By Agostino Pilia
This briefing discusses the use of the antisemitic “Khazaria conspiracy” myth in relation to the recent events in the Russian-Ukrainian war in social media, a topic that OHPI has briefly touched upon over the past year (1,2,3).
Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories about the conflict have been spread on the internet. One of these theories, which attempts to explain the “secret reasons behind” the outbreak of the war and seems to be regaining popularity, is the niche antisemitic “Khazaria conspiracy,”. This conspiracy theory, sprouted from old tropes about the Khazars, takes a novel form when applied to the war in Ukraine. With recent discussions between Ukrainian and U.S. leadership regarding rare earth minerals and a potential “peace” agreement, there has been a resurgence of posts on X, Gab, and Facebook about this topic.
According to the Khazaria conspiracy, the ongoing war in Ukraine is the result of a secret plan—where Zelensky is merely a puppet—to re-establish the “Jewish kingdom of Khazaria” through a bloody clash between white Christian Russians and Ukrainians.
This claim appeals to the old medieval Khazar Khaganate, a Turkic kingdom that ruled over what is now central-eastern Ukraine, southern Russia, western Kazakhstan, and the Caucasus between the 7th and 10th centuries. Around the 8th century, the ruling elites of Khazaria converted to Judaism, though it remains unclear how widespread this process was among the general population. Khazar rule ended in the 960s following the victory of Kievan Prince Sviatoslav I, the father of Vladimir I, the first Christian ruler of Kievan Rus’.
The memory of Khazaria gradually faded over the following centuries among European Jewish communities until it was rediscovered in the early 19th century and later linked to the origins of Ashkenazi Jews. By the late 19th century, some scholars—both Jewish and non-Jewish—proposed the hypothesis that Ashkenazi Jews descended from a westward Khazar diaspora following the fall of the Khaganate, rather than from the ancient Israelites as traditionally thought. This theory, which is now considered incorrect based on available evidence, was popularized in 1976 by the Hungarian Jewish writer Arthur Koestler in his book The Thirteenth Tribe.
Since then, the Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry has been increasingly associated with antisemitic narratives, particularly in the Soviet Union and later in Russia after the 1970s. This was largely due to the work of the antisemitic historian Lev Gumilev, who introduced the myth to a Russian audience.
Moreover, this theory has been used recently to challenge the legitimacy of the state of Israel and Zionism. In May 2018, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas referenced the Khazar theory to delegitimize Jewish historical ties to the region, stating that European Jews originated from the Khazar Empire and were not Semites.
For those accepting the Khazaria conspiracy about the Russian/Ukraine War, the conflict is a covert attempt to reinstate the Khazar Khaganate. This war, according to them, is not the result of a Russian project of recreating an imperial space through the reconquest of territories and states that broke away with the fall of the USSR, but is instead Ukraine’s fault. According to this view, Ukraine is a NATO proxy that attacked Russia, and Zelensky is controlled by, as it is sometimes called, the “Khazarian mafia”.
This view is endorsed in the following X post from the 28 of February, the day of the failed summit between Trump and Zelensky, where all the elements involved in this plot are stated clearly, along with other collateral conspiracy theories like the New World Order (NWO), and the Jewish ownership of the Fed (US Federal Reserve):
The Khazaria conspiracy is radically antisemitic, as it involves the belief that Jews are extremely powerful and wicked figures capable of plotting wars to depopulate a European country with the aim of re-establishing an ancient Jewish medieval kingdom. Furthermore, wide-ranging conspiracy theories of this kind were at the root of violent and deadly actions towards Jewish people, like pogroms in Russia between the late 19th century and early 20th century, and the Shoah.
On top of this, by portraying Ukraine’s struggle for independence and survival as a senseless attempt to undermine Russia, driven by a puppet leadership, and by denying its national autonomy, this conspiracy theory also conveys anti-Ukraine stances partially overlapping with some Russian propaganda.
On the 26 of February, two days before the meeting between Zelensky and Trump, a Holocaust denial X account (followed by almost 215,000 users) shared and commented on a misleading news headline—“PEACE DEAL reached”—which referred to the ultimately failed agreement on Ukrainian rare earth minerals. The post, featured below, used classic antisemitic tropes, stating that Russians and Ukrainians are senselessly killing each other while the “Jewish banking cabal“ secures a partial victory through the division of Ukrainian resources.
