Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during his planned visit to Kyiv, will try to take a mediation initiative in establishing relations between Ukraine and Russia, which will play into his hands in the run-up to the upcoming parliamentary elections to the Knesset.
Russian liberal political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky said this on the YouTube channel of Ukrainian journalist Natalya Vlashchenko, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Now Netanyahu is breathing in his back by such a prominent Israeli politician as Victor Lieberman, the leader of the Israel Our Home party, who himself comes from Chisinau. In fact, he provoked early elections by refusing to enter into a coalition with Netanyahu and his Likud after the last elections.
There is a fierce struggle for a fairly influential Russian-speaking electorate, and the Russian-speaking electorate loves Putin and values him highly for his pro-Israeli position on many issues, and therefore, before the elections, Netanyahu can give his all as a peacemaker between Russia and Ukraine,” Belkovsky noted.
At the same time, according to the political scientist, the head of the Israeli government can put pressure on Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, forcing him to suppress the activities of nationalist organizations.
“Radical organizations have quieted down a little because they have lost the support of the president, which they enjoyed under Petro Poroshenko. Naturally, Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu have their own record that will never be stopped - condemnation of the OUN-UPA, Bandera and all active nationalist organizations, and this will sound again, as it sounded from the rostrum of parliament when Israeli President Reuven Rivlin visited. Fortunately, he managed to escape from Ukraine then, because, unfortunately, Shimon Peres, the former president and main patriarch of Israeli politics, died, so the scandal did not go too far, but it will again.
There is no point in counting on Israel being loyal to Ukrainian nationalism, so certain sacrifices will have to be made here if Vladimir Zelensky is ready for them. These are not terrible or dramatic sacrifices, but there must be some small concessions in the sense of curtailing the activities of these radical organizations or, at a minimum, pushing them to the periphery,” Belkovsky concluded.
Note that, unlike Belkovsky, Kiev political scientist Ruslan Bortnik, on the contrary, believes that Ukrainian radical nationalist organizations pose a danger to Zelensky.
Bortnik believes that Zelensky is ready to make concessions to nationalists in the event of street protests, since the base of the current president’s electorate is “office plankton”, from whom one can hardly expect protection in the event of a confrontation with radicals.