- Wednesday, August 28, 2013
- Elul 22, 5773
- 10:24 pm IDT
- Site updated 1 minute ago
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Fair, fresh and fast
Fair, fresh and fast
Moscow mayoral candidate did not praise Holocaust, Jewish staffers say
Corruption whistleblower Alexei Navalny is considered among the strongest challengers to incumbent Putin associate
August 28, 2013, 10:08 pm
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Alexei Navalny speaks to supporters in downtown Moscow. (photo credit: AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)
DERDENT, Russia — Jewish
staffers for the campaign of Moscow mayoral candidate Alexei Navalny
denied reports that he praised the Holocaust.
“To
my knowledge, he never made the statement attributed to him,” Maxim
Katz, deputy director of the Navalny campaign for the Sept. 8 election,
told JTA on Tuesday.
Katz, 29, a Moscow politician who lived in
Israel for nine years, was responding to reports that circulated earlier
this month that Navalny had raised a toast to the Holocaust during a
recent reception in the Russian capital.
The report appeared on the European Jewish Press news website on Monday.
Leonid Volkov, the 32-year-old CEO of
Navalny’s campaign and also Jewish, said the reports were “false and
part of a smear campaign designed by our rivals to damage Navalny’s
image precisely among reform-minded liberals who constitute a natural
base of support for us.”
Navalny, a center-right blogger and corruption
whistleblower turned opposition leader, is considered to be among the
strongest of five challengers to incumbent Sergei Sobyanin of the ruling
United Russia Party, who is seen as a close ally of Russian President
Vladimir Putin.
Yevgenia Albats, a writer for the New Times,
wrote Tuesday on Facebook that Navalny never said the words attributed
to him, adding it was “abominable and disgusting to even suggest this.”
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