Originally Published on Limes, Rivista Italiana di Geopolitica – Issue “La Solitudine di Israele” (Israel’s Solitude), no. 6, 2026
The war on Iran is pushing Russian-Israeli tensions to an unprecedented level. The fall of al-Assad has fractured their deep cooperation in Syria. Ukraine and Gaza are accelerating the crisis. A rift between Russia and Israel is no longer taboo.
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At the end of April, 40 Israelis arriving in Moscow from Tel Aviv were detained and subjected to harsh interrogations. Among them, Russian authorities reportedly identified individuals “involved” in the war against Iran. The incident, described by Israeli diplomacy as “extremely serious,” is the latest in a series of frictions that have accumulated over recent years. These are signs of a tactical distancing driven by the reconfiguration of the Middle East—a process that America’s current crisis is pushing to greater depths. Russian analysts debate whether the chill in relations began with the invasion of Ukraine or with the war in Gaza, and whether the furious Israeli-American attacks on Iran could represent a point of no return. Every stage of the “Great War” has shaken the “special relationship” built on friendship, mutual understanding, and the long shared history repeatedly celebrated by President Vladimir Putin. A complete rupture does not appear imminent, but it is no longer unthinkable.
Over Putin’s quarter-century in power, Russia has developed an exceptionally pragmatic approach to the complexities of the Middle East, presenting itself as a country capable of talking to everyone in the region, with the vocation of an impartial mediator. This has enabled Moscow to maintain open channels with Arab states, the Gulf monarchies, and Israel even as it drew closer to Iran. With the Jewish state, it coordinated measures to contain the influence of the ayatollahs, while with the ayatollahs it built a strategic partnership that was formally codified in 2025. It was enough to give even the double-headed eagle on Russia’s coat of arms a stiff neck, gazing simultaneously east and west—a symbol of the Kremlin’s multi-vector foreign policy.
Dialogue with Israel, so closely tied to the United States, also allows Russia to engage with a West it once sought to join and later came to oppose. Embodying both phases, Vladimir Putin invested heavily in his relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at times personally managing the contradictions between often divergent interests. During the period of closest coordination, between 2015 and 2018, the two leaders met at least nine times and consistently emphasized the importance of Israel’s Russian-speaking community, which Putin described as “a bearer of Russian culture and the Russian mentality.” But he said this just after Russia’s military intervention in Syria had begun. Since then, much—if not everything—has changed.
Moscow views the Middle Eastern conflagration as a decisive stage in the crisis of American hegemony, and its relationship with Israel is closely connected to the prospect of a gradual U.S. disengagement. Both the Israeli government and the Russian authorities have an interest in preventing the “vacuum” left by the United States from being filled by undesirable forces. Hence the compartmentalization of an inherently complex relationship: cooperate where possible, oppose each other where necessary, and avoid direct confrontation at all costs. In practice, however, reality increasingly diverges from theory. The upheaval in Syria, the war in Gaza, and above all the attacks on the Islamic Republic have exposed the limits of Russia’s strategy toward Israel.
The Israeli-American war against Iran has brought tensions to an unprecedented level. The turning point came with the decapitation of the Islamic Republic’s leadership—a profound trauma for the Russian leadership that cannot simply be reduced to fears of suffering the same fate one day. For a political system that has made sovereignty—and not least the sanctity of the state—the cornerstone of its worldview, the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei cannot be dismissed as just another act of war.
Putin called it “a cynical violation of all the norms of human morality and international law.” He added that “in our country, Ayatollah Khamenei will be remembered as an outstanding statesman who made an enormous personal contribution to the development of Russian-Iranian relations, raising them to the level of a comprehensive strategic partnership.” The slaughter of Iran’s senior leadership is said to have convinced the Russian leader to raise the level of military support for Tehran. At the same time, it has prompted calls within Russia to treat Ukraine in a similar fashion, thereby complicating the management of a conflict that has reached a stalemate.
An analysis by the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RSMD)—the country’s most authoritative academic voice on Middle Eastern affairs—offers a key to interpreting Putin’s message about Khamenei. A lengthy article published at the end of March begins with questions of international law and arrives at a diagnosis that closely echoes the president’s words. Israel, it argues, does not act according to a logic of rational, measurable security. Instead, it is driven by the logic of an “existential threat,” which by definition recognizes no limits of space, time, or proportionality. An existential enemy is not an adversary to be defeated within a defined theater of operations but rather a metaphysical presence to be eliminated. Israeli action is thus portrayed as the product of a clash between an international order grounded in a Christian-derived conception of law—which Russia embraces—and an existential, messianic logic that rejects that legal framework. Applied to Russian strategic thinking, the conclusion is straightforward: if the Supreme Leader of a country of 90 million people can be killed, then a threshold has been crossed that no conventional security doctrine can justify. And in doing so, the pragmatic relationship between Russia and Israel—whose highest expression came during the “Syrian phase”—is hollowed out from within.
