“Zelensky destroyed Putin’s myth of a ‘Russian-speaking Israel'”: Laura Loomer explained whom Moscow considers ‘its own’

American far-right activist and MAGA movement blogger Laura Loomer shared how Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismantled Putin’s main myth about a “Russian-speaking Israel.” According to her, the dictator cynically claims 1.5 million Jewish repatriates from Ukraine and former Soviet republics as “his own,” ignoring the fact that the Russian language was imposed on them for 70 years, while their culture and religion were simultaneously destroyed.

After an interview with Volodymyr Zelensky, influential Donald Trump supporter Laura Loomer dissected one of the Kremlin’s favorite theses — the alleged “Russian-speaking Israel.” Statistics confirm the main point: most immigrants from the former USSR arrived in Israel not from Russia, although some of the Ukrainian president’s words require clarification.

American far-right activist, MAGA movement blogger, and influential supporter of US President Donald Trump, Laura Loomer, publicly dissected one of the most convenient myths for the Kremlin after a conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky — the portrayal of Israel as an almost “Russian” country.

In a separate publication, made on July 25, 2026 after the interview, Loomer reminded that Putin constantly refers to the widespread use of the Russian language in Israel, trying to portray himself as a “Jewish ally.” According to her, Zelensky dismantled this propaganda construct by explaining that most of the approximately 1.5 million Russian-speaking residents of Israel are not from Russia at all.

Loomer harshly recounted the Ukrainian president’s thought: it concerns Jews who came from Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, where the Russian language became dominant over decades against the backdrop of the displacement of national languages, religious traditions, and cultural institutions. As a result, Putin tries to claim as Russian assets people whose families lived under the Soviet empire and often sought to leave it.

At the same time, it is necessary to correctly separate the sources. The formulations that Zelensky “smashed” the propaganda and that Putin claims people whom his empire persecuted belong to Laura Loomer herself. This is her political conclusion and author’s retelling. In the interview, Zelensky expressed the same main idea but in different words.

What Laura Loomer asked Zelensky

The interview was recorded in Kyiv on July 23, 2026. Loomer came to Ukraine after years of criticizing American aid to Kyiv and spreading claims that coincided with Russian propaganda. In a conversation with Zelensky, she admitted that she previously considered Ukraine a country “full of Nazis,” but now realized she had been misled.

The topic of Israel arose in the final part of the interview when the conversation turned to Russian propaganda and religion.

Loomer stated that Putin likes to point to Russian as one of the most common languages in Israel. In her opinion, the Kremlin uses this fact to create a false image of Russia as a natural ally of Jews.

She linked this thesis to broader Russian propaganda portraying Moscow as a protector of Judaism and Christianity. Loomer reminded that she had visited the Assumption Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, damaged by a Russian strike, the day before, after which she stated: it is impossible to call oneself a defender of believers while simultaneously attacking religious shrines.

After this, Loomer asked Zelensky to explain to the American audience how to counter Russian informational influence. The President of Ukraine began his response precisely with the situation of Russian-speaking Jews in Israel.

What Zelensky actually answered

Zelensky suggested paying attention not only to the language but also to the countries of origin of the repatriates.

He reminded that the mass aliyah from the Soviet Union and the states formed after its collapse began in the last years of the USSR’s existence and continued in the 1990s. Jews and their families came to Israel from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, and other republics.

Zelensky specifically noted that many repatriates came from Ukraine, which had one of the largest Jewish communities in the Soviet Union. At the same time, in Soviet documents, people were considered residents of one country — the USSR, despite living in Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Minsk, Chișinău, Almaty, Vilnius, or other cities of the union republics.

Then the President of Ukraine explained why representatives of such different peoples and regions spoke Russian. According to him, for more than 70 years of Soviet rule, Moscow displaced national languages and traditions, closed religious institutions, and subordinated public life to communist ideology.

Zelensky reminded that historical church buildings were turned into institutions and administrative premises, and the Communist Party was supposed to replace religion. As a result, Russian became the main language of state administration, education, career, and communication between residents of different republics.

Therefore, a Jewish family from Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, or Lithuania could predominantly speak Russian without having Russian origins.

After the collapse of the USSR, new independent states began to return to their languages, historical roots, culture, and religious life, Zelensky emphasized.

What Zelensky said about 1.5 million residents of Israel

At the end of his response, the Ukrainian president directly mentioned the figure of 1.5 million Russian-speaking residents of Israel.

