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Vladimir Zhirinovsky
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Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of Russia’s highly nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, has died, TASS reported, citing Russian Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin.
He was in a coma in hospital for a long time.
Vladimir Wolfovich Zhirinovsky, born April 25, 1946 as Vladimir Wolfovich Edelstein, is a Russian politician, colonel in the Russian Army.
He was born in Alma-Ata, the former capital of the then Kazakh SSR (now the Republic of Kazakhstan).
His father, Wolf Edelstein, was a Jew born in 1907 in Kostopol, Rivne Oblast, Ukraine. After the Axis forces occupied the Rivne region, his parents and sister were shot, and he and his younger brother Aaron were evacuated to Alma-Ata. There he met his mother Alexandra Pavlovna Zhirinovskaya, a Russian by birth. After the war, Wolf and his brother, as they had Polish passports (until 1939 the Rivne region was within Poland), were forced by Stalin’s order to return to Poland. His father’s visa to the USSR was denied several times, forcing him to live away from his family and losing contact with them when he left for Israel.
He is the founder and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Deputy Speaker of the State Duma, member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, 6 times participated in presidential elections. Considered a populist and political veteran.
Despite its name, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, which he founded, is considered an ultra-nationalist party.
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