First publication: the president Yitzhak Herzog talked this week with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, around the Russian threat to close the activities of the Jewish Agency in the country. In the meantime, Russian sources, who are not identified with the official media in the country, reported that during the conversation, Herzog informed Putin that “in recent months, the Palestinian terrorist organizations have been receiving shipments of weapons smuggled from Russia in a non-official way.”
According to the same sources, the Russian president replied to Herzog that the weapons may be coming to those Palestinian organizations not from his country, but from Ukraine. However, the Israeli side claimed that it has intelligence information indicating the source and the route the weapon takes until it reaches the terrorist organizations. After that, President Herzog appealed to Putin to take steps to block the weapons smuggling routes from Russia to the Palestinian organizations.
Later, President Putin held a discussion with senior security officials, in which the President received operative reports regarding the war in Russia. During the discussion, Putin raised the question of arms smuggling to the Palestinian terrorist organizations, and gave an order to check Israel’s claims. If it turns out that they are true, and the weapons routes do exist, Putin asked to act to block them. In the meantime, the president’s house said that “the issue did not come up in the presidents’ conversation at any point”.