Putin wants the world to think the wars in Gaza and Ukraine are a Western plot — and it’s working

• Putin sought to blame Western meddling for an antisemitic riot at a Dagestan airport.
• The Russian president has long blamed global unrest on Western plots.

An airport in Dagestan, Russia, was at the center of ugly scenes over the weekend when a mob chanting antisemitic slurs attempted to seek out Jewish passengers arriving from Tel Aviv.

In the wake of the violence, rather than trying to calm tensions in the Muslim-majority region, Russian President Vladimir Putin made unevidenced claims that the West was responsible for the unrest.

"The events in Makhachkala last night were instigated through social networks, not least from Ukraine, by the hands of agents of Western special services," he said in a meeting of the Russian Security Council, according to the AFP news wire.

He added that there had been "attempts" to destabilize Russian society, and accused the US of being behind the war between Israel and Hamas, which triggered the riots, reported the AFP.

"Who is organizing the deadly chaos and who benefits from it today, in my opinion, has already become obvious... It is the current ruling elites of the US and their satellites who are the main beneficiaries of world instability," Putin said.

The Russian president has long accused the West of sowing chaos and instability, with Kremlin propagandists casting the war in Ukraine as part of a plot by the West to destroy Russia.

Putin's latest remarks are part of a wider plan to convince the world that the West is the enemy — and some countries are buying it.

Russia is exploiting an widening rift

One of Putin's core objectives is to break Western attempts to isolate Russia as punishment for the Ukraine invasion.

As part of this, a Russian disinformation campaign has been seeking to link Western-supplied Ukrainian weapons to the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7 against Israel, which sparked the war in the Middle East.

Analysts say the campaign, along with Putin's latest comments, could deepen the rift between the US, Israel, and Europe, and nations in the Middle East and so-called "Global South," which includes Brazil, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and China.

"The war in the Middle East will drive a growing wedge between the West and countries like Brazil or Indonesia, key swing states of the Global South," Clifford Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a New York-based risk assessment organization, told The New York Times.

"That will make international cooperation on Ukraine, like sanctions enforcement on Russia, even harder."

For its part, the US has sought to rally global opposition to Russia by pointing to the atrocities, infrastructure attacks, and human rights abuses committed by the Russian military in Ukraine.

But in its adamant support for Israel's campaign in Gaza, which, has so far killed around 8,000 people, it has opened itself to accusations of hypocrisy, analysts say.

"All the discourse and the efforts of the West have been undermined. It's a godsend for Moscow, which hopes to break out of its isolation on the international stage by virtue of the opening of this new front in the Middle East," Tatiana Kastueva-Jean, director of the Russia/Eurasia Center of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), told Le Monde.

"Russia's invasion has brought to the surface accumulated global anger and resentment towards European countries and the US, whether for centuries of colonialism and neocolonial practices or for the double standards western countries have so often displayed towards the violations of rights and law in different parts of the world," Nathalie Tocci, director of the Italian Institute of International Affairs, wrote in The Guardian.

Putin is exploiting this rift. In repeatedly portraying the US as the source of the unrest, he wants to bolster not just existing alliances, such as those with Syria, and Hamas' main backer Iran, but also gain favor with the Gulf states whose leaders are traditionally aligned with Washington and whose populations support Palestinian autonomy.

The Russian president has good relations with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but apparently sees there is more to be gained in stirring opposition to Israel's campaign in Gaza and its alliance with the US.

Russia in recent weeks hosted the leaders of Hamas, the organization behind the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, and criticized the Israeli response to the attacks, even likening the Israeli attacks on Gaza to the siege of Leningrad in World War II.

In generating anger at the West over war in the Middle East, Putin is betting that he can turn the tables, and the West, not Russia, will be facing isolation.