Jews are directly involved in Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine as both countries are home to substantial Jewish diasporas. Officially, there are around 150,000 Jews in Russia and 45,000 in Ukraine, but these figures do not accurately reflect the size of both countries’ Jewish populations.
Because of massive assimilation and intermarriage during 80 years of communism and Soviet antisemitism (during which offspring of mixed parentage were encouraged to inscribe a nationality/ethnic group other than “Jewish” on their internal passports), the combined population eligible for Israeli citizenship according to the Law of Return may be close to one million.
Russian and Ukrainian Jews are highly visible in this war. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish, of course, as is its former defense minister Oleksii Reznikov, to cite just two examples. On the Russian side, prominent Jews include propagandist Vladimir Solovyev (and the late founder of the Wagner private army Evgeny Prigozhin).
Both countries are paramount in Jewish history. In 1939, over 20% of the world’s Jewish population lived in the territories which are now Russia and Ukraine. Many strains of modern Judaism emerged from or were developed in, that area. This is underscored by the annual pilgrimage to Ukraine by the followers of the Breslov Hassidic movement to visit Rebbe Nahman’s grave in Uman. Additionally, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson was born in the former Russian Empire, in the now Ukrainian Mykolaiv, grew up in Yekaterinoslavl (now Dnipro), and for a time studied engineering in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).
Ukraine and Russia figure prominently in the development of Zionism, as well. Ze’ev Jabotinsky was born in Odesa – and Golda Meir in Kyiv. Even the Habima Theater (declared Israel’s national theater by David ben-Gurion in 1958) was officially founded in Moscow in 1918, only moving to Tel Aviv in 1928.
But apart from the history and the current presence of Jewish communities, there is a fundamental reason why the Russian war in Ukraine involves Jews everywhere, even if they reside thousands of miles from this conflict.
'Once they do away with them...'
There is an old parable about an Armenian patriarch imparting words of wisdom to his kinfolks as he lies on his deathbed. “My dearest,” he whispers. “You must protect the Jews.” Surprised, the assembled members of his extended clan question him: “Why the Jews, Grandpa?” “Ah, that’s because once they do away with the Jews they will turn on us.”
This story hits at the core of antisemitism. It is rarely an isolated hatred directed exclusively against the Jews. On the contrary, it goes hand in hand with the hatred of various “others,” be that other ethnic or religious minorities, different races, or people of different religions or sexual orientations. Hitler perpetrated the murder of six million Jews but his genocidal policies were directed at the Roma, the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Russians, and the homosexuals, among others.
The Anti-Defamation League in the United States was founded in 1913 not only “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people,” but “to secure justice and fair treatment for all.” Importantly, as the ADL website states, it was “founded on the clear understanding that the fight against one form of prejudice cannot succeed without battling prejudice in all forms.”
It was in response to the Holocaust of the Jewish people that the 1948 Genocide Convention was signed, defining genocide and obligating its signatories to punish its perpetrators. The term “genocide” obviously has a particular significance for the Jewish people.
And now Putin is claiming that his war of aggression against Ukraine was started to protect Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population from genocide at the hands of the Ukrainians. This is a blatant lie. Russian is spoken in the entire eastern half of Ukraine, not just in Donetsk and Luhansk but in Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odesa, and Kyiv, the capital.
Accusing others of his own crimes was a strategy typical of Hitler. He claimed that Germany wanted peace and that war was forced upon him by Germany’s enemies. And of course, the Jews were themselves to blame for their own extermination because they plotted to pauperize the good Germans and to starve their children. According to the Nazi leader, he was only protecting Germans from genocide by the Jews.
Putin’s claim of Ukrainian genocide has been rejected by the International Court of Justice. Additionally, American historian Prof. Timothy Snyder devoted last year’s Elie Wiesel Memorial Lecture at the Boston University Center for Jewish Studies to explaining why Russian war aims in Ukraine constitute genocide.
Snyder has written extensively on mass killings, focusing especially on the region which now comprises Ukraine, Belarus, and Western Russia and coincides with the areas where the majority of those who were to fall victim to the Holocaust resided. Putin’s intention is genocide when he claims that Ukraine is not a country and that Ukrainians are Russians; or when Russian propagandists say that those Ukrainians who persist in defending their identity should be exterminated.
These homicidal claims should ring particularly horrible to any Jew with a historical memory. Moreover, the Jewish state – founded after the historic tragedy of the Jewish people with the pledge “Never Again” – must unequivocally take the Ukrainian side in this conflict.
The writer, a New York-based economist, is a member of the US Andrei Sakharov Foundation. In 2005-2008, he organized a support group for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, bringing together Soviet Jewish immigrants in the United States.