JERUSALEM, Israel – Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to Israel for comments made by his foreign minister claiming that Hitler had Jewish ancestry during a phone call Thursday with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
Tensions flared between Israel and Russia this week after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov erroneously claimed that Hitler was Jewish to justify Moscow’s war against Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is a Jew. When Israel condemned the comments and demanded an apology, Russia doubled down and accused Israel of supporting Neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
A readout released by Bennett’s office after the call said he “accepted President Putin’s apology for Lavrov’s remarks and thanked him for clarifying his attitude towards the Jewish people and the memory of the Holocaust.”
A statement from the Kremlin did not mention an apology, but said Putin spoke with Bennett about the Holocaust, “historic memory” and Ukraine.
The phone call came a day after Bennett held a phone call with Zelensky, the prime minister’s office said.
“The prime minister presented the president with a humanitarian request to examine various options for evacuation from Azovstal in Mariupol,” Israel’s statement said.
Mariupol’s last defenders have been holed up in the Azovstal steel plant for weeks and are refusing to surrender to their Russian attackers. Russian assaults on the steel plant have prevented the evacuation of civilians.
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“President Putin promised to allow the evacuation of civilians, including wounded civilians, through a UN and Red Cross humanitarian corridor,” Bennett’s office said.
Meanwhile, Putin told Bennett that the Ukrainian soldiers in the steel plant should “lay down their arms.”
The war in Ukraine has tested Israel’s historically good ties with Russia. Israel has attempted to walk a diplomatic tightrope between the warring nations, hoping not to provoke Moscow’s wrath because it collaborates with Russia on regular airstrikes against Iranian targets in neighboring Syria.
However, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid explicitly accused Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine last month after reports emerged on atrocities there. Israel also recently decided to supply defensive military aid to Kyiv, which Moscow denounced.
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