{"id":233,"date":"2023-10-10T22:47:22","date_gmt":"2023-10-10T19:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/?p=233"},"modified":"2023-12-11T22:49:59","modified_gmt":"2023-12-11T19:49:59","slug":"russias-military-disguises-its-pain-by-sneering-at-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/new-nobility\/russias-military-disguises-its-pain-by-sneering-at-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s Military Disguises its Pain by Sneering at Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Russia\u2019s army has a complicated view of the Israeli military<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, the Soviet military backed attempts to erase Israel through support for Arab armies in wars from the 1960s onwards. And yes, it was perplexed and pained by Israel\u2019s destruction<\/a> of Soviet-trained and Soviet-equipped armed forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there was serious admiration too, both for the military and for Israel\u2019s intelligence services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of that changed dramatically with the Hamas attack<\/a> on October 7. Russian pro-war Telegram channels were flooded with photographs of Israeli tanks and comments like \u201cAnother Merkava is burning brightly . . . apparently, the IDF leadership completely slept through the lessons of the SVO [Special military operation, the Kremlin\u2019s term for its war in Ukraine.] and is resting on the laurels of long-past victories,\u201d military expert Boris Rozhin, who is close to the Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, said on Telegram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A military correspondent for Komsomolskaya Pravda,<\/em> Alexander Kots, posted on October 7: \u201cAfter today, I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if they [IDF] march into the Palestinian enclave in columns, to be burned by drones.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many Russian military commentators gleefully empathized with Hamas\u2019s use of lessons from the war in Ukraine, and the IDF\u2019s inability to do the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what\u2019s going on here? Well, quite a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Firstly, these comments unmask the acute psychological trauma suffered by the Russian military after its disastrous offensive against Ukraine in the early months of 2022. Not only was Russia\u2019s military mauled by its supposedly inferior Ukrainian counterpart, but it was subjected to widespread derision from numerous Western and other experts. That loss of global respect is hard to bear for a nation with a proud military tradition. So, the relief offered by Hamas has triggered an avalanche of schadenfreude<\/em>. You laughed at our incompetence? Now it\u2019s our turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondly, there is a deep-seated Russian disdain for all Arab militaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That can be traced back to the drubbing delivered by Israel to Arab armies in the Six-Day War\u00a0of 1967. It marked a huge change of opinion within the military ranks. Israel\u2019s absolute victory was explained by the Soviet officer corps as attributable to the \u201cpoor fighting capabilities of the Arabs,\u201d according to Victor Suvorov, a tank commander in 1967, and later a GRU defector to the UK, who described the feeling of confusion and dismay among the ranks of his army comrades in his book\u00a0The Liberators. My life in the Soviet Army.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How else to explain why all that Soviet military help, combined with Soviet military aid, including advanced weapons systems, failed to bring victory over the Israelis?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ever since, the Soviet army\u2019s disdain has been combined with vulgar xenophobia towards Arabs. The Israeli forces, on the other hand, were put on a pedestal. And that feeling continued, uninterrupted, as the Soviet Union collapsed and the Russian army was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus Russian military accounts also posted xenophobic responses to events, designed to show the supposed stupidity of Hamas militants; one derided a Palestinian standing in front of a captured Merkava tank with a screwdriver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this seems contradictory, that\u2019s because it is. It is of course true that the KGB orchestrated antisemitic campaigns in Soviet society, which was explained in propaganda by the \u201caggressive stance of Israel.\u201d Russian security services and politicians<\/a> remain deeply antisemitic to this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It openly assisted Arab countries throughout the Cold War and still claims an anti-colonial link to their \u201cstruggle\u201d. Past aid extended from military support to assistance for Israeli adversaries, including militant and terrorist groups. Cold War-era Palestinian militants rested and recuperated in Czechoslovak spa towns like Karlovy Vary in between missions, where they would meet KGB staff based at the consulate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early 2000s, the Russian security services also joined the ranks of admirers of the Israeli military and of Israeli special forces and intelligence agencies.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The authors remember a conversation with an officer of the FSB Vympel group, the most famous special operations unit of the FSB, which had been formed in the early 1980s to conduct special operations abroad but spent most of the 1990s and 2000s fighting militants in the North Caucasus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sergei Shavrin, a decorated colonel, who received the Hero of Russia award for saving the lives of his soldiers during the siege of Grozny, told us: \u201cTake a look at Mossad [hit squads]. Why can\u2019t we do the same with our terrorists abroad?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shavrin was clearly impressed by the efficacy and ruthlessness of Israeli operatives, launching global manhunts like the 1970s assassinations of the Munich Olympic terrorists in Operation Wrath of God<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two years after that conversation, Putin introduced legislation allowing Russian agencies to conduct assassinations abroad, in clear imitation of the Israeli approach, although right from the start the list of targets included Putin\u2019s personal political enemies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In truth, Russia\u2019s targeted assassination campaign has had mixed results. Opponents have been killed but the political and diplomatic costs were enormous, and the Russian security service\u2019s reputation was hardly helped after botched attacks like the 2018 Salisbury poisonings<\/a>. They arguably even laid the groundwork for the West\u2019s united response to Russian aggression in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And whatever the failings of the Israeli military and security services (which are clearly very serious indeed), it does little to improve the image of Russia\u2019s military, which has been badly damaged by its campaign in Ukraine. That doesn\u2019t seem like anything to celebrate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published in CEPA<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agentura.ru 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia\u2019s army has a complicated view of the Israeli military. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-nobility"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235,"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions\/235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}