BICOM

What happened: Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen pledged Israeli loan guarantees and defence assistance to Ukraine during a visit to Kyiv yesterday.

• Cohen met with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba before later meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
• In remarks delivered alongside Kuleba, Cohen said “Israel, as stated in the past, stands firmly in solidarity with the people of Ukraine.”
• Cohen promised to “assist Ukraine with developing a smart early warning system” similar to that which warns Israelis of incoming rocket fire.
• He also pledged $200 million in loan guarantees for healthcare and civilian infrastructure projects in Ukraine.
• In his remarks, Kuleba struck a cautious tone, saying “Israel knows perfectly about our list of security and defence needs. We will be waiting for decisions to be taken.”
• In their meeting, Zelensky told Cohen that Iran was a “common enemy”, while Cohen assured the Ukrainian President that Israel “supports Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.”
• Together with Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine Michael Brodksy, Cohen also reopened the Israeli embassy in Kyiv.
• Having left a one-day visit to earthquake-hit Turkey, Cohen travelled to Poland, before taking an overnight train from the border city of Przemysl to Kyiv.
• He began his Ukrainian itinerary in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, the site of extensive civilian deaths from Russian shelling, where he said “We can say clearly, it is impossible to remain indifferent to the scenes and mass grave that we have seen.”
• Cohen then proceeded to Babyn Yar, the ravine outside Kyiv where the Nazis and Ukrainian collaborators murdered over 30,000 across several days in 1941. Kaddish was recited and Hatikvah was sung.

Context: Cohen is the first Israeli government minister to visit Ukraine since the Russian invasion.

• For security reasons, his visit was not announced in advance, though it has been known for several weeks that such a trip was planned. He was joined in Ukraine by Foreign Ministry Director General Ronen Levy (formerly codenamed “Maoz”) and Simona Halperin, head of the ministry’s Eurasia desk.
• Cohen’s warning system pledge is the clearest commitment yet from Israel that it will publicly move towards security assistance to Ukraine.
• Despite condemning Russian aggression, Israel has been reluctant to accede to requests for military support from Ukraine and its Western allies.
• To do so would risk damaging the deconfliction status quo that exists with Russia, with tacit Russian agreement essential in maintaining Israel’s ability to strike Iranian-sponsored terrorist targets in Syria.
• On assuming office in January, Cohen angered Ukrainians and some allies by promising to “speak less” about the Russian invasion than the previous Bennett-Lapid government had done, and by holding a discussion with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov before speaking with any Ukrainian officials.
• In recent weeks, reports anticipating Cohen’s visit have suggested that Zelensky had sought assurances that practical assistance would be forthcoming before agreeing to receive the Israeli Foreign Minister.
• In addition to a request for $500 million in loans and its oft-repeated requests for missile defence sharing, Kyiv was said to be seeking public support for Zelensky’s November 2022 Peace Plan, including its demand for full Russian withdrawal, and an Israeli commitment to receive increased numbers of Ukrainian injured for medical treatment in Israel.
• On Twitter, Cohen indicated that Israel would support Ukrainian UN peace proposals designed to ensure Ukraine’s “sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity.”
• Washington has been encouraging Israel to step up its involvement. During his visit to Israel in early February, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken urged greater Israeli security assistance to Ukraine.
• In remarks to CNN immediately after Blinken’s departure, Netanyahu claimed to be “certainly looking into” military support, and highlighted Israeli cooperation in transferring what will eventually total 300,000 US 155-millimeter shells long stored in Israel to Ukraine.
• Reports on Netanyahu’s meeting with French President Macron in Paris in early February 2023 then indicated that the Israeli Prime Minister had hinted at a willingness to expand Israel’s aid to Ukraine to include “military things”.
• Hundreds of Iranian drones, including both Mohajer-6 and Shahed-series, have been deployed against Ukraine since Iranian transfers to Russia began last summer.
• In November, Israel shared with NATO an intelligence dossier on Iranian drones.
• Further, while Israeli sources were quick to separate last month’s Mossad deployment of quadcopter drones against the Iranian weapons facility in Isfahan from the Russia-Ukraine context, Kyiv might benefit from any reduction in Iranian capacity.
• Israel, with its line of communication to both Kyiv and Moscow, has previously played the role of intermediary passing on messages between the leaders in full coordination with the US.
• At the onset of the conflict, then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett engaged in discussion with both Putin and Zelensky including, he claimed recently, receiving Putin’s assurances that he would not order the killing of Zelensky.
• Netanyahu recently declared himself open to playing an intermediary role but suggested that the time was not right at present.

Looking ahead: With Russian-Iranian cooperation expected to grow, Israel will be further incentivised to assist Ukraine.

• The extent to which Cohen’s commitments represent a shift in the Israeli calculus, though, remains to be seen. The promise of an early warning system is still short of the Israeli missile defence technology Ukraine covets.
• Cohen also pledged Israeli assistance in post-war reconstruction.