Analysis: Ukraine war forces United Arab Emirates to hedge

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates campaigned hard for a seat on the U.N. Security Council in the country's international push to highlight the 50-year anniversary of its formation. But it got more than it bargained for with Russia's war on Ukraine.

The federation of sheikhdoms, home to Dubai's skyscrapers, abstained in a Security Council vote late last week condemning Moscow's invasion. The Emirates now carefully hedges its statements to avoid angering a country crucial to its economy as it tries to shake off the coronavirus pandemic.

Meanwhile, the United States, whose military provides security guarantees to the Emirates amid tensions over the collapsing nuclear deal with Iran, has lobbied the UAE to add its voice against Moscow.

That pressure on the UAE will only grow Monday as the U.N. prepares for only its 11th-ever emergency session of the General Assembly over the war. The Security Council will likely hold more votes as well seeking to condemn Russia.

For the Emiratis, they face a major risk in upsetting Russia, which has become an important trade partner, a source of tourists to the UAE and a military power across the wider Middle East.

Russia firmly rooted its presence in the region during the chaos of the civil war in Syria with its military backing of President Bashar Assad. Russian aircraft, along with Assad's air forces, “attacked civilian neighborhoods, including crowded markets during the day, with explosive bombs with wide-area effects, killing and injuring civilians in attacks that amounted to war crimes,” the U.N.'s Human Rights Council said in a report last year.

Those strikes amounted to “systematic failure to take any precautions to spare civilians from harm,” the report added.

But after opposing Assad for years, the UAE...