Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

With Kyiv under attack, Ukraine asks Israel to mediate in war with Russia

As Russia’s military invasion presses closer to the seat of the Ukrainian government in Kyiv, Israel has been reportedly asked to mediate between the two countries.

The news, reported by a correspondent for Kan News, an Israeli state-owned television channel, comes as Russia bombards the Ukrainian capital with missile strikes. According to correspondent Gili Cohen, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s first Jewish president, asked Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett via phone on Friday to serve as an intermediary between Ukraine and Russia.

Zelenskyy reached out to Israel because it is “the only Western country” that has “a good enough relations with both countries,” Cohen tweeted.

The Bennett-Lapid government has been divided on how to respond to the crisis in Ukraine. As fear for the safety of Jewish communities in Russia and Ukraine intensifies, Israel has been forced to juggle the interests of its long-running alliance with the U.S. and its joint security operations with Russia regarding Iran’s presence in Syria.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.