For a glimpse of a certain reserve that obtains in respect of President Zelensky, even among many friends of Ukraine, feature the telephone call that Prime Minister Netanyahu placed to the Ukrainian leader over the weekend late last week. His purpose was to ask Ukraine to oppose a United Nations resolution calling for the International  Court of Justice to opine on Israel’s presence in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem. That measure passed the General Assembly. 

The right move for Mr. Zelensky — president of another democracy under attack — would have been to say “sure, you can count on me.” Instead, according to an account in the Jewish News Syndicate, Mr. Zelensky used the occasion to wheedle — “blackmail” is the word in JNS’s headline — Israel for military matériel. Mr. Netanyahu asked him “to do the right thing,” but to no avail, JNS’s Jonathan Tobin writes.

This is not the first time that Ukraine, which has not missed an opportunity to castigate the Jewish state for being insufficiently supportive of its cause, turned its back on Israel at Turtle Bay. In November, Kyiv voted at the committee level in favor of the proposal asking the International Court of Justice to weigh in “urgently” on Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory.” The measure passed. 

Mr. Zelensky, who is himself Jewish and has invoked the Holocaust in appealing to world Jewry to aid his country’s cause, exhibits little warmth behind the scenes. Axios reports that “in exchange for voting against the resolution or abstaining, he wanted to hear how the new Israeli government would change its policy and provide Ukraine with defense systems.” That appeared to be a bid for help with the Iron Dome, which Israel has been using to great effect.

Israel is no stranger to realpolitik. It seems that Mr. Zelensky  “didn’t like” that Mr. Netanyahu held firm and also that Mr. Zelensky “didn’t agree to vote against the resolution or abstain.” Rather he “instructed Ukraine’s ambassador” to “not attend the vote.” It all makes Ukraine’s president look less like a statesman and more like a schemer. Given Russia’s presence in Syria, after all, Israel basically shares a border with the Kremlin.

Not that Israel or America has any stake in President Putin’s success. Russia’s defeat would, if it comes, be to the credit of both Ukraine and America and would bode well for the West. So there is something off-putting in Mr. Zelensky pressuring Israel in a place that has long since become an anti-Zionist cockpit. Nor is Mr. Zelensky the only leader whose country is under attack and needs help at the United Nations.