Wife of Putin’s press guy performs Holocaust-themed ice skating routine (VIDEO)

Tatiana Navka is the wife of Vladimir Putin’s press spokesman Dmitry Peskov, and has come under fire for performing a Holocaust-themed ice skating routine.

On Saturday she and her partner wore striped uniforms bearing yellow six-pointed stars and were heavily made up to look bruised.

Navka is an Olympic champion ice skater, and was performing on the Russian TV show Ice Age with her partner actor Andrey Burkovskiy. The show is similar to Dancing on Ice, with celebs being partnered with professional ice skaters.

The routine was based on the 1997 Holocaust film “Life is Beautiful”, which is about a Jewish father who pretends for the sake of his small son that their internment in a Nazi camp is just a game. According to Navka’s Instagram post, it is one of her favourite films and she urges parents to show it to their children.

Navka and Burkovsky told Russian media on Sunday that it was their way of paying homage to Holocaust victims.

While some Russians were indignant at what they saw as mockery of the memory of the dead, others posted messages of support on Navka’s Instagram account, saying that the dance brought tears to their eyes.

The routine was choreographed by 2002 Olympic silver medallist Ilya Averbukh, who is Jewish. Averbukh, who said in a 2012 interview that he “had problems” in his childhood because of his Jewish name, stood by the Holocaust-themed dance.

“This routine is my idea,” Averbukh, who is also Ice Age’s chief producer, told Komsomolskaya Pravda on Sunday. “I have done a lot of routines on the war and Jewish themes, there were very different characters.”

Outside of Russia, the routine has been met with widespread outrage.

It just doesn’t seem real.

The sheer lack of taste is almost laughable. Almost, but not quite.

This isn’t the first time Russian ice skating has courted controversy. Yulia Lipnitskaya came under fire at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics for skating as the girl in the red coat from Schindler’s List.

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