Israel Says Putin Offered Apology After Official's Antisemitic Comments

Israel's prime minister said Vladimir Putin offered him an apology over antisemitic comments made by Moscow's top diplomat.

The two leaders talked over the phone, and Naftali Bennett's office subsequently released a statement saying he had accepted an apology from the Russian president on behalf of foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

The statement read: "The Prime Minister accepted President Putin's apology for Lavrov's remarks and thanked him for clarifying the president's attitude towards the Jewish people and the memory of the Holocaust."

However, the Russian statement about the call made no mention of an apology. Instead, it said they emphasised the importance of marking the Nazi defeat in the Second World War, which Russia celebrates on Monday.

Bennett emerged as a potential mediator between Russia and Ukraine following Putin's invasion, but that role was thrown into doubt this week when Lavrov made comments about the Holocaust that were deeply offensive to Jews.

Asked in an interview with an Italian news channel about Russian claims that it invaded Ukraine to 'de-Nazify' the country, Lavrov said Ukraine could still have Nazi elements - even though its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish.

"In my opinion, Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it doesn't mean absolutely anything," he said.

"For some time we have heard from the Jewish people that the biggest antisemites were Jewish."

Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid - the son of a Holocaust survivor - described Lavrov's statement as 'unforgivable and scandalous and a horrible historical error'.

"The Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust," he said.

"The lowest level of racism against Jews is to blame Jews themselves for antisemitism."

Putin has portrayed the war in Ukraine as a struggle against Nazis - even though it has a democratically elected government, and Zelenskyy's relatives were killed in the Holocaust.

Announcing the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, Putin said: "To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation."

The head of the British military has said that Putin is under 'incredible pressure', because after 10 weeks of fighting, the rate at which Russian forces were using missiles and other armaments meant he was engaged in a 'logistics war' to keep them supplied.

In an interview with TalkTV's The News Desk, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin said: "He potentially has a problem, because the rate of expenditure and the toughness of the fight is totally different to the one that he perceived on 24 February."

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