Russian President Vladimir Putin cast a public slur on Ukrainian President Zelensky's Jewish roots on Friday, saying without evidence that some Jews considered him a disgrace to their faith.
“I have many Jewish friends. They say Zelensky is not a Jew, he is a disgrace to the Jewish people,” Putin said at an economic forum in St. Petersburg.
The Ukrainian president was born to Jewish parents in Kryvyi Rih and has become one of the most influential Jews in the world since Russia’s invasion of his country catapulted him into the international spotlight.
Zelensky's Jewish heritage
In 2020, Zelensky said he had an “ordinary Soviet Jewish upbringing.” He explained that his family was not very religious, 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 shared. “Of course, I believe in God. But I speak with him only in those moments which are personal for me.”
Zelensky, who lost family in the Holocaust, 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.
“Three of them, their parents and their families became victims of the Holocaust. All of them were shot by German occupiers who invaded Ukraine,” he said. “The fourth brother survived. Two years after the war, he had a son, and in 31 years, he had a grandson. In 40 more years, that grandson became president.”
He put flowers on his grandfather’s grave days before taking office in 2019. He has said that his grandmother only survived because she left Kryvyi Rih for Kazakhstan. Almost all of the Jews who remained in Kryvyi Rih were murdered in the Holocaust.
In March 2022, days after a Russian strike near Babi Yar, the site of a massacre where over 30,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis in World War II, Zelensky implored the Jewish community not to stay silent.
“I call now on all the Jews of the world – do you not see what is happening here? This is why it’s important for millions of Jews around the world not to stay silent in the face of such sights. Because Nazism was born in silence,” he wrote in Hebrew on the Telegram messenger application. “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 Babi Yar?”
Pushing back against Putin
Ukrainian Chief Rabbi Moshe Asman said he was proud of “Zelensky, who didn’t abandon his people at the beginning of the war even though it was life-threatening to him, showed abnormal courage and continues to defend the Ukrainian people.
“I and the whole Jewish community in Ukraine, like the whole free world, stand behind President Zelensky.”
Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel Yevgen Kornichuk called Putin’s remarks “a clear KGB-style provocation and poor propaganda.”
“We need to consider that he is trying to sabotage the ties between Israel and Ukraine before the visit of President Zelensky’s wife in Israel, and he purposely did so before Shabbat. We expect the Israeli government to strongly condemn President Putin’s words, otherwise, it could lead to a postponement or cancellation of President Zelensky’s wife visit in Israel.”
He added that “Zelensky takes Putin’s words personally. Putin’s comments are antisemitic and against the Jewish people. I think the Israeli people need to be proud of the Ukrainian president, who is Jewish and is bravely defending his country. When [Putin] attacks Zelensky, he attacks the Jewish people. We are on the same side of the barricade.”
Former Soviet prisoner of conscience and former deputy prime minister of Israel Natan Sharansky stated that “Ukrainians can be proud of their choice of a Jewish president, who unites the Ukrainian people in a hard struggle against barbarian aggression. And we Jews can be proud that a representative of our people plays such a unique historic role in mobilizing not only the Ukrainian people but the entire Free World to defend our common future.”