Syria and the End of the “Syrian Formula”
With Russia’s military intervention in Syria in 2015, the two countries developed the most effective form of cooperation they had ever achieved. Nothing was written down; everything rested on an agreed script. Israeli fighter jets struck Iranian and Hezbollah positions inside Syria, while Russian S-400 air defense systems did not attempt to intercept them. Russia protected President Bashar al-Assad, and Israel refrained from attacking Russian positions. In May 2018, Putin declared that he wanted to see all “foreign armed forces” leave Syria, effectively placing Israeli and Iranian forces on the same footing. For Israel, the glass half full mattered more than the half empty—and the same was true for Russia. The arrangement did not last.
From Moscow’s perspective, Assad’s Syria was driven toward collapse by an Israeli-American project to redraw the Middle East while Russia was distracted by the war in Ukraine. As early as 2021, Israel had begun informing Moscow of its strikes in Syria only after they had taken place, gradually eroding the deconfliction arrangement and hollowing out what had become known as the “Syrian formula” of cooperation. The downing of a Russian reconnaissance aircraft carrying fifteen servicemen off the Syrian coast in 2018 is widely regarded as the turning point. A recurring interpretation in the Russian media is that, at that point, Putin’s patience ran out and he decided to accelerate Russia’s strategic partnership with Iran—a lengthy process that was not formally concluded until 2025.
When Benjamin Netanyahu later boasted that he had played a decisive role in bringing down the Syrian president, Russians interpreted the statement as an explicit claim of responsibility for forcing them out of Syria—a strategic defeat they are unwilling to accept. The loss of the bases at Tartus and Hmeimim undermines Russia’s entire Mediterranean posture at a time when the Federation has already been weakened on multiple fronts by the war in Ukraine. In any event, with Assad’s fall, the principal testing ground of the tacit Russian-Israeli understanding disappeared, along with the operational framework that had given substance to the “special relationship” for years.
Today, Syrian territory has become an arena of direct rivalry between Turkey and Israel. “Will Turkish President Erdoğan assume the role of ‘guardian’ of the Syrian state, imposing his presence by force?” the influential journal Russia in Global Affairs asked after Assad fled to Moscow. Its answer was equally blunt: “It appears that this strategy is the only language spoken and understood in the Middle East.”
The Kremlin now finds itself caught between Turkey and Israel. If it hopes to rebuild a meaningful presence in the eastern Mediterranean, it will need Turkey’s cooperation.
Ukraine, Gaza, and the Progressive Breakdown of the Relationship
For years, Israel and Moscow have exchanged sharp public criticism only to continue reaching quiet understandings behind the scenes. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, however, unleashed a cycle of mutual recriminations that has never truly subsided.
When Russian tanks rolled toward Kyiv on 24 February 2022, then-Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid condemned what he called a “grave violation of the international order.” Shortly afterward, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asserted that Hitler “may have had Jewish blood”—a remark that struck directly at the shared historical foundation of both countries: the memory of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide, albeit central to each nation in very different ways.
Within months of the launch of Russia’s “special military operation,” Israel reportedly agreed to finance and channel “strategic materials” to Ukraine through a NATO member state. Moscow recorded the episode as one of those transgressions it regarded as understandable because of American pressure—but nevertheless worthy of close attention. Since then, the list of grievances has continued to grow on both sides.
After 7 October and the outbreak of the Gaza war, Russia shifted toward a rhetorical rapprochement with the Arab world, pursuing initiatives that the Israeli government found deeply objectionable. The visit of a Hamas delegation to Moscow fueled speculation over how much Russia might have known before the attacks on Israel. During a second visit in January 2024, Musa Abu Marzouk, deputy chairman of Hamas’s Political Bureau, declared that “Hamas trusts Russia in the same way Israel trusts the United States.”
However instrumental, Russia’s defense of the Palestinian cause helped preserve its alignment with Iran, which at the time was providing military assistance to Moscow for the war in Ukraine. This hesitant revival of the Soviet-era approach toward the Arab world nevertheless resonated with public opinion across what is now commonly called the Global South.
