16/11/2012 20:20
Putin calls Merkel on being objective
Mrs Merkel mentioned the feminist activists – jailed in August over their "punk prayer" in a Moscow cathedral – after she was urged by German MPs to confront the Kremlin over the erosion of democratic freedoms in Russia.
But Mr Putin struck back as the two leaders attended a bilateral forum, saying of Mrs Merkel: "Does she know that before that one of [the Pussy Riot activists] hung an effigy of a Jew and said that these people need to be got rid of. You and I cannot support people who take an anti-semitic stance. And I ask you to also take that into account."
Mr Putin was apparently referring to an event in 2008 when members of the Voina (War) radical art group staged a mock hanging of three migrant workers and two gays, one of them Jewish, in a Moscow supermarket.