Does Russia have relations with Hamas? What relations are there between Moscow and the militiamen who launched the attack against Israel on Saturday? The questions fit into an increasingly complex international context, with Israel and the Gaza Strip forcefully back in the spotlight in the last 48 hours.
Russia-Hamas, meetings in Moscow
Russia’s relations with Hamas have intensified since the start of the war against Ukraine, as relations with Israel have deteriorated, but Moscow’s influence on Hamas is considered minimal. A few months after the invasion began, a delegation of high-ranking Hamas officials arrived in Moscow, where they were received by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. And in these hours, the Russian leadership continues to identify Hamas with the Palestinian leadership.
Culturally, the traditional sympathy that the USSR reserved for Palestinian extremists is expressed in the DNA of Russian foreign policy, whose methods Hamas, founded in 1987, employs. In 1967, the USSR broke diplomatic relations with Israel, with which it maintained unofficial contacts through Pravda’s then correspondent in the Middle East, Evgheny Primakov, who would later direct the foreign intelligence services and serve as Prime Minister. It was also thanks to him that the Oslo agreements of 1993 were possible, even if formally Moscow’s role was symbolic.
After the collapse of the USSR, Moscow became closer to Israel and systematically condemned, until the beginning of the 2000s, the terrorist attacks on Hamas, while not recognizing the organization as terrorist. And after Hamas’s electoral victory in January 2006, relations with Moscow improved markedly.
On January 31 of that year, Putin underlined that the organization should be considered a political force. Since then, leading members of Hamas have participated in meetings on a regular basis at the Russian Foreign Ministry. In March of that year, the director of the Hamas Politburo, Khaled Mashal, arrived in Moscow for the first time and had even met the then President, Dmitry Medvedev, in 2010.
A Russian cultural center “Kalinka” was then opened in Gaza, sponsored by Rossotrudnichestvo, the government agency that deals with Moscow’s ‘soft power’ centers abroad. The director is a nephew of Primakov. AND Many Russian women live in Gaza. Russian diplomats travel to the Strip frequently to provide consular services. Contacts with Hamas are concrete. Otherwise these movements would not be possible.
Russia-Hamas, the crisis in 2011
But in 2011, relations between Moscow, which also supplied Kornet anti-tank missiles that arrived in the Strip via Egypt, and Hamas deteriorated. After the Palestinian extremist organization expressed its support for the armed opposition in Syria, where a considerable number of its men were based. Hamas took a direct part in the Syrian revolution, breaking with the regime, its main sponsor until then together with Iran.
The war in Syria has therefore eliminated Moscow’s influence on Hamas, an idea also shared by Israel which has until now considered Egypt, and not Russia, the intermediary for informal contacts with Hamas. Although Moscow’s official position has not changed. Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov was able to point out that Hamas “is an integral part of Palestinian society”.
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