by Pepe Escobar, The Unz Review:
The complex, nuanced issue of Russia’s geopolitical neutrality in the Israel-Palestine tragedy was finally clarified last week, in no uncertain terms.
Exhibit A is Russian President Vladimir Putin addressing – in person, on 30 October – his country’s Security Council, top government officials, and heads of security agencies.
Among other notables, his audience included Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Speaker of the Duma Vyacheslav Volodin; Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov; and Director of SVR (foreign intel) Sergei Narishkin.
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Putin took no time to cut to the chase detailing the official stand of the Russian Federation in the current geopolitical incandescence of two intertwined wars, Ukraine and Israel-Palestine. This was addressed as much to his high-profile audience as to the political leadership of the western Hegemon.”
“There is no justification for the terrible events taking place in Gaza now, where hundreds of thousands of innocent people are being killed indiscriminately, without having anywhere to flee or hide from the bombing. When you see blood-stained children, dead children, the suffering of women and old people, when you see medics killed, of course, it makes you clench your fists as tears well in your eyes.”
The US-led coalition of chaos
Then came a preview of the context: “We must clearly understand who in reality is behind the tragedy of peoples in the Middle East and in other regions around the world, who has been organizing this lethal chaos and who benefits from it.”
In no uncertain terms, Putin described “the current ruling elites in the United States and its satellites” as “the main beneficiaries of the global instability that they use to extract their bloody rent. Their strategy is also clear. The United States as a global superpower is becoming weaker and is losing its position, and everyone sees and understands this, even judging by the trends in the world economy.”
The Russian president made a direct connection between the American drive to extend “its global dictatorship” and the policy obsession with promoting non-stop chaos: “This chaos will help it contain and destabilize its rivals or, as they put it, their geopolitical opponents, among which they also rank our country, which in reality are new global growth centers and sovereign independent countries who are unwilling to kowtow and play the role of servants.”
Crucially, Putin made a point to “repeat again” to both his internal and Global South audiences that, “the ruling elites of the United States and its satellites are behind the tragedy of the Palestinians, the massacre in the Middle East in general, the conflict in Ukraine, and many other conflicts in the world – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and so on.”
It is a vitally important point. By conflating the perpetrators of the Ukraine conflict and the war on Gaza – “the United States and its satellites” – the Russian president has effectively lumped Israel in with the western Hegemon and its agenda of “chaos.”
Moscow aligns with the real ‘international community’
Essentially, what this tells us is that the Russian Federation unequivocally aligns itself with the overwhelming majority of Global South/Global Majority public opinion – from the Arab world to all the lands of Islam and beyond, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Interestingly, Moscow aligns with the analyses by Iranian Leader Ayatollah Khamenei – a strategic partner of Russia – and Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, in his searing, sophisticated, Sun-Tzu tinged address this past Friday, on “the spider that is trying to entangle the entire planet and the whole world in its cobweb.”
Exhibit B on Russia’s official position, specifically on Israel-Palestine, came from Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, at a special UN General Assembly session on Palestine two days after Putin’s address.
Nebenzya made it abundantly clear that Israel, as an occupying power, does not have “the right for self-defense” – a fact supported by a UN International Court consultative ruling way back in 2004.
At the time, the court also established, in a 14 out of 15 judicial vote, that Israel’s construction of a massive wall in occupied Palestine, including East Jerusalem, was against international law.
