Zelensky slams Putin’s ‘pure Nazi behaviour’ in direct plea to American Jews

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has appealed to American Jews for support and compared the Russian troops in his beleaguered country to the Nazi army that marched across Europe in the Second World War.

“This is just pure Nazi behaviour. I can’t even qualify this in any different manner,” Mr Zelensky told the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella organisation of Jewish groups, over a Zoom call on Monday.

The president, who is Jewish, listed a number of cities and towns that have reportedly been destroyed by Russian troops, while outnumbered Ukrainian troops continued to fight them.

“They are throwing themselves under the tanks – just for you to understand what’s happening here,” he said.

Mr Zelensky added that Russian president Vladimir Putin’s troops were not letting people evacuate the towns and cities they have attacked, and were also not allowing food and water to be brought in.

“All of this happened during Nazi times. The survival of the Ukrainian nation – the question will be the same as antisemitism... All of these millions of people are going to be exterminated,” he said.

The Ukrainian leader said 13 people were killed in the bombing of a bakery in Kyiv on Monday and on Sunday, 50 children with cancer had to be moved after a missile hit a paediatric hospital. “They’re bombing the life out of everything that is moving,” Mr Zelensky told the group.

Mr Putin declared war on Ukraine on 24 February, describing it as a “special military operation” to disarm the eastern European country and remove leaders who he described as neo-Nazis. Nato and its allies see this as a pretext for an invasion to conquer the entire of Ukraine and install a pro-Russian administration.

Although Ukraine has a dark history of antisemitism, Mr Zelensky has often used his own history to say that it is not the hate-filled nation that Mr Putin paints it to be. Mr Zelensky’s grandfather had reportedly fought in the Soviet Army against the Nazis, while other family members died in the Holocaust.

He noted instances of Russian airstrikes near areas of Jewish importance, including the Babyn Yar mass murder site and Uman – a sacred site to Hasidic Orthodox Jews.

“For some reason, we have to kneel down and give our weapons away. We have to hoist the Russian flag. We are supposed to say that we don’t want anything, we want to put our hands up. Listen, all of this already happened. In Europe,” he added.

On Monday night, Mr Zelensky released a new video from his office in Kyiv, which he visited for the first time since the Russian invasion, to declare he wasn't “afraid of anyone”.

“I stay here, in Kyiv, on Bankova, not hiding. And I am not afraid of anyone as long as needed to win this war, our national war,” Mr Zelensky said.

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