Dr. Volodymyr & Mr. Zelensky: the dark side of the Ukrainian president

[rmstock]

Dr. Volodymyr & Mr. Zelensky: the dark side of the Ukrainian president
by Guy Mettan
  The Swiss MP and former editor-in-chief of the Tribune de Genève, Guy
  Mettan, paints a portrait of the acrobat who plays the role of
  president of Ukraine. He shows how this public entertainer became an
  ally of the Banderists and set up a dictatorship for them.
VOLTAIRE NETWORK | GENEVA (SWITZERLAND) | 23 JUNE 2022
https://www.voltairenet.org/article217403.html

Guy Mettan
Member of the Grand Council of the Canton of Geneva (Christian
Democrat). Former editor-in-chief of the Tribune de Genève and founder
of the Swiss Press Club. Author of the book Russie-Occident. Une guerre
de mille ans (to be published on September 8, 2022).

   

   Héros de la liberté", "Hero of Our Time", "Der Unbeugsame", "The
   Unlikely Ukrainian Hero Who Defied Putin and United the World",
   "Zelensky, Ukraine in blood": the Western media and leaders no longer
   know what superlatives to use to sing the praises of the Ukrainian
   president, so fascinated are they by the "amazing resilience" of the
   comedian miraculously transformed into a "warlord" and "saviour of
   democracy".
   
   For the past three months, the Ukrainian head of state has been making
   the headlines, opening the news, inaugurating the Cannes Film Festival,
   haranguing parliaments, congratulating and admonishing his colleagues
   at the head of states ten times more powerful than he is, with a
   happiness and tactical sense that no film actor or political leader
   before him had ever known.
   
   How can you not fall under the spell of this improbable Mr. Bean who,
   after conquering the public with his grimaces and extravagances
   (walking naked in a shop and mimicking a pianist playing with his sex,
   for example), was able to swap his antics and gravelly puns for a
   grey-green T-shirt, a week-long beard and words full of seriousness in
   order to galvanize his troops who were besieged by the evil Russian
   bear?
   
   Since 24 February, Volodymyr Zelensky has unquestionably proved himself
   to be an exceptionally talented artist in international politics. Those
   who had followed his career as a comedian were not surprised because
   they knew his innate sense of improvisation, his mimetic abilities and
   his audacity in acting. The way he campaigned and defeated tough
   opponents like former president Poroshenko in a few weeks between 31
   December 2018 and 21 April 2019, mobilising his production team and
   generous oligarch donors, had already proved the extent of his talents.
   But it remained to transform the trial. This has now been done.
   
   TALENT FOR DOUBLE-DEALING
   
   However, as is often the case, the front rarely looks like the
   backstage. The spotlight hides more than it shows. And here the picture
   is less than stellar: both his achievements as a head of state and his
   performance as a defender of democracy leave a lot to be desired.
   
   Zelensky's talent for double-dealing will be demonstrated as soon as he
   is elected. We recall that he was elected with a score of 73.2% of the
   votes, promising to put an end to corruption, to lead Ukraine on the
   path of progress and civilisation, and above all to make peace with the
   Russian-speaking Donbass. As soon as he was elected, he betrayed all
   his promises with such untimely zeal that his popularity rating fell to
   23% in January 2022, to the point of being outdistanced by his two main
   opponents.
   
   From May 2019, to satisfy his oligarch sponsors, the newly elected
   president is launching a massive land privatisation programme covering
   40 million hectares of good agricultural land under the pretext that
   the moratorium on land sales would have cost the country's GDP billions
   of dollars. In the wake of the "de-communisation" and
   "de-Russification" programmes begun since the pro-US coup of February
   2014, he is launching a vast operation of privatisation of state
   assets, fiscal austerity, deregulation of labour laws and dismantling
   of trade unions, angering a majority of Ukrainians who had not
   understood what their candidate meant by "progress", "westernisation"
   and "normalisation" of the Ukrainian economy. In a country that, in
   2020, had a per capita income of 3,726 dollars against 10,126 dollars
   for the Russian opponent, while in 1991 the average income of Ukraine
   exceeded that of Russia, the comparison is not flattering. And it is
   understandable that the Ukrainians did not applaud this umpteenth
   neoliberal reform.
   
