Putin’s propagandist cornered: Israeli politician left him without arguments

A guest on Russian television directly contradicted Moscow’s position that the Western supply of tanks to Kiev represents the direct involvement of Ukraine’s allies in a war launched by Vladimir Putin, writes Newsweek.

Last week, Germany and the US announced their intention to send Leopard 2 and Abrams tanks to Kiev to help fight Russian aggression. The move was condemned by Moscow. Not long afterwards, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the military aid promised by the West as direct interference in a war that is growing with time.

Putin’s chief propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov, has often derided Western military aid to Ukraine in his radio and television broadcasts as proof that the conflict is a “proxy war” between NATO and Moscow. He has also called for nuclear attacks on countries that have helped Ukraine, reports Jutarnji.

However, on Solovyov’s show last week, Yakov Kedmi, a Russian-born Israeli politician and diplomat, said that he did not believe that the supply of arms to Ukraine constituted direct Western involvement in the conflict.

How many weapons did the USSR deliver to Egypt and Syria?, Kedmi asked in an apparent reminder of the delivery of arms from Russia to the Middle East during the Cold War and the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Kedmi, who is also known as Yasha Kazakov, said the Russian military “planned” the operation, although it has always seen it as an Egyptian-led war.

Kedmi replied:

That was the generally accepted view. That was the position of the USSR, the US and Israel. Nobody saw the Soviet Union as a party to the conflict, Kedmi continued.

According to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Moscow was the main arms supplier in the Middle East during the Cold War. They add that Egypt was for some time Moscow’s most important ally in the region.

Meanwhile, Moscow supplied Syria with huge quantities of state-of-the-art weapons in the 1980s, the Institute says.

Kedmi had earlier clashed with Solovyov on his evening show on Rossiya 1. In November, he described Solovyov’s threats to wipe Kiev and Kharkiv off the face of the earth as “obscene”.

It is a crime to bomb peaceful cities, Kedmi said, adding that such words should not be used, especially not in Russia, Newsweek writes./oslobodjenje.ba/