Relations between Russia and Israel after the restoration of diplomatic ties on the eve of the Soviet Union’s collapse can be roughly divided into three stages.
The first stage covered the 1990s and early 2000s — Boris Yeltsin’s presidency and Vladimir Putin’s first term. Ties between the two countries remained fairly restrained during this period.
The second stage coincided with Vladimir Putin’s subsequent presidential terms and his time as prime minister. This was when Russia “returned” to the Middle East and Russian-Israeli relations saw a clear upswing. Personal rapport between Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin played a significant role in the warming. From Netanyahu’s return to the premiership in 2009 until he moved into opposition in the summer of 2021, he held roughly 20 meetings with Putin — about twice as many as he held with U.S. presidents, Israel’s main strategic ally. The relationship was less about personal friendship than about the mutual trust that developed between two seasoned politicians.
Overall, this phase was defined by tactical partnership grounded in overlapping interests and tacit understandings about the “rules of the game.” It was understood that if those interests shifted, the relationship would shift with them.
That logic was fully borne out in the third stage, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. This stage itself falls into two distinct sub-periods: before and after October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants carried out the massacre in Israel’s southern border communities. Israel’s response — Operation Iron Swords — quickly escalated into a broad regional war between Israel and its partners on one side and Iran and its proxies on the other.
Start of the third stage: noticeable cooling, working channels preserved
In the period since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Israeli-Russian cooperation has declined sharply across nearly every domain — political and diplomatic, economic, and humanitarian.
From the first days of the war, Israel condemned Russian aggression. Alongside diplomatic support and deliveries of non-lethal protective gear (and certain types of weaponry that were never publicly confirmed), Israel provided Ukraine with extensive humanitarian and material assistance. It became the first country to set up a fully operational civilian field hospital in the Lviv region, which treated around 7,000 patients — both local residents and refugees from central and eastern Ukraine. Thousands of Ukrainian children and wounded soldiers received treatment in Israeli hospitals. Israel also organized professional retraining programs for hundreds of Ukrainian trauma surgeons and specialists in psychological rehabilitation.
In addition, Israel supplied Ukrainian emergency services with critical equipment and organized the delivery of hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid through the “green corridor,” including medicines, medical equipment, armored ambulances, powerful generators, hundreds of thousands of hot meals, and water-purification units capable of serving up to 100,000 people each. Israeli civil society and private donors also contributed on a large scale.
Unlike NATO countries, however, and contrary to Kyiv’s expectations, Israel did not join the “anti-Russian front.” It stayed out of Western economic sanctions against Russia and refrained from large-scale deliveries of lethal weapons to the Ukrainian armed forces.
Concerned by the growing threat from Iran and its regional allies, the Israeli leadership initially assumed — more out of habit than conviction — that the previous understandings and working arrangements with Russia would remain relevant. At first, this stance was formally acceptable to Moscow as well. Over time, however, irritation grew in the Russian capital, while voices in Israel increasingly argued that the old model of relations with Moscow had become obsolete in light of Russia’s strategic alignment with Iran.
Many expected Netanyahu’s return to the premiership in November 2022 to bring a noticeable shift in Israel’s approach to Russia. In practice, little changed, and both sides continued to maintain the appearance of “business as usual” for some time.
After October 7, 2023: Moscow chooses Iran and Hamas
After October 7, 2023, preserving even the illusion of “business as usual” became much harder.
Russia moved to openly back Hamas as an Iranian proxy. This was evident in a series of steps: official meetings with representatives of the terrorist group, accusations that Israel was committing “war crimes,” high-profile anti-Israel moves at the United Nations and other international forums, and economic support for the Hamas regime in Gaza (including, according to some reports, allowing Hamas to launder tens of millions of dollars through the Russian cryptocurrency market while evading U.S. sanctions). Russia’s support for the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah fits the same pattern; its leaders sided with Moscow from the very beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine.
Israeli officials acknowledge that the pro-Palestinian — and at times explicitly pro-Hamas — narratives regularly voiced in Moscow and in Russian state media help fuel anti-Israel sentiment in the region. At the same time, they consider direct Russian military involvement in the current war unlikely. What appears far more significant are the Kremlin’s pragmatic calculations. Israel’s war against Hamas is viewed in Moscow as a failure of American diplomacy and as an obstacle to the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel — a process that could have brought the classic Arab-Israeli conflict to a close after more than a century. Moscow also had an interest in derailing the potential formation of a U.S.-Israel-pro-American Arab defense alliance (the so-called “Middle East NATO”), which would have posed a serious challenge to Russian, Iranian, and Chinese interests in the region.
Moscow’s broader geostrategic outlook in the Middle East continues to rest on the assumption that Iran remains Russia’s key strategic partner there. The survival of Iran’s proxy Hamas therefore aligns with Russia’s regional priorities. Israel’s interests, as the strategic ally of Russia’s main adversary — the United States — no longer fit into that framework.
