There are diplomatic visits that pass quietly, leaving behind only protocol photographs and polite statements.

And there are visits that raise a larger question: what kind of relationship is actually possible between two countries that both know what it means to live under existential threat?

The visit of Iryna Mudra, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, to Jerusalem belongs to the second category.

On July 5, 2026, a Ukrainian delegation headed by Mudra held two important meetings in Jerusalem. One was a political and diplomatic meeting at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where Mudra and Ukrainian MP Olha Vasylevska-Smahliuk met with Yuval Fuchs, Israel’s Deputy Director General for Eurasia.

The second meeting was an economic one with Ze’ev Elkin, Minister for Restoration in Israel’s Ministry of Finance and co-chair of the Joint Ukrainian-Israeli Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation.

The agenda was broad: Ukrainian-Israeli relations, Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, sanctions policy, counterterrorism, defense technologies, trade, investments, Ukraine’s reconstruction, and preparations for the 85th anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy.

But one message stood above the rest.

Ukraine proposed that Israel consider joining the international compensation architecture for Ukraine.

In simple words: Russia must pay.

Not only politically.

Mudra stated it clearly: Russian aggression must have not only a political and criminal price, but also a financial one.

That sentence should matter in Israel.

Because Israel understands, perhaps better than many countries, that aggression without a price does not disappear. It reorganizes, rearms, waits, and returns. It learns that the world eventually gets tired, changes the subject, and moves on.

Ukraine is asking for the opposite.

It is asking for a system in which destruction is documented, responsibility is fixed, and the aggressor pays for what it has destroyed.

For Ukraine, this is not an abstract legal idea. It is about ruined homes, destroyed hospitals, damaged power stations, schools, bridges, businesses, communities, and families that will never be the same again. It is about the reconstruction of a country that has been attacked not by accident, but as a matter of policy.

For Israel, the question is different but no less........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)