladimir Putin  claimed Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, is viewed as a “disgrace” to his faith by other members of the religion.

“I have a lot of Jewish friends,” Putin told an annual economic forum in Saint Petersburg. “They say that Zelenskyy is not Jewish, that he is a disgrace to the Jewish people.”

“This is not a joke and not an attempt at irony, because today neo-Nazis, Hitler’s disciples, have been put on a pedestal as heroes of Ukraine,” Putin added, according to the TASS Russian News Agency.

Putin described Zelenskyy as “a man with Jewish blood” who “covers for these freaks, these neo-Nazis, with his actions.”

Zelenskyy, was born to Jewish parents in Kryvyi Rih, in a family which lost relatives in the Holocaust.

He has repeatedly dismissed as false Russian accusations that he has supported neo-Nazis in Ukraine. His great-grandfather and three of his grandfather’s brothers were killed after the Nazis invaded Ukrainian territory. They had joined the Red Army to fight the Nazis and his grandfather was the only one of the four brothers to survive.

Zelenskyy has said he had an “ordinary Soviet Jewish upbringing,” with little religious content because religion did not officially exist in the Soviet state.

“I never speak about religion and I never speak about God because I have my own personal opinion about it,” he said. “Of course, I believe in God. But I speak with him only in those moments which are personal for me.”

Well-known Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk responded to Putin on Facebook.

"Today the Ruscist(sic) dictator called the President of our state a “disgrace to the Jewish people”. I am a citizen of Ukraine, I am a Jew, and in many years of talking with Jews from all over the world, I have only heard positive opinions of Volodymyr Zelenskyy."

“The election of a Jew as the President of Ukraine vividly demonstrates the fundamental difference between a free, democratic Ukraine and an antisemitic Russian fascist empire. The Jews of Ukraine are a part of the Ukrainian people.”

At the request of his US counterpart, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant is expected in the coming days to speak to Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov for the first time since taking office more than five months ago.

The Israeli government has taken a careful approach to the war in Ukraine, hoping not to create tension with Russia and raise tensions with Russian-supported Syria.But the Pentagon has for months pressed Israel to do more to help Kyiv.

READ MORE

Russia's Putin attacks Jewish heritage of Ukraine's Zelenskyy (Jerusalem Post)

Putin: My Jewish friends say Zelenskyy isn’t Jewish, is a ‘disgrace’ to the faith (Times of Israel)

Ukraine's chief rabbi responds to Putin's remark about Zelenskyy (Yahoo)

Gallant to speak to Ukrainian defence minister for first time after U.S. pressure (Barak Ravid)

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Photo: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a ceremony in 2021 commemorating the 33,000 Jews executed in Babi Yar by the Nazis in one 48-hour period in 1941 (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office)