Zelensky is looking for help in the Middle East. He will be disappointed

Kiev is trying to sell its wartime experience for support because it has little else to offer Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s recent diplomatic activity in the Middle East is an attempt to find new political and financial oxygen at a moment when his usual supporters are becoming less reliable. For several years, the Ukrainian leadership built its strategy on the assumption that the US and Europe would continue to provide weapons, money, intelligence, and diplomatic protection for as long as necessary. But now, American support is increasingly politicized, European societies are visibly tired of the Ukraine issue, and the situation on the battlefield continues to demand more soldiers and equipment. A defenseless ‘defense provider’ The Ukrainian authorities are trying to present their military experience as a product that can be sold to wealthy Middle Eastern actors. Kiev is trying to turn the destruction it has experienced, and the lessons it has learned on the battlefield, into a diplomatic and commercial asset. At first glance, this makes perfect sense – defending themselves against missiles, drones and attacks on drones, and attacks on energy infrastructure is exactly what the oil-rich Middle East nations are concerned about right now. Ukraine has faced Iranian-made drones and Russian missile attacks and is now peddling itself as a laboratory of modern war, a country that has supposedly learned how to resist the very threats that now worry parts of the region. This is where the obvious contradiction comes in: Ukraine presents itself as a provider of security expertise while it remains dependent on foreign systems for its own defense. Kiev talks about protecting others, yet it continues to ask the West for air defense systems, interceptors, artillery shells, financing, and technical assistance. A state that cannot fully protect its own skies without outside help will struggle to convince wealthy regional powers that it can become a serious security provider for them.

Read more Zelensky’s European ‘concert tour’ flopping – Moscow The Middle East doesn’t work on Western ideology The deeper problem for Zelensky is political. Wherever Ukraine goes in the Middle East, it will not be able to force the region to worsen its attitude toward Russia. Not by ten percent, not even by one percent in any meaningful strategic sense. The countries of the region do not view Moscow through the emotional and ideological lens promoted by Kiev and many Western capitals. For them, Russia is one of the predictable and important centers of power in the international system, with which many of them have developed long-standing strategic, energy, military, and diplomatic relations. This is especially true for the Gulf. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and other regional actors will not sacrifice their partnerships with Russia to fulfill Ukraine’s demands. They see Moscow as a vital partner in energy markets, security balances, diplomatic mediation, and global multipolar politics. Russia is also important because it is not perceived in the region as a power that constantly lectures others about internal affairs while imposing political conditions. Many Middle Eastern states remember the Western pressure, interventions, regime-change experiments, sanctions, occupations, and destructive political engineering they have experienced over the past decades, and in a broader historical sense, over centuries. Zelensky and his team appear to believe that the Middle East can be approached in the same way as the US and EU. They seem to expect that emotional appeals to ‘values’, coupled with promises of future partnership, will produce large-scale political and financial support. But this is a serious misunderstanding of the region. The Middle East does not operate according to the same political psychology as the Western bloc – wartime rhetoric will n