Did Russian President Vladimir Putin threaten to attack Israel and "free" Palestine? No, that's not true. There is no record of Mr. Putin making such a threat against Israel.
The claim appeared on a video (archived here) where it was published by an account on TikTok on April 13, 2023.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Apr 18 2023 at 23:04:37 UTC)
The caption reads:
Putin, the Russian President said "when I am done with Ukraine and fully get control on the situation, I promise, I will enter Palestine with all of my military forces and free it from Israel, instead of the Arabs".
The claim has been shared by many other accounts on the platform. However, there is no record of the Russian President making such a statement from official state agencies or social media accounts of the Russian presidency and government. Moreover, Lead Stories conducted a Google search asking "Did Putin threaten Israel?" and found no reliable reporting of such a potentially consequential statement.
In a recent statement regarding the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories, the Russian Foreign Ministry called on the parties to refrain from further escalation, saying:
The key to long-term stabilization of the situation can only be the establishment of a full-fledged negotiation process aimed at developing a compromise formula for the Palestinian-Israeli settlement on a well-known international legal basis