The ongoing war between the United States, Israel, and their partners against Iran and its proxies inevitably affects other conflicts, including the war in Ukraine. The reactions of the two sides’ leaders were, predictably, diametrically opposed. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly supported the strikes on the Iranian regime. Moscow condemned the move. Other differences are also visible: Russia has limited itself to general calls for peaceful solutions based on international law and a balance of interests, while Kyiv has expressed readiness to assist the United States and its allies in countering Iranian Shahed kamikaze drones.
Russia itself makes extensive use of Iranian military technology in its war against Ukraine. Despite the officially declared strategic partnership with Tehran, however, Moscow has shown no inclination to intervene directly in the conflict between the Iranian regime and Israel and the United States. Iran has not received advanced Russian fighter jets or modern air-defense systems. According to media reports, Moscow’s assistance has been limited to sharing some intelligence information — nothing more.
Sources of the rift
One of the more visible achievements of the brief Russian-Israeli “honeymoon” in the late 2000s and 2010s was the alignment of positions on key aspects of World War II history. Both countries criticized attempts to revise the war’s outcome or deny the Holocaust.
In 2018, Benjamin Netanyahu was one of only two foreign leaders (alongside Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić) who stood with Vladimir Putin at the military parade in Moscow marking the 73rd anniversary of Victory Day. Netanyahu also took part in the Immortal Regiment march — a memory project that originated in Russian civil society but quickly became part of the official ideological narrative.
The information campaign surrounding Russia’s war in Ukraine, with its heavy use of terms such as “Banderites” and “fascist accomplices,” has undermined that earlier understanding. The Kremlin has also weaponized the concepts of “genocide” and “Holocaust” to delegitimize Ukraine’s leadership. In Ukraine, where several prominent political figures have Jewish roots, the counter-narrative of “Russian aggression as a new Holocaust” has gained traction and is used to shape international public opinion.
Public-opinion data reflects the shift in attitudes. A Levada Center survey conducted at the end of March 2025 found that roughly 40 percent of Russians sympathized with Iran in the current conflict, while only 2 percent sympathized with Israel and the United States (53 percent expressed no sympathy for either side). According to Pew Research Center data from April 2025, more than 80 percent of Israelis viewed Russia negatively. Before February 24, 2022, the image of Russia in Israeli society had been largely positive.
Economy and trade
Economic ties between Russia and Israel are now considerably weaker than they were five years ago. Israel did not join Western sanctions against Russia, but it has made no effort to circumvent them. Israeli companies have had to weigh not only moral considerations but also the risk of secondary sanctions from the United States and the European Union.
In the two years following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, bilateral trade turnover fell by nearly a third — from $ 3.23 billion to $ 2.24 billion. By 2025 it had recovered to $ 3.08 billion, almost returning to the pre-war level. Russian exports to Israel initially dropped by about one-third (from $ 2.44 billion in 2021 to $ 1.65 billion in 2023) but by 2025 had surpassed the 2021 figure, reaching $ 2.59 billion.
The composition of trade has shifted markedly toward raw materials. Before the war, high-value-added products made up a significant share of the flow. By 2025, Israel’s imports from Russia were dominated by grain, metallurgical products, petroleum products, aluminum, and chemical raw materials. Metallurgy became Russia’s largest export category to Israel, helped by the redirection of shipments to non-sanctioned markets and competitive pricing. Grain imports from Russia grew more than threefold — the fastest increase of any category — thanks to record harvests, a weaker ruble, and state support. Russia has established itself as the world’s leading wheat exporter.
Two major categories saw sharp declines. Unprocessed and polished diamonds, once a cornerstone of bilateral trade, dropped dramatically after the G7 imposed restrictions on Russia’s diamond sector and tightened rules on the origin of stones. Sanctions on ALROSA and new certification requirements altered global diamond-market dynamics. The Israeli Diamond Exchange in Ramat Gan was further hit by stricter regulatory measures from Israel’s Finance Ministry.
The role of petroleum products also diminished. After price caps were introduced and export routes changed, a large share of Russian oil shipments was redirected to Asia, reshaping Russia’s oil-trade structure.
Israeli exports to Russia have continued to fall. In 2025 they stood at $ 0.49 billion — 38 percent below the pre-war level of $ 0.79 billion. The sharpest drops were in pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, chemicals, and certain high-tech goods. The main reasons include sanctions-related restrictions, payment difficulties, the exit of some international companies from the Russian market, and more complicated logistics through European transit points. Fruits and nuts (citrus, avocados, dates, and others) remain the leading category of Israeli exports to Russia; in 2024 they were valued at $ 90 million, or 19 percent of total Israeli exports to Russia.
Data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics show that the war in Ukraine did not produce a complete rupture in Russian-Israeli economic relations. After an initial decline, trade turnover has largely recovered in volume. Its structure, however, has changed substantially.
Today Israel buys roughly $ 2 billion more from Russia than it sells to it. This imbalance stems from several factors: banks, insurers, shippers, and logistics providers have become far more cautious when dealing with Russian counterparties, even when goods are not formally sanctioned. The exclusion of Russian banks from SWIFT, the departure of international firms from Russia, broken global supply chains, and the risk of secondary sanctions have all played a role. Many Israeli companies have faced payment delays and have preferred to shift to markets without such risks. At the same time, since 2022 Russia has sharply increased its imports of industrial raw materials, components, and finished goods from China, Turkey, the UAE, and India. In this new configuration, Israel’s interest in the Russian market has noticeably declined.
