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Putin’s critics have 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 long annual press conference before the New Year, which lasted four hours on Thursday. Amid the event, Putin spoke of punitive moves opposed to the Russian Orthodox Church in other parts of Europe. connected to the Putin regime, and its leaders have been expelled from countries such as Bulgaria and Estonia.
Putin said the church “tortured” and blamed Jews.
“They’re tearing the church apart but they’re not even atheists,” Putin said. “These are people without any beliefs, godless people, they’re ethnic Jews, but has anyone seen them in a synagogue? I don’t think so.”
After adding that the alleged opponents of the church were also neither Orthodox Christian nor Muslim, he added, “These are people without kin or memory, with no roots. They don’t cherish what we cherish and the majority of the Ukrainian people cherish as well.”
Putin’s critics called this anti-Semitic, pointing to parallels with the anti-Semitism of the Soviet state under Joseph Stalin, when the Kremlin persecuted Jews and accused them of being “rootless cosmopolitans. “
Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the former chief rabbi of Moscow who left Russia after refusing the invasion of Ukraine, tweeted that Putin was “reviving Soviet-era tropes such as ‘rootless cosmopolitans'” and referred to the “doctors’ plot,” another of Stalin’s anti-Semitic campaigns.
“This echoes the Stalinist anti-Semitic rhetoric of the ‘Doctors’ Plot’ (1948-1953),” he wrote. History teaches us: hate must be fought. We call on European leaders to condemn these statements!
Putin and his advisers have used anti-Semitic rhetoric in their arguments for his 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 with Assad but had not yet done so. He also said he was open to an assembly with President-elect Donald Trump.
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