MOSCOW, September 5. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin said it’s disgusting that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, an ethnic Jew, covers up the glorification of Nazism in the country.

"Western handlers have put a man at the head of modern-day Ukraine who an ethnic Jew, with Jewish roots, with Jewish ancestry. And in this way, in my opinion, they kind of cover up the anti-human beliefs that underlie the modern Ukrainian state," the president told Pavel Zarubin, a journalist at All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. "This makes the whole situation utterly disgusting in that an ethnic Jew is covering up the glorification of Nazism and covering up those who led the Holocaust in Ukraine in their time - and it was the extermination of 1.5 million people."

Putin said this is best understood by ordinary people in Israel.

"Please take a look at what they are saying on the Internet," he said.

The president said that, when he conducted a meeting of the committee to organize Victory Day celebrations earlier, he spoke about civilians that were exterminated by the Nazis and their accomplices during the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union.

"It turned out that there were more than 13 million of them. And then a separate question was asked about the tragedy of the Holocaust and the murder of Jews," he said.

Speaking at the meeting of the Victory Day committee, Putin cited historical data on repressions in Ukraine, saying: "This is 1.5 million people - women, elderly people, children. Given that a total of 6 million people were exterminated by the Nazis during the Holocaust, this is one-quarter of them, 25% of all the victims."