Putin at the peak of hypocrisy: No normal person can calmly look at suffering children

“When one looks at suffering and bloodied children, one’s hands clench into fists and one’s eyes fill with tears. I think this is the reaction of any normal person. If he doesn’t have this reaction, then he doesn’t have a heart or it’s made of stone,” Putin told the Vedomosti website. The Russian media does not mention the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and its child victims.

In the predominantly Muslim Dagestan in southern Russia, violent riots broke out at the local airport on Sunday after the landing of a plane carrying several Israelis. It was in connection with this incident that Putin spoke about the children, whose suffering, in his opinion, could have made the attackers in Dagestan angry.

Paradoxically, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin and the Russian children’s ombudsman, Maria Lvova-Bělova, due to the kidnapping of Ukrainian children.

At the same time, Putin again accused the West and Ukraine of organizing attacks on Jews in Russian Dagestan. “They seem to support Israeli Jews and, with the help of their agents from Ukraine, are trying to organize pogroms against Jews in our country. They are simply incredible pigsties,” said the head of the Kremlin. At the same time, Putin accused Ukraine of supplying weapons not only to the Middle East (including Afghanistan, which is controlled by the Islamist militant movement the Taliban).

Russia is trying to act as a mediator for the ceasefire in Gaza and previously also maintained contacts with both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, Reuters reminded. But recently, Moscow provoked an angry reaction from Israel when it invited a representative of Hamas for an official visit.

Israel launched a large-scale military operation in the Gaza Strip in response to an attack by Hamas terrorist militants on southern Israel on October 7, which claimed 1,400 mostly civilian lives. Israeli bombing and ground operations have killed more than 9,000 residents, including many children, according to Hamas-controlled authorities, and Tel Aviv has been repeatedly called on to protect civilian lives and prevent a humanitarian disaster in its crackdown on the Islamist movement.

In Ukraine, however, Russian attacks often hit residential areas, and Russian forces have been responsible for a number of child victims since the beginning of the war. In August, the UN reported 546 children killed and 1,156 children wounded in the war in Ukraine. However, the real balance will probably be much higher, since the UN overview only includes confirmed victims and injuries.

For example, it is not yet known how many people died in the Russian bombing of a theater in Mariupol last spring, under which children were also hiding; according to the town hall and the media, there were hundreds of victims.