Sputnik comes to you live from New York, where Russia's top diplomat, Sergey Lavrov, is chairing a UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previously, Lavrov stated that the unrest engulfing the Middle East is "a result of vicious practices of geopolitical engineering by our Western counterparts". He lambasted the US for its attempts at foisting "democratization" on the region and forcing people "to accept alien values and models of development."
For a long time, the US had been seen as the undisputed hegemon in the Middle East. However, many experts on international relations and political scientists have reiterated that Washington's Mideast policy "has gone bankrupt." The hasty and shameful US retreat from Kabul in the summer of 2021 has shown Middle Eastern rulers that Washington can no longer be trusted. On the other hand, Russia has enormous power-brokering experience in the region, just take for example the recent stabilization of the situation in Syria.
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