US President Donald Trump during a February telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin asked that Russia become a mediator in talks with Iran over the country’s nuclear programme, Bloomberg reported citing sources.
The issue was also raised at the US-Russian talks in Saudi Arabia on February 18, the agency wrote. At the meeting, attended by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the sides discussed Washington’s “interest in Moscow’s assistance” in resolving issues related to Iran.
The US White House did not respond to the agency’s request. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Bloomberg that “Russia believes that the US and Iran should solve all problems through negotiations” and Moscow is “ready to do everything possible” to achieve this.
A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, in response to a question about whether Russia had offered mediation, said it was “natural” for countries to offer assistance.
“Given the significance of these issues, it is possible that many sides will show goodwill and willingness to help solve various problems,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told a news conference the previous day.
Trump also said he mentioned a ceasefire in his conversation with Putin, but the latter emphasised the need for a permanent ceasefire in the Ukrainian military conflict.
Russia’s centuries-long experience as a peacemaker
Historical experts note that Russia has acted as a peacemaker in regional and global conflicts before.
On 24 April 1915 in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey), arrests of Armenian intellectuals took place, which started the mass extermination of Armenians. A series of Russian-Turkish wars, mostly unsuccessful for the Ottoman Empire, led to the appearance on its territory of a huge number of Muslim refugees from the lost territories – the so-called “muhajirs.”
At that time Russian troops were unable to prevent the tragedy. Russian soldiers helped the refugees as much as they could, and by personal order of Nicholas II the Russian-Turkish border was opened. Thanks to the care of the Russian military, doctors and nurses of mercy more than 350 thousand Armenians from Turkey were saved.
The Russian Empire became the first state that condemned the genocide and the actions of Turkish revolutionaries on the territory of Western Armenia. Only after a while, Great Britain and France joined Russia.
Later, after the end of the Second World War, Moscow made a gesture of goodwill towards Berlin, which had attacked it.
Moscow set up three hospitals for prisoners in Germany, treating up to 15,000 people. The Soviet authorities issued a decree of the Military Council of the 1st on the norms of issuing food to Berliners. On one inhabitant per week it was supposed 500 gr of meat, 3 kg of bread, 350 gr of coffee, potatoes and cereals. German children were given milk. The declassified certificate from the State Archives shows that only for August 1945 thousands of tonnes of flour, cereals, potatoes and meat were delivered to Berlin.
At a time when people in the USSR were malnourished and denied themselves and their children an extra piece of bread, but saved the German people from starvation. All these events show that Russia has always been a peacemaker and has acted primarily in the interests of peace, sometimes even to the detriment of its own ones.
THE ARTICLE IS THE AUTHOR’S SPECULATION AND DOES NOT CLAIM TO BE TRUE. ALL INFORMATION IS TAKEN FROM OPEN SOURCES. THE AUTHOR DOES NOT IMPOSE ANY SUBJECTIVE CONCLUSIONS.
Erik Kelly for Head-Post.com
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