Putin’s first comments since Hamas militants launched an unprecedented attack over the weekend,on Tuesday were laden with anti-US rhetoric,blaming the Biden administration’s policy for the outbreak of the worst war between Israel and Palestinian forces for decades.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) and Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani before their talks at the Kremlin in Moscow.AP
He now says the United Nations needs to work on creating an independent Palestinian state.
As he met Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad al-Sudani on Tuesday,Russia’s president said the fighting was “a clear example of the failure of US policy in the Middle East”,without expressing any sympathy for Israeli suffering.
“They tried to monopolise the peace process,but didn’t bother with looking for compromises acceptable to both sides. Instead,they just promoted their own impressions of how it should be done and put pressure on both sides ... each time without taking the core interests of the Palestinian people into account,” Putin said.
The attack on Israel,one of America’s closest allies,has stretched US and European military armoury and political willpower. The crisis comes at a time when the West was already having trouble summoning more ammunition and money to support Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
Russia occupies a rather unique position in Middle Eastern geopolitics,having managed to forge alliances with Iran and two of its sworn enemies,Israel and fellow oil-producing powerhouse Saudi Arabia .
Russia has been positioning itself as a powerbroker – following its advocacy for the regime of Bashar al-Assad over the course of Syria’s deadly civil war. In 2013,Putin successfully in Syria’s chemical attacks on civilians as a win for the international order,outmanoeuvring Barack Obama in the process.
But Moscow’s missteps in Ukraine mean it has found itself beholden to Iran — Israel’s bitter enemy — as one of its primary arms suppliers for the war.
Israel has been put in an uncomfortable position,too,with its Western allies,and particularly the US,pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to distance himself from Putin and to back Ukraine instead.
Despite calls for a “diplomatic solution” to end the conflict,Israel has resisted sending weapons to Ukraine,or wholeheartedly endorsing and imposing sanctions on Russia for its invasion. Hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens reside in Israel,and around 1.5 million Israelis speak Russian.
Hamas’ brutal assault against Israel came on Vladimir Putin’s birthday. The strikes may end up being the gift the Russian leader had asked for.
There is,of course,no sign that Russia provided material support — or even had notice in advance of the surprise attack on Saturday,which has left at least 1000 Israelis dead and scores more kidnapped and taken into the Gaza Strip,where Israel has begun retaliatory strikes.
But analysts at the Institute for the Study of War have noted the Kremlin is likely to use the eruption of violence in Israel to distract from its operations in Ukraine. In the days since the horrific violence,Moscow has amplified its message,primarily blaming the West for neglecting conflicts in the Middle East in favour of supporting and claiming the international community will cease to pay attention to Ukraine by portraying attention to the Middle East or alternatively Ukraine as a zero-sum comparison.
Prominent Russian propagandist Sergei Mardan and other Russian news bloggers aim to influence their audience and to demoralise Ukrainian listeners by stating that Russia will benefit from the escalation in Israel as the world “will take its mind off Ukraine for a while and get busy once again putting out the eternal fire in the Middle East,” ISW said.
The group added that the Kremlin favoured narrative that Ukraine will lose international support is intended to reassure Russian audiences that the international society will ignore Ukraine’s war effort.
In years past,Putin might have sought ways to co-operate with Western countries,but there now appears to be little incentive for him to try to broker an end to the fighting in Israel as Russian forces are pummeled by Western weaponry in Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelensky with Ukrainian soldiers in front of a Leopard 2 tank on the Kharkiv region’s front line.AP
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky,who is Jewish,on Monday ignored criticisms of Israel’s lack of support and instead embraced its cause.
In a speech to NATO,he said that Russia and Hamas,the Palestinian faction that controls Gaza,represented “the same evil”.
“Israeli journalists who have been here in Ukraine,in Bucha,are now saying that they saw the same evil where Russia came,” he said.
“And the only difference is that there is a terrorist organisation that attacked Israel,and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine.”
However Putin reacts to the Israel-Hamas conflict,you can be assured his next move will be self-serving.
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