"I have the impression that no key actor wants the conflict between Israel and Palestine to escalate," Vladimir Putin declared, this Wednesday in Beijing. "The hospital disaster must be a signal to end the war," added the Russian president, "although only the emergence of a Palestinian state will lay the foundations for lasting peace."
Putin is one of the few leaders with the capacity to dialogue with all the actors in the Middle East, including the most antagonistic ones, such as Israel and Hamas. His most recent assessment is the product of conversations he held, basically on Monday, with the heads of government of Egypt, Syria, Israel, Iran and Saudi Arabia, among others.
The president of Russia made the statements in Beijing, at the end of the third New Silk Roads Forum, with world opinion still shocked by the 471 deaths recorded last night in the Anglican hospital in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, in an explosion of disputed paternity. "It was the other team," US President Joe Biden told his Israeli counterpart, Beniamin Netanyahu, after embracing each other in a hug.
In contrast, both Russia and China have toughened their tone towards Israel. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said a few days ago that the Israeli military reaction went far beyond any defensive objective and referred to the need to resolve "the historical injustice" committed against the Palestinian people. Faced with the embrace of Netanyahu and Biden - which has also sent two of its most sophisticated aircraft carriers to the area - and a Europe apparently in tow, Moscow and Beijing are capitalizing on the indignation in the streets and networks of the Arab and Muslim world.
Also taking advantage of the fact that, in Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has until now been biting his tongue, attentive to the next phase of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Both Turks and Israelis support Baku militarily, with the ethnic cleansing of the Christian-Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh just completed. Russia and Iran are Armenia's closest allies.
Putin has tried to appear relaxed at his 42nd meeting with his "friend" Xi Jinping in Beijing. At the same time, the Russian news agency RIA has made great efforts to show that the nuclear briefcases, carried by navy officers, travel with the Russian president, on one of his few trips abroad in the last two years.
The Russian president was already with Xi in Beijing in February last year, on the occasion of the Winter Games. The two declared an "unlimited friendship" and, shortly after returning to Moscow, Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine. Last March they once again staged a great show in the Kremlin.
It should be said that Washington's recently confirmed supply of long-distance missiles to Kyiv has been disdained by Putin this Wednesday. "It is a threat to which we will respond. It is war. But it will not change the situation on the front in any way."
The New Silk Roads are the cartography of globalization piloted by China. "Everyone wins," Xi Jinping assures anyone who wants to believe him. They are not few. Virtually all countries, except Washington's closest allies - and not all - have signed cooperation agreements with Beijing, for large energy and communication infrastructures, both land and sea.
The program was launched exactly ten years ago by Xi Jinping, almost immediately after being elevated to the top of the party and state, with speeches in Kazakhstan and Indonesia.
Xi has broken down into eight points what the second decade of the program will be like, to which some one hundred and fifty countries have joined. Projects that are somewhat smaller, but greener, more sophisticated and easier to finance will have priority. Putin, for his part, has committed starting next year to make year-round circulation possible on routes that cross the Arctic.
Putin also announced this Wednesday that he had given the order to "permanently patrol the neutral waters of the Black Sea with Mig-31 armed with Kinzhal supersonic missiles." "It's not that he wants to threaten," he said, before referring to the "thousand kilometer" range of this weapon.
A thinly veiled allusion to the reinforced presence of US naval forces, supposedly to deter Hizbullah and other Iran-allied militias in Syria or Iraq from escalating the situation. "We want to keep an eye on the Mediterranean," the president of Russia, a country that has a naval base and another air base in Syria, has said openly.
With the same caution, Vladimir Putin says he has detected the first signs of Western willingness to negotiate over Ukraine.
The New Silk Routes forum has counted in its third edition with fewer participants than on the previous two occasions, in 2019 and 2017. On the Latin American side it has highlighted the presence of the presidents of Argentina and Chile, Alberto Fernandez and Gabriel Boric. Former Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has arrived in a personal capacity.
Spain is not part of the program, unlike Greece or Italy, whose presidents have not traveled to Beijing. In fact, the post-fascist Giorgia Meloni says she is rethinking its continuity. However, several leaders from Eastern Europe have traveled, such as the Hungarian Viktor Orbán or the Serbian Alexandar Vucic, interested in Chinese technology and financing for the high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest.
In the second decade of his most cherished project, Xi Jinping has announced the creation of a Silk Roads secretariat and the intensification of human and tourist contacts, a weak link in globalization with Chinese characteristics.
