Fact Check: Did Putin Ally Say 'Israel Is Secretly Controlled by Jews'?

Vladimir Putin's ally and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has repeatedly used the conflict between Israel and Gaza to Russia's advantage, saying at the start of the war that the U.S. has been "helping the neo-Nazis" in Ukraine rather than focusing on finding a Palestinian-Israeli settlement.

Medvedev, currently deputy chairman of the Security Council, also criticized Congress' $95 billion aid package, providing security assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, saying that the "bloodsoaked" money going to Ukraine would be swallowed up by the United States' "insatiable military industrial complex."

One social media post that went viral this week, Medvedev's political analyses of foreign affairs have not always been astonishing.

The Claim

A post on X, formerly Twitter, by user @IlvesToomas, posted on April 22, 2024, viewed 748,800 times, said: "'Israel is secretly controlled by Jews' -- Dima Medvedev

"I am flabbergasted by the incredibly sophisticated intellectual contributions we lose by restricting access of Russians to the European Union."

Dmitry Medvedev is sometimes referred to as Dima Medvedev.

The post included a split picture of Dmitry Medvedev alongside the same quote in Russian.

The Facts

There is no evidence that Dmitry Medvedev ever said this.

Searches for the original text in Russian and the translation in English yielded no results, and reverse image searches of the quote and the picture of Medvedev only retrieved repetitions of the same post.

While it has apparently not been reported by any media outlet, the quote has been widely shared on Russian, English, and Ukrainian social media accounts on X and Telegram.

It appears to have originated from an account on X called @Nabludatel_001X that posted the quote and the picture on April 12, 2024. The quote and photo of Medvedev looks to have been screengrabbed from here and shared elsewhere online.

The post includes no sources or references for the quote, while their bio on X, translated from Russian, reads "Always doubt my words..."

Their other posts include far-fetched and unsourced claims, such as that former Russian President Boris Yeltsin was killed by Vladimir Putin, alongside racist posts about Muslims and Black people.

While the post is clearly intended to poke fun at Medvedev, the language in it echoes that of antisemitic conspiracies about Jewish people secretly controlling world governments—including the Jewish state in this case.

Newsweek has contacted a media representative at the Kremlin via email for comment.

Russia recently urged the United Nations to sanction Israel for failing to comply with a resolution that demanded a Gaza cease-fire during Ramadan.

At a security meeting on April 18, it objected to the lack of punishment for Israel, with Vasily Nebenzia, Russia's permanent representative to the U.N., lamenting that the security council had not "demanded, as per its mandate, for the parties to immediately engage in a ceasefire."

The Ruling

False.

There is no evidence that Dmitry Medvedev has said this. The claim came from a post on social media with no sourcing and suggestions that it ought to be treated as a joke.

The quote has not been mentioned elsewhere in Russian or English media.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team

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