Russia's Vladimir Putin says West is fomenting jihadi 'blowback'

Over the past decade Russia has used its UN Security Council vote to oppose the US invasion of Iraq aimed at overthrowing dictator Saddam Hussein; yet it has strongly supported NATO's anti-Taliban mission in Afghanistan. Last year, Putin even urged the Western allies not to leave Afghanistan before the "job was done" and Moscow gave NATO the use of a huge airbase in central Russia to help with the resupply effort to its embattled forces there. 

Moscow abstained on the March 2011 Security Council resolution that authorized the use of force "to protect civilians" in Libya, and last month it actually backed another resolution empowering France and others to intervene against Islamists threatening to overrun Mali.

On the other hand, Russia has repeatedly vetoed any resolution aimed at international cooperation to ease Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad from power and continues to back his regime with political support and shipments of weaponry. The UN estimates 60,000 killed in the ongoing civil war in Syria, with some 500,000 to 600,000 displaced or categorized as refugees.

Outsiders may be forgiven for seeing Moscow's policies as a bit tangled, not to say hypocritical, but many Russian analysts argue that they have been completely consistent – with the sole exception of former President Dmitry Medvedev's decision to abstain on the Libya "use of force" resolution, which was publicly slammed by then-Prime Minister Putin.

"The Libya resolution contained promises to Russia that were never delivered. Today our abstention on that vote can be clearly seen as a mistake, a symption of Medvedev's non-professionalism," says Mr. Satanovsky.

The Russians argue that they back secular goverments and stability, even where it is enforced by a dictatorship, because the alternatives are almost universally worse. They insist that Western efforts to back democratic revolution have backfired almost everywhere, and will continue to do so.

"All attempts to export revolution end badly," says Andrei Klimov, deputy chair of the State Duma's international affairs committee.

"In Iraq, the Americans came in to eliminate fictitious weapons of mass destruction, and knocked out all the pillars of stability in that country. Look at the mess it's in today.... Libya was stable, Syria was stable, until revolutions aided and abetted by Western powers tore them apart. All this chaos is a gift to militant fundamentalists and no one else," he adds.

Russia's backing for the current French-led intervention in Mali is just a case of lining up against the common enemy, the jihadists, pro-Kremlin analysts say.

They point out that the government the West is propping up in Mali is a dictatorship, the result of a military coup last year that overthrew the democratic government on the eve of elections.

"We agree with the French about this. Maybe they're finally seeing the light," says Sergei Markov, vice president of the Plekhanov Economic University in Moscow and a frequent adviser to President Putin in the past.

  "It's an attempt to stem the damage that's a result of the misguided operation in Libya. It's against the jihadists and we support it," he adds.

"When the West is helping to destroy a stable regime, and willfully opening the gates to the radical Islamists, we oppose it. . .   We wish that Russia and the West could work together on this. We are willing, but we doubt the West is ready to cooperate with us," Mr. Markov says.

"Will it have to take a few more Western ambassadors being killed by the very forces they created before they will listen to us?"

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