At the same time that Housing Minister Ze’ev Elkin was traveling to Moscow with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Shabbos morning for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his family members in Ukraine were fleeing from Russian missiles, Zeman Yisrael reported on Monday morning.

Elkin was born in Kharkiv in the former Soviet Union (now Ukraine), and his brother and nieces still lived in the city until Shabbos.

According to the report, Elkin, unlike many others before the war began, firmly believed that Putin would do exactly what the US was predicting and invade Ukraine, and tried to convince his brother to leave the country. [Elkin’s view was in sharp contrast to that of Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman, also born in the former Soviet Union, who vowed that Putin would never invade Ukraine]

Elkin’s brother, like many other Ukrainians, refused to leave, not believing that anything significant would happen. But after Kharkiv came under intense shelling last week, he and his daughters fled the city as Elkin was meeting the very one responsible for the shelling.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)