- March 26, 2026
- 6:54 pm
- Israel
“Mo-o-o-other earth, whi-i-i-te birch tree, For me — Holy Ru-u-u-ssia, for others — a tho-o-o-orn”
On March 26, 2026, the Financial Times reported that Moscow is close to completing the phased delivery of drones, medicines, and food to Iran. According to Western intelligence, secret discussions began in the early days of March, shortly after the US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets, and the deliveries are expected to be completed by the end of the month. Sources of the publication suggest that it may involve drones like the “Geran-2” — the Russian version of the Shahed-136, already adapted for the war against Ukraine.
This is the moment when the entire Israeli public in the genre of “it’s not so clear-cut,” all local fans of “Putin-birch trees,” and all sellers of the myth “Putin is actually a friend of Israel” should at least be silent for a minute and look at one simple point.
If these deliveries are indeed happening, then Russia is not just trading with Iran, not just pretending to maintain ties with all sides, but is helping a regime that shoots at Israel and openly builds its strategy on the destruction of the Jewish state.
And it’s not just about a newspaper leak. On March 17, Reuters relayed a summary of a Wall Street Journal publication that Moscow is expanding intelligence sharing with Iran and transferring improved drone technologies and satellite images for targeting US objectives in the region. On March 25, Reuters separately quoted Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying that Ukraine has “irrefutable” data on the ongoing transfer of military intelligence information by Russia to Iran; moreover, Russian components were found in Iranian drones used against American targets in the Middle East.
The Kremlin, of course, denies everything.
Dmitry Peskov has already called the reports of deliveries “lies” and suggested ignoring them. But Moscow’s problem is that the denial now sounds against the backdrop of too long a chain of coincidences: there are reports of deliveries, reports of technology transfers, reports of intelligence sharing, and there are already quite material traces of Russian involvement in the Iranian drone war.
For Israel, this is no longer a “Ukrainian issue,” but a matter of its own security.
The most dangerous thing here is not even the fact of Moscow and Tehran’s alliance.
This has long been no news.
The danger is that Russia now seems to be returning to Iran already reprocessed combat experience. Not the “Shaheds” that Tehran once transferred to Moscow, but a modernized killing system, tested on Ukrainian cities, with improved navigation, modified engines, and jamming protection. If this is the case, then over Israel, in the literal sense, a technology refined to effectiveness by the war against Ukraine may appear.
Against this backdrop, it is especially telling that Ukraine is already directly telling its allies: Russian facilities for the production of such drones are a legitimate military target because the threat from them extends far beyond the Ukrainian front. This was stated on March 23 at a UN Security Council meeting by Ukrainian representative Andriy Melnyk, linking the deliveries of modernized “Gerans” to Iran not only with the war against Kyiv but also with risks for the Gulf countries, the US, and the global economy.
And then begins what many in Israel stubbornly refuse to see. The Wall Street Journal writes that Israel has already struck the port of Bandar Anzali on the Caspian Sea — along a route that the publication associates with Russian-Iranian logistics of weapons, drones, and military technologies. Reuters separately confirmed the fact of Israeli strikes on Iranian maritime targets in the Caspian Sea. That is, at the level of real war, everything has long ceased to be theory: Israel, in essence, is hitting infrastructure related to the Russian-Iranian military pipeline.
It is here that the entire Israeli “vatnik” — yes, exactly so, because there is no other word for people who live under Israeli air defense and at the same time continue to tell tales about “great Russia,” — looks not just naive, but politically decomposed.
Because if the country they romanticize here helps arm Iran, then the question is no longer about love for the balalaika, birch trees, or old family myths. The question is in direct sympathy for the force that makes Israel’s enemy more dangerous.
The problem now is not only with commentators but also with the government.
But it would be too convenient to blame everything on just the “it’s not so clear-cutters” from Facebook and Telegram.
Much more unpleasant is another thing: the Israeli state itself has maintained a zone of political ambiguity around Moscow for years. Even after the full-scale war against Ukraine and after Russia’s strategic rapprochement with Iran, the channels of communication did not disappear. In May 2025, the Prime Minister’s office officially reported on a conversation between Netanyahu and Putin, where the leaders exchanged “warm greetings” and discussed regional events; Reuters then separately wrote that the Middle East and bilateral relations were discussed.
Since then, Moscow has not become any more neutral or cautious towards Israel. On June 13, 2025, Reuters reported that Putin condemned Israel’s actions against Iran and told Netanyahu that the Iranian nuclear problem should be solved diplomatically. And already in March 2026, the Russian Foreign Ministry publicly demanded that Israel and the US stop strikes on Iran and sit down at the negotiating table. That is, the Kremlin is working diplomatically and strategically in favor of the ayatollahs’ regime while maintaining contact with Jerusalem exactly as much as it is convenient for Moscow.
That’s why conversations in the style of “we have good relations with Russia” begin to sound not like subtle diplomacy, but like political inertia, which is already dangerous in itself. You cannot simultaneously see how Russia fuels Iran, how it offers itself as a mediator, how it condemns Israeli strikes, how it shares war technologies, and still continue to cling to the old formula of “complex but working relationships.” This formula, perhaps, was once explained by “Syria” and “other strategic issues.” Now it increasingly looks like self-deception.
In the middle of this whole story stands another inconvenient fact, which NAnews —Israel News | Nikk.Agency is obliged to speak out loud: the alliance between Moscow and Tehran can no longer be described as a peripheral problem of Ukraine. Ukraine was the first to pay for this connection with its cities and its nights under “Shaheds.”
Now the same military conveyor, apparently, is returning back to the Middle East — already in a form strengthened by Russian experience.
The question that will inevitably be asked sooner or later
Last week, Trump already showed that he is capable of publicly rebuking Netanyahu.
Reuters and AP reported that after Israel’s strike on the Iranian gas field South Pars, Trump demanded no more attacks on energy infrastructure, and Netanyahu acknowledged that he agreed to this request. AP directly described this episode as a rare public divergence between the two leaders.
And here arises a question that has not yet been openly asked, but is already hanging in the air.
If tomorrow Washington tells Jerusalem harshly and without diplomatic padding: either the US strategic line, or your old games in “special relations” with Moscow, — whom will Netanyahu choose?
This is no longer abstract journalism. This is a question of whether Israel is capable of finally recognizing the obvious: Putin is not “a friend of Israel,” not “a complex partner,” and not “a useful channel of communication.” He is the leader of a state that, according to Western intelligence and a number of recent publications, helps arm Iran against the US and Israel.
And if after this someone in Israel still tells stories about “the wise geopolitical strategist in the Kremlin,” then this is no longer an opinion. This is a voluntary refusal to see where exactly the next strike might come from.
