Russian President Vladimir Putin has apologized for Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s remarks about Adolf Hitler’s “Jewish roots,” the Israeli prime minister’s office said. The Kremlin said Putin spoke on the phone with Naftali Bennett, but did not mention an apology.

“Bennett [during a telephone conversation] accepted Putin’s apologies for Lavrov’s words and thanked him for clarifying the Russian president’s attitude towards the Jewish people and the memory of the Holocaust,” the Israeli prime minister’s office said .

The Kremlin also reported on a telephone conversation between the Russian president and the Israeli prime minister, but did not mention that Putin apologized to him.

According to the Kremlin, during the conversation “the leaders stressed the special significance of the date of May 9 for the peoples of Russia and Israel”, Putin asked “to convey wishes of health and well-being to the veterans living in Israel”, and Bennett “noted the decisive contribution of the Red Army to the Victory over Nazism”.

The words, for which, according to the Israeli side, Putin had to apologize, were voiced in an interview with Lavrov’s Italian channel Mediaset, released on May 1.

In it, Lavrov, in response to a question about how Ukraine can be accused of Nazism if its President Vladimir Zelensky is a Jew, said that Adolf Hitler also allegedly had “Jewish blood”, and “the most ardent anti-Semites” are usually Jews .

The Russian minister’s statements caused a wave of indignation – both in Jewish organizations around the world and among representatives of the Israeli government. The Russian ambassador was summoned to the Israeli Foreign Ministry for an “explanatory conversation.”

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet accused Lavrov of lying, the purpose of which “is to accuse the Jews themselves of the most heinous crimes in history that have been committed against them, and thereby remove responsibility from the enemies of Israel.”

And Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said that Lavrov’s remarks “are not only inexcusable and outrageous – they are also a terrible historical mistake.”

In response, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement claiming that Israel was involved in supporting the “neo-Nazi regime” in Kyiv and that some Jews helped carry out the Holocaust.

According to political scientist Abbas Gallyamov, the fact that Putin admitted that the Russian Foreign Ministry headed by Lavrov was wrong and apologized is evidence that the Russian president “still retains some kind of adequacy.”

“At least he doesn’t want to quarrel with Israel. This is an important thing. As long as there are relations with Israel, it seems like we are not completely isolated. Because the feeling that the whole world is against us shocks Putin’s electorate. In this sense, relations with Israel – this is a ray of light in a dark kingdom. And to extinguish this ray is the height of stupidity, “Gallyamov told the BBC.

The conflict, apparently, arose when Lavrov, in an interview, when he was pinned to the wall, performed an action for a red word, which, obviously, is offensive to the Israelis, the political scientist believes. And then, he argues, the Kremlin’s traditional logic kicked in: “no one has the right to blame us; we are right about everything; and whoever tries to blame us is the enemy.”

“And here the problem is that apologies are unacceptable for the Kremlin, since such a “kid logic” operates that the weak apologize. But in the end, time shows that such logic leads to a dead end. Because Israel is the last of the states of the first world, who else did not break off relations with Russia, who, in principle, tried to maintain them, who did not join the sanctions and did not supply serious weapons to Ukraine, although it makes such requests,” the expert recalled.

To keep getting BBC news, subscribe to our channels:

Download our application: