Tue 08 March 2022:
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba yesterday accused Israeli national airline El Al of making money “soaked in blood,” the Jerusalem Post reported.
According to the Israeli daily, Kuleba accused El Al of bypassing the international sanctions imposed on Russia as it is accepting payments on its website from Russia’s Mir network for international electronic funds.
“While the world sanctions Russia for its barbaric atrocities in Ukraine, some prefer to make money soaked in Ukrainian blood,” Kuleba tweeted, calling this policy as “immoral and a blow to Ukrainian-Israeli relations.” The tweet has since been deleted.
He added: “Here is @EL_AL_ISRAEL accepting payments in Russian banking system ‘Mir’ designed to evade sanctions.” He included in his post a screenshot of a payment page for El Al bookings that accepts funds from Mir as well as Visa and Mastercard.
Responding to Kuleba, El Al said: “It is unfortunate that a simple check was not done with us before the misleading tweet, as the facts are entirely different.”
Responding to Kuleba, El Al said, Kuleba had not checked before posting his “misleading tweet” and noted that its planes have brought humanitarian aid to Ukraine and also ferried refugees to Israel.
“Indeed, the ‘Mir’ payment button remained on the website, but the use of it was blocked,” Kuleba acknowledged Tuesday morning, though the system’s logo did not appear on the El Al website during attempts to book flights from the United States, Israel and Russia on Monday.
Indeed, the ‘Mir’ payment button remained on the website, but the use of it was blocked. I am grateful to El Al for its important humanitarian operations and convey my apologies.
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) March 8, 2022
“El Al is operating flights to Russia at the request of the Israeli government and we will continue to get Israelis and Jews out of Russia so long as it is possible.”
El Al said it stopped accepting Mir payments on 28 February — four days after the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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