ABSTRACT
One of the trickiest foreign policy challenges for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been dealing with Russia, especially since the Russian military intervention in Syria in September 2015. This chapter will first explore the nature of the Russian-Israeli relationship before the Russian military intervention in Syria. It will then briefly assess Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s reasons for the military intervention. The third part of the chapter will evaluate Israel’s reaction to the intervention, which seriously affected Israeli security. The final section of the chapter will analyze the impact on Russian-Israeli relations of the shooting down of a Russian plane by Syrian antiaircraft forces in September 2018, which the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation blamed on Israel.
