Hamas official arrives in Russia for talks

A senior member of the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, has arrived in Moscow on a planned visit, Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported on Wednesday, citing a diplomatic source. According to Reuters, Hamas politburo member Mousa Abu Marzouk intends to hold a series of meetings with Russian officials, but no further details were provided by the source.

Russia has ties to all key players in the Middle East, including Israel, Iran, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Moscow has repeatedly blamed the current crisis in the Middle East on the failure of US diplomacy, and called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the resumption of talks aimed at finding a peace agreement.

In December last year, Russia called for an international monitoring mission to go to Gaza to assess the humanitarian situation, and said that it was unacceptable for Israel to use the cross-border Hamas incursion on 7 October to justify punishing the Palestinian people.

At the time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Al Jazeera that his country had condemned Hamas for the 7 October attack but, “At the same time, we do not believe it is acceptable to use this event for the collective punishment of the millions of Palestinian people with indiscriminate shelling.” Lavrov added that 7 October “did not happen in vacuum,” and pointed to decades of blockade and unfulfilled promises about a Palestinian state.

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