Russia’s ambassador to Israel was recently summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem and reprimanded over recent inflammatory statements made by Moscow officials against Israel, Hebrew media reported Saturday.

The most recent remarks that drew Jerusalem’s ire occurred at a UN Security Council meeting last week on the UN’s report on sexual violence perpetrated on and after October 7, when Russia’s Deputy UN Ambassador Maria Zabolotskaya cast doubt on the report and appeared to draw an equivalence between Hamas and Israel.

Ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov attended the meeting in Jerusalem at the instruction of Foreign Minister Israel Katz before Shabbat on Friday afternoon, according to a Channel 13 news report, which cited diplomatic officials.

“The artificial equivalency that Russia is trying to draw between Israel and Hamas is unacceptable. Also, Russia does not call for the release of the hostages — and Israel takes this seriously,” the officials told the network.

Amid the war in Gaza — sparked by the Hamas-led October 7 onslaught in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 253 hostages — Russia has regularly criticized Israel including at the UN Security Council and has hosted Hamas leaders, in a development widely seen as an extension of its increasingly friendly ties with Iran.

Tehran has become a key ally as Moscow seeks support for its invasion of Ukraine. Israel had offered only relatively modest support for Kyiv in a bid to safeguard its relationship with Russia, but the once-close allies have nonetheless grown far apart.

Among other positions, Moscow submitted a UN Security Council resolution in October calling for a ceasefire that did not mention Hamas, and was therefore voted down by the United States, Britain, France and others.

Moscow has backed Israel’s right to defend itself but has blasted Israel for employing “cruel methods” in its campaign against Hamas.

During the UN meeting on Monday, Russia attempted to cast doubt on the report compiled by the UN’s special envoy on sexual violence, Pramila Patten, with Zabolotskaya saying, “We are being presented with only partial information from the context of a specific mandate and being asked to respond to it.”

The report stated that there was “clear and convincing information” to indicate that hostages held captive in Gaza were subjected to “sexual violence including rape, sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

It also said that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Hamas terrorists perpetrated rape and gang rape against victims in at least three main locations during their October 7 attack on Israel, during which they murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 253.

The Russian envoy sought to delegitimize the UN envoy who compiled the report over her alleged history of “using fakes” — a reference to Patten’s work exposing war crimes perpetrated by Russia against Ukraine.

“At the same time, the information in the report on rapes as well as the mission’s conclusions as to the likelihood of further sexual violence against the hostages is shocking. Sexual violence against Israelis has no justification. Those guilty must be held accountable,” Zabolotskaya said.

She blasted Israel over sections of the report highlighting sexual violence allegedly perpetrated by Israeli security forces against Palestinians in the form of threats of rape, strip searches, and beating of the genitals, which the UN and human rights groups say have been systematic for decades. Israel has said its troops operate according to international law and that it is prepared to investigate allegations of misconduct.

At the meeting, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said “all parties to this conflict must uphold their obligations under international law with regard to the treatment of detained individuals, and we urge and expect Israel to end these abuses,” the US envoy added.

However, she cautioned members against “drawing a false equivalency between these actions and hostage-taking by a foreign terrorist organization. These two things are not the same.”

Last month, Russia’s foreign ministry summoned Israeli Ambassador Simona Halperin to inform her of its “negative reaction” to her criticisms of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian policy in the Middle East made by the diplomat.

The spat came after Russian authorities lashed out over what they called “unacceptable comments” made by the ambassador in an interview with Russian newspaper Kommersant.

Halperin told the paper that Lavrov played down the importance of the Holocaust and said Russia was too friendly with Hamas.

Russia in late January appeared to belittle the Holocaust’s impact on the Jewish people, characterizing it as a mass extermination of “various ethnic and social groups,” while slamming Germany for intervening on behalf of Israel as a third party in the International Court of Justice’s “genocide” case.

At a media conference, the Kremlin’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova criticized what she labeled as Berlin’s “unfettered support” for the Jewish state, and accused it of systematically ignoring the plight of non-Jewish European minorities, particularly Slavic peoples in the then-Soviet Union, who were massacred during the Holocaust.

Reuters contributed to this report.