One of Russia's goals is to draw global attention away from the war in Europe, says Ukraine's president.
The Israel-Gaza war is "taking away the focus" from the conflict in Ukraine, the country's President Volodymyr Zelensky has admitted.
He said this was "one of the goals" of Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
And he denied that fighting in Ukraine had reached a stalemate, despite a recent assessment to this effect by the country's top military general.
Ukraine's counter-offensive in the south has so far made little headway.
This has prompted fears of war fatigue among Kyiv's Western allies, with suggestions of growing reluctance in some capitals to continue giving Ukraine advanced weapons and funds.
What is taking away the focus is the fact that he supported the ethnic cleansing and genocide that Israel is committing in Palestine. So he thought that these things are not inherently bad, but only bad when they are happening to yourself - and fuck everyone else.
Now he's just finding out that that might not have been the smartest move, if he have to explain to the world again that they must give a fuck about his war.
"Zelensky was one of the first leaders to call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and express support for Israel.
"In the face of such a terrorist strike, everyone who values life must stand in solidarity ... Israel has the full right to defend itself against terror," Zelensky said in a statement shortly after the attack."
It's a bit of a leap to go from that to full on support for ethnic cleansing.
That is not the same as calling for ethnic cleansing.
Someone punches you in the face, you have a right to defend yourself. You don't have a right to kill them, burn their house down, murder their entire family, and then take out the rest of the block "just to be sure".
Okay devoid of all context and reality and focusing only on the rhetoric, you have a point.
Now imagine if I commit a genocide while claiming a right to defend myself, like the Nazis did? How is that phrase being deployed in that historical example?
If you claim a right to defend yourself while committing a genocide, it is in fact the same as calling for genocide.
If you had asked them, they would have told you differently. They would have told you about the long and complicated history that brought them to that point and the necessity of their actions. They would have told you about the barbarism of their enemies and the atrocities they carried out.
There are heroic stories from the Warsaw ghetto and partisans who refused to be captured and took to the forests that you'd be erasing by making such a claim. Martyrs. Examples you and I could only hope to live up to if we found ourselves in their shoes. Resilience against pain and suffering the likes of which we can only read about. The human spirit will not allow itself to be extinguished without a struggle. Those who wish to extinguish it will always have examples of violence occurring against them.
Because his very political existence has been to pull Ukraine to the west and Israel is the US's 51st state. Things are going very badly for him and he's eager to get as much favor from the patron state as he can. He's going to get eaten alive by his local politics.