Ukraine invasion: How Russia justifies 'de-nazification' of a nation led by a Jewish president

Addressing the Ukrainian military in a televised address, he urged them to “take power in your own hands and overthrow the country’s leadership.

The military operation’s “goal is to protect the people that are subjected to abuse, genocide from the Kyiv regime for eight years, and to this end we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine and put to justice those that committed numerous bloody crimes against peaceful people, including Russian nationals,” Mr Putin said.

He said: “It seems like it will be easier for us to agree with you than this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis."

He appeared to be referring to leadership the in the Ukranian capital Kyiv which is led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, and comes from a family partially wiped out in the Nazi holocaust.

Three of Zelenskyy’s great uncles were killed in the German Nazi party-led genocide of Jews during World War II, he said during a trip to Jerusalem in 2020. His grandfather, their brother, survived.

Ukraine is a democratic country, whose president was elected, in an election, with over 70% of the vote.

Vasily Nebenzya, a former Russian deputy foreign minister and its ambassador to the United Nations has now sought to explain the apparent contradiction of de-nazifying a country with a Jewish leader claiming that he is not the real power in the country.

"On the fact that Zelenskyy has Jewish heritage. It doesn't matter because real power in Ukraine, real political weight belongs to to the radicals and neo-Nazis who defy the president, who have their own agenda, who rule the ball in Ukraine in fact, and President Zelenskyy, who came with a landslide victory of 74% of the population, promised to end the war, first thing on the list of his priorities. But then he was slowly backing off this and he finished practically playing into the hands of those radical and neo-Nazi organisations, which claim that they represent the patriotic part of the Ukrainian society."

Denazification was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of the Nazi ideology following the Second World War.

It was carried out by removing those who had been Nazi Party or SS members from positions of power and influence and by disbanding or rendering impotent the organizations associated with Nazism.

In the 2019 Ukraine election, the Ukrainian far right received only 2% of the vote... less support than far-right parties receive across western Europe, including democratic countries such as France and Germany.

A coalition of ultranationalist right-wing parties failed to win a single seat in the Rada, the country's 450-member legislature.

But Mr Nebenzya added about the Ukranian leader: "He demonstrated that he's weak, that he has no political will and power in the circumstances he found himself in, to resist those radicals who who are the main political driving force in today's Ukraine."

Ulrich Schmid, professor for Russian culture and society at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, said Putin's denazification claim was out of place.

"It is true that there were individual far-right groups during the Euromaidan protests in 2013 and 2014. Today, however, they play a subordinate role. They exist, but in Russia itself there are at least as many far-right groups as in Ukraine."

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has said that Mr Putin has misappropriated Holocaust history with his false claim that Ukraine needs to be “denazified.”

“The Museum stands with the Ukrainian people, including the thousands of Holocaust survivors still living in the country,” Museum chairman Stuart Eizenstat, said in the statement. “These survivors are remnants of one of Europe’s largest pre-war Jewish populations that was almost completely decimated by the Germans in World War II. Having suffered terribly as victims of both Nazism and Communism, Ukrainians today are seeking to fulfill their democratic aspirations.”