Source: foreignpolicy.com

The crisis between Russia and Ukraine, which has been the main agenda item in international politics for a while, has gained a different dimension day by day, and has already begun to affect global politics and the international system. In this sense, it is inevitable that this crisis will also affect the Middle East countries, where Russia has shown its presence in recent years.

Libya and Syria are at the forefront of these countries. Russia is one of the countries that gave the strongest support to Khalifa Haftar, the leader of the armed forces in eastern Libya. On the other hand, Russia has been the biggest part of the civil war in Syria from the very beginning. In this process, Russia both provided great support to the Assad Government and maintained good relations with the he Democratic Union Party (PYD). During this 11-year civil war, Russia wanted to find alliances in the Middle East region outside of Syria and had good relations with Iran and Iraq. Today, although Iran is officially neutral in the war between Ukraine and Russia, it blames the USA and Europe as responsible for the crisis.

Considering the alliance relations in the region, nowadays, while the normalization efforts of countries such as Israel and the UAE are seen with the countries of the region, nuclear negotiations between the USA and Iran have started again. However, the Russia-Ukraine war negatively affected these nuclear negotiations. While the position of Russia, which previously wanted to revive the nuclear agreement, has changed, the priorities of the USA and Europe, which had to deal with the Ukraine crisis, have changed.

The normalization steps in the Middle East region have limited Iran’s power in the region, which in the long run may cause Russia to support Iran more in the Middle East region. While Iran’s re-increasing its influence in the region worries Israel on the one hand, on the other hand, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gives Israel an advantage. Thus, Israel will be able to legitimize its occupation and existence in the Palestinian territories through the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

The most important point in the Russia-Ukraine crisis is that global energy policies will change. Western countries that are dependent on Russian gas will have to substitute their imported energy in case Russia severely curtails its gas supply. At this juncture, the first thing that springs to mind is the energy of the Middle East. Since it is not possible to send gas directly from the Middle East to Europe shortly, the EastMed project may be brought to the agenda again.

EastMed is a natural gas pipeline project involving Israel, Egypt, Southern Cyprus, and Greece, aiming to transport the gas in the Eastern Mediterranean to Europe, bypassing Türkiye.

This article was edited using the data from the Anadolu Agency, Euronews Türkiye, orsam.org, Mei.edu and farsnews.ir .