Far-right Ukraine competing with apartheid "Israel" over limited or even dwindling supplies of attention, money, and armaments from the West. Photo: Zeinab al-Hajj/Al Mayadeen English.
By Dmitri Kovalevich – Jun 28, 2025
Ukraine and “Israel” are being openly recognized for what they are, instruments of Western imperialism.
The world’s attention has been focused during June 2025 on “Israel’s” aggression against Iran, overshadowing the Western proxy war in Ukraine, now into its fourth year.
Representatives of the warmaking regime in Kiev responded to “Israel’s” attacks against Iran by siding with the aggressor. But they are pleading at the same time for their Western sponsors not to forget and leave behind their own regime’s need for continued supplies of funding and armaments. Kiev is now waiting with bated breath that the ceasefire announced between the two sides on June 24 will hold.
“Israel” and Ukraine are vital proxies for Western imperialism, each serving in their own ways as wedges aimed against the countries of Eurasia and the Global South. This is despite the historical animosity between Ukraine’s Jewish population and the ultra-nationalist ideology, which now prevails there, interspersed as it is with outright, neo-Nazi ideology. The ideological mix is tolerated and accepted by “Israel” and by the Western countries because far-right and neo-Nazi movements are on the rise in the West, deeply influencing central government policies and the conduct of their police and military agencies.
Apartheid “Israel” and far-right Ukraine, together with their dirty wars, are becoming ‘competitors’ for attention, financing, and armaments from the West. That is due to the limited capacities of the Western powers to help these two proxies with money and arms while simultaneously desperately trying to wage wars on two fronts at once. This dilemma for the West is further complicated by the fact that both proxies are seeking to draw the US and the other NATO powers into direct conflict on their side.
Both proxies are using similar methods. On June 1, the Ukrainian security services announced that they had conducted ‘Operation Spider Web’ on Russian territory, consisting of blowing up railway bridges used by trains carrying civilian passengers resulting in numerous casualties and launching drones smuggled into Russia and then aimed at airfields that are an integral part of Russia’s military defense against nuclear weapons.
The nuclear weapons agreement signed by the US and Russia in 2010 (formally named ‘Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms’) included the provision that strategic nuclear bomber fleets of each country be stationed in open-air airfields to minimize the danger of sneak attacks. That agreement was supposed to lead to a more comprehensive ‘START 2’ nuclear weapons treaty, but that failed when the US refused in June 2002 to renew an existing ABM Treaty. A ‘START 3’ treaty also failed, with the US and the Russian Federation eventually agreeing to the more limited Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), or ‘Moscow Treaty’, in 2003.
According to the online Ukraine news outlet Strana on June 17, the Israeli Mossad secret police launched drone strikes from Iranian territory, copying Ukraine’s recent ‘Operation Spider Web’ targeting Russian military airfields. Continuing the same thread on Telegram, Strana wrote further that if “Israel” and the US manage to break Iran’s military defenses and force it to accept their terms, this will surely be used to persuade the Trump regime in Washington to enter into direct warfare with the Russian Federation.
Former Ukrainian legislator Oleksandr Dubinsky believes that “Israel” is much more important to the US than is Ukraine, as evidenced already by the fact that the US has deployed advanced air defense systems and is refueling Israeli warplanes to assist the Israeli Air Force. “This experience shows how the US treats countries such as Ukraine, whose ‘partnership’ it considers to be important but not critically so, Ukraine is a “torpedo” in foreign hands, nothing more. It will be abandoned immediately after it fulfills its goals or should its military forces be defeated, whichever comes first.”
Dubinsky is a former associate of the Ukrainian regime leader Volodomyr Zelensky and is currently serving prison time in prison for ‘treason’. His status as an elected member of the Ukrainian legislature has been stripped away.
Dubinsky explains that the Office of the President of Ukraine is “jealous” over how the attention of the world’s media is shifting away from Zelensky’s figure. Kiev is well aware that the loss of interest in Ukraine’s problems and its dropping lower on the agenda of the Western media is fraught with the danger of losing Western funding and arms supplies. This was underlined at the meeting of leaders of the G7 countries held in Canada from June 15 to 17. Zelensky rushed to attend as an invited guest, but the event failed to produce a statement on the conflict in Ukraine.
According to the Ukrainian Telegram channel Legitimny, Zelensky looked lost at the summit meeting’s closing media event on June 17. Commenting on a video of the event, Legitimny wrote, “Pay attention to how the Prime Minister of Italy looks at Zelensky. She understands that his role is ending and the G7 media event that day is a little chat, nothing more.”
Ukrainian economist Oleksiy Kushch writes that from a global perspective, the world is refocusing its attention on the Middle East because that’s where some of the world’s major oil production and related financial centers are located. The stakes are in the trillions of dollars, writes Kusch, so in order to understand where events are headed, do as Western capitalists often advise: ‘Follow the money.’
