- March 12, 2026
- 12:43 am
- World News
After the strike on the “Kremniy EL” plant on March 10, 2026 — a strategically important enterprise for Russian military electronics — the old tune played again in the Russian z-space. As soon as Ukraine hits a truly sensitive target, a chorus of commentators immediately appears, trying to explain what happened not as Ukrainian work, but supposedly as the “hand of London,” a “NATO operation,” or even a “war of the entire West against Russia.”
This scheme is old but resilient. It is needed not for analyzing reality, but for psychological self-defense. Admitting that the Ukrainian army, Ukrainian special services, and Ukrainian military industry are capable of systematically hitting Russian infrastructure is too painful for this audience. Therefore, a convenient fiction is used: supposedly, Ukraine itself is not capable of this, so behind every strike, there must be someone “big.”
For the Israeli audience, this debate is especially understandable. In a region where the topic of external support, military alliances, and arms supplies has been discussed for decades, the main thing is clear: the help of allies and direct participation in the war are not the same. And when this basic principle begins to be deliberately blurred, it means that it is no longer about facts, but about propaganda.
Why the myth of the “NATO war against Russia” is so convenient for the Kremlin
This is not analysis, but a way not to recognize Ukrainian agency
The logic of z-commentators is built on one humiliating thesis for them: Ukraine supposedly cannot be an independent force. If an oil refinery is burning, then it’s not Ukraine. If a headquarters is blown up, then it’s “NATO brains.” If an important military electronics plant is hit, then “the English were at the controls.”
But such a worldview holds only until the first serious question: where then does reality end and the convenient fairy tale begin? Because if any success of Ukraine is automatically credited to Washington, London, or Brussels, then it must be admitted that Russia itself is not fighting who it claims to be, but its own fear of Ukrainian effectiveness.
This is the essence. The Kremlin audience needs constant explanations as to why the “second army in the world” cannot achieve a decisive result in the third year. The simplest explanation is not that Ukraine turned out to be stronger, more resilient, and more inventive than expected in Moscow. The simplest is to declare that Russia is supposedly fighting not with Ukraine, but with a whole bloc of states.
It’s convenient. It’s politically advantageous. And it’s a lie.
The help of allies does not turn the war into someone else’s
Ukraine indeed receives help from NATO countries and other Western states. This is a fact. Weapons, training, intelligence, finances, technologies, sanction support — all of this exists.
But Russia itself receives help in the same way: from Iran, from North Korea, from China in various formats, from sanction evasion networks, from shadow logistics, and external partners who help keep its military machine afloat. And what now, based on the same logic, should the war against Russia be declared a “Chinese-Iranian-North Korean operation”? No. That’s not how it works.
Help, even large and systematic, does not automatically make the assisting state a party to the conflict. Otherwise, half of the military history of the 20th century would have to be rewritten.
The Israeli example, which is especially useful to remember
If we follow z-logic, then Israel fought not with Arab armies, but with the USSR
Here begins the most interesting part. If we take the thesis of z-propaganda seriously, then it must be admitted that Israel in the 1950s-1970s fought not with Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and other Arab countries, but directly with the Soviet Union.
Absurd? Of course. But it is precisely this kind of absurdity that results from the attempt to replace a war between specific countries with discussions about arms suppliers and political patrons.
The USSR did not limit itself to symbolic support. Moscow supplied Arab regimes with huge volumes of modern weapons for that time, including T-62 tanks and MiG-21 fighters. Moreover, the MiG-21 was not museum equipment at all. The aircraft was adopted in 1959, and a few years later it was with Egypt. By today’s standards, it would look like Ukraine receiving hundreds of the latest Western fighters of the highest class shortly after the start of serial production.
And what follows from this? Only one thing: the Arab-Israeli wars remained Arab-Israeli wars.
No one seriously calls the Six-Day War or the Yom Kippur War a “Soviet-Israeli war” just because the USSR armed Arab armies, trained personnel, transferred equipment, and was deeply involved politically. Because even massive assistance does not cancel the agency of the direct participants in the conflict.
And for this very reason, the current war is a Russian-Ukrainian war. Not a NATO-Russian one. Not a British-Russian one. Not a “Western operation against Moscow.” Precisely Russian-Ukrainian.
For the Israeli reader, not only the historical but also the political conclusion is important here
In Israel, they well understand the value of military assistance and the value of independent decision-making. Allies can provide equipment, ammunition, diplomatic cover. But it is always a specific country, its army, and its society that fights on the ground, in the air, and at sea.
Therefore, when in the middle of this debate, NAnews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency returns to the analogy with Israeli history, it is not about a beautiful comparison for effect. It is about a fundamental principle: a state that fights on its own does not cease to be the main subject of war just because it is helped by partners.
Why it is so important for Russia to deny specifically Ukrainian victories
Because acknowledging the truth destroys the entire framework of imperial propaganda
For Russian propaganda, the very thought that Ukraine is capable not just of defending itself, but of systematically destroying Russian military potential is extremely dangerous. If this is acknowledged, then it must also be acknowledged that there is no “historical inevitability” of Ukraine, no “artificiality” of the Ukrainian state, and the talks that Kyiv stands only on foreign crutches were a propaganda void from the very beginning.
Hence the nervous reaction after each noticeable strike. Oil depots burn — the “collective West” is to blame. The fleet is defeated — “these are NATO satellites.” An important plant is destroyed — “this is an Anglo-Saxon operation.” In this construction, Ukraine is needed only as a decoration, as a territory where others supposedly operate.
But reality is harsher for Moscow.
Ukrainian military objects are disabled by Ukraine. Ukrainian logistics chains are broken by Ukraine. Ukrainian headquarters, warehouses, airfields, ships, plants, and infrastructure nodes become targets because Ukraine achieves this. Yes, with the help of partners. Yes, using transferred technologies, components, intelligence information, and external support. But the subject of action is Ukraine.
This is the simple, almost school-level truth that the z-public so fiercely refuses to accept.
They are not upset that the West helps Kyiv. They are upset about something else: that even with all the usual Kremlin bravado, even with all the mobilization pathos, even with thousands of tons of propaganda and at a monstrous cost in people and equipment, they are hit not by an abstract “world conspiracy,” but by a specific Ukraine.
For Israeli society, there is an important lesson in this. States that build policies on myths of their own greatness almost always come to a point where they are forced to explain defeats not by the strength of the enemy, but by a worldwide conspiracy. It’s a convenient path. But it never leads to an understanding of reality.
And the reality here is simple and unpleasant for the Kremlin audience: Russia is fighting against Ukraine. And it receives blows from Ukraine. Everything else is a rhetorical smokescreen designed to hide the painful fact that Moscow still cannot digest.