While the world watches the Middle East, Russian propaganda is running a coordinated campaign with a familiar target: Ukraine.
As US and Israeli strikes on Iran reshaped the security landscape across the Middle East, the Kremlin’s information apparatus shifted into a higher gear — running a coordinated campaign that uses the conflict to pursue a familiar objective: convincing Western audiences that Ukraine has been abandoned, discrediting Kyiv and its allies, and undermining the political will to keep supporting Ukraine. The operation moves on three tracks simultaneously: fabricated stories designed to damage Ukraine’s image and fracture Western solidarity, a sustained narrative push that the West has lost interest in Kyiv, and a broader wave of anti-Western content that makes both the fakes and the narrative feel credible.
Matryoshka at work: Fabricating the evidence
The most documented part of the operation comes from the Russian influence campaign known as Matryoshka—named after Russian nesting dolls for its method of producing fake reports that mimic credible outlets. As NewsGuard found, the campaign has used the Iran conflict to manufacture at least nine fabricated claims, with Ukraine and France as the primary targets, not the parties directly involved in the fighting.
The most widely circulated fake involved a video report purportedly published by the US think tank Institute for the Study of War, claiming that an Iranian missile strike killed 70 French soldiers at a base in Abu Dhabi. The claim accumulated 500,000 views on pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and appeared in eight articles across the pro-Kremlin Pravda network — a system of 286 seemingly automated news sites designed to seed Russian propaganda into AI-generated content. ISW denied the report entirely, posting on X: “The video is a fake, and ISW has made no such assessment.” French media confirmed a drone did hit the Camp de la Paix base near Abu Dhabi — but caused no casualties, only a fire in storage containers.
The fake did not stay on Telegram. French-language outlet Réseau International published a piece reproducing the fabricated ISW claim as fact, presenting the deaths of 70 French soldiers as having occurred the previous day — moving the story from Russian-language channels onto a European proxy site where it reaches local audiences with an editorial framing that makes it look like independent reporting.
- https://reseauinternational.net/linstitut-americain-detude-de-la-guerre-a-annonce-la-mort-de-70-militaires-francais-aux-emirats-arabes-unis/
A second fabricated video, attributed to French magazine Le Point, claimed that Ukrainian phone scammers exploited the conflict to steal 42 million euros from French citizens by soliciting donations for French air defence in the Middle East. The video received 70,000 views on pro-Kremlin Telegram channels. Le Point published no such report — and, as NewsGuard noted, the outlet publishes exclusively in French, not in English, the language used in the fake.
A third fake, attributed to Euronews, claimed that an Iranian missile destroyed a seven-million-dollar Dubai estate belonging to Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi. The claim spread across three sites in the Pravda network. Syrskyi’s last publicly available property declaration, from 2022, lists an apartment in Kyiv and a small plot of land in Ukraine. No Dubai estate exists.
The targeting logic is deliberate. Two fakes damage France — portraying its soldiers as casualties and its citizens as victims of Ukrainian fraud. One fake targets Ukraine’s military leadership directly. None target the US or Israel. The goal is not to comment on the Iran war. It is to use the Iran war against Ukraine and its closest European ally.
Building the narrative: “The West has forgotten Ukraine”
The fakes are the sharpest edge of the campaign, but they operate within a broader narrative environment that Russian state media and their European proxies have been constructing since the Iran conflict began.
The core message: the West’s attention has shifted to the Middle East, Ukraine is no longer a priority, and Kyiv has been left behind. As Ukrinform‘s fact-checkers documented, Russian Telegram channels and bots on X have been circulating a forged cover of the American magazine. The Nation, depicting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reading Middle East news and lamenting that the world has moved on. No such cover exists — the real March 2026 issue focused on US domestic policy. According to Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications SPRAVDI, on March 3 alone, more than 2,000 manipulative messages pushing this narrative were recorded across the media space.
