Photo: president.gov.ua
Zelenskyy’s father is not George Soros, but Oleksandr Zelenskyy, a university professor and a computer scientist, President of the Cybernetics and Computer Hardware Department at the Kyiv Rih State University of Economics and Technology. Zelenskyy’s mother is Rima Zelenskyy, who worked as an engineer. Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s grandfather, Semyon Ivanovich Zelenskyy, served in the Army during World War II. Semyon’s father and three of his brothers were killed in the Holocaust, writes Truthmeter.mk.
Under the content-sharing agreement between Truthmeter.mk and Meta.mk, we republish the text below:
We are fact-checking a post on the social network Facebook (screenshot here) saying:
Zelenskyy is son of Soros. A Jewish Khazar.
The Ukrainian nation is not his nation.
By the time they come to their senses, they will be gone.
The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, born on 25th January 1978, is not a son of the billionaire George Soros. He is a Ukrainian politician and former actor, and he has been the пresident of Ukraine since 2019. Zelenskyy was born into a Ukrainian Jewish family. Before he picked up acting, he graduated from the Law Faculty at the Kyiv National Economic University. George Soros is not Zelenskyy’s father, but Oleksandr Zelenskyy, a professor and computer scientist, and Head of the Cybernetics and Computer Hardware Department at Kyiv Rih State University.
Zelenskyy’s mother, Rima Zelenskyy, worked as an engineer. Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s grandfather, Semyon Ivanovic Zelenskyy, served in the Army during World War II. Semyon’s father and three of his brothers were killed in the Holocaust. In March 2022, Zelenskyy disclosed that his grandfathers were killed when German soldiers burned down their home during a massacre. Associated Press fact-checkers have already debunked similar claims about a relation between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Soros, but the disinformation then was that they were cousins, which is also not true.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue reported that conspiracy theories related to the Khazars – semi-nomadic Turkic people who founded the great Khazar Empire between Eastern Europe and Western Asia in the Middle Ages – were disseminated in the right-wing extremist online communities before Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine.
Given that Khazaria spanned modern-day South-Eastern Russia, Southern Ukraine, Crimea and Kazakhstan, they have acquired distinct geographic relevance amidst the war in Ukraine. The Khazar became a popular talking point among conspiracy theorists due to the claim that the Khazar people, or at least their elites, converted to Judaism en masse during the 8th century. The lack of reliable, contemporary source research on the Khazars make it difficult to determine how true this claim is. Khazaria was forgotten for centuries until it was rediscovered among early Zionists in the 19th century, who were interested in what they saw as a potentially historic Jewish state. While there appear to have been conversions to Judaism among the Khazars, the extent of the conversion to Judaism amongst the wider populace remains unclear.
Much of the contemporary interest in the Khazars by conspiracy theorists can be linked to the book “The Thirteenth Tribe”, a book written by Hungarian-British author Arthur Koestler in which he presents the highly contested thesis that Ashkenazi Jews are descendants of converted Khazars, rather than of ancient Israelites. Koestler was aware that this theory could be exploited to delegitimise the State of Israel, states the analysis of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
Koestler’s theory has been instrumentalized to promote antisemitism. The terms “Khazar” and “Khazarian Mafia” have been used to describe the Jewish people similar to how “Rothchild” and “Zionist” are used, ostensibly to soften antisemitic statements. More insidiously, the claim that Ashkenazi are not descendants of the Israelites, but Khazars, allows antisemites plausible deniability by claiming that they only oppose “fake Jews”. Such а narrative is also promoted in the post we are fact-checking in the part claiming that the Ukrainian nation is not Zelenskyy’s nation.
The conspiracy theories about alleged Khazarian control of Ukraine are varied and often contradictory. Ultimately, however, they all seek to legitimise the Russian invasion by dehumanising Ukrainians and presenting war crimes committed by Russian forces as acceptable means to destroy the descendants of a “wicked” race, states the analysis.
Ukraine is an independent, democratic country with its own territorial integrity and sovereignty, attacked by Russia in an unprovoked military invasion that led to enormous human casualties, material damage, displacement of population – and all this for the sake of defending fatherland Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who remained in Ukraine during the entire military invasion and coordinated the external and internal situation of the country, encouraged his people in the battle for freedom and the defense of sovereignty.
Due to all the facts noted above, the fact-checked post is assessed as untrue.
