VLadimir Putin could never have waged his war of aggression against Ukraine if he had not patiently consolidated some form of rear base in such a strategic region as the Middle East. Volodymyr Zelensky seems well aware of this, but he has long preferred to focus on Israel, in the name of shared democratic values, as well as the same Iranian enemy. But the Ukrainian president’s repeated appeals to the leaders of Israel and its people have gone unheeded, with prime ministers Naftali Bennett and then Benyamin Netanyahu having refused to deliver military aid to Kiev. Mr. Zelensky, noting this failure, is now turning to Arab heads of state and Iranian opinion.
Jeddah Arab Summit
Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, prime minister and de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, organized the Arab summit in Jeddah on May 19, in recognition of his now dominant position in the region. It is in this spirit that he invited Bashar Al-Assad, excluded from the Arab League for twelve years, this reintegration literally falling under the “fait du prince” of Saudi Arabia. But he also followed Emmanuel Macron’s advice to invite President Zelensky, who arrived in Arabia on a French plane and accompanied by the adviser for Ukraine at the Elysée, herself a former ambassador to Kiev. Mohammed Ben Salman may have established a privileged partnership with Mr. Putin in the regulation of the oil market, but he insisted on demonstrating, in a striking manner, that he retained all his independence from the Kremlin.
Volodymyr Zelensky was thus able to evoke in Jeddah the “tens of thousands of Arab students” who attend Ukrainian universities, a distant legacy of the Soviet period. He pointed out that Russian repression in occupied Crimea since 2014 specifically targeted the Tatar community, whose leader, Moustafa Djemilev, accompanied him to Jeddah. Calling on his Arab peers to “hear the Muslims of Ukraine”he invited them all to “take an honest look” on the Russian invasion, including those who “Among you turn a blind eye to its illegal prisons and annexations”.
Bashar Al-Assad, the only Arab leader to have recognized Russia’s annexation of the separatist provinces of Donbass, ostensibly put down his headphones so as not to hear such talk. But Mansour Ben Zayed, the deputy prime minister who represented the United Arab Emirates, insisted on meeting Mr. Zelensky, despite the close ties between his country and Russia. As for the Saudi press, it insisted on the “prominent role” that Mohammed Ben Salman could play in the Ukrainian crisis, he who had already sponsored, in September 2022, a complex exchange of prisoners between the belligerents.
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