Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Reuters
A year and three months into the brutal war in Ukraine, one might think there was no lower for Vladimir Putin to sink. But Putin’s remarks a few days ago at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, in an answer to the moderator’s question about how the Kremlin’s claims about a Nazi regime in Kyiv could be reconciled with the fact that President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish, managed to reach a new level of deplorable.
Putin said: “I’ve had a lot of Jewish friends since childhood. They say, ‘Zelensky is not a Jew, he’s a disgrace to the Jewish people.’ And this isn’t a joke, it’s not irony, you understand?…
Today, Ukraine elevates neo-Nazis, Hitler’s leavings, to the pedestal of honored heroes. Six million Jews were destroyed in the Holocaust, a million and a half died in Ukraine, first and foremost at the hands of the Banderovites [Ukrainian nationalists].”