- Frank Gardner
- BBC security correspondent
5 hours ago
image source,Getty Images
On February 4, 2022, on the eve of the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing and held a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the same day.
“Ukraine and its allies, including London, have been threatening Russia for the past 1,000 years to move NATO to our borders, to dismantle our culture – they have bullied us for many, many years.”
This is what Yevgeny Popov, a member of the Russian Duma (parliament) and an influential Russian TV presenter, spoke to on the BBC Ukraine podcast series (Ukrainecast) on April 19. “Of course, NATO’s plans for Ukraine are a direct threat to Russian citizens”.
His views are both surprising and instructive, as the Kremlin’s claims are very different from what Westerners perceive. To European and Western ears, Russia’s claims sound almost unimaginable because they almost blatantly ignore public evidence. However, these are the beliefs held by the supporters of the Kremlin, as well as the Russian population at large. And, in several other parts of the world as well.
After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the United Nations held an emergency vote – a week later 141 of the 193 UN member states voted to condemn Russia. But some major countries opted to abstain, including China, India and South Africa. Therefore, it would be delusional for Western leaders to think that the whole world shares NATO’s view that Russia should bear full responsibility for this disastrous war, because not everyone in the world thinks so.
So why are so many countries taking a wait-and-see approach to a Russian invasion?
The reasons are many: from immediate economic or military interests, to accusations of “hypocrisy” in the West, or extending to Europe’s colonial past. There is no one-size-fits-all argument. Each country may have its own particular reasons for not wanting to publicly condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or alienate Putin.
“Sino-Russian cooperation has no restricted area”
Let’s start with China.
China is the most populous country in the world, with more than 1.4 billion people, most of whom get news regarding Ukraine from state media. Like most people in Russia, on February 24, the eve of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, the Beijing Winter Olympics had a high-profile visitor: Putin. A joint communiqué issued following the event stated that “there is no restricted area for cooperation between the two countries”. So, did Putin tip off his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, that he was regarding to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine? China says absolutely not. But it is hard to imagine that for such an important neighboring country, even if there is no hint to the other party.
China and Russia will one day be strategic adversaries, but today they are partners and share a common, almost hostile attitude towards NATO, the West and their democratic values. China is already at odds with the United States over military expansion in the South China Sea. In addition, Beijing has clashed with Western countries over its crackdown on Uighurs in Xinjiang, its crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong, and its often-repeated vows to “return Taiwan to the motherland,” using force if necessary.
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A protester holds a Russian flag during a demonstration celebrating France’s announcement to withdraw its troops from Mali
Therefore, China and Russia see NATO as a common enemy. Both governments have also infiltrated their worldviews into their peoples, with the result that, in most cases, their peoples simply do not share the Western resentment over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and so-called war crimes.
Furthermore, India and Pakistan have their own reasons not to want to confront Russia. Because most of India’s armaments come from Moscow, and following a recent armed conflict with China on its border in the Himalayas, India is betting that it may one day need Russia as an ally and protector.
As for Pakistan’s recently ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan, he has been a fierce critic of the West, especially the United States. Pakistan also accepts arms from Russia. It needs a blessing from Moscow to ensure its access to the country’s northern hinterland, which is also a trade route for Central Asia. On February 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine, Imran Khan visited Putin as planned.
Afterwards, both India and Pakistan abstained in the UN vote condemning the invasion.
Hypocrisy or double standard
In addition, many people, especially in Muslim-majority countries, have accused the West, dominated by the most powerful country in the world, of hypocrisy and double standards.
In 2003, the United States and the United Kingdom chose to bypass the United Nations and most of the world’s public opinion and invaded Iraq under false pretenses, leading to years of ongoing violence in the country. Washington and London have also been accused of helping prolong Yemen’s civil war by arming the Royal Saudi Air Force, which regularly conducts airstrikes there to support the Yemeni government.
For many countries in Africa, there are other even more historical reasons. During the Soviet era, Moscow dumped arms on the African continent as it sought to counter U.S. and Western influence from the Sahara in North Africa to Cape Town in South Africa. In some places, the legacy of Western European colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries is the region’s longstanding hatred of the West, which persists to this day.
France rushed troops into Mali in 2013 to prevent al-Qaeda from taking over the country, a move unpopular in its former colony. So now most of the French troops have withdrawn, replaced by Russian mercenaries recruited by the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group.
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Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 2018 G20 Leaders Summit.
Middle East position
What is the position of the Middle East in this regard? Not surprisingly, Syria, along with North Korea, Belarus and Eritrea, supports Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has relied heavily on Russia to survive since 2015, when the country was at risk of being overrun by the so-called Islamic State (ISIS).
But even longtime Western allies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), while supporting the UN vote, have been relatively low-key in their criticism of Moscow. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the de facto ruler of the UAE, has good relations with Putin. His former ambassador to Moscow went hunting with Putin.
It’s also worth mentioning that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has basically a bad relationship with US President Joe Biden, and they don’t like each other: the two are said to have refused to answer the other party’s phone.
This comes following world leaders gathered in Buenos Aires for the G20 summit in late 2018 amid widespread allegations in the West that the Saudi crown prince ordered the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi weeks before the summit. , also translated as Khashoggi), so most Western leaders were indifferent to the Saudi prince at the summit. By contrast, Putin gave him a high five at the time. This is by no means something Saudi leaders will hastily forget.
image source,Archyde.com
At the end of 2018, when world leaders gathered in Buenos Aires for the G20 summit, most Western leaders were lukewarm to the Saudi prince. By contrast, Putin gave him a high five at the time.
But this does not mean that all the countries mentioned above, except Belarus, are actively supporting this Russian invasion of Ukraine. For example, on March 2, only five countries voted at the United Nations in solidarity with Moscow’s decision, and one of them was Russia itself. But it does mean that, for a number of reasons, the West cannot assume that the rest of the world agrees with what they think of Putin.
Nor can the West assume that all countries are willing to openly confront Russian aggression or support the provision of lethal weapons assistance to Ukraine.
