Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a “peculiar kind of Jew,” the Kremlin said on Tuesday, attempting to explain its assertion that he could be linked to Friday’s Islamist attack in Moscow.
“Well, there is a peculiar kind of Jew over there,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, according to AFP.
“A Jew who in many ways shows sympathy and inclination to the nationalist spirit that has permeated the leadership of the Kyiv regime,” he added.
It’s not the first antisemitic comment regarding Zelenskyy to come out of Russia, which has painted Ukraine as a “Nazi” regime.
In Sept. 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Russian television that “Western masters…put a person at the head of modern Ukraine, an ethnic Jew, with Jewish roots, with Jewish origins” in order to cover up “the anti-human essence that is the foundation…of the modern Ukrainian state” and “the glorification of Nazism.”
In April 2023, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Ukrainian leaders of having “introduced Nazi practice and theory without any concealment. Openly, they organized in the center of Kyiv and other cities exuberant torch-bearing marches with SS division banners upheld.”
There was no evidence supporting such claims, reported German broadcaster Deutsche Welle at the time.