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15 August 2024

Should Israel Cross Russia‘s Rubicon?

Anthony De Luca-Baratta, William Erich Ellison, Joseph Schneider Malamud & Mollie Sharfman

After Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022, most of the Western world united in its support for Ukraine against the Russian assault. The United States and its allies across Europe, Northeast Asia, and Australasia imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Russia, reduced diplomatic ties with Moscow, and began providing Kyiv with enormous quantities of economic, humanitarian, and military aid. Nevertheless, Israel did not go nearly as far as most other Western democracies in its support for Kyiv.

As we wrote in a previous article, Jerusalem has limited its assistance to rhetorical volleys, humanitarian aid, and some provision of intelligence, refraining from providing Kyiv with weapons and declining to participate in the international sanctions regime against Russia. Given Israel’s alignment with the American-led Western bloc in the new cold war against the Sino-Russian-Iranian Eurasian bloc, such a posture might seem surprising. However, Israel’s calculus becomes clearer when we consider Jerusalem’s need for freedom of action in striking Iranian targets in Syria and its desire to blunt the consolidation of Russia’s alliance with Iran, Israel’s archenemy.

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