   As for the march towards civilisation, it will take the form of another
   decree which, on 19 May 2021, ensures the domination of the Ukrainian
   language and bans Russian from all spheres of public life,
   administrations, schools and businesses, much to the satisfaction of
   the nationalists and the astonishment of the Russian-speaking people in
   the south-east of the country.
   
   A RUNAWAY SPONSOR
   
   The record on corruption is no better. In 2015, the Guardian estimated
   that Ukraine was the most corrupt country in Europe. In 2021,
   Transparency International, a western NGO based in Berlin, ranked
   Ukraine 122nd in the world for corruption, close to the despised Russia
   (136th). Not brilliant for a country that passes for a paragon of
   virtue in the face of Russian barbarians. Corruption is everywhere, in
   ministries, administrations, public companies, parliament, the police,
   and even in the High Court of Anti-Corruption Justice according to the
   Kyiv Post! It is not uncommon to see judges driving around in Porsches,
   the newspapers observe.
   
   Zelensky's main sponsor, Ihor Kolomoïsky, who lives in Geneva where he
   has luxurious offices overlooking the harbour, is not the least of
   these oligarchs who profit from the prevailing corruption: on 5 March
   2021, Anthony Blinken, who probably had no choice, announced that the
   State Department had frozen his assets and banned him from the United
   States because of "involvement in significant corruption". It is true
   that Kolomoysky was accused of embezzling $5.5 billion from the
   state-owned Privatbank. Coincidentally, the good Ihor was also the main
   shareholder of the oil holding company Burisma, which employed Joe
   Biden's son Hunter for a modest compensation of $50,000 a month and
   which is now under investigation by the Delaware prosecutor. A wise
   precaution: Kolomoisky, who has become persona non grata in Israel and
   is a refugee in Georgia according to some witnesses, is not likely to
   appear on the stand.
   
   This is the same Kolomoïsky, who was a key figure in Ukraine's
   progress, and who made Zelensky's entire career as an actor and who is
   implicated in the Pandora Papers affair revealed by the press in
   October 2021. These papers revealed that since 2012, the TV channel 1+1
   belonging to the sulphurous oligarch had paid no less than 40 million
   dollars to its star Zelensky and that the latter, shortly before being
   elected president and with the help of his close guard of Kryvyi Rih –
   the two Shefir brothers, one of whom is the author of Zelensky's
   scripts and the other the head of the State Security Service, and the
   producer and owner of their joint production company Kvartal 95 – had
   prudently transferred considerable sums to offshore accounts opened in
   his wife's name, while acquiring three undeclared flats in London for
   the sum of $7.5 million.
   
   This taste of the "servant of the people" (that's the name of his TV
   series and his political party) for non-proletarian comfort is
   confirmed by a photo that briefly appeared on social networks and was
   immediately deleted by anti-complot fact-checkers, which showed him
   taking his ease in a tropical palace at a few tens of thousands of
   dollars a night when he was supposed to be spending his winter holidays
   in a modest ski resort in the Carpathians.
   
   The art of tax optimisation and the assiduous association with
   controversial oligarchs do not argue in favour of an unconditional
   presidential commitment to fighting corruption. Nor does the fact that
   he tried to remove the troublesome president of the Constitutional
   Court, Oleksandr Tupytskyi, and appointed him prime minister after his
   predecessor, Oleksyi Goncharuk, left office due to scandal, an unknown
   man called Denys Chmynal, but who had the merit of running one of the
   factories of the richest man in the country, Rinat Akhmetov, owner of
   the famous Azovstal factory, the last refuge of the heroic freedom
   fighters of the Azov battalion. Fighters who sported tattoos on their
   arms, necks, backs or chests glorifying the Wolfsangel of the SS Das
   Reich Division, phrases from Adolf Hitler or swastikas, as seen on the
   countless videos released by the Russians after their surrender.
   
   HOSTAGE OF AZOV BATTALIONS
   
   For the rapprochement of the flamboyant Volodymyr with the most extreme
   representatives of the Ukrainian nationalist right is not the least of
   Dr. Zelensky's oddities. This complicity was immediately denied with
   the greatest virulence by the Western press, which judged it scandalous
   because of the president's suddenly rediscovered Jewish origins. How
   could a Jewish president sympathise with neo-Nazis, who are presented
   as a tiny minority of outsiders? One should not give credit to Vladimir
   Putin's "denazification" operation...
   
