Bennett, Putin hold first call, agree to meet

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Russian President Vladimir Putin made plans to meet in the near future, when the two leaders held their first phone call on Monday since the new government was sworn in last month. No date was set for such an encounter.

Bennett and Putin “agreed to meet soon,” the Prime

Minister’s Office said after the call.

Israel and Russia had close ties during the 12 years former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in office. Putin and Netanyahu met and spoke fairly frequently.

At his faction meeting in the Knesset hours later, Bennett boasted that he had “strengthened Israel’s foreign