Israel’s war against Hamas could spread well beyond the Middle East, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin says.
The Russian president, who has been leading an all-out war in neighbouring Ukraine since February last year, said he told other world leaders in phone calls that if Israel’s military campaign in Gaza did not stop, there was a risk of a much wider conflagration.
“Further escalation of the crisis is fraught with grave and extremely dangerous and destructive consequences and not only for the Middle East region. It could spill over far beyond the borders of the Middle East,” he said.
In remarks that criticised the West, he said certain unnamed forces were seeking to provoke further escalation and to draw as many other countries and peoples into the conflict as possible.
According to Al Jazeera, the Kremlin said efforts to agree on a “balanced” United Nations Security Council resolution on the Israel-Hamas conflict should continue. This a day after Russia and China vetoed a United States-drafted resolution that called for a “humanitarian pause” to allow aid access, the protection of civilians and a stop to arming Hamas, the group that rules Gaza, and other armed groups in the enclave.
