Putin’s unfinished business [after Crimea] with Ukraine also fed a growing personal animus toward Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.  

 

When Zelensky was elected in a landslide in 2019, the Kremlin saw him as someone it could work with: a Russian-speaking comedian who had lived in Moscow, performed on Russian television and won with a message of ending the war in eastern Ukraine that Russia had fueled.

And partly because Zelensky is Jewish, some in Moscow expected him to be tough on Ukraine’s nationalist wing, which venerated Ukrainian independence fighters who had fought alongside the Nazis in the closing battles of World War II. [There were those, that is true.]

“I think he is sincerely willing” to compromise with Russia, Putin said of Zelensky in 2019. “It is his sincere conviction, at least his striving.”

By early 2021, the Kremlin’s hopes had been dashed. Zelensky cracked down on pro-Russian interests in Ukraine, shutting down pro-Russian television channels and sanctioning Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch close to Mr. Putin.

Putin showed his frustration in a long meeting at his Sochi residence with Mr. Bennett, the new prime minister of Israel, in October 2021.

...But when it came to Ukraine, Putin flashed anger. Bennett noted that Mr. Zelensky was interested in meeting Mr. Putin face to face.

“I have nothing to discuss with this person,” Putin shot back, according to two people familiar with the exchange. “What kind of Jew is he? He’s an enabler of Nazism.”  

[Absolutely NOT true but Poot-Poot: Are you anti-Nazi? Some of Great Soviet Union's best buds Nazis! Heroic Soviet soldiers fought alongside Uncle Adolph's soldiers, too! So, some Ukraine's soldiers. Why bust yeast cells over a little Nazi-love?]