Extremist events, such as Hamas's horrific attack on Saturday, are inherently to remove masks and bring clarity to relations. For the fabric of reality is torn, there is no choice but to take a clear position, and the clarity attests to the deep, sometimes historical, motivations.
Unlike the Kremlin: Russian citizens identify themselves - and place wreaths near the Israeli embassy | Reuters
Since the attack until today, Western leaders have expressed complete solidarity and condemned Hamas. USA, EU, UK, France, Canada, Australia, Germany and Austria, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria. In Ukraine, which itself is embroiled in the worst war in its history, Israeli flags were projected on dozens of screens. A document issued yesterday by the Foreign Ministry listed 82 countries that sided with Jerusalem.
Israeli flags on screens in the streets of Kyiv, Photo: Reuters
Against this background, it is especially astonishing - and infuriating - to follow the position of official Russia. Since Saturday, Moscow has taken a neutral stance, calling for a ceasefire more or less before Israel has managed to lift the first plane to attack Gaza. According to independent Russian journalists, the tone of the news coverage was also at best correct. But already on Saturday, a different voice began to prevail.
Medvedev (left) touring a military base in southern Russia last month, Photo: AP
While the bodies of Israelis were still lying in fields and safe rooms, Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and now first secretary of the National Security Council, found the culprit in the events: the United States. "The beginning of the fighting between Hamas and Israel," it said, "on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War was expected. The conflict has been going on for decades, and the United States is a key player there."
Medvedev's writing could have been dismissed had it not become clear within two days that diverting attention to the United States – instead of condemning Hamas or identifying with Israel – was actually the dominant line in Russia's approach. For example, Foreign Minister Lavrov expressed "deep concern over the deaths of hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians" and stated that "the taking of women and children as hostages by both sides (!) is unacceptable," but at the same time accused the United States of evading the establishment of a Palestinian state and undermining efforts to solve the problem of Israel and Gaza.
RT Broadcasting Corporation publicist: "We are all Palestinians", screenshot
This framing was no coincidence: for years, and even more so since it failed in the blitz on Ukraine, Russia has presented itself as the antithesis of the West, as an alternative power in a "multipolar" world to which it aspires as part of its neo-imperial project. But in the framework of the same project, it raises the pro-Arab Soviet positions explicitly. For example, Igor Molotov, a columnist for the Russian RT Broadcasting Corporation, wrote that "the victory of Palestine in the occupied territories is also a victory of Moscow and Minsk" (the column was published in one of the journals of the Lukashenko regime in Belarus, but was removed).
Reporter Dmitry Stashin revels about the massacre of bad guys. "Without a drop of compassion", photo: Stashin's Telegram channel (screenshot)
Dmitry Stashin, a reporter for Putin's favorite newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, posted a video of his escape from the festival in Re'im and mockingly wrote: "Without a drop of pity."
Although no weapons support is known this time (Russia itself needs donations from North Korea), the close alliance with Iran and the seemingly neutral language regarding the attack provide an umbrella of legitimacy for Hamas' activity. Even the two visits by its leaders to Moscow in the past year did not harm the legitimacy of the terrorist organization.
Could Moscow have had an interest in the meteoric escalation in Israel? Like the Belarusian-Polish border two years ago and the past six months, as in Moldova during the war in Ukraine, as in Donbass in 2014 or earlier in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia is creating pockets of instability to advance its interests. This time, the interest seems clear: diverting attention from the Ukraine arena and, more importantly, supplying Israel with weapons in the event of an escalation. Because if the weapons are required here, where won't they be sent? That's right, for Kiev. Here, even Lavrov himself is quoted by the official Russian news agency TASS: "If there are fewer Western weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine, Russia's goals will be achieved faster."
Whether Israel wanted it or not, it eventually finds itself in the same boat with Ukraine. True, Russia did not attack Israel directly, but it is no coincidence that it is not on the list of 82 countries that condemned Hamas. Putin sought to restore the Soviet Union; Perhaps Jerusalem should also pay attention to our place in this old-new world.
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