Despite the weakened position of Russian President Vladimir Putin following the weekend’s aborted coup, chances that Israel’s government will change its policy in the Russia-Ukraine conflict are extremely low, says Haaretz senior correspondent Anshel Pfeffer, who has covered the war from the ground.

“Israel has - both on a moral level and on a strategic level - been making a mistake by staying on the sidelines and keeping its relationship intact with the Russians,” Pfeffer tells host Allison Kaplan Sommer on Haaretz Weekly podcast.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Sommer and Pfeffer, author of the book “Bibi: The Life and Turbulent Times of Benjamin Netanyahu” discuss producer Arnon Milchan’s testimony in the Prime Minister’s corruption trial that kicked off in Brighton, England this week, his sinking numbers in the polls, and the renewed effort to reboot the controversial judicial revolution.

He also addresses the violent attacks on Palestinian towns by West Bank settlers in the wake of a deadly terror attack, and the response by far-right ministers in the government “who openly support this kind of vigilantism.”

While they pay lip service against settlers taking the law into their own hands, “We know what Minister of National Missions Orit Struck, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have said in the past. And you can see it now in their body language when they're not saying it: that they're perfectly okay with, with the settlers going on rampage. So the only difference between this government (and those in the past) is that it's out in the open.”

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