   And yet the facts are stubborn and far from trivial.
   
   It is certain that Zelensky personally has never been close to neo-Nazi
   ideology or even to the Ukrainian nationalist far right. His Jewish
   ancestry, even if relatively remote and never claimed before February
   2022, obviously excludes any antisemitism on his part. This
   rapprochement therefore does not betray an affinity but is a matter of
   banal raison d'état and a well-understood mixture of pragmatism and the
   instinct for physical and political survival.
   
   One has to go back to October 2019 to understand the nature of the
   relationship between Zelensky and the far right. And you have to
   understand that these far-right formations, even if they only weigh 2%
   of the electorate, still represent nearly a million highly motivated
   and well-organised people who are spread across numerous groupings and
   movements, of which the Azov regiment (co-founded and financed as early
   as 2014 by Kolomoysky, still him!) is only the best known. To it must
   be added the organisations Aïdar, Dnipro, Safari, Svoboda, Pravy
   Sektor, C14 and National Corps to be complete.
   
   C14, named after the number of words in the American neo-Nazi David
   Lane's phrase ("We must secure the existence of our people and a future
   for white children"), is one of the least known abroad but most feared
   for its racist violence in Ukraine. All of these groups were more or
   less merged into the Ukrainian army and national guard at the
   initiative of their leader, former interior minister Arsen Avakov, who
   ruled the Ukrainian security apparatus unchallenged from 2014 to 2021.
   They are the ones Zelensky calls "veterans" since autumn 2019.
   
   A few months after his election, the young president went to Donbass to
   try to fulfil his election promise and enforce the Minsk agreements
   signed by his predecessor. The far-right forces, who have been shelling
   the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk since 2014 at the cost of ten
   thousand deaths, welcome him with the greatest circumspection because
   they are suspicious of this "pacifist" president. They are waging a
   merciless campaign against peace under the slogan "No surrender". In
   one video, a pale Zelensky pleads with them: "I am the president of
   this country. I am 41 years old. I am not a loser. I'm coming to you
   and saying: take the guns out." The video was released on social
   networks and Zelensky immediately became the target of a hate campaign.
   This will be the end of his desire for peace and the implementation of
   the Minsk agreements.
   
   Shortly after this incident, a minor withdrawal of the extremist forces
   took place, and then the bombing resumed in earnest.
   
   NATIONALIST CRUSADE
   
   The problem is that not only has Zelensky given in to their blackmail
   but he is joining them in their nationalist crusade. After his failed
   expedition in November 2019, he receives several far-right leaders,
   including Yehven Taras, the leader of C14, while his prime minister
   stands by Andryi Medvedko, a neo-Nazi figure suspected of murder. He
   also supports the footballer Zolzulya against Spanish fans who accuse
   him of being a Nazi because of his proclaimed support for Stepan
   Bandera, the nationalist leader who collaborated with Nazi Germany
   during the war (and with the CIA after the war) and participated in the
   Jewish Holocaust.
   
   Collaboration with nationalist radicals is well established. In
   November last year, Zelensky appointed the ultra-nationalist Pravy
   Sektor Dmytro Yarosh as special adviser to the commander-in-chief of
   the Ukrainian army and, since February 2022, as head of the Volunteer
   Army, which is waging terror in the rear. At the same time, he
   appointed Oleksander Poklad, nicknamed "the strangler" because of his
   taste for torture, as head of the SBU's counter-intelligence unit. In
   December, two months before the war, it was the turn of another Pravy
   Sektor leader, Commander Dmytro Kotsuybaylo, to be rewarded with the
   title of "Hero of Ukraine" while, a week after the start of
   hostilities, Zelensky had the regional governor of Odessa replaced by
   Maksym Marchenko, commander of the ultranationalist Aïdar battalion,
   the very same one with whom Bernard-Henri Lévy would make a point of
   marching.
   
   Desire to appease the far right by giving them positions? Shared
   ultra-patriotism? Or a simple convergence of interests between a
   neo-liberal, Atlanticist, pro-Western right and a nationalist far right
   that dreams of smashing Russians and "leading the white races of the
   world in a final crusade against the Untermenschen guided by the
   Semites", in the words of former deputy Andryi Biletsky, leader of the
   National Corps? It is not clear, as no journalist has ventured to ask
   Zelensky this question.
   
