The eyes of the world are on Israel. And Russia expects to take advantage of this. Since Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip, launched an offensive into Israeli territory on Saturday morning, October 7, "the Kremlin has been exploiting [these attacks] to disseminate information intended to reduce Western support and attention to the situation in Ukraine," the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said.
With this media offensive, Moscow is pursuing several objectives: "to create a gap in military support" to Kyiv, to divert the eyes of the Western public from the war waged in Ukraine since February 2022, to demoralize Ukrainian society and to reassure Russians "that the international community will ignore the war effort" of Ukrainian troops.
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Thus, several "key sources in the Russian information space" have been focusing their coverage on the situation in the Middle East since Saturday without interruption. "This could have an impact on the information environment around the war in Ukraine in the coming days or weeks," warns the think tank, which has been publishing a very precise daily report on the Ukrainian conflict for more than a year, in a note published on 7 October.
'The world will stop thinking about Ukraine'
Russia mainly accuses the West of neglecting the conflicts in the Middle East "in favor of its support for Ukraine," the ISW observes.
"That's what Washington and its allies should be dealing with. The conflict between Israel and Palestine has been going on for decades, and the United States is the key player," Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, said on X. He added: "Instead of actively working for the Palestinian-Israeli settlement, these morons have interfered in our affairs and are providing the neo-Nazis with large-scale aid, pitting the two closely linked peoples against each other. What can stop America's maniacal obsession with inciting conflict all over the planet?"
The Russian Foreign Ministry, which blames the current conflict on the West.
On Telegram, Russian propagandist Sergey Mardan prophesied that "the world will stop thinking about Ukraine (...) and will once again work to extinguish the eternal fire in the Middle East."
False accusations against Ukraine
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Other bloggers claimed, also on encrypted messaging, that Hamas and Hezbollah were using "weapons and ammunition from Ukrainian warehouses." "Because of the phenomenal corruption of the Kiev regime, even in Israel, few people doubt that the weapons that the West sent to Ukraine to kill Russians are now killing Jews in the Middle East," one of them said.
These claims were quickly denied by the Ukrainian Military Media Center. "In reality, the Ukrainians would not be able to do so, as our Western partners are closely monitoring the weapons and military equipment they are supplying us to fight the Russian aggressor," the note adds.
On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was extremely concerned about the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories. About 600,2000 people have already been killed since Saturday morning. More than 200 people have been killed in Israel and 413,78 injured, 41 of whom are "in critical condition," according to government data. In the Gaza Strip, 2300 Palestinians, including <> children and <> women, were killed, local authorities said, and <>,<> wounded.