I'm John Batchel with my good colleagues David Dalliard and Bill Raja of the Foundation for

Defense of Democracy. The war in Europe momentarily on all the front pages, the moving argument about

what is a peace plan. But in Gaza, the ceasefire remains, and yet, David, the puzzle here is not

Hamas being a bad actor, not even Hamas having no intention to disarm. Question is, what does the

Russian prevailing position in Ukraine mean for Hamas? Does it give it a freer hand to regenerate? Or is it

too far away from where they are right now, which is basically holding on? Look, so I mean, as far as

I know, and I don't follow Hamas as closely as I do say Hezbollah. They've been relatively agnostic,

at least openly on the Russian war. My sense is they're going to be more inclined towards Russia, given that Russia doesn't consider them a terrorist organization. They routinely visit and meet with President Putin, so on and so forth. But Hamas is part of the broader resistance axis. And through the Hezbollah lens, I can give you what they were saying when the Russian attack on Ukraine started and why they were saying it. So the official leadership in Hasbola

was saying, I mean, Mastrola was still alive, we have no dog in this fight. These are both, you know,

Russia and Ukraine are victims of American imperialism, which has dragged them, you know, these poor Russians and these

poor Ukrainians to fight as the Americans sit back and watch them, you know, destroy each other

and come out on top. But Hasbalah's media. So I had newspaper, Manar, you know, they had this

whole file on Al-Ahad newspaper just following the Russia-Ukraine war. The narrative there was that this is a good thing, right, that the Russian war in

on Ukraine, the Russian invasion is a good thing. Why? Because ultimately, what Hasbalah,

the resistance axis, this includes Hamas, Iran, what they have in common with Russia, what they haven't,

what those two countries have in common with North Korea and China and Venezuela is one thing.

There's one thing that unites them.

And it's the shattering of American global hegemony.

Right.

So they saw, otherwise these countries and these actors have nothing in common, right?

The Soviets and Hezbollah were targeting each other in Lebanon in the 1980s,

and the Iranians had no love lost on Moscow back when it was under communist rule.

...