“Israel’s” actions in the current war resemble those of Ukraine in many respects. This is manifested in their racist attitudes toward the inhabitants of Palestine and Donbass, respectively, and also in “Israel’s” ‘copy-cat’ banning of its citizens from leaving the country.
Thus, ‘fully-fledged’ citizens are even becoming hostages of each regime. Zelensky has made Ukrainian men into de facto slaves, barring them from leaving the country ever since February 2022, in order that they serve as ‘cannon fodder’ for the regime, not be lost to conscription evasion. There is a vast, daily manhunt by military recruiters taking place all over Ukraine for diminishing numbers of bodies available for its armed forces. Gaps in Ukraine’s defensive lines are growing larger as replacement reserves are disappearing or do not have the required health or military training to be effective and survive. It is likely that a similar scenario would await the Israeli army if its struggle with Palestine and Iran were to resume and move to a stage of ground hostilities.
At the G7 summit in Canada, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz acknowledged that “Israel” is doing the “dirty work” for the entire West by attacking Iran. “I am grateful to you for the term ‘dirty work’,” Merz told an inquiring German journalist at a media event. “This is dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us.”
Merz continued, “I can only say that [I have] the greatest respect for the fact that the Israeli army had the courage to do this [an unprovoked attack against Iran] and that the Israeli state leadership had the courage to do this.” His words shocked many in Germany, already used to the harsh and repressive support of genocidal “Israel” being waged by the government in Berlin.
In March 2025, German intelligence chief Bruno Kahl expressed his desire for the war in Ukraine to continue until 2030, which he says would result in European governments feeling safer (from whom, exactly?). This is how the government in Berlin is openly acknowledging the proxy character of the wars in Ukraine and, since October 2023, in the Middle East. Ukraine and “Israel” are being openly recognized for what they are, instruments of Western imperialism.
Oleg Yasinsky, a left-wing Ukrainian journalist living in Chile, wrote on June 14 that the Western powers and their satellites are bowing before all of this. “Allies and satellites of the West could make canned food out of dead babies and as long as they remain obedient, no one would reproach them or talk of sanctions to stop what they are doing.”
“There is no war between Israel and Iran,” he writes. “What is taking place is the destruction of Iranian sovereignty at the hands of Israel, planned by the West. Here is yet another lesson for the peoples and governments of Russia, Belarus, Cuba, Venezuela, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Burkina Faso and anyone else, even China. The claims that Iran would provide nuclear weapons technology to other countries resemble the infamous claims of ‘chemical weapons’ said to be in the hands of the Iraq government under Saddam Hussein and therefore warranting an all-out invasion.”
Yasinsky continues, “For the Western powers, claims of ‘violations of human rights’ by this or that independent country begin at the moment when such a country begins to conduct an independent foreign policy. Disobedience to the economic tyranny of Western corporations is the main challenge facing the ‘civilized world’ today, and this gets disobedience gets fully punished by media lies followed by economic sanctions and eventually missiles… The indignation being voiced by the Israeli government for the ‘brutal shelling of civilians in Tel Aviv’ by the Iranian military is an insult to the conscience and common sense of humanity, considering the tens of thousands of children who continue to be methodically killed in Gaza.”
Yasinsky draws parallels between the attack against Iran and the 2015 ‘Minsk 2’ agreement for peace in Ukraine. The coup regime in power in Kiev in 2015 had not the slightest intention to honor that agreement, just as US talks with Iran over its nuclear energy program were solely intended to distract the Iranian government and put it to sleep. Washington’s decision to seek the destruction of Iran was made long ago.
Some Western observers are warning that the conflict in the Middle East could lead to strikes against nuclear energy facilities, producing radioactive contamination of air, water, and land. Zelensky is using such fears to draw attention to himself and claim that Russia intends to strike nuclear energy facilities in Ukraine.
Zelensky’s words reflect his anger and envy that the attention of Western media has switched to the Middle East. “Russia is also planning further attacks against our energy-producing industries; this may become less visible to the world because of the focus on the situation in the Middle East,” Zelensky claimed on Telegram on June 15. But this refrain is getting tired; it has been trotted out for more than three years now, ever since the beginning of Russia’s military intervention in February 2022.
The regime in Kiev is also unhappy with the fact that Israel’s conflict with Iran may sharply inflate world oil prices and thereby increase the revenues of Russia’s fossil fuel industries and central government. Ukraine is quite threatened by rising oil, gasoline, and diesel fuel prices for the operations of its armed forces.
