TEL AVIV — The two countries are close partners of the United States. They are each locked in major wars against allied adversaries — namely, Russia and Iran. And yet Israel and Ukraine just can’t get along.
In recent days, though, the relationship — long chilly at best — took a nosedive after Ukraine accused Israel of buying grain harvested by Russia in occupied Ukrainian territory. Israeli officials hit back, rebuking Ukraine for failing to provide evidence and airing its recriminations in public.
The European Union weighed in on Ukraine’s side and said it could impose sanctions against Israeli parties that circumvent international sanctions and help Russia’s war effort.
The grain dispute not only marked a new low in Israel-Ukraine relations, but it also offered a window into how the two countries ostensibly aligned with the West have drifted apart even as their enemies on the battlefield, Russia and Iran, seem more closely aligned than ever. It is also a sign of how President Donald Trump has managed to build relationships of mutual expedience but so far failed to create deeper allegiances based on shared values as his predecessors did during the Cold War and, later, the war against terrorism.
Israel has long seen Russia as a major power it cannot afford to antagonize — a partner that coordinates with Israeli forces operating inside Syria and an occasional interlocutor with Iran. Ukraine, however, has seethed over Israel’s refusal to side publicly with the West against Russia’s invasions in 2014 and 2022 and its reluctance to transfer weapons to aid Ukraine’s defense.
Since 2022, Ukrainian forces have battled against Russia’s deployment of Shahed drones designed by Iran. And since the start of the war against Iran in late February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been touring the region offering to share Ukraine’s combat-honed technology and expertise against cheap but effective Iranian drones.
Several Persian Gulf states, which the $20,000 Iranian UAVs have battered, signed agreements to accept help from Ukraine. So far, Israel has not — even though it, too, faces drone attacks from Iran and Tehran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and in some cases had to use expensive munitions to shoot them down.
“Our military establishment has some psychological fear of Russian power,” said Arkady Mil-Man, a former Israeli ambassador to Moscow. “Everyone says our national security depends on the Russians, so we don’t have any choice but to be with the Russians and relations with Ukraine are less important.”
In 2022, Mil-Man sought to broker a back-channel drone-technology partnership between Ukraine and the Israeli military but was rebuffed. “Today, we have a big, big problem with drones,” Mil-Man said, adding that he has urged Israel to cooperate more with Ukraine. “What’s the problem with calling Zelensky?”
The recent grain dispute, which quickly escalated into a diplomatic crisis, was the latest episode in an Israel-Ukraine relationship that has gone from cool to frosty, Mil-Man said.
Following Russian invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, Israel refrained from condemning Moscow, joining Western economic sanctions against Russia, or sending lethal military aid to Kyiv. Weeks after the February 2022 invasion, Zelensky chided Israel for remaining on the sidelines, telling Israeli lawmakers in an address that “indifference kills.”
There have been some indications that Israel may be providing clandestine help to Kyiv at the behest of the United States. Last year, Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine, Michael Brodsky, told a Ukrainian blogger in an interview that Israel had transferred old U.S.-made Patriot missile systems to Ukraine, something Kyiv had long sought. His comments were quickly denied by the Israeli government, which maintained that officially, it had simply returned American weapons to the United States.
After the Panormitis, a Russian cargo ship carrying grain allegedly harvested from Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, arrived in Haifa Bay on April 26, Zelensky once again directed pointed comments at Israel.
“In any normal country, purchasing stolen goods is an act that entails legal liability,” he posted on X. “Israeli authorities cannot be unaware of which ships are arriving at the country’s ports and what cargo they are carrying.” Ukraine’s intelligence services were working to develop sanctions on companies and individuals profiting from the shipments and were coordinating with European authorities, the president added.
Ukraine summoned the Israeli ambassador in Kyiv, and officials said publicly that they previously provided information to Israeli authorities about another vessel, the Abinsk, headed for Israel in April but stolen grain was unloaded without any intervention by Israeli police or customs agents.
Israeli officials accused Zelensky of waging “Twitter diplomacy” while taking to social media themselves. “You did not even submit a request for legal assistance before turning to the media and social networks,” Foreign Minister Gideon Saar posted on X.
After the dispute burst into public view, the Panormitis departed Israel without unloading its cargo. Aside from the Panormitis, five shipments of grain allegedly stolen from Ukraine have been unloaded in Israel this year, according to Ukrainian officials.
Last week, the Ukrainian Embassy in Tel Aviv filed police complaints against the Israeli importers, and the cases remain ongoing, said Liora Turlevsky, a lawyer representing the Embassy.
Besides projecting toughness, the comments from Saar may reflect a deeper, anti-Ukraine undercurrent in Israel, said Ksenia Svetlova, a former member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, who is now an associate fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
Following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Israeli social media was awash in commentary that referred to the historical persecution of Jews in Ukraine and the collaboration between some Ukrainians and Nazi Germany during World War II. These sentiments may have been stoked by a pro-Russian social media influence campaign, Svetlova said. Russian President Vladimir Putin has cited “de-Nazification” as one justification for the war, an assertion some Ukrainians have dismissed as preposterous considering Zelensky’s Jewish roots.
At a strategic level, many Israeli political and military leaders believe Russia could use its leverage to force Tehran to give up its enriched uranium — or at least Moscow could withhold sales to Iran of advanced weapons such as the Sukhoi-35 fighter jet. But chances of a Russia-brokered nuclear deal, or a major fighter jet sale, are “slim,” Svetlova said.
“Given the place of Israel as part of western democratic states and Russia, on the other side, siding with Iran and Hamas, it should be very clear where Israel should be, but this is not the case,” Svetlova said. “There might be another reason why Israel is projecting this cold attitude toward Ukraine: its strained ties with the U.S. administration. Trump thinks Zelensky has the weaker chin, he can be pressured, so maybe Israel thinks that, too.”
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