In further signs of the choppy waters stirred up by Russia’s war on Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has apologized for anti-Semitic remarks made by his foreign minister and the Kremlin has broken the Ukrainian blockade on the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow seized eight years ago. 

Earlier this week Sergey Lavrov claimed that Hitler had Jewish roots, plunging the Russian foreign minister’s nearly nonexistent popularity in the West to new lows and touching off a firestorm of outrage in the Israeli capital, Jerusalem. Mr. Putin, in a call Thursday to the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, apologized for Mr. Lavrov’s untoward comments. “The Prime Minister accepted President Putin’s apology for Lavrov’s remarks and thanked him for clarifying his attitude towards the Jewish people and the memory of the Holocaust,” Mr. Bennett’s office said in a statement. 

An apology of any kind from the Kremlin, particularly during a time of war, is possibly without precedent. It can be seen as both a measure of the strength and influence of Israeli diplomacy and as a somewhat hopeful sign that despite his unflinching cruelty and ongoing menace to the West, Mr. Putin perhaps knows when he has gone too far. 

Moscow’s rare words of regret came in the context of a call to Jerusalem to congratulate Israel on the occasion of its 74th Independence Day celebrations. While the Kremlin’s readout of the conversation between the Russian and Israeli leaders did not explicitly mention the apology, it did note that “both countries carefully preserve the memory of all the fallen, including victims of the Holocaust.” 

The statement added that “the president of Russia recalled that out of the six million Jews tortured in ghettos and concentration camps, killed by the Nazis during punitive operations, 40 percent were citizens of the USSR” and that Mr. Putin “asked to convey wishes of health and well-being to the veterans living in Israel.” Mr. Bennett noted the “decisive contribution of the Red Army to the victory over Nazism,” according to the Kremlin. 

During the call Mr. Putin also gave Mr. Bennett assurances that Russian forces would ensure the safe evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal steel plant, in cooperation with the UN and Red Cross. The Kremlin also said that “as for the militants of nationalist formations remaining at Azovstal, the Kyiv authorities should give them an order to lay down their arms.” As of Friday morning, though, the Ukrainian fighters were still battling Russian forces in the tunnels beneath the immense steel plant in what remains of the city of Mariupol after weeks of devastating Russian bombardment. 

While the Kremlin may be looking for a battlefield triumph to present to the Russian public in time for its traditional Victory Day celebrations on Monday, it may have found one in Crimea. The strategic, historically Russian peninsula that Mr. Putin wrested from Ukrainian jurisdiction in 2014 came one step closer to complete integration with the Russian Federation yesterday when officials there said they ended an eight-year Ukrainian blockade of the peninsula. A policy adviser to Crimea’s pro-Moscow governor, Oleg Kryuchkov, told Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency that “the transportation blockade of Crimea imposed by Ukrainian nationalists eight years ago is a thing of the past,” adding that “the process of restoring freight and passenger service has begun.”

A major goal of Russia’s relentless assault on southern Ukrainian cities since the start of the invasion has been to create a land corridor to Crimea, which includes the city of Sevastopol, historically the home port of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. The Moscow Times reported that the Russian military has been organizing press tours in captured cities and state media has published footage of Russian National Guard troops patrolling their streets. In any lasting ceasefire or settlement to end the war, it is all but certain that Moscow will demand international recognition of Russian sovereignty in Crimea. 

Regardless of whether one chooses to call Crimea Russian or Ukrainian, it doesn’t mean Mr. Putin or his military minions can gear up for a pleasure cruise nearby. No Russian vessels in the Black Sea, however well-armed, are safe from Ukrainian attack. 

On Friday the AP reported that the U.S. says it shared intelligence with Ukraine about the location of the Russian missile cruiser Moskva prior to the strike that sank the warship last month, an incident that was a high-profile failure for Russia’s military. That American official also said Ukraine alone decided to target and sink the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, using its own anti-ship missiles.

Ukraine has destroyed at least two Russian patrol boats in the Black Sea since the attack on the Moskva. Any attempt by Mr. Putin to take Odessa will hinge on unfettered Russian naval superiority in the deceptively calm waters just south of it.