Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett says he has accepted an apology from Russian President Vladimir Putin for controversial remarks about the Holocaust made by Moscow’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov, Al Jazeera reports.

The two leaders talked over the phone on Thursday, May 5 after which an Israeli statement said Putin had apologized.

“The Prime Minister accepted President Putin’s apology for Lavrov’s remarks and thanked him for clarifying the President’s attitude towards the Jewish people and the memory of the Holocaust,” Bennett’s office said in a statement.

However, the Russian statement after the call made no mention of an apology. Instead, it said they emphasised the importance of marking the Nazi defeat in World War II, which Russia celebrates on Monday.

Asked in an interview with an Italian news channel about Russian claims that it invaded Ukraine to “denazify” the country, Lavrov said Ukraine could still have Nazi elements even though its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish.

“In my opinion, Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it doesn’t mean absolutely anything. For some time we have heard from the Jewish people that the biggest antisemites were Jewish,” he said, speaking to the station in Russian, and dubbed over by an Italian translation.