Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures speaks at the St.Petersburg International Economic Forum, June,16 2023. (Getty Images)

(JTA) — Vladimir Putin accused Jews of attacking the Russian Orthodox Church and suggested that they lacked family and “roots,” the latest antisemitic statement from the Russian leader since his 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Putin made the allegation during his lengthy annual press conference ahead of the New Year, which lasted four hours on Thursday. In the middle of of the event, Putin addressed punitive actions against the Russian Orthodox Church elsewhere in Europe. The church is considered to be closely tied to Putin’s regime, and its leaders have been expelled from countries such as Bulgaria and Estonia.

Putin said the church was “being tortured” — and blamed Jews.

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“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.”

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 chief rabbi of Moscow who left Russia after refusing to support the invasion of Ukraine, tweeted that Putin was “reviving Soviet-era tropes like ‘rootless cosmopolitans,’” and referenced the “Doctors’ Plot,” another of Stalin’s antisemitic campaigns.

“This echoes the Stalinist antisemitic rhetoric of the “Doctors’ Plot” (1948-53),” he wrote. “History teaches us: hate must be challenged. We call on European leaders to condemn these statements!”

Putin and his deputies have employed antisemitic rhetoric in their arguments for their invasion of Ukraine. Although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish, Putin has claimed that Ukraine is led by a “neo-Nazi regime.”

In the press conference, Putin also blamed the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad on Iran. Assad was an ally of Russia and is now living in exile there. Putin said he planned to meet with Assad but had not yet. He also said he was open to meeting with President-elect Donald Trump.

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