Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Sunday scoffed at Naftali Bennett’s claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin promised him he wouldn’t kill Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“In the past, Putin has made promises not to occupy Crimea, not to violate Minsk agreements, not to invade Ukraine, yet he has done all of these things,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter. “Every time he has promised not to do something, it has been exactly part of his plan.”

Zelensky’s senior adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said that Bennett’s “strange” claims are “fictional.”

“Strange ex-officials’ claims on ‘mediation’ that Putin allegedly gave ‘guarantees not to kill’ and ‘the West interrupted promising negotiations’ are fiction,” he stated. “The Russian invasion isn’t about ‘NATO expansion,’ security guarantees or sanctions, it’s Russia’s desire to destroy Ukraine and kill Ukrainians.”

In a five-hour interview published on Israel’s Channel 12 News over the weekend, Bennett spoke about a number of subjects, including his meeting with Putin in the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Bennett said that he managed to wrangle two concessions from Putin – that he wouldn’t kill Zelensky and wouldn’t demand Ukrainian disarmament. Bennett added that Zelensky agreed to concede his demand to join NATO.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)