This was announced by President Vladimir Putin on Friday at the start of a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in the Russian city of Sochi on the Black Sea. “There are points of contact and opportunities for cooperation.”
According to Bennett, the conversation should also be about the situation in Syria – and about “efforts to stop the Iranian military nuclear program.”
Russia is one of the countries that negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran, which Israel criticized in 2015. In Syria, the Russian military supports President Bashar al-Assad. Israel’s air force repeatedly attacks targets in neighboring Syria in order to prevent its archenemy Iran from gaining a foothold there.
Israel’s relations with Russia are generally considered to be good. However, there have been multiple disagreements over Syria. “There are also problematic issues, there are many of them,” said Putin.
It was the first meeting with Bennett, who has been in office since June. Under Bennett’s predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, Russia had “built up fairly factual and trusting relationships,” said the Kremlin chief. He hope for a continuation. Bennett called Putin a “close, true friend of the State of Israel”.
The Prime Minister also pointed out that around one million Russian-speaking people lived in his country. Israel has a total of about 9.4 million inhabitants.