A statue of Stepan Bandera in Lviv, Ukraine, September 2014 (Courtesy of Andrey Syasko)
(JTA) — When Vladimir Putin grabbed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, the Russian president claimed it was to protect minorities from anti-Semitic fascists whom Putin maintained were behind the revolution that year that ousted his ally in Kiev, former President Viktor Yanukovych.
But a physicist named Josef Zissels, who heads one of the groups representing Ukraine’s fractured Jewish community of 350,000, wasn’t buying it.
In hundreds of media briefings and interviews, Zissels called the revolution “an expression of the Ukrainian people’s desire for independence, Western democracy and an end …read more
Source: JTA
