The outbreak of the Ukraine war has led to a major spike in the number of immigrants from Russia, data provided by the Aliyah and Integration Ministry at the request of Israel Hayom revealed.
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Since the beginning of this year, about 19,200 people made aliyah from Russia, compared to the 7,824 who moved to Israel in all of 2021. Last year's monthly record was registered in October with 1,248 new immigrants, while this year, on average 3,000 Jews from Russia have moved to Israel every month.
In February, Israel welcomed 743 Russian Jews, a number that spiked after the outbreak of the war, with 3,361 having made aliyah in March.
The numbers are especially high if compared to aliyah from other countries, even Ukraine. Since the beginning of 2022, 12,358 Jews have made aliyah from the country, and while the number increased after the outbreak of the war, it has since returned to average (only 384 Ukrainian Jews made aliyah in July, compared to 549 in July 2021, before the war began).
So far in 2022, 39,585 people made aliyah to Israel, 48% of whom came from Russia.
As Russia continues to threaten to close the offices of the Jewish Agency, which works to promote aliyah to Israel, political sources say there is fear President Vladimir Putin might even shut down flights to Israel altogether.
"There is definitely fear that there could be a closure. We are not sure what exactly they want, because they have not submitted any demands. Perhaps they are afraid of an increase in aliyah, one cannot rule this out," one source said, adding that political officials are "increasingly worried."
A rabbi who lives in Russia told Israel Hayom that in his opinion, there was a direct link between the Kremlin's actions and the massive number of immigrants leaving the country for Israel.
"The rhetoric of the aliyah organizations is that we are in a state of the end of the world and must flee Russia. They ran a big campaign in the last six months, for people to leave Russia, so they were asked to stop the campaign," he said.
He insisted that one should not worry about the closure of flights to Israel, saying "it's not unheard of for a country to shut down an organization that encourages citizens to flee the country in the middle of an emergency."
Another rabbi from Russia concurred, suggesting that the Kremlin is acting out of revenge for the actions of the Jewish Agency.
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