The Knesset Commission on Aliyah, Absorption and Diaspora held a second meeting on Monday, June 29, on the issue of implementing the pension rights of repatriates entitled to pensions from Russia and other countries of the former USSR.
As the press service of the commission notes, since 2025, payments of private pensions from Russia have ceased to flow into the Israeli banking system. According to the Bank of Israel, most payments in 2025 arrived in January, then there were only sporadic transfers, and in the last quarter of 2025 they stopped completely.
According to an audit of Israeli banks, transfers were stopped at the stage between Gazprombank in Russia and Gazprombank in Luxembourg after the Russian Gazprombank was included in US sanctions lists.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Alex Goldman told the commission that Israel continues its dialogue with the Russian side, but Moscow proposes to transfer pensions in local currency, and not in dollars, as previously envisaged. To do this, Russia requires the provision of personal data of pension recipients, which Israel, according to a Foreign Ministry representative, cannot transfer. After the exchange of official letters between Israel and Russia, there is no progress in resolving the issue yet.
The chairman of the commission, MP Gilad Kariv (Democrat), said that this is not only a technical, but also a diplomatic problem. According to him, a situation in which a foreign state prevents the flow of money to Israeli citizens is unacceptable. Kariv demanded the creation of a special interdepartmental working group with the participation of all relevant ministries and departments, which will deal with both technical and political and diplomatic aspects of the problem.
MP Evgeniy Sova (NDI) said that the crisis must be resolved on the basis of the 2016 agreement and through serious discrete negotiations. According to him, more than 50 thousand immigrants from Russia in Israel have not received their due pensions for more than four years, and many are in a difficult financial situation.
Following the meeting, Kariv said that next week the commission will hold a closed meeting on this issue. He demanded the participation of representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the level of deputy director general, as well as the transfer of the issue to the Prime Minister’s Office in order to find out the extent of its involvement in resolving the crisis.