He emphasized that these people come from different countries and cannot be automatically considered from Russia. They know Russian, but many also speak Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, and other languages of their birth or origin countries.

Zelensky’s main point was: knowing the Russian language does not make a person Russian, and originating from the Soviet Union does not mean originating from modern Russia.

During this part of the response, the President of Ukraine mistakenly used the expression “Israeli language.” Loomer twice clarified: “Hebrew.” Zelensky immediately repeated the correct name and apologized for the slip.

It was this response that Loomer later recounted to her audience, adding a harsher political assessment: Putin essentially presents the consequences of Soviet Russification as an achievement of modern Russia.

Where Zelensky was right, and what requires clarification

Zelensky’s main idea is confirmed by statistics: most repatriates from the former Soviet Union indeed came to Israel not from Russia.

However, his words that Russian-speaking Jews arrived “mainly from Ukraine” cannot be taken as an exact demographic ratio for the entire period of mass aliyah. Russia was the largest individual country of origin, although immigrants from it did not constitute the majority of the overall post-Soviet flow.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics of Israel, about 900 thousand immigrants from the former USSR arrived in the country only in the 1990s. They joined approximately 170 thousand Soviet repatriates who arrived in the 1970s.

A study by demographer Mark Tolts, based on Israeli statistics, shows: from 1990 to 2022, approximately 1.201 million Jews and their families arrived in Israel from all former Soviet republics.

From Russia, 446.3 thousand people arrived — about 37% of this flow. Less than 385 thousand came from Ukraine. Consequently, Russia provided the largest individual group, but almost two-thirds of the repatriates came from Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.

Thus, Loomer’s statement that most Russian-speaking Israelis are not from Russia corresponds to the demographic picture. But Zelensky’s words about the predominance of Ukrainian natives are a conversational generalization: if considering the entire aliyah from 1990 to 2022, the group of immigrants from Russia was somewhat larger than the Ukrainian one.

For NANews — News of Israel, it is fundamentally important not to replace one propaganda extreme with another. It is impossible to declare the entire post-Soviet aliyah as Russian, but it is also impossible to ignore the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who indeed came from Russia.

Putin indeed called Israel a “Russian-speaking country”

The thesis discussed by Loomer and Zelensky was not attributed to Putin — the head of the Kremlin repeatedly stated it publicly.

On September 17, 2019, speaking in Moscow at the conference of the international Jewish fund “Keren Hayesod,” Putin stated that almost two million Russian-speaking citizens live in Israel, after which he said:

“We consider Israel a Russian-speaking state.”

This phrase was widely covered by Israeli and international media and was included in the materials of the speech itself.

On June 20, 2025, at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin returned to this narrative. He combined almost two million immigrants “from the former Soviet Union and the Russian Federation” into one category, after which he called Israel “almost a Russian-speaking country.”

In this formulation lies the main substitution.

First, immigrants from fifteen former Soviet republics are combined under the general designation “Russian-speaking.” Then the language category is turned into a political one, and people with Ukrainian, Belarusian, Moldovan, Georgian, Lithuanian, Kazakh, or Uzbek roots are effectively recorded as part of the Russian diaspora.

Russian-speaking, Soviet, and Russian are not the same

Kremlin rhetoric erases the differences between three different categories:

One person can simultaneously belong to all three categories. But another may speak Russian, be a native of Ukraine, and have neither Russian origin nor Russian self-identification.

A resident of Israel born in Odesa, Kharkiv, Minsk, Chișinău, Riga, Tbilisi, Almaty, or Tashkent does not become Russian just because the Soviet school taught him in Russian.

Russian in such a case is part of personal and family biography, not proof of political affiliation to the “Russian world.”

Where did the 1.5 and almost 2 million come from

The numbers used by Loomer, Zelensky, and Putin do not necessarily describe the same group of people.

In different calculations, “Russian-speaking Israelis” may include:

• first-generation repatriates;
• children of immigrants from the USSR born in Israel;
• people for whom Russian is native;
• those who use Russian at home;
• all capable of freely communicating in it;
• the entire extended community of immigrants from the former USSR.

Therefore, 1.5 million Russian-speaking people cannot automatically be turned into 1.5 million immigrants from Russia. Moreover, they cannot be called a Russian political or cultural community.

