JERUSALEM, June 24. /TASS/. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed the hope that Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Israel in January 2020. According to Netanyahu, such a visit will be timed to the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by the Red Army.

"I hope to welcome President Putin to Israel at the ceremony to unveil a monument in memory to the Siege of Leningrad and at the events to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz," Netanyahu said on Monday at a meeting with Secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev.

According to the Israeli prime minister, it is quite symbolic that Israel’s Independence Day marked according to the Jewish calendar is celebrated on May 9 this year and coincides with Victory Day. "Without the victory won by the Red Army and the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany, the State of Israel would have hardly appeared," Netanyahu said.