The Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Saudi perspective
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine eight months ago, Western governments that support Kiev frequently use stark contrasts to describe the conflict and show little pity for nations that stand between them and Moscow.
Support for Ukraine is framed by US leadership as a question of maintaining a “rules-based international order” that is being challenged by rogue authoritarians.
This Manichean story, however, is usually disregarded in Arab nations. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Saudi Arabia essentially see the situation in Ukraine as a complex European dispute that does not necessitate Arab states taking a stand against Vladimir Putin’s administration.
Arab politicians do not think their governments should sever ties with Moscow because of this crisis, despite the fact that no Arab government, with the exception of Syria, has openly backed Russia’s invasion, occupation, and annexation of Ukrainian territory.
While the GCC nations have mostly backed UNGA resolutions denouncing Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, none of them have sided with Western countries in putting sanctions or other restraints on Moscow.
Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, wrote this month that “the majority of the developing world in Asia and Africa, including the Middle East, has not viewed the Ukraine war as the kind of definitive, transformational moment in international relations that the West does.”
Some commentators predict that the Saudis will continue to defy Western efforts to side with Moscow as the war in Ukraine reaches its ninth month. They claim that preserving relative neutrality serves Saudi objectives for the government in Riyadh, and that the country is exploiting the conflict and its response to it to show the US that it is not Washington’s vassal state.
