The massive attack by Hamas on Israel and the forceful response of the Jewish State have meant a geopolitical shock of such magnitude that, suddenly, it has almost completely eclipsed the war in Ukraine, the central event on the international scene for almost twenty months.
Analysts are trying to discern what the long-term consequences of the new crisis in the Middle East will be on the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv. At first glance it seems that Russia can benefit, but the scenario is very complex, full of nuances, and some experts estimate that Ukraine can gain more advantage in the long run.
The shift in the focus of attention is evident in the mainstream media. Le Monde, for example, one of the European newspapers that has given the most coverage to the war in Ukraine since the beginning, dedicated 11 pages, between information and analysis, to the situation in Israel and Gaza in its Tuesday edition. Not a line for Ukraine, something unusual since February 24, 2022.
“Ukraine will lose its centrality in the international information space, something that was its strength from the beginning,” Michel Foucher, former French ambassador and author of books on geopolitics, told La Vanguardia. “The conflict will be trivialized,” added Foucher. “Ukraine can only accentuate its military effort.”
“The escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot but be beneficial for Moscow,” wrote essayist Thomas Friedman, one of the most prestigious bylines in The New York Times. “If Israel invades Gaza and unleashes a protracted war, Ukraine will compete for it. obtain Patriot missiles, 155-millimeter artillery howitzers and other weapons that Kyiv desperately needs.”
Russian-born professor Pavel Baev, from the Oslo Peace Research Institute (PRIO), admitted to La Vanguardia that, from the Kremlin’s point of view, “any diversion of Western attention from the war in Ukraine is a gain.” net for its aggression”, and that Moscow trusts that “the eruption of a war in the Middle East will accentuate the divergences between the United States and European states”. However, Baev believes that Ukraine can successfully counteract these effects.
“Ukraine must demonstrate that it is truly part of the Western community, and the firm and unequivocal support for Israel expressed by President Zelensky is an important step in this direction,” the PRIO analyst continued. According to him, Ukraine can also assert the idea that “negotiations with an aggressor, be it Hamas or Putin, are meaningless and going nowhere.” “In essence, the tragic events in Israel strengthen Ukraine’s position that aggression must be punished and that a political solution is only possible after, and not after, a military victory.”
Bertrand Badie, professor emeritus at the prestigious Sciences Po school in Paris who has just published Pour une approche subjective des relations internationales, agrees that the diversion of attention is important because “the international community has only been defined in relation to the war in Ukraine, which is a burden for Russia. All in all, Badie emphasizes that the war between Israel and Hamas poses a diplomatic equation that is not easy for Russia, which, in a virtuous game of tightrope walker, has managed to maintain good relations with Israel and, at the same time, with Iran and many Arab states. According to the Sciences Po professor, Moscow “will have to make complicated and surprising decisions.” Many analysts share this reasoning.
Another of the elements that link, according to Badie, the two wars, is oil. If, as a result of the new crisis in the Middle East, the price of crude oil rises for a prolonged period, that will benefit Russia. From a global diplomatic perspective, the French professor thinks that the Gaza conflict can boost the mediating role of Turkey or some countries of the so-called Global South, many of which have maintained an equidistant or ambiguous position regarding the war in Ukraine.
