Arsonists Hurl Firebombs at Russian Synagogue in Second Attack

For the second time in just over a year, law enforcement in Russia responded to an attempt to burn down a synagogue in Obninsk, Russia.

The Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS (FJC), which works to represent Jewish communities in former Soviet states, released a statement describing the crime.

“In the night between Aug. 12 and 13, 2025, unknown perpetrators attempted to set fire to the synagogue in Obninsk, Kaluga Region. According to available reports, at least three bottles containing incendiary mixture were thrown at the building, damaging its entrance,” FJC stated. “This is not the first attack on the synagogue. On July 10, 2024, unidentified individuals tried to ignite the building, resulting in a fire that destroyed the internal electrical substation. Police at the time detained two minors in connection with that incident.”

Rabbi Aaron Golovchiner, the synagogue’s leader, said, “Of course, this is an act of antisemitism. There’s no other way to define a second arson attack on a synagogue.”

Recalling the previous attack, Golovchiner said that “last year, police arrested two minors, one of whom was not even eight years old, which we said at the time was implausible without adult involvement.” He explained that as a result, “we believe perpetrators are using children to escape criminal responsibility.” Police arrested two minors in connection with the July 10 arson attempt.

Golovchiner also believes that the failure to achieve accountability for the previous antisemitic act may have motivated those who struck on Tuesday.

On July 18, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced sentences for 135 people who participated in an antisemitic riot in the predominantly Muslim Dagestan region in October 2023. Those convicted received prison terms ranging from six-and-a-half to 15 years.

Russia has maintained close relations with Israel’s arch-foe Iran, announcing a 20-year strategic partnership earlier this year. Since then, Russia has participated in trilateral talks with Iran and China.

In support of its strategic partner, Russia also urged the US not to strike the Islamic republic’s nuclear facilities in June. The two countries participated in joint naval exercises last month too.

On Jan. 25, 2024, the US State Department released a report detailing the long history of Russian governments using antisemitism as a tool in promoting disinformation and spreading propaganda.

“For over a century, Tsarist, Soviet, and now Russian Federation authorities have used antisemitism to discredit, divide, and weaken their perceived adversaries at home and abroad. Today, Kremlin officials and Russia’s state-run or state-controlled media spread conspiracy theories, fueling antisemitism intended to deceive the world about its war against Ukraine. These tactics build on a long tradition of exploiting antisemitism to create division and discontent,” the State Department stated in the report’s introduction.

Explaining the historical depth of Russian antisemitism and its consequences, the report explained that “Russian authorities’ exploitation of antisemitism as a tactic to spread disinformation and propaganda dates back over 100 years. One of the earliest examples of this malign influence activity was the Russian Empire’s Tsarist Security Service’s fabrication of the now infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the early 1900s.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League’s January update to its Global 100 research into antisemitic attitudes by country, 62 percent of Russia’s adult population (71.1 million people) embrace “elevated levels of antisemitic attitudes.” This positions Russia at 84 out of 103 countries surveyed for antisemitism levels (the lower the number, the higher the levels of hate.) The report ranks Russia with the top levels of antisemitism for the Eastern European region.

An analysis from Indiana University’s Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism by its research associate Yaron Gamburg explained how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to conquer Ukraine had contributed to the surge in anti-Jewish sentiment in Russia.

“Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and a series of failures by the Russian army in 2022, antisemitic rhetoric has become an integral part of Russian foreign policy, including elements of distortion and banalization of the Holocaust,” Gamburg wrote in a December 2024 report. “Just days after his statement about Zelensky, Putin publicly used antisemitic rhetoric, this time against prominent Russians of Jewish descent who do not support the war in Ukraine and emigrate to Israel.”

Earlier this year,  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “pure Nazi” and a “traitor to the Jewish people.” Lavrov’s comments resembled previous rhetoric from Putin in 2023, when he called Zelensky a “disgrace to Jewish people.”

As part of its ongoing propaganda campaign to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty, Russia has relied on such rhetoric and claims invoking the Nazis for decades, insisting that Kyiv has no distinct culture or state and has always been part of Moscow’s “own history, culture, and spiritual space.” For example, in an attempt to justify the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Putin labeled its leaders as “neo-Nazis” and invoked World War II rhetoric, claiming that Russia’s so-called “special military operation” was meant to “de-nazify” the country.

A Tel Aviv University study on global antisemitism in 2024 cast doubt on the full reporting of incidents targeting Jews in Russia.

“In 2024, the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis recorded no acts of antisemitic violence and no acts of antisemitic vandalism, compared to no acts of antisemitic violence and only a single act of antisemitic vandalism in 2023. It is the third straight year that SOVA did not record an antisemitic act of violence,” the researchers stated. “The reliability of these data is questionable, given the current state of oppression and misinformation in Putin’s fascist Russia. For example, a June 2024 terror attack in Dagestan targeted a synagogue, as well as a church, but the incident does not appear in SOVA’s data.”