Vivek Ramaswamy says there are ‘open questions’ about Zelenskyy’s treatment of ‘religious minorities’ like Jews

Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said there were “open questions” about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s treatment of Jews and religious minorities in an interview published Monday with the Jewish Insider.

Ukraine has been criticized in the past for allowing soldiers to wear Nazi symbols and patches that were often worn by concentration camp guards during World War II, according to The New York Times. Ramaswamy said that people should “stop short” of calling Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, a “hero” due to concerns about his treatment of religious minorities, according to the Jewish Insider.

“I’m going to say some things that maybe are outside of the establishment-approved Overton Window here, but I think we have gotten into this weird habit of holding out Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelensky as some paragon of democratic ideals,” Ramaswamy said. “I would just say that there are open questions about his treatment of religious minorities, including but not limited to Jews in Ukraine, that I think should be among the reasons we should stop short of holding him out as some sort of hero.”

Ramaswamy did not provide specific examples to back up his statements to the Jewish Insider, but a spokesperson for the 2024 presidential candidate pointed the Daily Caller News Foundation to Zelenskyy’s attempts in December 2022 to ban certain branches of Orthodox Christianity, according to the Times. Zelenskyy announced that his administration was working on legislation to make “it impossible for religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence in the Russian Federation to operate in Ukraine” and said that inquiries would be made into churches that had ties to Moscow.

Ramaswamy also criticized the Ukrainian president for removing political parties tied to Russia and forcing all national TV channels to join a state-sponsored TV service under threat of martial law, according to the Jewish Insider. He argued that that kind of behavior “create[s] the risks for” religious discrimination.

“The idea of banning political parties or consolidating state media into one arm, I think, is a risk factor that everyone who cares about democracy, including but not limited to those who are concerned about antisemitism, should worry about,” Ramaswamy said, according to the Jewish Insider.

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