“I didn’t have to be in this place, I didn’t have to record this video. In my place should have been another person. But this person was killed by Putin.”
“I didn’t have to be in this place, I didn’t have to record this video. In my place should have been another person. But this person was killed by Putin.”
“Hide” is the word you’re looking for. He didn’t hide from his past misdeeds, any more than he hid from Vladimir Putin.
And given that the newest example of this racism is from 2007, seventeen years old now, it’s obvious he did distance himself from it. If he hadn’t, you’d have been able to find a much newer example.
You don’t need grand apologies to distance yourself from bad behavior. All it really takes is simply not repeating it.