   What is not in doubt, however, is the increasingly authoritarian, even
   criminal, drift of the Ukrainian regime. So much so that its zealots
   should think twice before nominating their idol for the Nobel Peace
   Prize. While the media look the other way, a real campaign of
   intimidation, kidnappings and executions is underway against local and
   national elected officials suspected of being Russian agents or of
   connivance with the enemy because they want to avoid an escalation of
   the conflict.
   
   "One less traitor in Ukraine! He was found killed and was tried by the
   people's court!" This is how the adviser to the Interior Minister,
   Anton Gerashenko, announced on his Telegram account the murder of
   Volodymyr Strok, mayor and former deputy of the small town of Kremnina.
   Suspected of having collaborated with the Russians, he was kidnapped
   and tortured before being executed. On 7 March, the mayor of Gostomel
   was killed because he had tried to negotiate a humanitarian corridor
   with the Russian military. On 24 March, the mayor of Kupyansk asked
   Zelensky to release his daughter, who had been kidnapped by SBU agents.
   At the same time, one of the Ukrainian negotiators was found dead after
   being accused of treason by the nationalist media. No less than eleven
   mayors have been reported missing to date, including in regions never
   occupied by the Russians...
   
   PROHIBITED OPPOSITION PARTIES
   
   But the repression does not stop there. It hit the critical media,
   which were all closed down, and the opposition parties, which were all
   dissolved.
   
   In February 2021, Zelensky closed down three opposition channels deemed
   to be pro-Russian and supposedly owned by the oligarch Viktor
   Medvedchuk, NewsOne, Zik and 112 Ukraine. The State Department hails
   this attack on press freedom, stating that the US supports Ukrainian
   efforts to counter Russia's malign influence..." In January 2022, a
   month before the war, Nash was shut down. After the war began, the
   regime went on a hunt for left-wing journalists, bloggers and
   commentators. At the beginning of April, two right-wing channels were
   also affected. Channel 5 and Pryamiy. A presidential decree obliges all
   channels to broadcast a single, pro-government tone of voice, of
   course. Recently the witch-hunt even extended to the country's most
   popular critical blogger, Ukraine's Navalny, Anatoliy Shariy, who was
   arrested on 4 May by the Spanish authorities at the request of the
   Ukrainian political police. Attacks on the press at least equivalent to
   those of the autocrat Putin, but never heard of in the Western media...
   
   The purge was even more severe for political parties. It decimated
   Zelensky's main opponents. In the spring of 2021, the home of the main
   opponent, Medvedchuk, reputedly close to Putin, was ransacked and its
   owner placed under house arrest. On 12 April, the oligarch deputy was
   forcibly interned in an undisclosed location, visibly drugged, deprived
   of visits before being shown on TV and offered in exchange for the
   release of the Azovstal defenders, in defiance of all the Geneva
   conventions. His lawyers, threatened, had to give up defending him in
   favour of someone close to the services.
   
   Last December, it was Petro Poroshenko, who was rising in the polls,
   who was accused of treason. On 20 December 2021, at 3.07 pm, the
   official SBU website listed him as a suspect for crimes of treason and
   support for terrorist activities. The former president was accused of
   "making Ukraine energy dependent on Russia and the leaders of the
   Russian-controlled pseudo-republics."
   
   On 3 March, activists of the Lizvizia Left were raided by the SBU and
   imprisoned by the dozen. Then on 19 March, repression hit the whole of
   the Ukrainian left. By decree, eleven left-wing parties were banned:
   Party for Life, Left Opposition, Progressive Socialist Party of
   Ukraine, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Union of Left Forces, Socialists,
   Sharyi Party, Ours, State, Opposition Bloc Volodymyr Saldo.
   
   Other activists, bloggers and human rights defenders are arrested and
   tortured, journalist Yan Taksyur, activist Elena Brezhnaya, MMA boxer
   Maxim Ryndovskiy or lawyer Elena Viacheslavova, whose father was
   charred to death in the pogrom of 2 May 2014 at the Odessa House of
   Trade Unions.
   