The post then asked: “Will Victoria Nuland, Zelensky, and the other international Jews that caused this war be held accountable? Or will they just take their money and run. I bet the latter”.
This statement references a common theme in both Russian and antisemitic propaganda about the war in Ukraine: Victoria Nuland, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under President Barack Obama, was the American official who handled the Euromaidan crisis in 2013–2014, which led to the Revolution of Dignity and the following overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych. Her role in the Ukrainian revolution has often been exaggerated, portraying it as a U.S.-backed coup—a key element of Russian propaganda. Due to her Jewish heritage, this narrative has also been integrated into antisemitic conspiracy theories.
The use of the phrase “international Jews,” similar to the term “globalists,” reinforces the antisemitic trope of Jews as stateless manipulators of world affairs. Furthermore, it echoes the title The International Jew, a collection of booklets published in the 1920s by American industrialist Henry Ford. This contained The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was a forgery first published in the Russian Empire in 1903, describing a supposed secret Jewish plot to conquer Christian nations through deceitful means, including revolutions and wars, with the ultimate goal of establishing a Jewish world government.
Even though the Khazaria conspiracy is not explicitly mentioned in the above post, this account also suggested, in a second post, that “Victoria Nuland is descendant of the Khazar kingdom, and wants that land under NATO control” endorsing the antisemitic Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi Jews ancestry.
By the end of February 26, the original tweet had 4,394 views. A user commented on the post by explicitly mentioning the Khazaria plot, along with its full range of antisemitic conspiracy tropes. The first argument presented was demographic: the war’s human losses and the mass migration of the population (i.e Slavs) would prepare Ukraine to welcome Jews—to “revive Khazaria”—once Israel “falls.”
This was in response to a news article titled: “Zelensky and NATO plan to transform post-war Ukraine into ‘a big Israel’”, featuring a pre-war photo of Netanyahu and Zelensky.
The purpose of this conspiracy theory is to suggest that a secret Jewish plot is targeting Ukraine. However, while Zelensky did use the “big Israel” analogy, it was initially meant to describe a post-war scenario in which Ukraine would maintain a strong military might and a militarized society, similar to Israel in the Middle-East.
The same news story was shared by another X account on the 21 of July 2024, who stated that the “Khazarian Zionist Jews occupying America are behind the Ukraine war” and Zelensky “Zionist Jew” is a “puppet” of them:
In the last part of the comment thread on February 26, alleged documentary evidence is presented to “support” the veracity of the reported conspiracy— a classic element of antisemitic discourse, in which evil plots are supposedly exposed through the explicit words of a powerful Jewish figure. A picture containing a long text suggests that the so-called “Jewish Chabad 1994 plan” to “liquidate” Slavs via the Russo-Ukrainian war was revealed in a speech given in the same year by Chabad leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, one of the most influential Jewish rabbis of the 20th century and a leader of a branch of Orthodox Judaism. In this alleged speech— for which there is no evidence that it ever took place— the entire plot is explained in grim detail. It first claims that “Slavs, and among them Russians, are the most unbending people in the world.” Therefore, for this reason, “we will divide those into small nations” and proceed with the war, so Slavs are “subjected to eviction”. Finally, “we will build the Great Khazaria”.
The content of this alleged speech closely resembles two notorious antisemitic texts from the past two centuries: The Rabbi’s Speech and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The influence of The Protocols is evident in the expressions used to describe the supposed “character” of the Slavs and the strategies for subjugating them through “divide and conquer” tactics and “civil wars for mutual destruction.” These claims closely mirror the fabricated rhetoric of the Learned Elders of Zion, who, according to the Protocols, conspire to subdue non-Jewish populations.
Regarding the format of this discourse, there is a long tradition of forged antisemitic “rabbi’s speeches.” The most famous of these, The Rabbi’s Speech, dates back to the late 19th century and provides a striking example of how Jewish conspiracy myths emerge and evolve. In 1868, the novel Biarritz was published by Hermann Goedsche, a German writer with nationalist and antisemitic views. The novel includes a fictional chapter titled ‘In the Jewish Cemetery in Prague’, in which thirteen Jewish leaders supposedly gather in secret at a cemetery to discuss their plans for world domination.