Russian media were also quick to recall that Stalin’s Soviet Union had been the first country in the world formally (de jure) to recognize the State of Israel, only to feel later “betrayed,” when the Israelis—once imagined as standard-bearers of socialism in the Holy Land—ultimately chose the Western camp. Following the Six-Day War in 1967, Moscow severed diplomatic relations with Israel, ushering in twenty-four years of hostility before ties were normalized in 1991, only weeks before the Soviet Union itself ceased to exist.
Last year’s Twelve-Day War and the latest Israeli-American attacks are unlikely to produce consequences as dramatic as those of six decades ago. Nevertheless, tensions have reached an unprecedented level.
Despite evident reservations, Iran has become a geopolitical investment that the Kremlin can no longer afford to abandon. It is indispensable as the linchpin of the North-South Transport Corridor under conditions of international sanctions; as a strategic presence in the Caspian region and the Caucasus, and as a partner in coordinating with China against Western pressure.
No one in Moscow welcomes the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Yet the collapse of the Islamic Republic would destabilize a neighboring region that remains strategically indispensable for as long as Russia’s confrontation with the West continues—which is likely to be for the foreseeable future.
At the same time, the Kremlin has little desire to provoke Donald Trump unnecessarily. America cannot become Russia’s friend, but under Trump it still represents the most favorable interlocutor Moscow could realistically hope to find in the White House.
Events in the Middle East have wrong-footed policymakers. The situation remains fluid, and the intensity of the crisis makes it impossible to establish new strategic reference points. Within Moscow’s political establishment, several competing theories about Iran’s future are circulating, each contradicting the others. No one truly knows what comes next.
The first is the continuity thesis. If Iran emerges from the war severely weakened but not destroyed, Russia could simply continue its policy of strategic ambiguity without fundamentally changing course. A diminished Iran would remain valuable while becoming more dependent on Moscow—and therefore easier to manage.
The second theory begins from the same premise but reaches the opposite conclusion. Precisely because Iran faces the risk of internal collapse, Russia should abandon its improvisational approach and formalize a genuine alliance. No longer merely a strategic partnership on paper, but one involving a military presence, binding agreements, and institutionalized cooperation—even at the cost of definitively rupturing relations with Israel and alienating the Gulf monarchies.
A third, more ambitious but considerably less realistic vision holds that a weakened and more dependent Iran could become part of a flexible geopolitical framework alongside Turkey under Russian leadership, allowing Moscow to recover influence in the Caucasus, Syria, and North Africa—all areas where the war in Ukraine has eroded Russian power. This is the vision favored by nostalgics of great-power status, who see every crisis as an opportunity for geopolitical repositioning.
The problem is that such a strategy requires a degree of freedom of maneuver that Moscow, now entering the fifth year of the war in Ukraine, simply does not possess.
Iran, the Gulf, and the Limits of Russia’s Middle Eastern Strategy
During the most recent Israeli-American military campaign, the Russian Federation supported Iran’s strategy of “regional retaliation.” Moscow supplied satellite imagery and intelligence for attacks on U.S. bases in the Gulf states and delivered military material across the Caspian Sea, exploiting geographical proximity to circumvent the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Russia also vetoed a UN resolution proposed by several Arab states that would have authorized military action to reopen the Strait. The move, coordinated with China, was perceived by the Gulf monarchies as an act of betrayal.
As a result, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar felt justified in establishing a decade-long defense cooperation agreements with Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine. Kyiv moved swiftly to exploit the geopolitical opening created by Russia’s growing tilt toward Tehran.
The episode confirmed that every theater of what the author calls the “Great War” is interconnected: developments in one arena immediately affect the others. It also highlighted the danger that Russia could alienate the third pillar of its Middle Eastern strategy—the Arab world, and particularly the Gulf monarchies, which have become an integral part of the network of relationships Moscow has painstakingly cultivated over the years as an alternative to the West.
Moscow regards the spread of the conflict into countries hosting American military bases as a useful warning. Iranian reprisals vividly demonstrated the inherent vulnerabilities of the Abraham Accords—the U.S.-backed initiative designed to normalize relations between Israel and the Gulf monarchies.
From the outset, Russia viewed the Accords with skepticism, seeing them less as a diplomatic normalization process than as an instrument of American regional hegemony.
