The same Russian dictator currently perpetrating actual genocide against Ukraine dared to accuse Israel of committing the same grotesque crimes against Gazans this week.

“What is currently happening in Gaza in response to the terrorist attack on Israel does not resemble a war at all. It is akin to the complete elimination of the civilian population,” President Vladimir Putin told AFP on Thursday. “They pushed aside all previously established mechanisms for collective efforts to solve this extremely difficult problem.”

“It is not possible to solve the problem with some material offerings. The real issue, political matters, need to be resolved. This involves creating two states, as foreseen in the UN’s decision to establish two states in this territory, a Palestinian state and a Jewish state.”

Scapegoating the Middle East’s lone liberal democracy with libels and disinformation is a classic Kremlin technique for rallying anti-Western forces across the Arab world. However, the outrageous double standards at play in Putin’s genocide rant cannot be ignored.

Israel’s surgical precision strikes against Hamas terrorists represent a model of judicious military conduct in avoiding civilian casualties. Tragic collateral damage is always an inevitability in urban combat zones, but the IDF’s record of making utmost efforts to safeguard Arab innocents stands in stark contrast to the Russian military’s doctrine of inflicting mass murder.

Under Putin’s command, the Russian military has targeted Ukraine with deadly cluster munitions, pursued a systematic campaign of deportations and ethnic cleansing, and overseen the destruction of entire cities.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been slaughtered or wounded so far in Putin’s illegal invasion. Unspeakable atrocities have been reported like the Bucha massacre where Russian death squads executed over 400 innocent people and subjected others to rape, torture and mutilation.