Russian state media have been building the same narrative through more conventional means. RT ran pieces framing Zelenskyy as desperately struggling for relevance — publishing analysis under the headline “Loyalty Mantra to Washington: How Zelenskyy Tries to Keep the West’s Interest” — and amplifying his real warning from an interview with Corriere della Sera about weapons potentially being redirected to the Middle East, stripping it of context to suggest Ukraine has been sidelined. RIA Novosti went further, publishing a piece titled “Ukraine—the Main Loser in the Iran-Israel War,” quoting a Polish expert as saying, “Ukraine is gone! It simply disappeared.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry added an official voice through Lenta.ru, with a diplomat stating that the conflict “diverted Western attention from the Ukrainian question” and that “part of the weapons and aid may be redirected to the region.”
- https://russian.rt.com/world/news/1499160-vnimanie-smi-ukraina
- https://russian.rt.com/ussr/article/1601889-ukraina-iran-zelenskii
- https://ria.ru/20250624/zelenskiy-2025031964.html
- https://ria.ru/amp/20250616/ukraina-2022970907.html
- https://lenta.ru/news/2025/06/16/v-mid-vyskazalis-o-vliyanii-konflikta-mezhdu-iranom-i-izrailem-na-situatsiyu-na-ukraine/
European proxy outlets carried the message into local languages. Réseau International argued that the US has “neither the time nor the means” to keep supporting Kyiv and that Zelenskyy finds himself in a position of “total powerlessness”—using the same Corriere della Sera interview as RT. Czech outlet CZ24.news ran multiple articles under headlines including “ZELENSKYY IN PANIC! The USA in Iran is spending his bombs,” claiming the “White House’s interest in Ukrainian affairs may significantly decrease.” Czech site Infokurýr published a piece titled “Ukraine is the Main Loser in the War Between Iran and Israel,” stating that “for the reader following the news, Ukraine no longer exists in the media.” Slovak outlet Hlavný Denník framed Ukraine as having “also suffered” from the Middle East conflict, adding that Russia would “liberate so much territory that Ukraine will regret” pausing negotiations. Dutch outlet Frontnieuws framed Ukraine as being on “the verge of a total collapse,” with the US having “abandoned” the NATO-Ukraine coalition. The Spanish site Geoestrategia stated plainly that the Middle East conflict “diverts the West’s attention from Ukraine—which in turn favours Russian leaders on the Donbass battlefields.”
- https://reseauinternational.net/comment-la-guerre-contre-liran-impacte-lukraine/
- https://cz24.news/brutalni-iran-ukazal-co-skryva-pod-zemi-taby-zacala-pomsta-americanum-dnesni-briefing-mo-rf-aktualni-zpravy-z-frontu-2-3-2026/
- https://cz24.news/ruske-delostrelectvo-dosahlo-kramatorsk-ukrajina-zasahla-ropny-terminal-usa-navdory-varovanim-usa-dnesni-briefing-mo-rf-aktualni-zpravy-z-frontu-3-3-2026/
- https://www.infokuryr.cz/n/2025/06/22/pierre-duval-ukrajina-je-hlavnim-porazenym-ve-valce-mezi-iranem-a-izraelem/
- https://www.hlavnydennik.sk/2026/03/05/titulky-zahranicnych-medii-z-5-marca-iran-spustil-hypersonicky-utok-na-izraelske-ministerstvo-obrany-bola-ohlasena-pozemna-operacia-trpela-aj-ukrajina-zelenskyj-povedal-vsetko
- https://www.frontnieuws.com/het-westen-in-oorlog-en-de-redenen-voor-zijn-onvermijdelijke-nederlaag-een-interview-met-emmanuel-todd/
- https://geoestrategia.eu/noticia/44735/ultimas-noticias/el-mundo-a-la-espera-de-una-agresion-yanqui-contra-iran-que-esta-aplastando-el-frente-interno-del-mossad.-trump-muestra-su-cara-mas-siniestra.html
The anti-Western narrative driving the campaign
For the fakes and the “forgotten Ukraine” narrative to land, they need an audience already primed to believe them. That is where the third track of the operation comes in.
