RUSSIA IS NOT JUST WATCHING: HOW THE KREMLIN EXPLOITS MIDDLE EAST TENSIONS FOR STRATEGIC GAIN
📌 OPENING – THE OPPORTUNIST EMPIRE For decades, Western foreign policy analysts have made a critical error in their assessment of Russia's role in the Middle East. They have assumed, repeatedly and incorrectly, that Moscow is merely a reactive power — a country that responds to events initiated by others, rather than shaping events itself. This assumption is dangerous. And it is wrong. Russia is not just watching the Middle East burn. Russia is exploiting every flame — and sometimes quietly fanning the fire — to advance its own strategic interests. Every tension between Israel and Iran, every rift between Gulf states and the United States, every humanitarian catastrophe that captures global attention becomes, in the Kremlin's calculus, an opportunity. This is the sixth article in Cakranegara News' 15-part series on Russia's strategic resurgence in the Middle East. We have already established, across Articles 1, 2, and 4, that Russia waits in silence, rearranges the glo...