Did Russia's President Vladimir Putin publicly announce after Iran's aerial strike on Israel that Moscow will back Iran if the U.S. attacks "Iran's soil" in U.S. support of Israel? No, that's not true: As of this writing, Putin has not made this public statement or any others directly referring to the Iranian attack or potential further developments in the region. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov urged the involved parties to avoid further escalation.
The claim appeared in a post (saved here) published on X, formerly known as Twitter, on April 13, 2024. It opened:
🚨🇷🇺🇮🇷 BREAKING: Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared that
RUSSIA will SUPPORT IRAN if the United States attacks Iran's soil in
support of Israel.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Apr 15 14:58:44 2024 UTC)
The entry on X did not cite any sources, and Lead Stories found no evidence to support that the purported announcement has been made, as of this writing on April 15, 2024.
A search for the post's wording (archived here) across websites indexed by Google News showed numerous duplicates of the unfounded claim on social media, but no credible evidence-based English-language sources reported it.
Had Putin publicly announced his support for Iran under these circumstances, that would have been a public statement broadcast and amplified by government websites and state-controlled Russian media.
A search for the word "Iran" on both Russian (archived here) and English (archived here) versions of the official website of the Russian head of the state did not show any results between April 13, 2024, which was the day of the Iranian aerial attack on Israel (archived here) and April 15, 2024, the day of this writing.
A Google search across Russian websites (archived here) for the key phrases "Putin declared" and "Russia will support Iran" in Russian for the same period did not produce relevant results.
The only comments about the hositilites made on behalf of Russia came from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On April 14, 2024, it issued a statement (archived here) that reads:
We express our extreme concern at yet another dangerous escalation in the region.
It continues:
We call on all parties involved in the conflict to exercise restraint. We expect the regional states to resolve the existing problems through political and diplomatic means. We believe it is important for the constructively-minded international players to contribute to this effort.
A short press release (archived here) about a phone conversation between the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs and his Iranian counterpart mentioning "both sides' interest in steadily building up political and diplomatic cooperation, as well as trade and economic interaction" was published on April 13 roughly four and a half hours before the Iranian strike and it did not contain any direct quotes of Putin.
Later, on April 15, 2024, the Russian president's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov repeated (archived here) the points made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in connection with the Iranian strike, as translated by Google Chrome:
Further escalation is in no one's interests.
That was consistent with the respective articles published, among others, by the Moscow Times (archived here), an independent English-language newspaper covering Russia formerly based in the Russian capital but now operating from Amsterdam (archived here), Netherlands, and Al Jazeera, owned and funded by the state of Qatar.
As of this writing, Putin has not directly commented on any aspects of the Iranian areal attack on Israel.
As reported by Reuters (archived here) on April 14, 2024, the United States said it will not participate in any retaliation against Iran.
Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning Iran can be found here.
