Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu holding a call to “discuss regional stability” in the Middle East is rather like a pair of arsonists congratulating each other on their commitment to fire safety.

According to the Kremlin’s summary of today’s call, Putin “stressed the importance of upholding Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” This, from the man whose air force spent nearly a decade bombing Syrian hospitals, schools, bakeries, and aid convoys to prop up a genocidal dictatorship —and who reportedly helped Assad's regime plan and supervise chemical attacks, scorched-earth massacres, and forced demographic engineering campaigns from his command centre in Latakia. If this is Putin’s idea of ‘sovereignty’, it’s no surprise Russia’s map of alliances looks like a war crime flowchart.

And Netanyahu, currently engaged in genocide in Gaza, who coordinated closely with Putin in Syria from 2015 onwards—mostly to ensure that Israeli jets could keep bombing Syrian territory in cosy harmonisation with their Russian peers nodded along, no doubt. After all, Netanyahu is also a great believer in sovereignty. Just not for Palestinians. Or Syrians. Or, really, anyone who isn’t useful to his blood-drenched war machine.

The obscene theatre of this call is difficult to overstate. These are two men who have made their careers on flouting international law, weaponizing Islamophobia and identity politics, and bombarding civilian populations with a mix of high explosives and high-concept lies to maintain authoritarian rule. But when they speak, we’re all supposed to pretend that diplomacy is happening.

As of this week, Netanyahu’s forces have killed at least 58,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, with the carpet-bombing now augmented by apocalyptic scenes of mass starvation in the famine deliberately engineered by Israel that's already killed over 100 and will kill many more without an immediate end to these crimes against humanity - an end the 'international community' is too shamefully cowardly to impose. Today alone, two prominent Israeli human rights groups publicly accused their own government of committing genocide, joining a growing international chorus that includes the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International.

Putin and Netanyahu apparently didn’t have time for that topic, however; perhaps they were too busy planning how best to “maintain regional stability”—a euphemism that now seems to mean “crush all resistance and deny it ever existed.” It’s no coincidence that both men have relied on the exact same rhetorical blueprint to justify their crimes: the enemies are terrorists, the actions are defensive, and the dead don’t count.

Let’s not forget that this is not a new partnership. In Syria, Russia and Israel coordinated closely, with Netanyahu visiting Moscow repeatedly, proudly boasting of his warm relationship with Putin during Israeli election campaigns. Israel bombed Iranian positions and Hezbollah convoys; Russia bombed rebel-held towns and UN-protected hospitals. It was a tidy division of labour—one that left Syria in ruins and Assad’s regime intact until it was finally overthrown by the Syrian people.

So yes, the word “genocide” was not spoken during the Putin-Netanyahu call. That would have required a degree of honesty neither man possesses. But the term hangs heavily over the region anyway—invoked not by propagandists, but by survivors, witnesses, and international legal scholars. And now, even by Israeli human rights activists.

In a better world, these men would be facing tribunals. In ours, they’re staging conference calls.

By Ruth Riegler
Radio Free Syria
July 28, 2025