Incitement against Ukraine: Putin at the International Economic Forum in St Petersburg Image: Portal
The Russian president claims that Ukrainians were the main perpetrators of the murder of Jews in Ukraine during World War II. He accuses the Ukrainian president of covering up these crimes.
Vladimir Putin was prepared: “I knew this question would come,” he said when asked at the International Economic Forum in St Petersburg to explain why Russia calls Ukraine’s leadership “Nazis”, despite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy being a descendant of Jews. He had many “Jewish friends” since childhood, replied Putin, who said: “Zelenskyy is not a Jew, he is a disgrace to the Jewish people.”
That was “no joke, no irony,” Putin continued. In today’s Ukraine, neo-Nazis, “Hitler laggards”, are described as heroes. “With his actions, Zelenskyy covers these freaks, these neo-Nazis.” That is why the “denazification” of Ukraine remains Russia’s “main task”. In his speech on the morning of February 24, 2022, Putin justified the attack on Ukraine by saying that the country should be “denazified” and “demilitarized”.
The St. Petersburg public had already listened for more than an hour to the president’s tedious lecture, peppered with long numbers, about the achievements of the Russian economy, its tasks and its bright future. Now Putin had a video showing footage from World War II showing burning houses and the horribly mangled corpses of civilians, including children, on big screens. This was all the work of “Banderowzy,” one voice claimed early on.
The SS and Wehrmacht carried out the Babyn Yar massacre
The word “Banderovtsy” refers to supporters of radical Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, who was in fact anti-Semitic; some of his followers collaborated with the German occupiers during World War II and were involved in war crimes, while Bandera himself was in German custody. In today’s Russia, the term “Banderovtsy” refers to all supporters of an independent Ukraine.
Putin falsely claimed that most of the 1.5 million Jews murdered in Ukraine during World War II were killed by the “Banderovtsy”. Although Ukrainian auxiliary troops were indeed involved in the mass shootings, German units were the main culprits. Putin attributed the Babyn Yar massacre, in which more than 30,000 Jews were shot in Kiev in two days in September 1941, to Ukrainian forces. It was actually perpetrated by the SS and the Wehrmacht.
Putin also addressed crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists against Poland. He stated that nothing was said about it in Poland. Indeed, in 1943, Ukrainian nationalists killed tens of thousands of Polish civilians in what is now western Ukraine. However, Putin’s claim that this is not discussed in Poland is false. With the 80th anniversary of the worst massacres looming in July, the topic is currently very much present in the Polish public.
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Dealing with this history has repeatedly led to tensions between Kiev and Warsaw in recent years, although there have been state-level efforts to commemorate them together since the 1990s.
In late May, Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, lamented the crimes in a speech to the Polish parliament in Warsaw. The “We forgive and ask for forgiveness” formula must be implemented between Ukraine and Poland, he said. In early July, the President of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, and the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Svyatoslav Shevchuk, want to commemorate the victims together at religious services in Poland and Ukraine.