Loomer’s claim about Russian as the second most common language in Israel also depends on the counting methodology.

In a social study by the Central Bureau of Statistics of Israel for 2011, among residents over 20 years old, Hebrew was named the native language by 49%, Arabic by 18%, and Russian by 15%. By the indicator of native language, Russian ranked third, not second. However, the study did not count all Israelis capable of speaking Russian and cannot be considered an up-to-date assessment of the community’s size in 2026.

Why Laura Loomer’s turnaround matters

Laura Loomer does not hold an official position in the White House, but she remains a prominent figure in Donald Trump’s circle and has an audience of nearly two million followers.

Previously, she spent years opposing support for Ukraine, downplaying the significance of Russian aggression, and repeating claims about the alleged “Nazi” nature of the Ukrainian state. In Kyiv, Loomer publicly admitted that she was deceived by Russian propaganda.

In the interview, she said that after being blocked on American social networks, she began actively using Telegram, where she regularly encountered Russian media and pro-Russian channels. Loomer also admitted that she had written several articles for RT in the past and now regrets it.

On July 26, her conversation with the Associated Press in Kyiv had to be moved from a hotel room to an underground shelter due to the threat of a ballistic strike. Loomer stated that what she saw in Ukraine made her reassess the Russian war and the role of Moscow’s informational influence on American conservatives.

Trump followed her trip. After the publication of a fragment of the interview with Zelensky, the US president shared the video on social media and wrote: “Very good!!!” Loomer also reported that she spoke with Trump on the phone after the meeting.

Lavra, Rabbi Moshe Asman, and the rejection of previous rhetoric

During the visit, Loomer met with the First Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Serhiy Kyslytsia. Together they visited the Assumption Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, damaged by a Russian drone.

According to the Office of the President of Ukraine, the strike occurred on the night of June 15, 2026, during a massive Russian attack and caused a fire. While in the damaged cathedral, Loomer stated that Putin cannot represent Russia as the savior of Christianity while Russian drones attack one of Ukraine’s oldest shrines.

She also met with the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, Moshe Asman, and spent time with his family. After the conversation, Loomer renounced previous claims about Ukraine as a country of “Nazi supporters” and reminded that the rabbi’s son died defending Ukraine from Russia.

Thus, the publication about Russian-speaking residents of Israel became not an isolated post but part of a broader change in Loomer’s position after the trip.

Why this story is especially important for Israel

The Russian-speaking community of Israel has never been a single Russian bloc.

It includes people with Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, Moldovan, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Kazakh, Uzbek, and other roots.

Some retain Russian as the main home language. Others have switched to Hebrew. Still, others, after the start of Russian aggression, consciously began to return to Ukrainian. Each person has their own biography and the right to independently determine their identity.

NANews — News of Israel emphasizes: the mere fact of knowing Russian does not give Moscow any political rights over Israeli citizens. Language is not proof of loyalty to Putin, belonging to Russia, or support for its foreign policy.

The attempt by the Kremlin to claim as “its own” Jews who left the USSR against the backdrop of state anti-Semitism, restrictions on religious life, closed borders, and the struggle for the right to repatriation looks especially cynical.

Main conclusion

Laura Loomer correctly conveyed the main idea of Zelensky’s response: 1.5 million Russian-speaking residents of Israel cannot be considered a Russian diaspora.

Volodymyr Zelensky indeed stated that:

• Jewish repatriates came from different republics of the former USSR;
• Knowledge of Russian does not mean origin from Russia;
• The spread of Russian is associated with decades of Soviet policy;
• Moscow displaced national languages, traditions, and religious life;
• People from Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, and other countries cannot be recorded as Russians.

At the same time, the words that most post-Soviet repatriates came specifically from Ukraine require clarification. Russia provided the largest single group — 37% of the flow from 1990–2022. But the main thing remains unchanged: the overwhelming majority of the entire post-Soviet aliyah was not a Russian majority, and almost two-thirds of the people came from Ukraine and other republics.

The Russian language in Israel is part of the complex history of hundreds of thousands of families. But it is not the property of the Kremlin and does not turn Israelis into subjects of the ‘Russian world’.

Putin tries to present the consequences of Soviet Russification as an achievement of modern Russia. Laura Loomer, after talking with Zelensky, formulated the opposite conclusion: Moscow appropriates people whose languages, faith, and national identity the Soviet empire suppressed for decades.