Réseau International has published a sustained stream of commentary framing the Iran war as definitive proof of Western moral collapse — and doing so in ways that consistently mirror Kremlin talking points while never applying the same standard to Russia. One article described the US and Israel as “thieves, liars and genocidaires” attacking a civilisation thousands of years old. Another argued that Iran is “morally superior to the United States”—not because Iran is good, but because “the United States is particularly malevolent.” A third called on Europe to urgently disengage from its alliance with Washington, arguing that the US in its “declining phase” has become “unpredictable, dangerous and led by unreliable, poorly prepared officials.”
- https://reseauinternational.net/les-voleurs-menteurs-et-genocidaires-sen-prennent-a-liran
- https://reseauinternational.net/liran-est-moralement-superieur-aux-etats-unis/
- https://reseauinternational.net/il-est-temps-de-se-liberer-des-liberateurs/
Russian state media reinforce this framing from the other direction, amplifying Iranian claims of military success. RT published statements by then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, claiming that US strikes “achieved nothing” and that Iran’s retaliation left Israel “practically knocked out.” By January 2026, RT was still carrying his assertion that “the Iranian nation defeated the US.” RIA Novosti and Gazeta.ru quoted Iran’s UN envoy declaring that Iran would “inevitably win” in a “battle of wills” with Washington.
- https://www.rt.com/news/620572-khamenei-remarks-israel-us/ https://www.rt.com/news/631110-iran-khamenei-us-israel/
- https://www.gazeta.ru/politics/news/2026/03/01/27967081.shtml
European proxies amplified the same message in local languages. Slovak outlet Infovojna framed the conflict as the US waging “a war to preserve global dominance”—with Iran as the force resisting it. Dutch outlet Frontnieuws warned that US military pressure was leading to an impasse, predicting economic crisis for Europe as a consequence.
- https://www.infovojna.com/article/prasce-sa-nechcu-odtrhnut-od-koryta-usa-a-ich-spojenci-vedu-vojnu-za-zachovanie-globalnej-domi
- https://www.frontnieuws.com/de-iraanse-impasse-wat-dit-betekent-voor-uw-geld/
One detail in Réseau International‘s coverage is particularly telling. An article criticising Western media double standards noted that outlets had no difficulty writing “Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine” four years ago — but are now silent about what the author calls an equally illegal war against Iran. The comparison is framed as exposing Western hypocrisy. What goes unmentioned is that the same logic, applied consistently, would require identical condemnation of Russia’s conduct in Ukraine. It does not appear anywhere on the site.
The bigger picture of disinformation campaigns
The three tracks of this campaign are not separate operations — they are designed to work together. The anti-Western narratives create an environment in which fabricated stories about Ukrainian corruption and French military casualties feel plausible. The fakes give the “forgotten Ukraine” narrative concrete, shareable evidence. And the “forgotten Ukraine” narrative serves Russia’s most immediate strategic interest: eroding the political will in Europe to keep supporting Kyiv at a moment when Western attention is already stretched.
As NewsGuard observed, this finding mirrors a pattern that Insight News Media has previously documented: following the US capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January 2026, Russian influence operations used that fast-moving event not to defend a Kremlin ally but to discredit Ukraine. The Iran war is being used the same way. Russia did not start it. But for the Kremlin’s information machine, it is already proving useful.
The record, however, tells a different story. On March 5—the same day Russian bots were flooding the media space with forged magazine covers and fabricated casualty reports—NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte directly told Reuters that allies would keep supporting Ukraine despite the situation in Iran. His framing left little room for ambiguity: the approach had to be “and, and” — support what the US and Israel are doing in the Middle East, and at the same time ensure Ukraine has what it needs to stay in the fight. The two are not in competition. The narrative that says otherwise is not analysis. It is a campaign.
