{"id":168397,"date":"2022-02-24T10:21:35","date_gmt":"2022-02-24T15:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishexponent.com\/?p=168397"},"modified":"2022-02-24T10:21:35","modified_gmt":"2022-02-24T15:21:35","slug":"declaring-war-putin-cites-goal-of-denazification-of-country-with-jewish-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishexponent.com\/declaring-war-putin-cites-goal-of-denazification-of-country-with-jewish-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Declaring War, Putin Cites Goal of \u2018Denazification\u2019 of Country with Jewish President"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-21013 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jewishexponent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Jewish Exponent Square-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"Jewish Exponent Square.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/>By Shira Hanau<\/p>\n<p>In launching Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine late Wednesday night, Russian President Vladimir Putin cited a purported need for \u201cdenazification\u201d of Ukraine, a country whose president is Jewish.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIts goal is to protect people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide\u2026 for the last eight years. And for this we will strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine,\u201d Putin said in his speech, which was broadcast on state television.<\/p>\n<p>Putin was referring to a claim that he has long made,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2014\/9\/3\/18088560\/ukraine-everything-you-need-to-know\">starting as a justification for his 2014 invasion and subsequent annexation of\u00a0Crimea<\/a>, that the Ukrainian military is run by secret Nazis.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jta.org\/2019\/04\/21\/global\/ukraine-to-become-first-country-outside-israel-whose-president-and-pm-are-both-jewish\">Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine since 2019, is himself Jewish<\/a>\u00a0and had family members died in the Holocaust, in which more than 1 million Jews living in what is now Ukraine were murdered by the Nazis and, in some cases, by their local collaborators.<\/p>\n<p>Some Ukrainian nationalists have\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jta.org\/quick-reads\/hundreds-in-ukraine-attend-marches-celebrating-nazi-ss-soldiers-including-in-kyiv-for-the-1st-time\">increasingly exalted those collaborators<\/a>, especially a division of the Nazi army formed with local troops, in recent years.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jta.org\/2018\/04\/29\/global\/nazi-symbols-salutes-display-ukrainian-nationalist-march\">Nazi symbols have been on display at nationalist marches<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Zelensky has\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jta.org\/2020\/01\/21\/global\/ukraines-jewish-president-heaps-praise-on-israel-in-pre-visit-interview\">expressed reservations<\/a>\u00a0about efforts to exalt Nazi collaborators, who fought against the Soviet Union, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jta.org\/quick-reads\/hundreds-in-ukraine-attend-marches-celebrating-nazi-ss-soldiers-including-in-kyiv-for-the-1st-time\">last year condemned a march featuring Nazi-related symbols<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, the Ukrainian government\u2019s official Twitter account\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ukraine\/status\/1496716168920547331\">shared a cartoon image Thursday morning<\/a>\u00a0that showed Adolf Hitler smiling and touching Putin\u2019s cheek. \u201cThis is not a \u2018meme\u2019, but our and your reality right now,\u201d the account wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Zelensky\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/europe\/live-news\/ukraine-russia-news-02-24-22-intl\/h_1d10d8f9522910cac8758c5dbc0f7d5e\">extended the comparison in a televised address Thursday<\/a>\u00a0in which he said that Russia had behaved like Hitler, whose bid to overtake much of Europe began with a shock invasion of a contested territory, in invading Ukraine \u201cin a cunning way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russian President Vladimir Putin cited a purported need for \u201cdenazification\u201d of Ukraine, a country whose president is Jewish..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13297,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,11],"tags":[12509,11731],"section":[],"coauthors":[12308],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - 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