Hezbollah, Russia Discuss Opening Representative Office in Moscow: Report

Date: 07 April 2021 - 21:28

News ID: ۸۸۹۱۱

BEIRUT (Dispatches) – Russia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah are reportedly considering the possibility of opening a representative office for the resistance movement in the capital, Moscow, following high-level meetings between the two sides last month.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov received on March 15 a delegation of senior Hezbollah figures led by Mohammad Raad, the head of the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc — the political wing of Hezbollah — and media reports indicated that the two sides had held "open and friendly” talks.
"The two sides stressed the need to strengthen means of communication between them and to adopt direct channels of communication between the party and Moscow, while studying the possibility of establishing a representative office for the party in the Russian capital,” Lebanon’s al-Akhbar newspaper said in a report on Tuesday.
The meeting, held at Russia’s request, was described by analysts as different from Moscow’s previous ones with Hezbollah and it showed Russia’s inclination to see the Lebanese resistance movement as an "independent” power.
Hezbollah was established following the 1982 invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon by the Zionist regime. Since then, the popular resistance movement has grown into a powerful military force.
During the 2000 and 2006 Zionist wars on Lebanon, battleground contribution by Hezbollah proved an indispensable asset, forcing the occupying regime’s military into a retreat and shattering the myth of the occupying entity’s invincibility.
Moreover, Hezbollah has played a critical role in the Syrian military’s counter-terrorism operations over the past years with the aim of preventing the spillover of the Syria crisis into Lebanon.
Unlike the Western countries, Russia does not consider Hezbollah a ‘terrorist’ organization.