Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Why Putin thinks war with Ukraine is like the Israel-Palestine conflict

Vladimir Putin chairing a meeting with members of Security Council, government and law enforcement agencies following the Makhachkala pogrom (Credit: Getty images)

Who is to blame for the shocking pogrom in the Dagestani city of Makhachkala, where a mob of hundreds stormed the local airport in search of Jews on a flight from Tel Aviv? Vladimir Putin has offered a predictable answer: the West.

In a meeting with Russia’s security council and law enforcement agencies, president Putin said the actions of the anti-Semitic mob in Dagestan were ‘inspired through social media, including originating from Ukraine, created at the hands of agents of Western intelligence services’. 

Putin is trying to present his invasion as an existential fight against encroaching Western influence

Putin then went further, suggesting that the US could also be blamed for war in Ukraineand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

Behind the tragedy of the Palestinians, and behind the massacre in the Middle East as a whole, behind the conflict in Ukraine, and behind many other conflicts in the world – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and so on – are the ruling elites of the United States and their satellites.

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