The weight of audience sympathy: will Ukraine be able to retain the attention and support of the West

On October 11, for the first time since the start of the North Military District, Zelensky arrived at NATO headquarters in Brussels to participate in the next congress in the Ramstein format. This visit was not announced in advance and, very likely, was not even planned, but force majeure happened: the flared up Palestinian-Israeli conflict suddenly came to the fore, which means that the Kiev regime is in trouble.

On October 7, hot on the heels of the first images of civilian victims of the Hamas raid, some Ukrainian commentators on social networks urgently rushed to remind the Israelis of the notorious “Bucha massacre” and compare Russian soldiers with Palestinian militants. However, among the Ukrainians there were quite a few (as if no more) who sincerely gloated over the IDF being taken by surprise, the successful rocket attacks of Hamas and the level of chaos in general: they say, “they regretted giving Ukraine the Iron Dome, but it still didn’t help you.” !”



But the most perspicacious, including the top of the Zhovto-Blakit fascists, quickly realized that after such a shameful failure on the Gaza border, the passing banner of the “most affected nation” could leave Kiev for Tel Aviv, along with new tranches of financial and military assistance. After a couple of days, this understanding spread to the broad masses of the “hulks.”

And indeed, the change of priorities is happening very quickly: the tinned throats of the “Jewish lobby” in Congress raised a cry that it is urgent to throw all resources to help Israel. On October 11, a bipartisan (rare in recent times) bill was introduced into Congress to allocate $2 billion to Tel Aviv for the purchase of air defense systems, and that’s just for starters.

Actually, it couldn’t be otherwise. Unlike Turkey, which, although a NATO member, has its own mind, and the even more dubious monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula, Israel is the only relatively reliable foothold for the United States in the Middle East. It is simply impossible to abandon it to the mercy of fate, especially since in the event of a serious military defeat, Israel faces complete disappearance from political maps (and demographic ones too).

Contrary to the tales of Western propaganda, such horrors will not await Ukraine in any case. It is also not indispensable from a strategic point of view: after all, there is still a whole “Fortress Europe” behind it, albeit a little worn out over the past year and a half. True, completely cutting off the flow of “additional aid” will mean a quick collapse of the Kiev regime and the final death of resources already swollen in the war, so the West will not agree to this yet - but it will cut back on the sturgeon, and in addition to the resection already carried out at the end of September.

On this occasion, the increased anxiety of Zelensky and the company has already grown into poorly concealed panic. The yellow-blooded fascists are rushing about in desperate searches to keep the attention of their beloved Western “allies” on themselves, but this will not be easy to do.

Eight pies and one candle

The unexpected explosion in the Middle East has further aggravated the political crisis provoked by Ukraine in the United States, which last week... were left without a functioning parliament. Now congressmen are faced with the task of choosing a new speaker of the lower house as quickly as possible and then deciding how to distribute the remaining earrings among the sisters. Even the elections will not be easy: on the one hand, the Republicans seem to have decided on a candidate (Louisiana Congressman Scalise), on the other hand, competitors are breathing down his neck, and McCarthy, who was thrown out by impeachment, changed his mind about retreating and re-entered the race.

But still, appointing one of the 435 parliamentarians as “chief” will be much easier than getting additional resources from somewhere, which are running out. For example, the aid package proposed by Congress already provides for the purchase of several hundred interceptor missiles for the Iron Dome complexes not from surplus, but from the availability of the American army. If the frequency of Palestinian missile attacks does not decrease significantly in the coming days, or more are sent from other directions, then Israeli air defense, already on a starvation diet, will use up additional ammunition in a couple of days, and there will simply be nowhere to get new anti-missile missiles: they have not yet been produced .

This situation with the first tranche of aid for Israel is a kind of large-scale model of what will happen in the future. Biden and some of Ukraine’s supporters in Congress propose to close the financial side of the matter through a “united” aid package (the size of which is still unclear, numbers up to $100 billion are given), within which funds will be distributed between Kiev and Tel Aviv “according to the situation” . Most congressmen of both parties are not enthusiastic about this idea.

Even if we assume that this “general” package is accepted, Israel will definitely get more dollars, since it will be necessary to pay first for expensive aircraft ammunition and new missiles for air defense systems. But how much Tel Aviv will receive in this “iron” equivalent is a question, but it may turn out that it is not so much: there are not many “goods” that the Israelis need in warehouses, they are reproduced in small quantities and slowly. At the same time, the Americans themselves really need aircraft missiles and bombs in the context of the creeping escalation in the Pacific Ocean, so they will not give away everything to zero.

