A New War, a New Direction?: Middle East Violence and Russian Propaganda on Ukraine

• In Event: Global Responses to the Russia-Ukraine War

Abstract

The large-scale Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, resonated around the world. As the Israeli government claimed the right to self-defense by any necessary means, Palestinians and their supporters justified Hamas’s actions as resistance to Israeli occupation. Russian propagandists were among those who noted and weaponized the attack to their own ends. In the aftermath of October 7 and in recent months, the most prominent Z personalities have woven a variegated tapestry of narratives. In their pronouncements from television to Telegram, Eastern Ukraine and Gaza are the same, the United States is ultimately to blame for both conflicts, and the Ukrainian government’s pro-Israel stance is normal for “Zelensky the Jew.”
In this paper, I examine how violence in the Middle East since October 7, 2023, has impacted propaganda surrounding Russia’s war in Ukraine. Addresses, monologues, and posts by Vladimir Solovyev, Dmitry Medvedev, and Vladimir Putin himself, among others, generally condemn Israeli strikes on Gaza while downplaying Russian atrocities in Ukraine. At the same time, the suffering of Palestinians is cynically equivocated to that of the population in Eastern Ukraine: “doesn’t anyone feel sorry for the children of Donbass?” I argue that this narrative pattern coincides with a long history in Russian propaganda of anti-Semitism and of claiming victimhood against aggressive Western imperialism. The paper also analyzes how pro-Russian leftists in America have incorporated Israel-Palestine into their content. A short conclusion considers how Russia is attempting to repair its international image in response to mounting calls for ceasefire.

Author

• Arthur Mengozzi, U of Michigan