A Hamas delegation in Moscow
A Hamas delegation is currently visiting Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Thursday without further details during her daily press briefing. According to the RIA Novosti news agency, which cites a Palestinian source, Abou Marzouk, member of the political committee of the Palestinian Islamist movement, is part of this delegation.
Hamas is not considered a terrorist organization in Russia, and its representatives have already made two trips to Moscow over the past year. The first took place in September 2022 under the leadership of the head of the organization, Ismaël Haniyeh, who spoke with Sergei Lavrov; the second, in March, with his deputy, Saleh Al-Arouri.
Russia counts twenty nationals among the victims of the October 7 attack, and three others are believed to be held hostage in Gaza, but Moscow has taken a clearly anti-Israeli position in the matter. Vladimir Putin even waited more than a week to call Benjamin Netanyahu, and he compared the siege of Gaza to the blockade of Leningrad, which left around 800,000 dead during the Second World War.
The RIA Novosti news agency also writes that the Hamas political office has “highly appreciated the position of Russia and China”particularly the veto of these two countries to the draft resolution submitted by the United States to the UN Security Council.
Maria Zakharova also announced that the Iranian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ali Bagheri Kani, in charge of negotiations on nuclear power, was also in the Russian capital and that he had spoken with the vice -Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mikhail Galouzin.