ZELENSKY TO PUTIN: I’m no Nazi — I’m Jewish. “Putin’s address and justification wasn’t meant for Western ears. It was aimed at Russians and ethnic-Russian Ukrainians with long memories and long grudges from World War II. In the run-up to World War II, Ukraine — which at the time did not include as much ethnic-Russian territory — had suffered through the Holodomor, a deliberate genocidal famine imposed by Joseph Stalin. The Soviet leader wanted to suppress the kulaks, but more importantly the western-leaning Ukrainians that chafed at the Soviet occupation. Estimates of casualties from the imposed famine of 1932-33 runs as high as 3.9 million. By June 1933, 28,000 people were dying each day, while the Soviets expropriated millions of tons of Ukrainian wheat. As a result, when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in his surprise war of June 1941, ethnic Ukrainians rallied around the Germans as liberators — but only at first. Rather than take advantage of the Ukrainian hatred for the Soviets, the Nazis imposed the same racial policies in Ukraine that they imposed on other Slavs in eastern Europe. Still, some collaboration took place among ethnic Ukrainians, and that has not been forgotten among Russians.”