The Phenomenon of Mass Aliyah from Russia to Israel
Mass aliyah from Russia and other post-Soviet republics began in late 1989 and continues to this day, with periods of both surge and decline. In Moscow, references to “a million compatriots in Israel” long carried an almost ritual quality. In Israel, meanwhile, relations with Russia have always been shaped with the interests of the country’s substantial Jewish community in mind.
One reason Israel adopted a relatively restrained approach toward Moscow after February 24, 2022, was a sense of responsibility for the fate of the Jewish diaspora. Preserving the possibility of free entry for these people was a priority for the Israeli leadership. Between the end of February and the end of December 2022 alone, 42,335 people arrived in Israel from Russia — compared with 14,604 from Ukraine, 2,126 from Belarus, and 1,526 from other former Soviet states. According to research conducted under the author’s supervision, two-thirds of the Russian repatriates who arrived in the first half of 2022 said they had already planned to move to Israel in the near future and that the war simply coincided with those plans. Nearly another quarter said they had been “hesitating, but the war pushed them to make a final decision.”
The outflow of people with Jewish roots from Russia accelerated noticeably in the summer and early autumn of 2022, especially after the announcement of “partial mobilization,” when potential conscripts and their families — including Jews — scrambled to find ways out of the country.
Over the following three years, the number of repatriates from the former Soviet Union dropped significantly. This decline, however, does not reflect the exhaustion of emigration potential. Demographers estimate that at the beginning of 2024 more than 320,000 people in Russia still met the criteria of the Law of Return. Nor has the security situation been the decisive factor: while the war in Ukraine acted as a powerful trigger for a new wave of aliyah, the war in the Middle East has not halted it.
Other circumstances have played a far greater role. First, residents of Russia’s major cities — home to the bulk of the Jewish population — gradually adapted to wartime conditions. Economic and cultural life in the big cities has continued with little visible change, and the authorities have effectively refrained from mass conscription of this category of citizens. As a result, the feverish emigration wave, including the aliyah of autumn-winter 2022−2023, has subsided.
Second, the simplified procedure for issuing Israeli passports to new repatriates immediately or shortly after arrival was discontinued. Many had obtained such passports “just in case,” without any intention of settling in Israel permanently in the near term.
The rhetoric of certain Israeli politicians also contributed. Some claimed that new repatriates from Russia had no intention of living in Israel permanently and were merely seeking passports and social benefits. Others expressed concern that the high share of non-Jewish and mixed-background individuals in the “wartime aliyah” posed a challenge to Israel’s Jewish character. Both claims deserve considerable skepticism.
Russia’s leadership position remains ambivalent. On the one hand, Moscow officially does not obstruct Jewish emigration (or any other emigration, for that matter). On the other, the large-scale departure of people — including Jews — clearly irritates the Kremlin. A telling sign of this irritation was the July 2022 request by Russia’s Ministry of Justice to liquidate the Moscow office of the Jewish Agency “Sochnut,” which had operated in the country for more than thirty years and facilitated Jewish repatriation to Israel. In Israel the move was viewed as part of anti-Israeli rhetoric and closer alignment with Iran. In the end, the Kremlin did not follow through, but the case was never formally closed.
Outlook
No complete rupture in Russian-Israeli relations has occurred. Russia continues to criticize Israeli and U.S. actions in the conflict with Iran but avoids steps that could lead to irreversible escalation. The Kremlin, it appears, is not yet prepared to place Israel among its open adversaries. Israeli leaders, for their part, have also stuck to the status quo, even though the previous “special relationship” between Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin clearly belongs to the past. Israel’s stance may also reflect the approach of the Donald Trump administration, which does not appear to view Russian-Iranian rapprochement as a major problem.
At the same time, certain publicly reported developments could prompt adjustments. Beyond limited Russian arms supplies to Iran, attention has focused on reporting by The Jerusalem Post that Russian intelligence provided Tehran with a list of 55 critical energy infrastructure sites in Israel. Such information could enable Iran to carry out precise strikes capable of paralyzing the country’s power grid. Against this backdrop, it is difficult to predict whether Israeli leaders will maintain their balancing act or reconsider relations with Moscow should similar incidents recur.
On the surface, Russian-Israeli relations today combine tactical friction of interests with deeper uncertainty. As one participant in a discussion at the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry told the author, the current leitmotif of Russian-Israeli business contacts can be summed up as: “We’re in a tactical pause right now, but we’re ready and looking to the future with optimism.” A similar narrative dominates among Russian experts and officials involved in business.
The real “red lines,” however, remain quite clear and can be expressed in a simple formula: Israel does not take direct part in the war in Ukraine and does not provide it with large-scale military assistance, while Russia does not intervene in the Middle East conflict on Iran’s side and does not directly assist the development of Iran’s nuclear program.
