Putin’s Israel Remarks Must Be Taken Seriously

If there’s one thing that the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum showed this year, it’s that, unlike its economy, Russia’s imperialistic appetites are growing by the day –and Vladimir Putin made sure to prove it firsthand.

There’s a lot to digest in his his lengthy speech delivered during the Forum– from the typical “putinicisms” of merging two fully contradictory statements that he “doesn’t wish Ukraine to surrender” but also considers it to be belonging to Russia, to conquistador talk that wherever the Russian soldier steps is in fact Russian land. 

Yet, one particular line in this mishmash of opinions-presented-as-fact proved overwhelming – even those attuned to his usual blabber. 

When answering the question of why Moscow isn’t aiding its ally Iran, who has been diligently supplying missiles and Shaheds to help Russia kill Ukrainians, Putin suddenly stated that Israel is in fact “practically a Russian-speaking country” due to the large volumes of ex-Soviet and Russian repatriates, which “of course we take into account in contemporary Russian history.”

Russian-speaking and Russian history in one sentence relating to another sovereign state. Now, what could possibly go wrong?

As a Ukrainian, I’ll refrain from answering my own rhetorical witticism. But I will state that it appears to be of no concern to Putin that Israel is a multi-million Hebrew-speaking country with only 13% of the country being fluent in Russian.

Or that many of the repatriates he’s referring to have very little appetite to be reconnected with their homeland due to its omnipresent antisemitism.

Or that that he’s once again attempting to deny the linguistic agency of the many republics that once composed the Soviet Union. 

And the reason for all this is dreadfully obvious: Much like Crimea, Israel is “nash” (Russian for “ours”) in his world, and yet another extension of Russia, not a fully-fledged sovereign state.

This idea’s roots stem not only from Moscow’s deliberate manipulation involving Russian speakers, – the eternal lady in distress that needs to be “saved,” especially on Ukraine’s and the Baltic States’ sovereign land– but from its centuries-long insistence on being the “Third Rome.”

In this quite delusional worldview, Jerusalem plays a central role as a civilizational cradle that must be taken control of in order to rule the world. How and why the Russian Orthodox Church, created in the 15th century, is supposed to oversee the Christianity-predating center of Judea is never fully explained – nor does it need to be.

It is simply a desire, however irrational, and best propounded by Russia’s top “philosopher” Alexander Dugin – whose “philosophy” boils down to a detailed explanation of why it’s a splendid idea to kill somebody (by now you may have guessed that this applies to Ukrainians especially) – and his blunt statement that “Jerusalem will be a Russian city, or it won’t exist at all.”  

To understand whether such talk should be taken seriously, you simply need to look at Kyiv.

Before Russia launched an all-out war in 2022, not many Ukrainians truly believed that such an audacious move would ever take place. We’re, after all, neighbors with some shared history—though a highly problematic one—and, quite frankly, not exactly living in the 19th century-version Europe.

Besides, Kyiv stood no chance of joining NATO or the EU, which Moscow so vehemently opposes despite lacking the right to do so; was largely a Russian-speaking country with no real intention of liberating the illegally occupied Crimea or Luhansk and Donetsk; and made no true effort to build up its army or procure equipment.

So, why would you invade a country that poses no threat to you and just minds its own business? 

Sadly, this question only makes sense if you assess Moscow through the lens of rationality – and it is a profoundly wrong lens to do that.

Putin has now been in power for 25 years without ever competing in a true and fair election. He’s in his 70s with no access to the elixir of life and no competition in sight. His last true adversary, Alexey Navalny, was imprisoned and killed while his one-off replacer and former President Dmitry Medvedev has given up his political ambitions and has instead taken on a full-time job of threatening the world with nuclear annihilation. 

Having changed the Russian constitution to serve perennially, the man is effectively in the final stage of his personal metamorphosis from a KGB Dresden-stationed clerk to St. Petersburg’s criminality to a self-identified womanizer to the great “pravitel’’ (Russian for ruler) akin to Peter the Great. 

Perhaps there’s really no need to explain that such people are dangerous, and if they deny your sovereignty in broad daylight, you have to take it seriously.