Russia–Israel relations
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Israel–Russia relations refers to the bilateral foreign relations between the two countries, Israel and Russia. Russia has an embassy in Tel Aviv and a consulate in Haifa. Israel has an embassy in Moscow and a consulate-general (to open) in Yekaterinburg.
Russia is a member of the Quartet on the Middle East. For many years, Israel was a sanctuary for many Russian Jews. This was especially the case during the Aliyah in the 1970s and the Aliyah in the 1990s.
Israel is also part Russophone and considered to be the world's only part Russophone country outside the Former Soviet Union. Russian is now the third most widely spoken first language in Israel, (after Hebrew and Arabic), and has the third largest number of Russian speakers outside of former Soviet countries, and the highest as a proportion of the total population.
From late 1944, Joseph Stalin adopted a pro-Zionist foreign policy, apparently believing that the new country would be socialist and would speed the decline of British influence in the Middle East. Accordingly, in November 1947, the Soviet Union, together with the other Soviet bloc countries voted in favor of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, which paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel. On May 17, 1948, three days after Israel declared its independence, the Soviet Union officially granted de jure recognition of Israel, becoming only the second country to recognise the Jewish state (preceded only by the United States' de facto recognition) and the first country to grant Israel de jure recognition.
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