Israel’s Reported Transfer Of US Patriots To Ukraine Won’t Significantly Change Anything

Andrew Korybko 

It would be regrettable from Russia’s perspective but not surprising if true

Zelensky claimed in late September that “The Israeli system has been operating in Ukraine for a month. We will receive [another] two Patriot systems in the fall, that’s all I’m going to say.” This follows long-running reports, previously denied by the Israeli Foreign Ministry as recently as June, that Israel agreed to a triangular arrangement whereby it’ll return these US systems for refurbishment before the US then transfers them to Ukraine. It was assessed here at the time that this would harm ties with Russia if true.

That analysis also assessed that “Russia will probably just file a formal complaint and at most flirt with designating Israel as an ‘unfriendly country’”, but “the second possibility can’t be taken for granted” given their interests in Syria vis-à-vis Turkiye and Israel continuing to defy US pressure to sanction Russia. Nevertheless, in spite of the aforesaid, Israel might have still very well gone along with the US’ triangular arrangement for bolstering Ukraine’s air defenses for the reasons that’ll now be explained.

In brief, Russia is no longer a significant factor in Syria’s domestic, foreign, or security affairs, thus reducing its utility to Israel there and correspondingly eroding Israel’s prior resistance to this proposal. Moreover, even though Russia wisely chose not to ally with the now-defeated Resistance Axis last fall when Israel crushed Hezbollah and didn’t step in to defend Iran during this summer’s joint Israeli-US bombing campaign, Israel still presumably dislikes the continued closeness of Russian-Iranian ties.

The combination of these two coupled with Bibi’s desire to remain in Trump’s good graces or at the very least not widen their repeatedly rumored rift cogently accounts for why the Israeli leader might have finally acceded to this long-running request. If this is one of those rare instances where Zelensky is telling the truth, then it wouldn’t significantly change anything though, neither in terms of the Ukrainian Conflict’s military-strategic dynamics nor Russian-Israeli relations.

Regarding the first, Russia continues to win the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with NATO, which can’t produce enough military-technical equipment to prevent Ukraine from continuing to cede ground. It’s for precisely this reason that NATO might directly intervene in the conflict, which it could justify by shooting down Russian jets on the false pretext that they violated the bloc’s airspace, absent which Zelensky might stage a false flag drone provocation blamed on Russia in pursuit of the same end.

As for the second, Israel remains reluctant to escalate tensions with Russia through the direct dispatch of offensive military-technical equipment to Ukraine like it and the US have long wanted due to the fear that this could provoke Russia into more muscularly supporting Iran, thus worsening Israel’s security. Likewise, Russia probably won’t do anything other than ramp up its pro-Palestinian rhetoric in response to this triangular arrangement since it doesn’t want Israel to sanction it, which would ruin their relations.

The end result is that Israel’s indirect transfer of older US Patriots to Ukraine won’t significantly change anything. It’s regrettable from Russia’s perspective but shouldn’t have been surprising due to how much less of a role Russia has played in Israel’s security ever since Assad’s fall. Closer Russian-Iranian ties also predictably pushed Israel into wanting to symbolically signal its displeasure one way or another. This is therefore arguably a non-event but will still likely be spun by the usual suspects as a pretty big deal. 

Andrew Korybko, Substack, October 7, 2025 

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