By Dan Murphy
When Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the reason for his country’s invasion of Ukraine was to “denazify the country,” I couldn’t understand what he meant. Because the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish.
And upon further reading, I discovered that President Zelensky’s gradfather fought in WWII against he nazis, while three of his grandfather’s sibling were killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust.
President Zelensky likes to tell the story of how his family had 4 brothers, 3 of whom were murdered by the Nazis. Only 1 survived, and that was President Zelensky’s grandfather.
One of the infamous stories of the Holocaust is the 1941 massacre at Babyn Yar in Kyiv, where the Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators killed 34,000 Jews.
Putin’s claim is absurd. Like the United States and almost every democratic nation in the world, there are about 2% of white supremacist, anti-semitic, nazis in Ukraine. But the Russian war against Ukraine is also a war against Ukrainian Jews. Putin is not invading to save them.
Israel is attempting to mediate a peace between Russia and Ukraine, and is taking Ukrainian Jews and refugees into Israel. But if Russia’s war offensive continues, look for Israel to start to impose economic sanctions on Russia.
And like the hundreds of retired U.S. Marines who have flown to Ukraine to fight, several hundred Israeli special forces have done the same.
Some have speculated that Putin could have killed Zelensky already if he wanted to, but that Putin realizes that Zelensky will become a martyr if he is killed, and the riots that might ensure could wipe out Putin in the same wave of democracy that could come about.
