As President Vladimir Putin is concentrating too much on the East for strategic cooperation a day is not far away when some Western cartographers may, at the behest of their political masters, declare entire Russia as a country of Asia on the global map rather than an Euro-Asian nation, which is spread over two continents.
On June 19 Putin made trips to North Korea and subsequently to Vietnam, the two countries which the then Soviet Union and China helped in the Korean War of 1950-53 and the Vietnam War between 1945 and 1975. Both these wars were fought against the United States and its
allies and led to the death of millions of Koreans and Vietnamese.
Why was Israel invited?
Putin’s visits to these eastern countries came just after the G-7 meeting in Italy and the Ukraine Peace Conference in Switzerland (June 15-16), which was attended by about 92 countries besides some international organizations. While more than 80 of them signed the joint communiqué India, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Mexico, Thailand, and Brazil, (the last named country attended as an observer), refused to do so.
While some countries cited the non-invitation of Russia in the Conference as the reason for not signing the joint communiqué, South Africa said that it refused to sign because of the presence of Israel, whom it had accused of genocide. South Africa also expressed surprise that Israel was invited just five days after a UN-backed commission held it responsible for the war crimes against Palestinians.
Strangely, Israel was invited though the International Criminal Court issued a warrant of arrest for its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Switzerland is a member of the ICC.
In contrast, Russia, the main country involved in the conflict, was not invited.
Surprisingly, Asian countries showed the least interest in this conference. Only eight of them participated. The most notable absentee was China, which did so because one of the parties, Russia, was not invited.
Not only that, most of these Asian countries were not represented by the head of the state or the head of the government. Fifty-seven of those who took part were represented by the President or Prime Minister, most of them European States. Japan was the rare exception among Asian countries which was represented by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The United State was represented by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Some of the Asian countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Pakistan and Malaysia did not participate in this Peace Conference. For Malaysia the crises in Gaza and Myanmar were more serious.
Shangri La Dialogue
The countries of South showed little interest notwithstanding the Shangri La Dialogue attended by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Singapore on June 2 where he specifically invited Asian countries to the Switzerland meet. Singapore itself just sent a minister of state for foreign affairs.
The Ukrainian President paid special attention towards the East because he knew that China and Russia exert influence in the region.
It needs to be mentioned that unlike in the second half of the 20th century, the tussle is not between Communism and Capitalism in the Eastern Theatre of the world. If Russian and Chinese dictators are further consolidating relationships with their authoritarian counterparts in Pyongyang and Hanoi the ‘Democrats’ in Washington are throwing all sorts of democratic norms and values to the wind to spread their brand of terrorism.
There is no doubt that Putin is an aggressor in Ukraine; yet at the same time, it is a very well-known fact that Moscow was pushed into war by the United States and its allies, which are hell-bent upon expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to encircle Russia.
The doors for Russia in the European Union are virtually closed as it is a club of ‘civilized’ nations of Europe. Russia is considered a part of the rest of the ‘barbarian’ world.
At the same time, they are using Taiwan as well as Japan and South Korea to keep China and Russia in check in the Far East. After all, Russia and China are not going to threaten the western coast of the United States.
What about war conferences?
If Putin had paid a return trip to North Korea whose president Kim Jong-Un made a rail journey to the eastern Russian port of Vladivostok on September 13 last year where he met former, President Joe Biden flew to Hanoi from New Delhi after attending the G-20 meet on September 8-10, 2023.
A month later Putin-Xi Jinping meeting took place in Beijing when the former made a trip to China on October 17-18—that is 10 days after the Hamas attack on South Israel. Exactly that was the time when Biden was in Israel where he was busy with what can be called a War Conference with Israeli top leadership.
Ever since then the self-proclaimed Zionist President of the lone superpower of the world is giving all sorts of help to Israel to finish off all its enemies in its vicinity. Biden, notwithstanding his age, is visiting various countries and sending his Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to Western capitals as well as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to hold mini-war conferences. In between Washington raises the issue of ceasefire to show the world that it has a human face too. The truth is different. The West wants to fool the world.
The presence of Israel in the Peace Conference on Ukraine in Switzerland is ample proof of this fact.
Curiously, it was South Africa and not Saudi Arabia and UAE, the two stooges of the US, which questioned the presence of Israeli delegates in that conference.
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