   To complete this list, we should mention the men and women stripped
   naked and whipped in public by the nationalists in the streets of Kiev,
   the Russian prisoners beaten and shot in the legs before being
   executed, the soldier whose eye was pierced before being killed, the
   members of the Georgian Legion who executed Russian prisoners in a
   village near Kiev, while their leader boasted that he never took
   prisoners. On the Ukraine 24 channel, it was the head of the army's
   medical service who said he had given the order "to castrate all
   Russian men because they are subhuman and worse than cockroaches".
   Finally, Ukraine is making extensive use of facial recognition
   technology from the company Clearview to identify dead Russians and
   broadcast their photos on Russian social networks, ridiculing them...
   
   AN OSCAR-WINNING ACTOR
   
   The examples could be multiplied, as there are so many quotes and
   videos of atrocities committed by the troops of the defender of
   democracy and human rights who presides over the destiny of Ukraine.
   But this would be tedious and counterproductive with a public opinion
   convinced that these barbaric behaviours are solely due to the Russians.
   
   This is why no NGO is alarmed, the Council of Europe is silent, the
   International Criminal Court is not investigating, and press freedom
   organisations are silent. They have not listened well to what the
   kindly Volodymyr told them during a visit to Butcha at the beginning of
   April: "If we do not find a civilised way out, you know our people,
   they will find an uncivilised way out."
   
   Ukraine's problem is that its president, willingly or unwillingly, has
   ceded power to extremists internally and to the NATO military
   externally in order to indulge in the pleasure of being worshipped by
   crowds around the world. Was it not he who told a French journalist on
   5 March, ten days after the Russian invasion: "Today, my life is
   beautiful. I believe I am wanted. I feel that this is the most
   important meaning of my life: to be wanted. To feel that you are not
   just breathing, walking and eating something. You are living!"
   
   We told you: Zelensky is a great actor. Like his predecessor as Dr.
   Jekill & Mr. Hide in 1932, he deserves to win the Oscar for best male
   role of the decade. But when he is faced with the task of rebuilding
   his country after a war, he could have prevented in 2019, the return to
   reality may be difficult.
   
Sources
    «The Comedian-Turned-President is Seriously in Over His Head», Olga
   Rudenko, New York Times, February 21, 2022 (Opinion Guest from Kyyiv
   Post).
    «How Zelensky made Peace With Neo-Nazis», and «Zelensky's Hardline
   Internal Purge», Alex Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal, Consortium News,
   March 4 and April 20, 2022.
    «Olga Baysha Interview about Ukraine's President», Natylie Baldwin,
   The Grayzone, April 28, 2022.
    «President of Ukraine Zelensky has visited disengaging area in Zolote
   today», @Liveupmap, 26 October 2019 (Watch on Twitter).
    «Qu'est-ce que le régiment Azov?», Adrien Nonjon, The Conversation, 24
   mai 2022.
    «Public Designation of Oligarch and Former Ukrainian Public Official
   Ihor Kolomoyskyy Due to Involvement in Significant Corruption», Press
   statement, Anthony J. Blinken, US Department of State, March 5, 2021.
    «Petro Poroshenko notified of suspicion of treason and aiding
   terrorism», Security Service of Ukraine, 20 December 2021.
    «Un maire ukrainien prorusse enlevé et abattu», Michel Pralong, Le
   Matin, 3 mars 2022,
   
Guy Mettan
Source
Swiss Standpoint

See also:
[1] The NWO Globalist Stooge Zelensky & His Epic Betrayal of Ukraine
   March 01, 2022
   http://theinfounderground.com/smf/index.php?topic=29179.0

[yankeedoodle]

18 Things to Know About Ukraine's Jewish President Volodymyr Zelensky
Before leading his nation in a war, Zelensky was an actor known for voicing the Ukrainian Paddington Bear.
https://www.heyalma.com/18-things-to-know-about-ukraines-jewish-president-volodymyr-zelensky/

The world has had a crash course on Volodymyr Zelensky in recent days, as the Ukrainian president has galvanized his country against an unprovoked attack by neighboring Russia.

The broad strokes of Zelensky's career have long been known to those who pay attention to Ukrainian politics — or to their spillover effects in American government. He's young, funny, Jewish and committed to a strong democratic Ukraine, even at the risk of death. "I need ammunition, not a ride," he reportedly told American authorities this week after they offered to evacuate him from Ukraine.

But as someone who has long been in the public eye, and not always in politics, Zelensky has left more to know than that. We scoured interviews in multiple languages, scrolled back through his social media posts and compiled some amazing YouTube clips to offer a more nuanced portrait.

Here are 18 things you should know about the man who has captured the world's attention.

