‘The Kremlin tried to recruit me – but when I condemned the war, I was forced into exile’

Pinchas Goldschmidt, the chief Rabbi of Moscow, witnessed first-hand the rise of Putin, writes Adam Luck. Now that he’s fled the country after criticising the Ukraine war, he has a stark warning for the West – the Russian leader has his sights set on more than just Kyiv...

The 60-year-old Rabbi finds himself watching on as the Middle East and Europe are consumed by conflicts (Getty)

When the chief rabbi of Moscow was summoned by Putin’s FSB agents to Sadovnicheskaya Street police station in 2003, they had one goal: to turn him into a Russian agent.

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, who had been chief rabbi for the previous decade, was able to resist the Russian state in their efforts to turn him. But when Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago, his time was up.

Having refused to endorse the war, Rabbi Goldschmidt fled, first to Hungary and then Israel, urging other Jewish people to leave Russia while they could. He was designated a “foreign agent” by the Kremlin for his criticism of Putin, whose rise he had witnessed at close quarters.