Yesterday, Ukraine held the first round of its presidential election; once the results are finalized, the two candidates with the most votes will then compete in a runoff election. The apparent frontrunner is Jewish, while his opponent in the next election, the incumbent Petro Poroshenko, prides himself on good relations with Israel and with Ukraine’s Jewish community, which is one of the largest in Europe. Vladislav Davison writes:

At the end of January, Poroshenko took a break from an increasingly frenetic election campaign to pay a visit to Jerusalem in order to sign a long-awaited free-trade accord, seven years in the making, which is expected to raise annual trade between the two nations above the symbolic billion-dollar threshold. The speech that followed the deal’s signing reiterated a now popular Ukrainian trope: surrounded by powerful enemies, after centuries without any concrete experience of self-government, Ukrainians should emulate the Israeli experiment. . . .

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, [Poroshenko’s opponent], is a forty-one-year-old Jewish comedian whose primary [qualification] for the job is his experience playing a school teacher [on a popular television show] who becomes president of Ukraine due to a surreal turn of fate. . . . Ukraine’s young activists have taken to clustering around Zelenskiy, who has run a sophisticated media-driven campaign heavy on stand-up comedy. . . .

Whatever his flaws, and irrespective of his chances at re-election, Poroshenko will likely be remembered by the history books as the president who was most attentive to the work of honoring Holocaust memory since Ukraine gained its independence. . . . The 75th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre, held in 2016, was an international event conducted by Poroshenko and his administration with immense tact and generosity. Poroshenko has also been personally comfortable with Jewish aides, including both of his chiefs of staff and the country’s current prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman.

The surrealism of the current election campaign aside, the Jewish community of Ukraine lives an undeniably normal life. It is a community with thriving institutions living in what, according to numerous polls, is likely the least anti-Semitic nation in the post-Soviet world.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.