Russian President Vladimir Putin made another statement yesterday targeting the Jewishness of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, claiming that the West placed a Jew in office to whitewash the "glorification of Nazism" in Ukraine.
""The Western tyrants have put a person at the head of modern Ukraine - an ethnic Jew, with Jewish roots and Jewish origin," Putin said in an interview broadcast on Russian television. "By doing so, I think, they are trying to whitewash the anti-human essence that underlies the modern Ukrainian state. This makes this whole situation especially repugnant, because an ethnic Jew whitewashes the glorification of Nazism and whitewashes those who once led the Holocaust in Ukraine - the extermination of a million and a half people.".
Putin has previously made other statements against Zelensky's Judaism. Last June, he claimed that his Jewish friends told him that Zelensky was "a disgrace to the Jewish people" in their eyes, and a week before that statement, he said that he "does not understand" how a person like Zelensky, whom he described as having "Jewish blood flowing in his veins," could allegedly support neo-Nazi elements.
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Putin has never presented evidence that Zelensky supports the Nazis, and this is a rather far-fetched accusation. Zelensky lost several of his relatives in the Holocaust, including his grandfather.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and the Ukrainian Embassy in Israel have responded to Putin's recent comments regarding President Zelensky's Jewish roots.
Its Foreign Ministry said: "Vladimir Putin linked the Jewish origin of the Ukrainian president with the glorification of Nazism. Putin's chronic fixation on the ethnic origin of the Ukrainian president is another expression of the deep-rooted anti-Semitism of the Russian elites. We call on the world to strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements of the Russian president. In today's world, there should be no place for hatred based on ethnicity.".
The Ukrainian Embassy in Israel also responded: "The Israeli government needs to understand that Putin, in his harsh words against President Zelensky, only proves once again why Israel must support Ukraine, President Zelensky, and the Ukrainian people in their difficult time.".
