Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Russia of cooperating with Iran and of letting antisemitic bot networks target Israel, telling reporters on October 18 that Russian and Israeli interests "sometimes even clash".
"Russia has its own interests, and the State of Israel has its interests, and they do not always overlap. Sometimes they even clash," Netanyahu said at a rare press briefing at which he set out Israel's national security doctrine, answering a question from i24NEWS.
Netanyahu's remarks marked a sharp public break with his longstanding effort to maintain ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He made them on the same day US President Donald Trump defended putting sanctions on Russia on hold, arguing that Russia was “doing very little, if anything, to help the Islamic Republic of Iran” and that he wanted to keep it that way. US intelligence assessments reported by The Washington Post in March found that Russia had passed targeting data to Iran during the war.
Netanyahu said Russia's cooperation with Iran as paret of the informal CRINK alliance (China, Russia, Iran and North Korea) ran counter to Moscow's own interests, arguing that a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten Russia too, and warned that Tehran could try to recruit agents from among Russia's Muslim population. He described the bot campaigns aimed at Israel and Jews as antisemitism of the most extreme kind.
"We raise all these issues with them, and we do so very clearly," he said. "If that is not possible, you stand by your own interests and fight to defend them."
Asked about his relationship with Putin, Netanyahu said the two leaders speak "when necessary".
The Kremlin had not responded to Netanyahu's remarks by the morning of October 19.