This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center
CHISINAU, Moldova— Olena Khorenjenko rolls her eyes at the idea that Nazis control her homeland, the baseless assertion Russian President Vladimir Putin made to justify his deadly military assault on Ukraine.
An Orthodox Jew born in Kyiv, Khorenjenko says she has never faced any organized or even casual discrimination in daily life. And she has certainly never seen any evidence of organized Nazi activity.
“There were boys who fought in school, but it was not because they were Jewish. They fought because they are boys,” said the 33-year-old Khorenjenko, whose Jewish great-grandmother fled Poland in advance of the German invasion during World War II.
“I’ve never seen anything like that," she said of Putin's claims.
In a speech announcing the attack on Ukraine, Putin said he wanted to “de-Nazify” the country, a statement that many found baffling and bizarre. Ukraine is a democratic country led by a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose family was almost wiped out in the Holocaust.
Zelenskyy has said that three of his grandfather's brothers were victims of the Holocaust, executed by German occupiers. His grandfather fought in World War II as part of the Soviet Army.
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