Weapons and other equipment which the Israeli army says belonged to the Lebanese militant group … [+] Hezbollah, and were seized by the army during its ground operation in south Lebanon, are displayed for the media on December 23, 2024, in a northern Israeli military base. Israel stepped up its campaign in south Lebanon in late September after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges begun by Hezbollah in support of Hamas following its Palestinian ally’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel. A ceasefire came into effect on November 27. Both sides have accused the other of repeated violations. (Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
Ukraine hopes Israel will transfer Russian weaponry recently captured from the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon as Israel is showing much less reluctance about sending Kyiv lethal weapons. If it does so, Ukraine will not become the first country Israel has transferred Russian, and in the Cold War days Soviet, armaments it captured from its Arab adversaries over the decades.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Korniychuk, recently expressed his country’s hope that an Israeli parliament (Knesset) bill introduced in November advocating the transfer of captured Hezbollah weapons to Kyiv passes.
In its recent ground war against Hezbollah in South Lebanon, which ended in a ceasefire in late November, the Israeli military found surprising quantities of Russian-supplied weaponry, which Moscow had transferred via the former Syrian military. The Wall Street Journal quoted a senior Israeli officer who estimated that as much as 70 percent of Hezbollah arms captured by Israel in that recent war were Russian. Israel suspects Russia used a route from its Tartus naval base in Syria, an area Moscow knew Israel was less likely to strike, to transfer the weapons, some of which were manufactured as recently as 2020.
In the short few intervening months, historical changes have occurred in the regional balance of power. Israel eliminated Hezbollah’s leadership and much of its strategic stockpiles of offensive Iranian-made surface-to-surface missiles. In another strategic setback, the Iran and Hezbollah-allied regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria was deposed by Islamist-led rebels in early December, severing Iran’s critical land bridge and reducing the possibility that Tehran can help Hezbollah rearm any time soon. On top of that, Russia also lost its ally in Syria and is scrambling to secure continued access to Tartus and its coastal airbase there. Whatever the outcome of ongoing negotiations on this matter with the new authorities in Damascus, it’s unlikely Moscow will ever have the same level of military access in Syria it enjoyed under Assad.
That could be good news for Kyiv, which still needs all the weapons it can get. Since the start of the current full-scale Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022, Israel refused to deliver Kyiv any lethal aid, citing its need to coordinate with Russia in Syria, where it repeatedly attacked suspected Iran-related targets for over a decade. With Russia weakened and Iran and its militia proxies no longer welcome in Syria, that argument is weaker than ever, if not completely invalid.
There are already positive signs of change. Israel recently gave the U.S. up to 90 interceptor missiles for the MIM-104 PAC-2 Patriot missile system from storage, which the U.S. military will send to Kyiv, giving a boost to that country’s beleaguered air defenses. While Israel has never had much love for the Patriot since acquiring the system three decades ago, its agreeing to transfer them is progress, especially considering Israel previously rejected a U.S. request for older MIM-23 Hawk systems it has long had in storage collecting dust.
The captured Russian weapons from Hezbollah are small arms and ammunition, including AK-103, PKM machine guns, and Draganov sniper rifles. Still, even the extra ammunition would doubtlessly help Ukraine as it continues fighting a deadly war of attrition against Russia, especially if transfers include some of the captured 9M133 Kornet anti-tank guided missiles.
Furthermore, by arming Ukraine with these particular arms, Israel would signal its displeasure with Russia aiding its Hezbollah nemesis. Such a move would echo Washington’s supply of thousands of infantry weapons and over 500,000 bullets to Ukraine that it seized from an Iranian arms shipment to the Houthis in Yemen.
There was speculation in January that recently captured Russian weapons from Hezbollah were already en route to Ukraine in light of the movement of American transport aircraft between Germany’s Ramstein and Israel’s Hatzerim airbases. Small arms deliveries are also much less conspicuous than strategic systems like the Patriot. Israel may also want to keep quiet about any transfers to avoid publicly antagonizing Russia while simultaneously getting some form of payback for Moscow arming Hezbollah.
Such a covert arrangement would certainly not come without precedent. As early as 1956, Soviet state-run media claimed that Israel had given Soviet-made weapons it captured in Sinai during that year’s Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt, the infamous Suez Crisis, to the government of Camille Chamoun in Lebanon.
Israel would go on to capture vast quantities of light and heavy Soviet weaponry in the conventional Arab-Israeli wars of June 1967 and October 1973. One year after the latter conflict, Israel agreed to make available 82 Soviet-made Strela shoulder-fired air defense missiles and 507 Sagger portable anti-tank missiles for Iraqi Kurdistan’s Peshmerga forces—which the U.S., Israel, and Iran under the Shah were covertly supporting against Iraq. In return, Washington agreed to replace those captured Israeli weapons with American-made Redeye and TOW anti-tank missiles.
When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, it captured small arms from the Palestine Liberation Organization and sold those arms to Iran. The move was seen retrospectively as a “prelude to the Iran-Contra affair” three years later. During that scandal, Israel officially denied transferring weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua. On the other hand, it admitted giving 600 Soviet-made rifles to Washington, “knowing that they might be supplied to the Contras.”
Israel would occasionally transfer heavy Soviet military hardware. For example, it supplied its allies in Lebanon, the Lebanese Forces and South Lebanese Army, with captured Soviet-made T-54 tanks and a modified Israeli version called the Tiran in the 1980s during the violent civil war in that country. During the same period, it also supplied these groups Soviet-built M-46 and D-30 towed artillery, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s extensive arms transfer database.
Incidentally, when American-made M113 armored personnel carriers appeared during Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria’s civil war decades later, speculation arose that Hezbollah had taken them from the Lebanese Army. However, subsequent analysis concluded Hezbollah most likely captured them from the South Lebanese Army, which disbanded after Israel withdrew from South Lebanon in 2000.
Israel made use of the ubiquitous Soviet T-55 tanks it captured in those historical conventional wars with its Arab neighbors to build a new vehicle for its army, the Achzarit APC. Israel built approximately 300 of these APCs on the chassis of captured Arab T-55s. Weighing 49 tons, the Achzarits are heavier than those vintage Soviet main battle tanks.
There are no signs Israel will supply Ukraine with the Achzarit or other APCs or tanks in its inventory, and it’s not likely to do so. Nevertheless, as previously outlined here, Israeli firms have long specialized in modernizing and upgrading Soviet-era military hardware for foreign clients. As its depleting war with Russia grinds on, Ukrainians are still using “souped-up Soviet-era weapons” to stave off Russian advances. Therefore, Israeli know-how and assistance in upgrading its Soviet arsenal could still greatly benefit Kyiv.
Whatever ultimately does happen, Israel has had a long history of passing on Russian weapons it captured off the numerous battlefields of the Middle East, and it doesn’t look like that will end any time soon.