1. He had an "ordinary Soviet Jewish upbringing." Zelensky told the Times of Israel in early 2020, on the eve of visiting Israel to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, that his family was typical of Soviet Jews in the 1980s when he was growing up. That meant, he said, that they were not religious, because "religion didn't exist in the Soviet state as such." Indeed, Jewish observance was illegal and Jews were routinely surveilled, although many Jews did preserve some elements of their Jewish identity as acts of resistance. If that was the case in Zelensky's family, he hasn't said so. "I never speak about religion and I never speak about God because I have my own personal opinion about it," he said in the interview. "Of course, I believe in God. But I speak with him only in those moments which are personal for me."

2. He grew up in what was once known as the "Pale of Settlement." Like much of Ukraine, Zelensky's hometown of Kryvyi Rih is located in the only region of the Russian Empire where Jews were permitted to live. The area, known as the Pale of Settlement, was formed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries after the Russian government barred Jews from living elsewhere under its supervision. Pogroms, or organized attacks against Jewish communities, originated in the Pale of Settlement and terrorized the Jews living there for generations.

3. As with most Ukrainian Jews, the Holocaust is part of his story. Zelensky has said that his great-grandfather and three of his grandfather's brothers died as a result of the Nazi invasion of Ukrainian territory. His grandfather and his grandfather's brothers took up arms against the Nazis in the Red Army; his grandfather was the only one to survive. He did not specify whether they died in combat or in the extended massacre of more than 1 million Ukrainian Jews that the Nazis carried out, often with local collaboration. His grandmother, he has said, survived because she left Kryvyi Rih for Kazakhstan; almost all of the Jews who remained were murdered. A Holocaust memorial not far from his parents' home in Kryvyi Rih was defaced in January 2020.

4. He says being Jewish is a small part of his identity. Zelensky rarely discusses his Jewish identity publicly, and by all accounts it was not a prominent part of his campaign, even by his detractors. Asked about his Jewishness by the French Jewish philosopher Bernard-Henry Levi in early 2019, Zelensky declined to explore it at length, Levy wrote when the interview appeared in the French newspaper Le Point. "The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults," he told Levi.

Want to see Zelensky and his comedy partners say "L'chaim"? Head to 3:00 in this video, a skit from before Ukraine's 2010 elections.

5. He has credited his Jewish parents with giving him his moral compass. Zelensky's father, Oleksander, is a mathematician who heads a university computer science department; his mother Rimma was an engineer for many years. He said in a 2018 interview, shortly before officially running for president, that because of them, he is unable to accept lies. "I always react painfully to lies," he said. "This is the main feature that my parents gave me."

6. He has many personal ties to Israel. Zelensky has said he has relatives who moved to Israel in the 1990s, during the wave of Jewish emigration from the newly dissolved Soviet Union. He has also conducted business there as an actor and comedian, and performed in venues throughout the country. As Ukrainian president, he has visited just once, for the Holocaust commemoration shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic began. "I know Israel," he said in the Times of Israel interview. "I know people there."

7. Married for nearly two decades, he's the father of two children. Zelensky dated his wife Olena, a school acquaintance 11 days his junior, for eight years before they married in September 2003. Their daughter Oleksandra was born the following year, and they had a son, Kyrylo, in 2013. Olena has been an advocate for women and children since Zelensky took office, and on Tuesday she posted on Instagram about the bravery of Ukrainian women who are defending their country against the Russians. Zelensky has said that his family remains in Ukraine but that he will not disclose their location; he told CNN on Tuesday that he had not seen them in three days.

8. He got a scholarship to study in Israel but didn't go. In a 2018 interview with a friend from the entertainment industry, he described scoring so high on an international English exam that he had an opportunity after high school to study in Israel. Most of his classmates took advantage of the option — he named one woman specifically who moved to Israel — but he did not, saying that his father prohibited him from moving. He studied law in Ukraine instead.

9. He won the Ukrainian equivalent of "Dancing with the Stars" in 2006. A highlights reel of a 28-year-old Zelensky twisting and dipping in a series of outlandish outfits, including a pink leisure suit, went viral over the weekend.

10. His most prominent acting role foreshadowed his presidency. On the political satire TV show "Servant of the People," Zelensky played a history teacher so outraged by government corruption that he runs for president — and stuns the country and himself by winning. Produced by Zelensky's company, the show aired on Ukrainian television from 2015 to 2019, its final episode launching just weeks before Zelensky was himself elected president.

