kiev – Volodymyr Zelensky, a Jewish actor and comedian, was sworn in Monday as president of Ukraine and said his nation must defend their land like Israelis.
Join our WhatsApp groupSubscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
Zelensky took the oath of office reportedly on a copy of the country’s constitution and a 16th-century manuscript of the New Testament.
“We must become Icelanders in football, Israelis in defending our native land, Japanese in technology,” he said at the swearing-in, the BBC reported.
Zelensky announced at the inauguration that he would dissolve the parliament and call early elections, which had been scheduled for October. In turn, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, who is Jewish, announced that he would resign.
Zelensky, who on his primetime television show plays a teacher thrust into the presidency through an unlikely chain of events, was elected last month with 73 percent of the vote, defeating incumbent Petro Poroshenko, who had been in power since 2014.
Born in Kryvyi Rih, near Dnipro, to a Jewish family of scientists, Zelensky rarely speaks of his Jewish ancestry in interviews. But unlike some Ukrainian politicians widely believed to have Jewish roots, Zelensky during his campaign neither disputed his Jewish ancestry nor attempted to camouflage it.
DEFEND LAND LIKE THE ISRAELIS,
ha. Wishful thinking,
The Israelis are fighting tooth and nails fighting Arabs, go try & fight the Russians,
Pass me Smirnoff, will you?
hope soros doesn’t become his partner.
“Like Israelis”. To bring on aggression and antisemitism. What compliments to Zionism and such an insult to Judaism.