The recent visit of Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov to Israel took place with sparse media coverage at the request of the host country. Official statements only noted that Reznikov and Eyal Khulata, Israel's National Security Council head, discussed urgent security issues. According to some media reports, Israel asked the guests to be careful with public speeches and not to give interviews so as not to irritate the Kremlin once again. Moscow insists on urgent and legally enshrined guarantees of refusal to expand NATO and, through a new deployment of troops on the border with Ukraine, is trying to impose the parameters of a security system in Europe.

Unsurprisingly, Russia defiantly confuses defense policy and business when it comes to the post-Soviet space. An example of this are the Turkish-made Bayraktar drones, which the Ukrainian side has already begun to use in Donbass. Ankara has publicly emphasized the difference between the official line of the state and sales of military equipment, but Moscow is not convinced. Meanwhile, Ukraine needs to develop ties, strengthen its economic and military potential, and is not in submissive self-isolation due to the whims of the Russian leadership.

The Kremlin was initially unhappy with the victory of Volodymyr Zelensky in the presidential elections in Ukraine due to the fact that democracy won a victory over the administrative resource familiar in the Russian sense. Therefore, the course of active diplomacy in Kiev is doomed to irritate the Russian side. And whoever figured in the second element of the equation — representatives of the Israeli or Turkish defense industry — it is impossible to convince Moscow that the relevant contacts are developing within the framework of the business model.

There is a well-established point of view that gentlemen's agreements in the defense sphere have long existed between Russia and Israel: The Israeli side does not cross the "red lines" and does not intensify defense ties with Ukraine and Georgia. In exchange, Russia restricts military-technical cooperation with Iran. According to Ariel Bulshtein, a former adviser to ex-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Russian side at least twice blocked the relevant requests of Tehran.