By Independent News Roundup
The Jerusalem Post cited “a source close to Ukrainian intelligence” to report on Monday that “Russian intelligence has provided Iran with a detailed list of 55 critical energy infrastructure targets within Israel”. This follows reports over the past month that Russia is helping Iran target the US’ regional assets, which were assessed here as believable, but it was also explained here why both the Kremlin and the White House are covering this up. The same cannot be said about this report, however, which is fake news.
For starters, the source is someone “close to Ukrainian intelligence”, thus immediately casting aspersions on whatever they claim about Russia due to Kiev’s obvious self-interest in dividing it and Israel. The context of arguably believable reports that Russia is helping Iran target the US’ regional assets lends false credence to the latest one that it’s now helping Iran target Israeli energy infrastructure too. All that Ukrainian intelligence had to do was find a journalist and outlet willing to launder this lie to the public.
There are several reasons why Russia didn’t do this, not least of which is that the location of Israel’s energy infrastructure is public knowledge and easily verifiable through open sources, so Iran doesn’t need Russia’s help with this. The second is that Putin once famously declared that “Russians and Israelis have ties of family and friendship. This is a true common family; I can say this without exaggeration. Almost 2 million Russian speakers live in Israel. We consider Israel a Russian-speaking country.”
It’s therefore improbable that he’d help Iran inconvenience, harm, and especially kill his fellow Russian speakers about whom he feels so strongly that he authorized the special operation in no small part to defend their rights in Ukraine. The Russian-speaking community in Israel holds a special place in his heart since Putin is a proud lifelong philo-Semite whose best friends from childhood till now are all Jews. He of course has non-Jewish friends too, but his longest-lasting friendships are all with Russian Jews.
Readers who are unaware of Putin’s love for Jews and the State of Israel can review these quotes from the Kremlin website from 2000-2018 that completely debunk the false “Potemkinist” narrative pushed by Alt-Media charlatans alleging that he’s an anti-Zionist secretly allied with Iran against Israel. It’s precisely because of how widespread this lie about him has become due to it being spread by putative friends and undeniable foes alike that Ukraine’s latest infowar attack against Russia will likely dupe many.
Therein lies the genius behind it since this provocation takes maximum advantage of the misguided narrative tactic employed by “Non-Russian Pro-Russians” (NRPR) with the tacit approval of their “soft power supervisors” (SPS) in Russia. These SPS – members of its publicly financed Russian media, officialdom, and conference/forum organizers who are in touch with top NRPR influencers – never discreetly nudged these NRPRs in the direction of more accurately reflecting Russian policy.
Instead, it was seemingly concluded that making people like Russia on false premises was more important than them liking it on real premises despite the risk of them becoming despondent or even turning on Russia upon discovering the easily verifiable truth about its policies, which was a mistake. Top Russian expert Dmitry Trenin just bravely issued a clarion call to correct foreign policy misperceptions among his peers, so hopefully this leads to abandoning “Potemkinism” too, though it’s too early to tell.
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