Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised the Iranian people for battling to stay independent in the face of US and Israeli attacks adding Moscow will do all it can to help Tehran.

Putin made the remarks during his meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Russia’s former imperial capital St Petersburg.

“We see how courageously and heroically the Iranian people are fighting for their independence and sovereignty,” Putin told Araghchi saying he hoped they can get through what he called a “difficult period” and peace will prevail.

“For our part we will do everything that serves your interests and the interests of all the peoples of the region to ensure that peace is achieved as quickly as possible,” he added.

Russia has offered to mediate to try to help restore calm to the Middle East following US and Israeli strikes, which Moscow has strongly condemned.

It has also repeatedly offered to store Iran’s enriched uranium as a way of defusing tensions, a proposal spurned by the United States.

Russian official calls US-Israeli attacks on Iran ‘flagrant and unprecedented’ act

The US and Israeli military operation against Iran is “a flagrant and unprecedented act that will have far-reaching consequences” for the nuclear non-proliferation regime, Russian Special Envoy Andrey Belousov says.

Speaking in an interview with Russia’s state RIA news agency, Belousov said the Russian delegation plans to raise the issue at the conference on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which opens in New York on Monday.

“A military operation carried out by a nuclear state, jointly with and in the interests of a state that demonstrably ignores the NPT, and carried out bypassing the UN Security Council – the only internationally recognised body authorised to make such decisions – is in itself a flagrant and unprecedented act,” he said.

He warned that it will have “far-reaching consequences both for cooperation within the NPT framework and for international relations as a whole.”

“The bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities has caused serious damage to the authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency and its safeguards system, which are among the key supporting elements of the entire structure of agreements embodied in the NPT,” he added.

The US and Israel also violated Iran’s “inalienable right” to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, the official also said