11. He voiced Paddington in the Ukrainian-dubbed versions of the "Paddington" movies. A clip about the movies' dubbing shows the soon-to-be president giving his voice to a delightful cuddly CGI bear. At one point, Zelensky makes the sounds generated when Paddington sticks electric toothbrushes up his nose. The Paddington books were inspired by Jewish children who took refuge in England during World War II.

12. He has ... unconventional piano skills. One piece of his comedy team's shtick was to pound the keys with their pants at their ankles and their hands in the air — leaving little room for guessing how the music was getting made. One of their standbys: the Jewish classic "Hava Nagila."

13. He likes dogs, working out and shawarma. Zelensky's pre-presidency Instagram account reflects his passions from before he was responsible for representing Ukraine on the world stage. He frequently posted workout selfies, which continued at a less frequent pace after he became president. He also posted pictures of his dogs Peter and Nora. And shortly after taking office, he posted a picture of himself eating a shawarma sandwich, writing, "When you have a busy schedule, shawarma can be the solution. ... For those in power, I recommend it!"

14. He went shirtless for his COVID vaccination. Most world leaders posted pictures of themselves with rolled-up sleeves getting their inoculations against COVID-19 in 2021. Zelensky went the distance, removing his shirt entirely, in a move that drew international side-eye. For another shirtless view, check out this 2014 video of his comedy troupe performing a parody of a popular Ukrainian band.

15. The conversation about casting his inevitable biopic has already started. It's unclear how the Volodymyr Zelensky movie will end, but his admirers have already started suggesting stars to play him. One suggestion that appears to have gained steam is Jeremy Renner, who has acted in war films and bears a resemblance to Zelensky. But Renner is not Jewish, leading some to suggest that he would not be an appropriate choice. For his part, Zelensky was dismissive of the adulation in a CNN interview from his bunker on Tuesday, saying, "It's very serious, it's not a movie ... I'm not iconic, I think Ukraine is iconic."

16. He reportedly changed the global response to Russia's aggression this week in five minutes. Some world leaders were reportedly hesitant to impose steep sanctions on Russia on Thursday night, after the first day of the country's war on Ukraine. But after meeting with Zelensky by videoconference and hearing him deliver a five-minute, emotional appeal for aid, they changed course. "It was extremely, extremely emotional," a European official briefed on the call told The Washington Post. "He was essentially saying, 'Look, we are here dying for European ideals.'"

17. He doesn't like to lose. In the 2018 interview with his entertainment industry friend, Zelensky characterized himself as someone who commits to a fight for the long haul — a resonant idea as his country nears the end of its first week at war with Russia. "I'm such a guy that if I get involved in a battle, I usually don't get out of it. I can lose, but go out in the middle of it ... no," he said. "The white flag is not our flag!"

18. People who know him say he is who he seems right now. "I've always thought he is a person who has a profound sense of right and wrong," a senior adviser to Zelensky told the Washington Post on the condition of anonymity in recent days. "He will never acquiesce when he thinks something is wrong." The newspaper asked the adviser whether he believed Zelensky was prepared to die. "The adviser answered without hesitation: 'Yes.'"

[yankeedoodle]

How Jewish is Volodymyr Zelensky?
The Ukrainian President is hailed as one of the few Jewish world leaders not from Israel, but how Jewish is he
https://www.thejc.com/news/world/how-jewish-is-volodymyr-zelensky-1zBi4bpLPCHVjWiAJh6gOq?reloadTime=1675963931341

Volodymyr Zelensky, the heroic President of Ukraine, is often held up as an example of strong Jewish leadership, a rarity, especially in a part of the world where antisemitism is historically rife.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Zelensky has not been shy about his heritage, even referencing it in a plea to the Israeli government for financial and military support in the early stage of the invasion.

He's also been used by antisemitic conspiracy theorists to suggest a Jewish globalist plot to support Ukraine.

But what is his Jewish background and just how Jewish is Volodymyr Zelensky?

Background

When Volodymyr Zelensky won his election in 2019, it meant that for the first time in Ukraine's history, the country had a president and a prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, who were both Jewish and open about their Jewish background. For a time, Ukraine was the only country outside of Israel where the heads of state and government were Jewish. Yet neither promoted nor relied on ethnicity in their politics.

