A top Russian national security official referred to the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic community in Ukraine as a “supremacist cult”, drawing fierce criticism from Russia’s Chabad Chief rabbi Berel Lazar.

In an article published Tuesday in the government-owned Argumenty i Fakty, assistant secretary of the Russian Security Council Aleksey Pavlov claimed that Ukraine requires “desatanisation” after abandoning Orthodox Christian values in favour of hundreds of neo-pagan cults.

Mr Pavlov wrote: “I believe that with the continuation of the special military operation [in Ukraine], it becomes ever more urgent to carry out the desatanisation of Ukraine.”

In listing examples of some of the cults in Ukraine, Mr Pavlov included the Chabad-Lubavitch sect, which began in the Russian Empire in the late 18th century and to which the vast majority of rabbis in present day Russia subscribe.

“The main principle of the Lubavitch Hasidism,” Mr Pavlov wrote, “is the superiority of the followers over all nations and peoples,”

In response, Russia’s chief rabbi Lazar, who was once believed to be a close confidant of President Vladimir Putin, penned an open letter to Russian authorities condemning Mr Pavlov’s comments as “nonsensical, vulgar, and superficially antisemitic.”

He added, “This is a new variety of the old blood libels. And if they are being uttered by a member of the Russian Security Council, this represents a great danger. Therefore, we demand an immediate and unequivocal response from society and from the country’s authorities.”

Chief rabbi Lazar also rejected Mr Pavlov’s assertion that the movement’s followers considered themselves superior to others, noting the organisations extensive charity and interfaith work in Russia and abroad.

Putin and Lazar

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar in 2013 (Credit: YURI KADOBNOV/AFP via Getty Images)

The Chabad and Orthodox Jewish communities in Russia have mostly withheld from taking sides in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, with the notable exception of former chief rabbi of Moscow Pinchas Goldschmidt, who had to leave Russia and his community while encouraging other Russian Jews to do the same, so that they could more freely criticise the war and Vladimir Putin.

Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky spoke to the JC in August, warning Russian Jews that they should leave the country as crackdown fears grew.

Last month, Putin warned against Russian Jews leaving the country, which many thousands had done since the start of the war, saying they had a duty to contribute to Russia.

Putin said: “It is very important that while retaining their loyalty to old spiritual traditions, Russia’s Jews make a hefty contribution to the preservation of cultural diversity in our country, to strengthening interethnic concord and the principles of mutual respect and religious tolerance.”