🪙 Nov. 01, 2023: The Daily Beast > Putin’s rhetoric towards the Jewish community has taken a drastic turn in recent months driven perhaps by desperation—with his own power base imperiled—perhaps by his fascination with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s own Jewishness. - #Ukraine

 Anna Nemtsova

Published Nov. 01, 2023 4:49 AM EDT 

www.thedailybeast.com

The Ukrainian leader is wrecking Putin’s legacy by leading a stirring defense of his nation against the Russian invasion, and his faith has made a mockery of Putin’s claims to be liberating Ukraine from neo-Nazis.

This summer, Putin tried to square the circle by claiming that his old Jewish friends were telling him that Zelensky was a disgrace to the Jewish people. (Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s attempt was even more ludicrous, suggesting Adolf Hitler himself had Jewish blood.)

But Putin now seems to have slipped even further to the dark side while his propagandists push the ludicrous conspiracy theory that the U.S. planted a Jewish president in Ukraine to hide the Nazi grip on power in Ukraine.

When he finally addressed the antisemitic uprising in the Caucasus on Monday, the Russian president delved once again into conspiracy theory, blaming the U.S. for the marauding gangs.

In September, Putin openly mocked the Jewish community himself. Talking about a former confidant who fled to Israel after the foolhardy invasion of Ukraine, Putin said: “He is not Anatoly Borisovich Chubais any longer but he is now some Moshe Israelevich.”

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