SUBSCRIBER+EXCLUSIVE – Hamas thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for his support as it released 25-year-old Russian-Israeli dual national Ron Krivoi from captivity on Sunday in a sign of the growing closeness in the relationship between Moscow and Hamas. Krivoi was among the hostages taken during the Hamas-led terrorist attack against Israel on October 7.
“In response to the efforts of Russian president Putin and in appreciation of the Russian position in support of the Palestinian cause, we released a detainee who holds Russian citizenship,” Hamas said.
The public expression of gratitude follows an official welcome of Hamas leaders to Moscow late last month, a visit that U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called ‘chilling’ during a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group where Austin also called out Iran for its role in supporting both Hamas and Russia in its war in Ukraine, noting a ‘moment of global challenge’.
“It was chilling to see a delegation from Hamas—led by one of the terrorist group's leaders—brazenly visit Moscow on October 26 to meet with senior Russian officials. Both Ukraine and Israel are facing relentless foes, who are out to annihilate them. And we see that Iran is fueling conflict in both Gaza and Ukraine by arming Hamas and Putin. Iran's support to the Kremlin and Hamas harms Ukraine, harms stability in the Middle East, and it affects the rules based international order. This is a moment of global challenge.”
“The burgeoning conflict between Israel and Hamas is certainly a boon to Putin,” Ashley Rhoades, a Defense Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation, told The Cipher Brief. “Russia has already begun a propaganda campaign against U.S. support to Israel, attempting to spin it as hypocritical of the U.S. and the West more broadly to support an ‘invasion’ and crying crocodile tears over the collateral damage produced by Israel’s Gaza campaign—as though he [Putin] has not overseen mass atrocities against the Ukrainian people and actually cares about the plight of the Palestinians.”
Many western analysts believe that for Putin, the war in the Middle East serves as a ripe opportunity to not only condemn and undermine Washington in the international order but also allows him to posture publicly as an intermediary and vessel for de-escalation while working to re-assert himself as a prominent player in the region.
“The battering that the United States is taking in Arab public opinion now is a bonus for Russia,” said Karl Kaltenthaler, Director of the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies and a Political Science Professor at the University of Akron. “(And) Putin sees the conflict in Gaza as a great way to damage the United States’s standing in the Middle East. It is likely that he is willing to accept some bumps in the road with Israel as a way of hurting the United States. For Russia, expanding Russian influence in the Arab world at the expense of the United States is the main goal related to the Gaza conflict.”
Rhoades notes that Moscow also stands to gain from the shift away from Ukraine in western media.
“Another benefit to (Putin) of this war is that it distracts the West from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and forces the U.S. government and European capitals to make difficult decisions about how to direct their limited resources between two allies in need, Israel and Ukraine,” Rhoades said.
Get an up close with some of the greatest minds in cyber at the Cyber Initiatives Group’s virtual Winter Summit, Wednesday, December 6 from 12p – 3p ET. Save my seat.
Analysts worry that the diversion of some arms earmarked for Kyiv to the Middle East could spell another victory for the Kremlin as the longer the Middle East war rumbles on, the higher the chances are that Israel will need U.S. arms, including artillery rounds and weaponized drones, which are already in short supply in Ukraine.
“Russia is interested in triggering a war in the Middle East so that a new source of pain and suffering could undermine world unity, increase discord and contradictions, and thus help Russia destroy freedom in Europe,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
There are other ways Russia can benefit by supporting Hamas as well. As a prominent global oil producer, Moscow could prosper from a hike in crude prices amid the Middle East volatility, essentially increasing its export value and making more funds available for defense purposes. As per the World Bank, the increase since the start of the conflict has been modest, around six percent, but has the potential to surge if the war draws more regional players to the fray.
In its most recent monthly oil market report, the International Energy Agency said the markets will “remain on tenterhooks” as the conflict unravels.
Another coup for Putin is the assumption that the war is likely to have halted, or possibly destroyed U.S. efforts to normalize ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The view from Moscow on the Abraham Accords has always been one of contention, an American-dominated effort that pushes Russia out of the mix.
Complicating matters to Israel’s north, U.S. intel sources told The Wall Street Journal that Russia’s paramilitary mercenary outfit, Wagner Group, intends to send Hezbollah, an Israel archenemy on its northern front, a short-range air defense system currently in the arsenal of the Syrian military.
According to Rhoades, the United States does have the capacity to manage its support for both Israel and Ukraine, especially if it can contain the wars from escalating into conflicts that would require U.S. boots on the ground.
“Though involvement in a two-front war would certainly place a strain on resources, the type of military equipment required for the two conflicts in question is sufficiently different to avoid too much overlap,” said Rhoades. “It is very true that we are being spread thin when it comes to international conflict management, diplomacy, and financial and military support to our allies.
“The U.S., at least under the Biden administration, is and will remain, fully committed to supporting both Israel and Ukraine,” Bryant said. “However, one drawback to our republic and its democratic change of power every four years is that our stated alignments, intentions, and strategies are subject to massive change at the whim of any incoming administration. How long that willingness lasts will be dictated in no small way by this next election—and who becomes the next POTUS.”
Reporter Hollie McKay contributed to this report
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business
