Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that European Jews are welcome to come to Russia if they feel threatened at home,
Mashable reports.
Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, said in a meeting with Putin that anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe to the levels it was at during World War II.
"Jews are fleeing the once-prosperous Europe," Kantor said. "The Jews are again in fear and a Jewish exodus from Europe is quite real. There are more Jews fleeing France, which is considered very secure, than from civil-war-torn Ukraine."
"They can come to us," Putin told Kantor. "They left from the Soviet Union. Let them return."
"I've seen reports that [Jewish] people there are afraid of wearing a yarmulke in public," Putin told reporters afterward. "They're trying to hide their ethnicity."
Putin's offer was met with skepticism online, with many people noting that anti-Semitism is also on the rise in Russia.
The 2015 assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was Jewish, was one of a string of incidents pushing Jews to leave Russia for Israel.
Kantor, who was born in what is now Russia, said, however, that he and his delegation believe there has been a decrease in anti-Semitism in the region, according
The Times of Israel.
"We commend the Russian authorities in the fight against those who target Jews," he said.
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