In fact, Tsyba, a childhood friend and now MP in Zelenksy's Servant of the People party, says Zelensky rarely mentioned his Jewish background and it was not something people talked about. "It never mattered ... There were a lot of Jewish people around yet there was no particular interest in who was who."

Grandparents

Days before taking office in 2019, Zelensky put flowers on the grave of his Jewish grandfather, who fought the Nazis in World War II.

"[Simon] went through the whole war and remains forever in my memory one of those heroes who defended Ukraine from the Nazis. Thanks for the fact that the inhuman ideology of Nazism is forever a thing of the past. Thanks to those who fought against Nazism — and won."

He revealed on CNN that his great-grandparents were killed by the Nazis in a blaze that consumed their entire village.

However, his grandmother escaped Hitler in an evacuation of Jews to Kazakhstan. He said: "My grandmother was living in Kryvi Rih, in a part of south Ukraine which was occupied by the fascists. They killed all the Jews who remained. She had left in an evacuation of Jews to Almaty, Kazakhstan. Many people fled to there. She studied there. She's a teacher. After World War II, she came back. That's where I was born."

Parents

Zelensky grew up in the Russian-speaking city of Kryvyi Rih, in the eastern part of Ukraine. Like most Soviet Jews, his parents were highly educated but limited in where their careers could go. His father was a professor of mathematics and his mother studied engineering.

Zelensky said he grew up in an "ordinary Soviet Jewish family," which was to say, not very religious, since "religion didn't exist in the Soviet state as such."

In January 2020, during the commemoration in Israel of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Zelensky told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a story about a family of four brothers.

"Three of them, their parents and their families became victims of the Holocaust. All of them were shot by German occupiers who invaded Ukraine," he said. "The fourth brother survived. ... Two years after the war, he had a son, and in 31 years, he had a grandson. In 40 more years, that grandson became president, and he is standing before you today, Mr. Prime Minister."

His childhood

As a child, Zelensky had little connection to Kryvyi Rih's Jewish community. Instead, his Jewish ties have mostly been to the community of Dnipro, the largest city in the region. Shmuel Kaminetsky, the chief rabbi of Dnipro, met Zelensky in 2010 after inviting the comedian to perform at a Purim celebration. Since then, they have met on various occasions, including at the new president's meeting with the Jewish community in 2019.

Yana Dobroserdova, an entrepreneur with Jewish roots, says she didn't even know that Zelensky was Jewish. "We are so intermixed; everyone has either a brother or friend with a Jewish background."

Running for President

Zelensky did not hide his background during his Presidential election campaign, but he did not play it up either. "The fact that I am a Jew is about the 20th question among my characteristics," he said.

Vyacheslav Lykhachev, head of the National Minority Rights Monitoring Group, believes that Zelensky, if anything, benefited politically from being Jewish – he was seen as a "smart Jewish boy". But his Jewishness was not the most important factor. "What matters in Ukraine is the region you are from," Lykhachev explains.

Rabbi Kaminezki, the chief rabbi for the eastern Ukrainian region where Zelensky grew up, remembers feeling appalled that his own community believed Zelensky should not run as they thought "we will have pogroms here again in two years if things go wrong."

However, historian Mr Shchupak thought Zelensky's background played "zero role" in the election campaign - aside from a few posts on social media, which included a comment on Facebook by an adviser to Ukrainian President Poroshenko that "the president of Ukraine must be Ukrainian and Christian".

"Everybody in Ukraine knows that Zelensky is a Jew," Mr. Shchupak said. "He is a typical product of a secular intellectual Jewish family. How can this happen in a country that Russia says is run by fascists?"

How important is Zelensky's Jewishness to him?

Zelensky's "Jewishness is important for him," said Nathan Sharansky, who spent years in a Soviet Gulag accused of treason for seeking permission to move to Israel.

"He is not a Jew who is making secret of his Jewishness and he is not a Jew who is looking for some other identity," Sharansky told AFP.

Lisa Maurice, a senior lecturer in the classical studies department at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv, told AFP she saw signs of Jewish influence in Zelensky's public posture, including his social media posts.

"All our heroes, even the military heroes, fight not because they want to fight, not because they are aggressive, but because it is the right thing to do. That is a really strong tradition in Judaism," she said.