Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza is tantamount to genocide against the Palestinians, Russian President Vladimir Putin charged during a press conference with foreign news editors in St. Petersburg, as he blamed the US for the war itself.
“What is happening now in Gaza response to the well-known terrorist act in Israel, does not really look like a war,” Putin said during the conversation that lasted for close to three hours.
“It is some kind of total destruction of the civilian population,” he said based on a translation of his words.
He spoke amid rising tensions between his Moscow and Washington over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which also chilled relations with the Jewish state, particularly given the growing military alliance between Iran and Russia.
Placing blame on the United States
Moscow believes that the Gaza war, “is the result of the policy of the US,” Putin stated. Washington, he charged, has “monopolized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” and “pushed aside all previously created tools” for resolving the issue.
“Maybe someone in the American administration believed that the fewer opinions there are the more agreements can be reached,” Putin said. “But practice has shown that this is not the case,” he added.
Despite this, Putin said, he still retained hope for a Palestinian state, noting that his country has recognized Palestine as a state since the time of the former Soviet Union.
Russia won’t be playing a leading role in these efforts, he said, but it can contribute.
The leading players here should be regional ones, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the Arab League, he said. The US and Israel should also have a role, Putin said, stressing that he was not opposed to American involvement in achieving a two-state resolution to the conflict, just that it should not be the sole mediator.
“We need to work together rather than trying to monopolize the peace process,” Putin said, because sooner or later that “monopolizer sides with one of the sides and it all falls apart resulting in a tragedy like the one that we are witnessing,” he said.
“We are trying to do what we can,” he said, noting that Moscow has provided humanitarian aid for Gaza and has operated behind the scenes to help secure the release of hostages who hold dual Israeli-Russian citizenship.
He spoke as the US is pushing for a three-phased hostage deal that would see the release of the remaining 124 captives and an end to the Gaza war.
The war was sparked by the Hamas led invasion of Israel on October 7, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 seized as hostages. Hamas has reported over 36,000 Palestinian deaths in the war, verifying close to 25,000 of them. Israel has said that 14,000 of those fatalities were combatants.