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Putin’s critics called him an anti-Semitic, drawing parallels with the anti-Semitism of the Soviet state under Joseph Stalin.
Vladimir Putin accused Jews of attacking the Russian Orthodox Church and warned that they lacked family and “roots,” the Russian leader’s latest anti-Semite since his invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Putin made this accusation at his lengthy annual pre-New Year press conference, which lasted four hours on Thursday. In the midst of the event, Putin spoke of punitive moves opposed to the Russian Orthodox Church in other parts of Europe. The Church is seen as strongly connected to Putin’s regime and its leaders have been expelled from countries such as Bulgaria and Estonia.
Putin said the church was “tortured” and blamed the Jews.
“They are destroying the Church, but they are not even atheists,” Putin said. “They are other people without beliefs, atheists, they are of Jewish ethnicity, but have you seen them in a synagogue? I don’t think so. “
After adding that the alleged sides of the Church in conflict were not Orthodox Christians or Muslims, he added: “They are other people without parents or memory, without roots. They don’t appreciate what we appreciate and most other Ukrainians appreciate as Good.
Critics of Putin decried the statement as antisemitic, noting parallels to Soviet state antisemitism under Josef Stalin, when the Kremlin persecuted Jews and accused them of being “rootless cosmopolitans.”
Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the former Moscow chief rabbi who left Russia after refusing to invade Ukraine, tweeted that Putin was “reviving Soviet-era tropes such as ‘rootless cosmopolitans'” and referred to the “doctors’ plot,” some others from Stalin’s anti-Semitic campaigns.
“This echoes the Stalinist anti-Semitic rhetoric of the ‘doctors’ plot’ (1948-1953),” he wrote. “History teaches us: hate will have to be fought. We ask European leaders to condemn these statements!
Putin and his advisers have used anti-Semitic rhetoric in their arguments for their invasion of Ukraine. Although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish, Putin has claimed that Ukraine is Jewish through a “neo-Nazi regime. “
At the press conference, Putin also blamed Iran for the overthrow of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Assad is Russia’s best friend and now lives there in exile. Putin said he planned to meet Assad but had not yet done so. He also said he was open to a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump.
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