Chrystia Freeland. Nazi past. russian fake. Volodymyr Zelensky. rt news

kremlin media outlets are spreading ‘news’ that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has appointed Chrystia Freeland, the ‘granddaughter of a Nazi collaborator,’ as his economic development adviser. This was stated in particular by russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman maria zakharova: ‘Freeland is the granddaughter of Nazi collaborator Mykhailo Khomyak, who published a Nazi-oriented newspaper in Krakow and then in Vienna during the German occupation of Poland.’ 

The story about Chrystia Freeland's grandfather's ‘Nazi past’ is not new. It was first widely circulated in the media in 2017, immediately after Freeland was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada. Even then, Freeland stated that the spread of such narratives was an attempt by russia to influence democratic processes in the West, and in Canada in particular. At the same time, she herself participated in historical research on her grandfather's life and did not hide the fact that Mykhailo Khomiak was the editor of a Ukrainian-language newspaper in Krakow during the Nazi occupation and later emigrated to Canada. However, he was not a war criminal, an ideologist of Nazism or a participant in punitive actions. 
Mykhailo Khomiak's biography states that before the war he was a young journalist in Lviv, from where he fled before the Soviet occupation to Krakow, which was occupied by the Nazis (https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/28360562.html). In Krakow, Ukrainian organisations were looking for opportunities to publish a Ukrainian edition, but printing it would have been impossible without the knowledge of the occupying authorities. 
Ernest Giedel, one of the researchers who studied the publications of the Krakowski Visti newspaper for his dissertation, says that no more than 25% of the newspaper's space was devoted to propaganda, including anti-Polish and anti-Soviet articles (https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/paula-simons-school-of-hate-was-foreign-affairs-minister-chrystia-freelands-grandfather-a-nazi-collaborator). Other materials concerned cultural, philosophical and linguistic aspects of Ukrainian life. According to the researcher, newspapers at that time were a ‘school of hatred,’ and German policy was to set Ukrainians against Poles and Poles against Ukrainians so that they could not unite against the Germans. The role of the ‘editor’ was more technical — he had to ensure the publication of the newspaper. Among the articles signed by Khomyak, Ernest Giedel found none that were anti-Semitic or pro-Nazi in nature. To call Mykhailo Khomyak a ‘collaborator’ would be to ignore the circumstances of that terrible time, he writes in his study. 
Thus, russian propaganda deliberately demonises Mykhailo Khomiak's biography in order to discredit his granddaughter Chrystia Freeland, whose own political activities have nothing to do with her ancestors' past. It is difficult to imagine that the Canadian government would ignore such a fact about any civil servant. 
Based on materials from Stopfake.org
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