Ihe Universal Exhibition in Dubai, which closes at the end of this month, was to represent the consecration of the great bet of the United Arab Emirates on a globalization from which they would fundamentally benefit. The symbol is all the more cruel to see the flag of Russia rubbing shoulders there, celebrating “the infinite source of creativity” of “Russian Spirit”and that of Ukraine, boasting the “sustainable development of an innovative and mobile society”. As if the great return of the war in Europe placed Abu Dhabi and the federation of the emirates which it directs in front of a totally new situation, at best uncomfortable, and more and more difficult to bear.
The Chechen network
Mohammed Bin Zayed, the de facto ruler of the Emirates, even if he is only the crown prince, has long had close and warm relations with Vladimir Putin. They are primarily based on the shared interest of these two regimes in maintaining, under the aegis of Saudi Arabia, the highest oil prices. But the importance of investments by Russian oligarchs in Dubai has added a dimension that is as profitable as it is sensitive to this bilateral relationship. Finally, Abu Dhabi’s pioneering role in counter-revolutionary mobilization against democratic protest in the Arab world has led to active convergence with Moscow, with support for General Sisi’s putsch in Egypt, which overthrew elected President Morsi in 2013. , then with the commitment in Libya alongside “Marshal” Haftar, who aims from 2014 to become the local equivalent of the strongman of Cairo. These long years of more or less avowed collaboration culminated with the recent normalization between Abu Dhabi and Damascus, which was supposed to prepare the rehabilitation of the Assad regime in the Arab concert.
Mohammed Ben Zayed is also very close to Ramzan Kadyrov, whom Putin placed in 2007 at the head of Chechnya and who often played the emissary between Moscow and Abu Dhabi. The Emirates have invested heavily in Chechnya, not only in financial terms, but also within the framework of Islamic conferences defining Sunni “orthodoxy”. It matters little to Mohammed Ben Zayed that the Islam professed by Kadyrov legitimizes the most obscurantist patriarchal reaction and violence against homosexuals, the main thing, in his eyes, is that Abu Dhabi and Grozny fuel the same active hostility towards any form liberal opposition. Even the repatriation of the remains of the Chechen executioner of Samuel Paty, to be buried there “with honors”, did not seem to trouble the strongman of the Emirates. Now, Kadyrov claims to have sent several thousand Chechen auxiliaries to Ukraine, enlisted alongside the Russian army. He thus brings, with the tacit endorsement of Abu Dhabi, precious Muslim support for Moscow’s offensive against the Ukrainian resistance fighters, whom he stigmatizes in “kyiv Nazis”.
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