Ramat Gan, Israel | Oct. 26, 2026, 4:02 p.m. ET | 4 min read

Yona Roizman has never voted in a free election. Born soon after Vladimir Putin rose to power in Russia in 1999, democratic competition existed in name only for her generation. After Mr. Putin’s decision to unleash a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, she left Moscow for Tel Aviv.

Now an Israeli citizen, Ms. Roizman says she feels as if she is voting for the first time, hoping to stop what she sees as “democratic backsliding” in her new home under the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I moved to Israel because I don’t want to live in a dictatorship, and I would like to live in a country that is at peace,” she says. “And we are moving further from there.”

She’s one of nearly a quarter-million Russians and Ukrainians – according to Israeli government statistics – who immigrated to the Jewish state since 2014, when Russia seized Crimea.…