US foreign policy towards the Russia-Ukraine war has shifted significantly since President Donald Trump returned to the White House earlier this year. The recent suspension of US military aid to Ukraine and the pause in Washington’s intelligence sharing with Kiev come with serious repercussions in terms of the Eastern European country’s ability to continue fighting against Russia. 

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government is now under serious pressure to negotiate with Moscow. On March 4, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was “ready to come to the negotiating table” and that “my team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.”

A deal that allows Moscow to keep its hold on the Ukrainian land currently under Russian control, along with a partial lifting of economic sanctions, would be favorable to the Kremlin. Such an outcome would embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin three years after he launched this “special military operation” in parts of Ukraine. 

A key question is: how might a freezing of the Ukraine war through a deal that favours Russia’s interests impact Moscow’s image in the Arab world?

When Russia intensified its direct military intervention in Syria a decade ago to prop up the Assad regime, which at that time was only in control of no more than 20 percent of Syria’s territory, Moscow sent a powerful message to all governments in the Arab world and beyond. A main takeaway was that Russian military intervention could effectively prevent the fall of a regime.

This established an image of Russia as a global player that contrasted with the US, which approached the Middle East in manners that many Arab governments resented due to the disastrous and destabilising invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the response to the Arab Spring uprisings, especially Egypt’s, in 2011. 

In short, Moscow’s role in Syria during 2015-16 helped close a chapter of history in which Arab states—and many others around the world, including in the West—could dismiss Russia as a weak or insignificant player during the post-Cold War era.

But after launching its “special military operation” in Ukraine, Russia faced many problems on the battlefield that undermined Moscow’s image of strength. The failure to achieve a decisive victory over a much smaller neighbour was not lost on Arab statesmen who had reason to revisit their views on Russian power which were informed by Russia’s Syrian intervention in 2015-16. 

In other words, Arab leaders at that point were required to consider if Moscow’s military might was a reality or an illusion. Although no Arab state took any decisive action against Russia, and none burned any bridges with Moscow, the Ukraine war led Arab states to find themselves having less reason to turn to the Kremlin for security-related purposes. 

The Ukraine war, as it raged on, became Russia’s top priority on the international stage. Syria was the one Arab state that relied on Russia as a security guarantor, and Moscow prioritising the Ukraine war above all resulted in Russia shifting energy away from Syria. This factor, among others, greatly contributed to the Assad regime’s fall last year, prompting Arab states to further doubt the idea that Russia could perhaps one day be their top security partner.

Now, if the Russians negotiate a deal in Ukraine that is favourable to them and the war freezes, Moscow would presumably be in a position to shift more attention back to the Middle East. Within this context, Arab states could possibly assess that this would be a time for further engagement with Moscow. 

The Ukraine war put Russia under significant economic and military pressure, resulting in Moscow having to divert resources away from meeting obligations under arms contracts with foreign countries in order to prioritise its own military requirements. 

Yet, Algeria recently became the first foreign customer to purchase the Sukhoi Su-57E stealth fighter jet and it is worth considering whether other Arab states would follow Algeria’s lead and deepen military ties with Russia in a post-Ukraine war period with a lifting of sanctions. 

In any event, the legacies of the Ukraine war and how it was, at least partly, tied to the demise of Assad regime will probably impact the ways in which Arab statesmen view Moscow for a long time. The freezing of the war in of itself won’t erase doubts about Russia’s ability to serve as an effective security partner. A lesson that many Arab leaders likely took from Assad’s ouster was that depending excessively on Moscow is simply too risky. Ultimately, Arab countries that have long depended on the US for a security umbrella are unlikely to burn bridges with Washington in favour of establishing full-fledged military alliances with Moscow.

Nonetheless, Arab states like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and even post-Assad Syria will see their relationships with Russia as serving their long-term national interests. After all, many of these countries are fed up with countless aspects of US foreign policy. Trump’s deranged talk about a “clean out” of Gaza has terrified Arab statesmen who see such plans for a mass ethnic cleansing that entails a forced displacement of 2.2 million Palestinians as extremely dangerous from the standpoint of the region’s security and stability.

As unrealistic as this plan is, if it were to be implemented, it would directly threaten the stability of Egypt and Jordan—two important US allies in the Middle East.

Ultimately, Arab officials have witnessed Trump propose an idea for Gaza’s future that prioritises the fantasies of right-wing Israelis over the basic security needs of Arab states. This is to say nothing about the outright support that Biden’s administration gave Israel amid the Gaza genocide.

With many of these Arab countries having come to see Washington as unreliable and unable to appreciate their security concerns, global powers like Russia that support a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict are ones that Arab officials sometimes view as more reasonable.

In this more multipolar geopolitical order, Arab leaders will see Russia as one pole in it while, of course, China and India are others. Arab states and Russia both benefit in various ways from their relationships, and leaders throughout the Arab world will continue engaging Putin’s government in order to keep open the Russian lane on the multipolar highway they are driving on. 

The freezing of the Ukraine war on terms that make Russia appear strong will likely lead to a more widespread view among Arab policymakers and security officials that Moscow is an actor worth engaging on a higher level while these states seek to achieve greater autonomy from the US.