Political scientist Ruslan Bortnik argues that an increase in the world price of oil will cause two crises at once for Ukraine. “First, energy prices in Europe and the U.S will rise, which will have a negative impact on domestic public opinion there. And second, the governments of some countries, notably Russia, will earn significant increases in income. This will give Russia more opportunity to continue and intensify the war.”
Andriy Kobolyev, the former head of Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-run oil and natural gas company, predicts a rise in natural gas prices in Europe due to the Israeli strikes against Iran’s gas industry. As he explains, Iran has been supplying gas to Turkey, which has then been reselling it to European Union countries. That supply arrangement to Europe through Turkey will now be reduced. Ukraine, itself having severed its gas supply from Russia and having emptied its underground gas storage facilities this past winter, is now obliged to buy gas from the EU at a time of rising prices.
In a recent interview, Zelensky also worried about the decline in Western arms supplies, much of which are now being redirected to the Middle East. “It will become more difficult for Ukraine to buy weapons from the United States, as Washington is expected to increase military aid to Israel,” says Sergei Danilov, deputy director of the Kiev-based Center for Middle East Studies.
The Zerkalo Nedeli weekly in Ukraine is panicking that the US has already redirected to the Middle East extremely important elements of anti-drone systems that were intended for Ukraine. The publication believes that “for pragmatic reasons” Ukraine is quietly interested in ending the Iran-“Israel” conflict as soon as possible; it does not want it to expand.
At the NATO summit in The Hague on June 25, Trump responded to a question from ВВС Ukraine about the sale of US Patriot missiles to Kiev by saying that the US did not have many more of them to offer because they had already been provided to “Israel.”
Ukrainian experts are also concerned that all of Zelensky’s attempts (at the request of London and Brussels) to reverse the positions taken by Global South countries on the conflict in Ukraine, opposing Kiev regime actions, will now go down the drain. According to Ukrainian analysts, the West will unite around “Israel” while the Global South will unite around Iran, Russia, and China. In this situation, it will be more difficult for Kiev and the West to proclaim and find believers in “Russian aggression” because “Israel” so obviously struck Iran first. The whole world can now see clearly that “Israel,” not Iran, is the aggressor in the Middle East.
The Ukrainian Telegram channel of political analysis, Rubicon, writes that for Ukraine, the war against Iran has turned out to be extremely unfortunate, even though Kiev’s sympathies and support lie on the side of the Zionist entity.
Although Trump is boasting that he has successfully brought “peace” to “Israel” and Iran, he warned at the NATO summit in The Hague that war between them could well resume. It could soon resume just in case.
Trump Plans Tighter Intel Curbs After Iran Strike Impact Leak: Axios
Most of the legislators from Zelensky’s ‘Servant of the People’ party machine have expressed support for “Israel” and are seeking to dehumanize Iran and its people as much as possible. A legislator from Zelensky’s party, Maxim Buzhansky, wrote on Telegram on June 16, “Iran stands outside morality and has done so firmly and for a long time. I sincerely hope it will pay dearly, and soon.”
For Ukrainian politicians and their racist world view, “Israel” is symbolically ‘a part of Europe,’ while Iran is part of ‘barbaric Asia’. Russia is portrayed similarly by the ideologues of far-right Ukraine. Ukrainian legislators claim that Iran is led by ‘religious fanatics,’ conveniently forgetting that the “Israel” they defend as a “theocratic state” has now become an openly “genocidal state.”
For all of their emotional support to “Israel,” the leaders of far-right, pro-Western Ukraine harbor uncomfortable thoughts that they and apartheid “Israel” [1] are actually competing for limited or even dwindling supplies of attention, money, and armaments from the West.
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Explanatory editorial note:
[1] The term ‘apartheid’ as used in the Russian language [апартеИд] refers largely to the past apartheid regime of South Africa. The term is not commonly used to describe today’s “Israel”; the most common term for that in Russian refers to “Israel” as a society of ‘segregation’.
‘Genocide’ [геноцИд] in the Russian language refers to the mass extermination of populations on the basis of their ethnic/religious character. Russian society widely accepts that a genocide was conducted by Turkey against the Armenian populations it dominated in 1915/1916; and, of course, that a genocide was conducted by Nazi Germany against Jewish and Roma peoples throughout the territories it occupied and influenced during the world war begun in 1939. These occupied territories included Soviet Crimea and Soviet Ukraine from 1941 to 1944. The term is controversial in today’s Russia because of its widespread and false usage by Western ideologues to describe the mass deportations of ethnic Koreans, Turks, Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans and others by the Stalin regime of the Soviet Union following the catastrophic invasion by Nazi Germany in June 1941.
Dmitri Kovalevich
Dmitri Kovalevich is a Ukrainian Communist, member of the organization Borotba. He is the special correspondent in Ukraine for Al Mayadeen English.
