Category: The News And Times Blog

Russia’s mercenary group is preparing to deliver an advanced air defense missile system to Hezbollah as the Lebanese militia group clashes with Israel, according to US intelligence.

American officials are currently monitoring discussions between the Wagner mercenary group and Lebanon’s Hamas-supporting militia over the possible delivery of the SA-22, a system that uses anti-aircraft missiles and guns to combat airstrikes, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The SA-22 system, also known as Pantsir-S1, is a truck-mounted surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery weapons system made in Russia.  

The weapon has seen action in the Russian-Ukraine War and could be deployed in the Middle East as a defense for the Iran-backed militia group against Israel’s airstrikes.

Clashes between Israel and Hezbollah have increased along the Lebanese border as the war with Hamas rages in Gaza.

American officials say the SA-22 has yet to be delivered to Lebanon, but noted that some Hezbollah and Wagner personnel are currently stationed in Syria.

Hezbollah fighters are allegedly in contact with Russia’s Wagner mercenary group to receive an anti-aircraft weapon. AP The SA-22, developed in Russia, uses missiles and gunfire to take out aircrafts.Imagebroker/Shutterstock

It remains unclear if the weapon could be transported from Lebanon to Gaza as a means to help Hamas combat Israel’s bombardments of the Palestinian enclave.

Russian officials have yet to comment on the alleged discussions between Wagner and Hezbollah.

The US has made its presence known in the area by stationing an aircraft carrier in the Eastern Mediterranean as a deterrent for Hezbollah to join Hamas in attacking Israel.

After Israel declared war on Hamas on Oct. 7, President Biden warned outside parties from staging an assault on Israel’s borders.

The Wagner Group lost its autonomy following the mercenaries’ coup attempt over the summer. AP

Despite the warning, the heads of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad met last week to announce their united war against the Jewish State.

The trio of terrorist leaders — dubbed the “axis of resistance” — met to set a goal for achieving “a real victory for the resistance in Gaza and Palestine” and halt Israel’s “treacherous and brutal aggression against our oppressed and steadfast people in Gaza and the West Bank,” according to a brief statement released afterward.

The meeting came after Israel vowed to launch a full-scale military assault against Iran if Hezbollah joined the ongoing war.

“The plan of Iran is to attack Israel on all fronts. If we find they intend to target Israel, we will not just retaliate to those fronts, but we will go to the head of the snake, which is Iran,” Nir Barkat, Israel’s Minister of Economy, told the Daily Mail.

Editor’s Note: A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

When was the last time you saw a live television news report from Ukraine? It’s likely been a while.

The raging war in the Middle East has put the prolonged war in Eastern Europe largely on the back burner, in terms of media coverage, with Vladimir Putin’s campaign of brutality against Ukraine receiving much less attention from the press than it did prior to the Israel-Hamas conflict breaking out.

Closed-captioning data from the Internet Television Archive, which was analyzed by the GDELT Project, showed that on cable news, coverage of the Ukraine war plummeted dramatically after Hamas’ shocking Oct. 7 terror attack. In the days before the Israel-Hamas war, the battle in Ukraine amounted to about eight percent of CNN’s television coverage. After the attacks, CNN —the cable news network that provided the most Ukraine coverage — fell to under one percent.

As the chaos to elect a new House speaker ensnared Washington, there was a notable uptick in mentions of Ukraine on cable news networks — but the focus of the coverage mostly pertained to U.S. funding of the embattled nation, not the actual state of play in the war.

Data provided by ComScore, an Internet analytics firm, showed a similar trend play out online. The data indicated that there has been a significant drop in discussion on social media about the Ukraine war since the onset of the Israel-Hamas conflict, though it also indicated that in general, there had been a lull in attention to Putin’s invasion in recent months.

The noted drop in Ukraine war coverage from the press, given the fresh violence in the Middle East, is not completely surprising. The horrific acts of violence Hamas carried out in Israel has shocked the world, arresting the attention of those who normally pay little regard to global affairs. U.S. outlets have also been juggling several other important stories in the last several weeks, including disarray in Congress, Donald Trump’s legal issues and a monstrous mass shooting in Maine.

But, at the same time, the drop in attention paid to Ukraine has been nothing short of a boon for Putin. The authoritarian Russian leader, who has committed unspeakable atrocities as his forces invade a sovereign nation, has been able to wage his war with far less scrutiny on his appalling actions.

Paul Kolbe, a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in Harvard Kennedy School, who served for 25 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, told me that Putin must be “delighted” that the war between Israel and Hamas “is diverting US attention” as Russia “continues to strike Ukrainian cities and civilian targets.”

“Even as Western press coverage of war in Ukraine wanes, Russia fills the vacuum in reporting with its own campaign of distributing lies and disinformation,” Kolbe said. “Putin’s strategy is to wear down Western patience and support, play upon U.S. domestic divisions, and to prey upon those in NATO which harbor latent Russian sympathies.”

In addition to the kinetic military action, Putin is also waging an information war, using all the tools at his disposal to lie about and sanitize the acts of savagery being committed against a civilian population under his orders. As Kolbe told me, “Putin’s media campaign to paint Ukraine as divided, corrupt, and a puppet of the U.S. and NATO, is a central part” of his strategy.

The lack of press attention makes that all the more easier.

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November 16 2023, 8.05am