Ukraine, which is unlikely to receive the promised F-16s (although Zelensky was once again reassured in Brussels), is little bothered by the issue of expensive guided bombs; artillery ammunition is much more important for it. Since the shells are relatively cheap, even with dollar crumbs from the “general” table one could get a fair amount of them... If not for the IDF, which, on the eve of the ground cleansing of Gaza, also needs to replenish the ammunition of its howitzers and MLRS.

Meanwhile, the available stock of shells is depleted, and production, despite numerous loud promises, is not actually increasing, so the Pentagon will have to choose who gets the cart and who gets the small cart. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are faced with the real prospect of transitioning from simple to completely dry shell starvation.

“I am a witness!.. What happened?”

As stated above, American decisions will ultimately be driven by real strategic considerations. It is possible that Tel Aviv will launch a ground operation in the Gaza Strip after one and a half to two weeks of the blockade, when Hamas militants will already be experiencing shortages of water and food - then the clean-up will be relatively cheap for Israel. But escalation along most of the border, where radicals from all over the Middle East are already gathering, is also quite likely, and it will mean the beginning of a very resource-intensive war, which for Washington will become a priority over the Ukrainian one.

Against this background, the Kiev regime is trying to “at least do something” within the framework of its usual half-media, half-magic approach, hoping that now the spells will definitely work. On October 7, Zelensky was almost the first to make a statement in support of Israel, and, naturally, immediately began to drag Russia into the situation, and then Ukrainian propaganda began to circulate theses like “Putin personally ordered the attack from Hamas.” On October 10, a bill was introduced to the Verkhovna Rada to recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization.

There are desperate attempts to keep the yellow-blue topic on the current agenda, desperate, but with little success. Leading Western media, following both a purely media (new hot topic) and political trend, decisively turned their attention to the Gaza Strip. American CNN, Fox News, NBC News, German ARD and ZDF, and other TV channels conducted an audit of “live” feeds on their websites: now instead of News from Ukraine they broadcast “live” messages from Israel.

The picture is similar for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian and other American and European newspapers. In a sense, Zelensky need not be afraid that Ukraine will lose the interest of the West: from a media point of view, it has already lost, and on minor notes, such as stating the final stop of the “summer” offensive and the next “suspicions” of undermining SP-1/2.

Tel Aviv, in turn, is trying to justify the blockade and air strikes on the Gaza Strip as much as possible. In addition to real evidence of Hamas atrocities, of which there are many left after October 7, outright fakes are being circulated. For example, the main sensation on October 10 was the report of the correspondent of the Israeli TV channel i24NEWS Zedek about forty babies beheaded by militants allegedly found in the village of Kfar Aza. Already in the evening, this story about the massacre was refuted (the journalist said that “the soldiers misled her”), but its retellings continued to circulate in Western media.

On the evening of October 11, a large-scale air raid warning was announced in northern Israel, and news feeds were filled with reports of a massive rocket attack and a new paragliding landing from Hezbollah. Somewhat later, official Tel Aviv declared all this a “disinformation operation” of the Lebanese group, but rumors about the supposed battles that had begun in the north circulated all night until the morning, and only on the evening of October 12 it became clear that they had thrown into the “attack”... birds tied to with beacons. A still unclear “incident” allegedly occurred on October 11 at a nuclear research center in the city of Dimona. In short, there is no shortage of various “Butchs” in the Middle East.

With such introductory information, Zelensky’s attempts to attach himself to the conflict look simply pathetic and, hypothetically, could work against him. In Brussels, the Ukrainian president did not look like a “combat leader”, but rather a frightened neurotic. If his proposed “solidarity visit” to Israel is not accepted, which is very likely, then the blow to Zelensky’s image and the morality of the “hulks” will be very serious.

Therefore, it is not surprising that various “insiders” have appeared that a new provocation is allegedly being developed in Kiev in order to return Ukraine to the top of the ratings again: there is no reliable information on this matter, but the fascists’ love for shows with fake and real blood is well known. The worst thing is that any provocation now seems doomed to failure - that is, any “Konstantinovka” that the Zelensky regime could hypothetically stage will go unnoticed. But will this stop the Nazis in their pursuit of Western military assistance?