Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday issued another statement taking aim at the Jewishness of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and suggested that the one who put him in office is the West, allegedly to whitewash the "glorification of Nazism" in Ukraine. This claim - which stands in complete contrast to the fact that Zelensky was elected in a democratic election - as opposed to those held in Russia, where the government persecutes Putin's opponents - joins a host of other statements made by the Russian president and Kremlin officials in the past year, as part of their attempt to justify the invasion of Ukraine on the grounds that it is controlled by neo- Nazis who allegedly want to persecute the Russian speakers in the country.
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“Western curators have put a person at the head of modern Ukraine - an ethnic Jew, with Jewish roots, with Jewish origins. And thus, in my opinion, they seem to be covering up an anti-human essence that is the foundation ... of the modern Ukrainian state," Putin said, after previously denying the justification for the existence of Ukraine, formerly a Soviet republic, as an independent state.
"And this makes the whole situation extremely disgusting, in that an ethnic Jew is covering up the glorification of Nazism and covering up those who led the Holocaust in Ukraine at one time - and this is the extermination of one and a half million people."
These statements join Putin's other screeds against Zelensky's Judaism. In June, he claimed that his Jewish friends told him that in their eyes Zelensky was a "disgrace to the Jewish people," and a week before that statement he said that he "does not understand" how a man like Zelensky, whom he described as having "Jewish blood running through his veins," could allegedly support neo-Nazi elements . Putin has never presented evidence that Zelensky supports the Nazis, and this is a rather absurd accusation. Several of Zelensky's relatives were killed in the Holocaust, including his grandfather.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov caused a storm last year when he said that Zelensky's Jewishness does not negate the fact that there are Nazi elements in Ukraine.
"Zelensky? The biggest anti-Semites are Jews. I believe that Hitler also had Jewish blood," Lavrov was quoted as saying, a claim that is not based in fact. In January, Lavrov issued another unusual statement , saying that the US assembled a coalition of European countries with the aim of solving the "Russian question" - just as Hitler wanted to solve the Jewish question. That "question" led to the creation of the "final solution" to destroy the Jews of Europe and to the establishment of extermination camps.
Zelensky's top advisor, Mykhailo Podolyak, responded on Tuesday evening to Putin's latest statement, saying that he finds it disgusting when Putin "tries to justify mass crimes against the citizens of another country with a monstrous lie."
Zelensky himself responded in June to claims made by Putin at the time, and expressed surprise at the words: “It’s like he doesn’t fully understand his words. Apologies — but it’s like he is the second king of antisemitism after Hitler. This is a president speaking. A civilized world cannot speak that way. But it was important for me to hear the reaction of the world and I am grateful for the support,” He then stated that it was important for him to "hear the world's reaction" to the Russian president's statements.
Putin made his statement on Tuesday when the battlefield turned in favor of the Ukrainians, after three months during which their counterattack progressed very slowly and was disappointing for them and for the West, which hoped to see an effective and successful use of the advanced and expensive weapons it provided to Kiev. In recent days it has been reported that the Ukrainian forces managed to break through the first defense line of the Russians on the southern front , in the Zaporizhia region, the central line among several fortification lines that include minefields, canals and networks of tank obstacles.