RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin claimed that the West is using Zelenskyy’s Jewish heritage to cover for the culpability of Ukrainian nationalists in the holocaust during the Second World War.
He also talked about Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian prominent figure declared a war criminal by both Poland and the soviet union for killing Ukrainian Jews.
Bandera was the leader of the militant arm of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) during World War II.
And up to this day, he remains a divisive figure in Ukraine, with some hailing him as a liberator from the Soviets while others consider him to be a Nazi collaborator for killing 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews and for living with his deputies under German protection after World War II started.
Bandera was eventually assassinated by the Soviet spies in 1959.
The Ukrainian government, however, declared Bandera a national hero in 2010.
Zelenskyy is of Jewish heritage, while his grandfather, Semyon, fought in World War Two and earned two Red Star medals for his courage and heroism.
In a 2019 interview with broadcaster Ukrainska Pravda, Zelenskyy described Bandera as a hero for some Ukrainians and that it is normal and cool.
“He [Bandera] is one of the people who defended Ukraine’s freedom…He is a hero for a certain percentage of Ukrainians, and it’s normal, and it’s cool.”
“Western curators have put a man, an ethnic Jew with Jewish roots, with Jewish ancestry, in charge of modern Ukraine, and thus, in my opinion, they kind of cover-up such an anti-human essence, which is put in the foundation in the basis of modern Ukraine.”
“This makes the whole situation extremely despicable, the fact that an ethnic Jew covers up the glorification of Nazism and covers up those who led the Holocaust in Ukraine.”
“And this is the extermination of one and a half million people. And you know, this is best understood by the ordinary citizens of Israel,” according to Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine.
