The mafia supposedly asked cui bono (who benefits?) when trying to figure out who was behind a hit. There is no evidence that Russia’s Vladimir Putin had anything to do with Hamas’s horrific slaughter of 1,200 Israeli civilians last year. But Russia has been a leading beneficiary. To reach that conclusion, you have only to ask, cui malo (who loses?). The biggest answer geopolitically is Joe Biden. As Israeli forces move into the Gazan enclave of Rafah, that is only likely to get worse.
Fate decreed that Hamas’s barbarity took place on October 7, which is Putin’s birthday. The geopolitical instability since then has been delivered gift-wrapped to Moscow. Putin now finds it easier to depict Biden’s “liberal international order” as a hollow shell. Biden has made it clear that he will back Israel to the hilt if the International Criminal Court issues any indictments of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his colleagues. By contrast, the US president supports the ICC indictment of Putin for his alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
The irony is that until October 7 Putin and Netanyahu had something of a mutual admiration society. Each recognised in the other a strongman leader who would do what it takes to hold on to power. Each shared a disdain for American liberals, and do-gooding democrats in general. Those overlapping resentments remain. Since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, however, and particularly since October 7, Russia has tilted away from Israel and thrown in its lot with Iran, Israel’s chief enemy.