Joseph Epstein, exclusively for Novaya Gazeta Europe
Joseph Epstein – D.C.-based analyst covering the Middle East and Post-Soviet Space
The night of the Hamas massacre in Israel, the Israeli flag lit up on buildings throughout Kyiv in solidarity with the Jewish state, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the terrorist group and called Israel’s right to defence “unquestionable”. Zelensky even criticised Iran’s role in the attack, going farther than even US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Contrast that with the muted statement from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which framed the attack as “another … vicious circle of violence” and called for the establishment of a Palestinian State on 1967 borders. In Moscow, three days after the massacre, Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed the United States for the incident and didn’t offer a word of condolence or condemnation. In St. Petersburg, police even prevented people from laying flowers outside the Israeli consulate.
Russia has not always been so cold to Israel, nor has Ukraine always been so warm. In the past Putin has made efforts to court Israel, even holding yearly meetings with Israeli leaders. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously campaigned on his purported close relations to Putin. The Russian president himself once reportedly warned Yasser Arafat that he would consider an attack on Israel an attack on Russia due to the millions of Russian citizens living there.
Ukraine has openly criticised Israel multiple times for its lack of support during the war. In June, Israel summoned the Ukrainian ambassador after he accused Jerusalem’s policy of being “pro-Russian.”
In fact, Russian propagandists including RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan showed open delight over the attack, with some gleefully saying it would divert Western attention from Ukraine. Russian state media blamed Israel for the attack due to its “years of humiliation of Palestinians.” Belarusian state media published an article by Igor Molotov, which was subsequently deleted, calling for a thermonuclear bomb to be dropped on Israel. Not one of them even decried the loss of Russian life in the attack.
Israel and Russia have drifted apart since Putin invaded Ukraine last February.
In the early days of the war, Israel did everything it could to stay neutral, much to the fury of its Western partners and Ukrainian officials. Yet Israel felt that it didn’t have a choice as Moscow was in de facto control of the skies over Syria.
The Russian tactics used in Israel are the same as those it used in the South Caucasus: positioning itself in the middle of a conflict and making itself indispensable to both sides. By controlling Syria, Russia placed itself between Iran and Israel. Sometimes it would open the Syrian skies for Israeli strikes on Iranian targets, sometimes it would keep the skies closed to allow Iranian convoys to pass through to Lebanon. This made both Jerusalem and Tehran beholden to Moscow.
But things changed.
Russia became more dependent on Iran and Russian capacity in Syria has fallen to the point where Israeli intelligence considers Moscow’s threat capability in Syria to be “negligible.”
As Russia began stepping up its cooperation with Iran, it started meeting more with Iranian proxies including Hamas. As the Russian military began using Iranian Shahed drones against Ukraine, Israeli intelligence started cooperating with their Ukrainian counterparts on anti-drone technology. Throughout, Israel’s Western allies have been pressuring Netanyahu to distance himself from Putin.
For its part, Moscow began pushing Jerusalem away not long after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. Five months after the start of the war, Moscow closed the Russian branch of the Jewish Agency, while in June, the Israeli ambassador was called in by the Russian Foreign Ministry after the Israeli government objected to Kremlin propaganda that compared the Ukrainian government to Nazis…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… — Novaya Gazeta Europe
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