Letter From the Editors
This week’s news from Russia makes it clear that the ongoing war in Iran is a boon to Moscow in at least three sectors: the economy, PR and foreign policy. First, as NG reports, Tehran’s air strikes on oil and gas facilities in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar are restricting global energy supplies, as is the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Georgy Bovt writes that these changes are redounding to Russia’s benefit: “[T]he US clearly had its eye on Iranian oil – the situation would have been analogous to Venezuela. . . . The calculation may have been that a ‘defeated’ Iran entering the oil market would ‘bury’ the OPEC+ cartel, but something went wrong.” Instead, Bovt continues, oil prices are rising. “Under current conditions, Moscow is financially gaining from the energy crisis in the Middle East. If Russian oil trades at $80-$85 per barrel for a month, Moscow stands to gain at least $2.5 billion in additional oil revenues.”
The Iran war is winning Moscow points in the PR game, too. Iranian Ambassador to Russia Kazem Jalali tells Izvestia that the first shipment of medical supplies from Russia arrived safely via Azerbaijan. “We are grateful to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government. As I understand it, our Russian colleagues are planning to send new shipments of humanitarian aid.”
When it comes to foreign policy, the hostilities in the Middle East are taking pressure off Moscow to resolve the war raging in its own backyard. Izvestia quotes Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that the trilateral conflict resolution group on Ukraine “is taking a pause.” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin says that no talks are scheduled, but the issue of territory remains one of the principal negotiating points.
Speaking of territory, Putin’s address to Russian government members on “Crimea Reunification Day” left no doubt in listeners’ minds about who the peninsula belongs to. Krasnaya zvezda quotes part of his speech lauding the “decisive and historic choice” of Crimean voters to become part of Russia in 2014. “And this choice is unchanged and unshakable. It is dictated by the fate of our Fatherland and has become one of the most important and – without exaggeration, perhaps defining – milestones in our one-thousand-year history, a symbol of the unity, resolve and cohesion of our entire multiethnic people.”
We can safely assume he doesn’t mean the Crimean Tatars, whose parliament (Mejlis) is one of the “extremist organizations” currently being blocked on the Russian Internet. Apparently, the only minority worth the Kremlin’s concern are ethnic Russians abroad.
A similar situation holds in Hungary, where the treatment of compatriots in neighboring countries is an issue that unites political rivals Viktor Orban and Peter Magyar. Marc Roscoe Loustau writes: “A hallmark of Orban’s nationalist politics since the 1990s has been his willingness to criticize neighboring countries over their treatment of their Hungarian minorities.” His most consistent target of late has been Ukraine, but Loustau notes that Orban’s principles stop short of criticizing his northern neighbor, Slovakia: “The Hungarian prime minister initially looked the other way when Slovakia’s government, which has been led by pro-Russian Robert Fico since October 2023, passed a new law in January criminalizing speech against a set of post-World War II laws called the Benes decrees . . . [which] were used by Slovakia’s government to deport thousands of Hungarians from the country in the 1940s.”
Magyar, on the other hand, had no qualms about marching up to the Slovak Embassy in Budapest, where he led a protest against the new law. Loustau wonders whether Orban will uphold his nationalist stance or “defend the Slovak government . . . and pay for it at the ballot box” in April. Stay tuned – Russia’s parliament may be “no place for discussion,” but Hungary’s is being contested as the world watches.