Although Biarritz was a work of fiction, this particular chapter was later taken out of context, translated, and presented as real evidence of a Jewish plot. It gained particular popularity in Russia, where it was republished in 1872 as The Rabbi’s Speech. In 1881 the story was translated in France, and the supposed speeches were compiled into a single fabricated rabbinical discourse. Eventually, this text became one of the primary sources used to construct The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
In this second image, placed alongside the previous one about rabbi Schneerson, academic authority is invoked to validate the Khazaria theory by quoting a statement attributed to “Professor Zoran Milosevic:”
The Khazaria conspiracy is also spread on social media through images with more immediate impact. In the following case from Facebook, a user posted on the 26th of February an image with a map of the Khazar Khaganate, with the heading “The real Jewish homeland,” containing the aforementioned antisemitic and anti-Zionist elements denying the legitimacy of the state of Israel. The user connects this to the Khazaria conspiracy by stating: “WHO IS BEHIND THE WAR IN UKRAINE….. JEW DECIDE Ukraine was once Khazaria they want it back it’s their true homeland!”
The alleged Jewish expansionist plan goes even further in a post from March 3 from a Gab account, where despite recognizing that Palestine is the “territory from where they [the Jews] originated before [Roman] Emperor Hadrian deported them,” it is suggested that Jews are trying to “join” that with “the Ukraine, the former Khazaria.” Thus the shared map shows “New Khazaria” along with “Greater Israel” which encompasses a significant part of the Middle East, from Egypt, to eastern Turkey, the whole Arabian peninsula and western Iran.
In addition to these geographical analogies, historical comparisons are made between Ukrainian identity symbols and those used by the Khazars, all to suggest the intrinsically Jewish nature of today’s Ukrainian state and to demonstrate the validity of the Khazarian conspiracy. In a post on X on the 20th of February 2025, in addition to comparing the borders of present-day Ukraine with those of the Khazarian Empire, the Ukrainian coat of arms is juxtaposed with a Khazarian tamga (stamp).
Although doing this is not intrinsically antisemitic—the hypothesis of the Khazar origin of the Ukrainian tryzub (trident) is supported by serious historians—the hateful nature of this is made clear by the text of the user’s post: “The Khazarian Zionist are restoring their old Khazarian Empire and that means nothing short of a world population reduction (genocide) and totalitarian control.” This last claim is similar to what can be found in The Protocols, where Jews are plotting to seek total control of the world.
I
Finally, it is worth mentioning the antisemitic cartoon posted on March 4 by a X-active cartoonist followed by almost 220,000 users. The post features an image in which a visibly sorrowful Zelensky, with his land devastated and full of corpses of dead soldiers in the background, is reassured by the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The British PM then says “don’t worry! I have plenty of men I can send to die for your country!” “And after we die, who will repopulate our country?” ask a group of ordinary British in the next passage. “Don’t worry,” Starmer replies in the last scene, introducing looming Jews with revolting features. The representation of Jewish characters as having hooked nose, olive complexion, long beard, and thick lips is in the wake of a long iconographic European tradition that, passing through the fundamental French nineteenth century, dates back to the late medieval period. Furthermore, in this cartoon it is visible the dehumanising element of possessed eyes, almost to give an aspect of zombies to the depicted Jews. While the whole scene does not advance the Khazarian conspiracy in the form we have seen, it conveys one of its core statements, which is that the Jews are plotting to depopulate a European country with the aim of invading and dominating it— in this case the UK instead of Ukraine.
Conclusion
The revival of the Khazarian conspiracy myth on social media in conjunction with the Zelensky-Trump summit stresses how fringe antisemitic tropes still count significantly in anti-Jewish discourses. While this conspiracy theory is heir in some elements to the well-known conspiracies portrayed in texts like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The Rabbi’s Speech, it is shaped by and reflects the contemporary situation of the Russo-Ukrainian war and the Gaza war. The anti-zionist nature inherent in this antisemitic theory becomes evident when analyzing its core axiom, that Jews believe that the “true Jewish homeland” is Khazaria, which delegitimizes the existence of Israel. Moreover, by portraying the Ukrainian side in the war as a voiceless victim of evil Jewish puppeteers it denies the national self-determination of the Ukrainian people, who democratically elected a president of Jewish origin, Zelensky, and willingly resists Russian aggression.