When Kazakhstan joined the Accords last November, Russian concern turned into alarm. Israeli-American influence, from Moscow’s perspective, was extending into the former Soviet space of Central Asia, where Russian influence has steadily declined because of the war in Ukraine and because other powers—chiefly China and Turkey—have taken advantage of Moscow’s distraction.
The same applies to Israel’s growing presence in the South Caucasus, regarded as an essential factor behind Azerbaijan’s regional rise and a direct challenge to the Kremlin’s traditional sphere of influence.
Russia’s Domestic Debate and the Future of the “Special Relationship”
Developments in the Middle East have also complicated Russia’s domestic political landscape, becoming a reflection of its external tensions.
The idea of openly aligning with the Muslim world appeals to certain nationalist circles that are currently kept at arm’s length from the centers of power—though that could change in the future. Whether Sunni or Shiite is of secondary importance; Israel is the principal target, amid a mixture of wounded national pride and the resurgence of an anti-Semitism with deep historical roots.
Influential nationalist outlets such as Tsargrad, owned by the self-described Orthodox businessman Konstantin Malofeev, increasingly advocate a decisive distancing from Israel, often adopting openly hostile rhetoric.
Following the Gaza war and the accompanying shift in Russia’s official narrative, public attitudes have changed significantly—not only among hardline patriotic constituencies.
Before 7 October, opinion polls showed that more than half of Russians regarded Israel as a friendly country. Since then, public sympathy has shifted toward the Palestinians. As a mirror image of this trend, Israeli public opinion has also become less favorable toward Russia, including among Israel’s large Russian-speaking community.
In this new climate, the “Russians of Israel” have proved to be less Russian than Moscow had hoped.
For three decades, Israel’s Russian-speaking population was portrayed as evidence of an unbreakable bond between kindred peoples—a relationship that, like family ties, would endure despite occasional disagreements.
In reality, emigrants from the former Soviet Union are not necessarily loyal either to Moscow or even to Judaism. Most were driven less by Zionism than by the desire to escape collapsing societies: more than one million left during the Soviet Union’s dissolution between 1990 and 1996, while much smaller numbers emigrated during the 2010s because of opposition to Putin’s political system.
The “Putin aliyah” between 2012 and 2020 brought roughly 57,000 Russians to Israel, while another 47,000 arrived during the first year of the war in Ukraine.
Together, these successive waves have produced a Russian-speaking community of more than 1.5 million people—approximately 16 percent of Israel’s population.
They are commonly referred to as “Russians,” yet many actually come from Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, or other former Soviet republics. Ukrainians constitute a substantial share of the community, helping explain the Israeli government’s often ambivalent stance toward Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
According to scholar Lily Galili, those who arrived as children immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union do not regard themselves as bearers of Russian culture. They see themselves primarily as Israelis, treating their Soviet background as a resource to facilitate social advancement rather than as a cultural identity.
This differs markedly from the “reservoir of Russian culture” that Putin has long celebrated. Supporters of the Russian president remain highly visible in the media, but they do not represent the community as a whole. Political scientist Vladimir (Zeev) Khanin dismisses them as a “noisy minority,” estimating that they account for no more than ten percent of Russian-speaking Israelis.
As with almost everything confronting Russia today, much will depend on the outcome of the war in Ukraine—and equally on the outcome of the confrontation over Iran.
Amid the current uncertainty, one conclusion nevertheless appears increasingly clear: the much-discussed “axis of autocracies” has no intention of becoming a rigid geopolitical bloc with formally defined members, allies, and enemies.
Such a project does not appear to fit China’s strategic vision, nor is it within Russia’s capabilities, despite lingering nostalgia for Soviet superpower status.
Instead, Moscow practices the multipolarity it advocates as a kind of free market of interests: states pursue whatever partnerships they find advantageous, with whomever they choose, provided those relationships do not inflict existential damage on other partners.
Within this framework of not always voluntary affinities, compartmentalization works only as long as it continues to generate tangible and mutually recognized benefits.
In Israel’s case, however, the “special relationship” may simply have become too special to survive indefinitely.
“How can Israel realistically expect to exist securely in the region where it is located twenty or thirty years from now?” reflects one Kremlin adviser, who nonetheless denies that any formal revision of Russian policy toward the Jewish state is currently under way.
“Of course, we are going through a difficult phase. In the long run, many things will change.”
Ultimately, it is this line of thinking that is likely to shape Moscow’s strategic posture in the years ahead. In the new Middle East that emerges from the Iranian crisis, Russia’s relationship with Israel will no longer resemble the one forged during Vladimir Putin’s era.
