Russia’s Federal Agency for International Humanitarian Cooperation, also known as Rossotrudnichestvo, described Israel’s destruction of its cultural center in South Lebanon as an “act of unprovoked aggression” in their official statement on the matter. They also reminded everyone that “On October 10, 1973, during the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, the Soviet Cultural Center in Damascus was destroyed by a direct hit from Israeli bombs.” The innuendo is that Israel is tacitly treating Russia like an enemy state.
Attempting to explain Israel’s motives doesn’t equate to excusing what it just did as this thought exercise is required for better understanding what just happened and what it might lead to. The immediate context concerns a recent report that Russia is helping Iran target the US’ regional assets, which this analysis here argues is believable even though Russia hasn’t confirmed it and Trump downplayed it. Prior to that, another report circulated alleging that Russian tech had been found in some Iranian drones.
Coupled with the Russian Ambassador to the UK declaring that “We are not neutral. We are supportive of Iran…We have all sympathies with Iran”, the impression that casual observers might naturally have is that the abovementioned reports might be true. This is especially so after Putin congratulated new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei earlier the same day as Israel destroyed his country’s cultural center and “reaffirm[ed] our unwavering support for Tehran and solidarity with our Iranian friends.”
Russia was never Iran’s “ally” in the sense of having any mutual defense obligations to it, and while Russia hopes to mediate a swift end to the conflict, cynics might suspect that Russia has an interest in helping Iran attack the US on its behalf as revenge for the US helping Ukraine attack Russia on its behalf. What Russia doesn’t have any interest in is helping Iran attack Israel due to Putin’s proud lifelong philo-Semitism, Israel’s ~2 million-strong Russian-speaking minority, and Russia’s regional balancing act.
“Russia Dodged A Bullet By Wisely Choosing Not To Ally With The Now-Defeated Resistance Axis” in late 2024 during the climax of their war with Israel, but instead of appreciating this, Israel now tacitly treats Russia like an enemy state presumably due to its reported technical assistance to Iran against the US. The State of Israel tends to view everything through a zero-sum security perspective and might accordingly expect Russia to soon help Iran against it too due to mission creep if the conflict doesn’t soon end.
In connection with the aforesaid perception stemming from its strategic culture, Israel also tends to carry out preemptive strikes against its adversaries, thus possibly rationalizing this act of unprovoked aggression against Russia’s purely civilian cultural center in South Lebanon as an attempt to deter that scenario. Assad’s downfall, Trump’s subsequent management of Sharaa, and the Third Gulf War have reduced Russia’s usefulness to Israel in Syria and Iran so it might assume that it has nothing to lose.
That might be a miscalculation if Russia defiantly doubles down on its reported technical assistance to Iran instead by expanding the scope thereof to include helping it target military sites in Israel after feeling betrayed by what just happened. At the very least, Putin might demand a public apology from Netanyahu and compensation for the attack, absent which ties could informally or even officially freeze. What just happened was unacceptable so it’s difficult to imagine Russia not taking a very strong stand.
