Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is flying to Moscow on Wednesday on the way back from Washington D.C., where he met with President Donald Trump about his Middle East peace plan, to inform Russian President Vladimir Putin about “regional developments and the Deal of the Century.”

The trip to Moscow was not previously announced and there is much speculation that the real purpose of the trip is to bring Naama Issachar back with him to Israel on Thursday.

The Prime Minister’s Office announced Netanyahu’s trip to Moscow right after Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit indicted him for bribery, breach of trust and corruption – the first indictments ever filed against a sitting prime minister.

Defense Minister Naftali Bennett slammed Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit for filing the indictments against Netanyahu while he is abroad. “Why should they humiliate Prime Minister Netanyahu precisely when he is abroad, representing us all, including all the citizens of Israel?” Bennett said. “You could wait two days for his return to Israel.”

“The eagerness to file the unfounded indictment against the prime minister is so great that they could not wait one day for the historic summit in Washington, one of the most important in the history of the state, to be over,” Netanyahu’s associates said.

Moscow Governor Andrey Vorobyev signed Naama Issachar’s pardon request on Tuesday, which means that only Putin’s signature is now needed for Issachar’s release.

After Vorobyev signed the petition, the Kremlin stated that “the necessary legal proceedings are in progress so that the president can make his decision on this issue in the near future.”

The Moscow Region Pardon Commission unanimously approved Issachar’s pardon request on Monday, which was filed by her lawyers on Sunday.

The announcement on the committee’s meeting came after Russian Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova supported Issachar’s pardon request.

Issachar was sentenced to 7.5 years of imprisonment after being caught with a small amount of marijuana in her luggage on a stopover in Moscow from India to Israel.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)