Moscow's exiled chief rabbi says Jews could be scapegoated for hardships caused by the war in Ukraine and should leave while they can

• The chief rabbi of Moscow left Russia earlier this year in protest over its invasion of Ukraine.
• Pinchas Goldschmidt told The Guardian that Jews should leave Russia while they can.

Moscow's exiled chief rabbi told The Guardian that Jews should leave Russia while they can, adding that the country is "going back to a new kind of Soviet Union."

Pinchas Goldschmidt told The Guardian in an interview published on Friday that he worries the Jewish population will become a scapegoat for the hardship caused by war.

"When we look back over Russian history, whenever the political system was in danger you saw the government trying to redirect the anger and discontent of the masses towards the Jewish community," he told the outlet.

He added that today "we're seeing rising antisemitism while Russia is going back to a new kind of Soviet Union, and step by step the iron curtain is coming down again."

"This is why I believe the best option for Russian Jews is to leave," he said.

Goldschmidt resigned from his post as Moscow's chief rabbi earlier this year, after refusing to support Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

As of June, he was living in Jerusalem and taking care of his ailing father, The Guardian reported at the time.

After leaving the country, Goldschmidt said in a statement that he was leaving the Russian Jewish community "in distress," according to The Times of Israel.

According to the estimates of Hebrew University in 2016, Russia is home to 179,500 Jews.

Economic sanctions imposed by the EU, US, and other Western countries have pushed the Russian economy into recession and pushed out even more people. International companies have exited Russia en masse, while much of its currency has been frozen since the start of the war.

After launching the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Putin said that he was aiming for the "demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine."

There is no evidence of genocide happening in Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the country's democratically-elected president, is Jewish.