Middle Eastern countries are watching Russia’s offensive in Ukraine from a distance. In general, in the first days of the conflict in the press and at the political level, statements about the situation in Kiev were rare. According to L’Orient-Le Jour, it is “a strategic silence that highlights a desire to maintain neutrality between Washington and Moscow”. While the majority of Arab governments traditionally have stronger relations with the United States, Russia has become an increasingly important trading and military partner in the region in recent years. Furthermore, in the face of Washington’s disengagement from the Middle East, many countries have sought to expand their network of alliances, including with Moscow.
At the beginning of the invasion, Arab newspapers remained focused on regional news. Apart from the breaking latest news of the facts, the opinion articles, often used by Middle Eastern newspapers to convey an official line, were few. Reflecting a general trend in the region, Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg, Deputy Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council for Political Affairs and Negotiation, on February 22 explained on the Saudi Arab News website why “developing countries should stay out of the new cold war “.
Wheat and energy
The consequences of the war could be felt very soon anyway. As Alessandro Lubello, editor of Economics of Internazionale wrote, the Russian invasion of Ukraine will have “not negligible effects on the global economy”. In an article summarized in the issue of Internazionale on newsstands, Al Araby al Jadid warns that the crisis threatens the food security of Arab countries: “These states, where 5 percent of the world population lives, are among the largest importers of food, including 20 percent of all wheat sold in the world, which comes largely from Russia and Ukraine ”.
But there could also be a positive side, comments the Raseef22 website: the Gulf countries could take advantage of the rise in energy prices and take the place in the market occupied by Russia in Europe so far. This would allow them not only to obtain enormous financial benefits, but also to restore luster to their image in the eyes of Westerners.
And the Gulf countries, especially the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, have been particularly cautious in distancing themselves from Moscow, the Financial Times points out: “The response of most of the Gulf states, which for decades have seen the United States as guarantors of their security, it has been attenuated, in an attempt to maintain a neutral position to preserve cooperation with Moscow on geopolitical and energy issues ”.
Abu Dhabi, which took over the presidency of the United Nations Security Council this month, is trying to keep a balance so as not to upset Moscow. After abstaining on the resolution deploring the Russian invasion presented to the UN Security Council on 25 February, on 2 March the Emirates were among the 141 countries to vote in favor of the resolution to condemn it to the general assembly of the UN (together with Egypt and Saudi Arabia). Presidential advisor Anwar Gargash made it clear on Twitter that for the Gulf state “siding on one side will only lead to more violence” and that the priority is “to encourage all parties to resort to diplomatic action.”
For their part, Egypt and Jordan, but also Qatar and Kuwait, have limited themselves to a prudent appeal to seek “diplomatic solutions”. Only the official government of Libya and Lebanon have expressed clear support for Ukraine.
On social networks, many Middle Eastern users express their support and their closeness to Ukrainians and in particular to refugees forced to flee the country. However, several people have bitterly pointed out the difference in the treatment offered by European countries, which have welcomed Ukrainian refugees while in recent years they have closed the doors to the flow of people fleeing Arab and Muslim countries. Online images of destroyed cities in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen are circulating, with comments accusing Western democracies of fueling violence and destabilizing those countries, abandoning people traveling to Europe to their fate, and of using instead a different approach in the case of Ukraine.
Other users criticize some articles published in the Western press in which a distinction is made between the war in Ukraine and conflicts that come from “poor and distant populations”, as wrote in the Telegraph the journalist Daniel Hannan, MEP of the Conservative Party from 1999 to 2020. Comments like this prompted the Association of Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists (Ameja) to publish a statement on February 27 condemning “the orientalist and racist undertones” present in the Western press, which tend to “normalize the tragedy in regions such as the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and Latin America ”.
Many in Palestine they called “hypocrite” the exaltation of armed resistance in Ukraine by the same people and media who for decades have condemned the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation as terrorist. Others stressed the similarities between the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. “Putin’s way of contextualizing Russian state violence in Ukraine is similar to the rhetoric Israel has used in its wars against the Palestinians for decades,” writes Meron Rapoport on the +972 Magazine website. It is no coincidence that the war is supported by the Israeli right, first of all, explains Rapoport to “prove the alleged ‘weakness’ of the United States under Democratic President Joe Biden”. The government, on the other hand, is trying to maintain a difficult balance between the need to take sides with its Western allies and the desire not to hurt Moscow, on which it “relies to facilitate its military operations in neighboring Syria”, comments Bethan McKernan in the Guardian.
The case of Syria deserves a separate discussion. President Bashar al Assad owes his stay in power to the Russian intervention which, starting in 2015, allowed him to crush the opposition groups and jihadists who were about to overthrow his regime. On February 25, in a phone call with Vladimir Putin, he supported the Russian intervention in Ukraine. Instead in the province of Idlib, the last stronghold in the hands of the opposition in northwestern Syria, people mobilized to express solidarity with the Ukrainians. Furthermore, several observers pointed out that the Kremlin is re-proposing in Ukraine the same scheme used during the Syrian civil war. “Russia’s road to Ukraine began in Damascus”, headlines The New Arab, which in another article comments: “The world should have stopped Putin in Syria. Now Ukraine is paying the price for international silence ”.