Russia is enjoying and partially fueling the chaos in a series of global outbreaks that are turning Western energy away from Ukraine.
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In fact, the path did not spark all these crises, but now he is happy to add fuel to the fire and play them to his advantage, writes Politico.
The brutal Hamas attack on Israel took place on Vladimir Putin’s birthday. This catastrophic security shock to the Middle East was likely a pleasant surprise for the Russian president, whose strategic priority is to divert Western support and attention away from Ukraine. A massive fire in Israel risks doing just that.
The big question is how much credit can be given to the Kremlin for the perfect storm of growing crises – in Israel, Kosovo, the Caucasus and Africa – bearing down on America and Europe. It is tempting for many to see Putin as a mastermind or puppet master, stirring up more conflict than the West can handle.
In fact, the path did not spark all these crises, but now he is happy to add fuel to the fire and play them to his advantage. He enjoys chaos. Kremlin propagandists are already spreading the narrative that the war in the Middle East is a Russian victory and that money for Ukraine will dry up.
This was probably Putin’s best birthday present. An attack on Israel would divide attention given the natural US focus on Israel, an EU diplomat said. “We hope that this will not have a dramatic impact on support for Ukraine, but, of course, a lot will depend on the duration of the conflict in the Middle East. If we really want to be a geopolitical European Union, we are dealing with several crises at the same time.
The thinking in Washington is that Hamas’ attacks on Israel will reduce U.S. attention to Ukraine, which is consumed by the fallout from last week’s ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy by a group of Republicans who are part of the same group of conservatives who sought to cut aid to Ukraine. The fight over McCarthy’s successor is now unfolding, making it difficult for the Biden administration to win congressional approval for any additional aid it may want to provide to Israel.
Sensing that the West may be about to lose attention to Kiev, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has insisted that Hamas-backed Iran and Russia are close allies and views the fight against Russia and the fight against Islamist militants as one.
Israeli journalists who were here in Ukraine, in Bucha, now say that they saw the same evil where Russia came. So evil. And the only difference is that there is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel, and here there is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine.
Let’s start with Hamas attacks, writes Politico. Russia has long courted Islamist militants, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and other officials recently visited Moscow. After Saturday’s assaults, the Russians quickly dusted off old plans to return Israel’s borders to where they were in 1967.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the creation of a Palestinian state was being hampered by the “destructive policies” of the United States, and we could hear some purring of satisfaction as gloating former President Dmitry Medvedev turned his wrath against the West.
Instead of actively working on a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, these morons [США] prevented us and left it to neo-Nazis [в Україні] full-scale assistance, pitting two closely related peoples against each other,” Medvzhdev laughed.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov gleefully asserted that funding for Ukraine would now inevitably decline.
The process of pumping weapons into the Kyiv regime from a factual, emotional, financial, technological point of view will go into a downward trend,” he said.
Does this mean that Russia was directly involved in the attacks? This seems incredible because Russia is not nearly as important as Iran when it comes to weapons and funding for Hamas, according to Politico observers.
Norman Rule, a former senior US intelligence official, argued that Moscow’s political support for Hamas inspired the group’s violence but said that any Russian role beyond that would be modest.
This strategy allows the Russians to claim they support the peace process, but the ensuing violence disrupts the region, distracts policymakers from Russian aggression against Ukraine and draws U.S. naval forces from the Black Sea to the eastern Mediterranean, he told POLITICO.
Coddling Hamas and supporting the Palestinians also helps Putin in his bid to make himself an important player in the global realignment against the West, led by China and Iran. Just a few days ago, he said that Russia intends to “build a new world,” blaming the West for the war in Ukraine and saying that the conflict is over “the principles on which the new world order will be based.”
Iran, Russia’s ally and major foreign military supplier, certainly also wants a new world order, but the debate remains over how directly Tehran gives specific orders to Hamas. It is suggested that Iran is only “creating a Frankenstein monster and then releasing it into the village.”
This approach to fueling global geopolitics suits Russia well.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.