In the early morning hours of October 7, Hamas (officially — The Islamic Resistance Movement) attacked Israel from the territory of the Gaza Strip. The Hamas fired between 3,000 and 5,000 rockets on Israeli cities, while the attack itself involved about 2,500 militants. According to a number of investigative journalists, more than 1,200 Jews were killed that day, the largest killing of Jews since the Holocaust.
A couple of days after the attack, a Ukrainian artist Andriy Dankovych published a painting — "Axis of Evil", depicting major authoritarian regimes, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, and the Hezbollah leader, as well as footage of war crimes in Ukraine, Syria, and Israel.
Indeed, despite official denials, there is ample evidence that at least Iran and Russian Federation of the depicted autocracies, are actively and systematically supporting the actions of Hamas, an organization that has been recognized as terrorist by most of the democratic countries. .
The tactics and methods of the Hamas terrorists and Russia's authoritarian regime are so similar that even the world's leading politicians have mentioned this in their public statements. For instance, the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that just as Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to wipe Ukraine off the map, Hamas, backed by Iran, wants to wipe Israel off the map.
"Iran, Hamas' patron, only wants to fuel the fire of chaos. Russia, Iran's wartime customer, is watching carefully. Russia and Hamas are alike," von der Leyen emphasized.
Although Russian representatives have officially condemned war crimes against civilians in Israel at the UN, there are many indications that suggest Russia's long-standing support for Hamas.
Following is a story about how Russia is both directly and indirectly helping Hamas to commit war crimes against Israeli citizens.
A long history of friendship
Russia maintains close relations not only with the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) (from 2014 to 2020, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas travelled to Russia eight times, each time meeting with Putin, while the Russian president travelled to Palestine in 2012 and 2020), but also with Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups.
In fact, Russia has never recognized Hamas as a terrorist organization. Relations between Russia and Hamas have improved dramatically since its victory in the January 2006 Palestinian Authority parliamentary elections. At his annual press conference, President Vladimir Putin reiterated that Russia has never recognized Hamas as a terrorist organization.
Moreover, the Russian Federation is one of those countries that regularly holds meetings with Hamas militants, hence contributing to the terrorists’ legitimacy.
Since 2006, meetings have been held with members of Hamas' top leadership at the level of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The first time the head of Hamas' politburo, Khaled Mashal, paid his first official visit to Moscow was almost immediately after the movement's victory in the Palestinian elections in 2006
Mashal did not hide his joy as he was giving out interviews to Russia's state media:
"We were always convinced that the day would come when we [Hamas] would be able to come to the capitals of the world in peace. And we were sure that it would happen after Hamas won. But when exactly that would happen, of course, none of us knew. And especially that it would happen so quickly."
These events reached the highest level of absurdity when, in 2010, the president of Russian Federation met with a representative of the organization recognized as a terrorist organization in many democratic countries – the then head of state, Dmitry Medvedev, welcomed Khaled Mashal in Moscow.
The relations between Russia and Hamas soured somewhat after the latter supported the Syrian opposition fighting against Bashar al-Assad – another dictator and Putin’s ally.
Nevertheless, Russia has never abandoned it’s engagement with Hamas. Between 2015 and 2020 there were at least seven official meetings between the top leadership of the Russian Foreign Ministry and Hamas. Moscow even hosted and facilitated talks between the nine Palestinian forces: Fatah, Hamas, the Popular Liberation Front (an organization recognized in the West as terrorist), the Democratic Liberation Front (which was a terrorist organization until 1999, having carried out several terrorist attacks in Israel) and others.
As part of the effort to increase its influence in the Middle East region, Russia continues its dialogue not only with Hamas, but also with organizations such as Islamic Jihad. Thus, in March 2020, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with the leader of Islamic Jihad, Ziyad Al-Nahhal.
Already after Hamas’s most recent attacked on Israel on the 7th of October that killed thousands of civilians, Hamas continues to claim its close relations with Russia. Hamas thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for his statements in support of Palestine and wrote on its official Telegram page that it "appreciates Russian President Vladimir Putin's stance on the ongoing Zionist aggression against the people and Putin’s condemnation of the blockade of the Gaza Strip." Hamas added that it welcomed Russia's attempts to stop the "aggression" against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Weapons of crime
It is well known that Hamas mainly relies upon the remnants of the Soviet war arsenal and also uses weapons transferred by Iran directly or through Hezbollah, their allied organization recognized as terrorist in a lot of countries. In the early 2000s, however, a serious scandal emerged when Hamas was seen using the Russian “Kornet” anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) system, which Russia itself officially adopted for military service only in 2000.
This meant that the most modern at that time Russian ATGM system has somehow ended up in the hands of Hamas.
According to a National Post investigation, the arsenal transferred by Russia to Hamas includes Russian-made guided anti-tank missiles and man-portable air defense systems, as well as some drones. Hamas also possesses a variety of Russian-made Grad missiles. These projectiles, with a range of about 20 kilometers, are believed to be supplied by Russia via Iran.
In addition, a 2006 Radio Liberty investigation indicates that Russian defense companies supplied Hamas militants with small arms.
On April 6, 2011, Hamas terrorists fired a Russian Kornet laser-guided missile at a school bus in southern Israel. Unlike other warfare weapons, production of the Kornet ATGM system and its projectiles is authorized exclusively inside Russia, so any Kornet missile sold outside Russian Federation is manufactured by the JSC “KBP”plant in the Russian city of Tula. The U.S. government previously imposed sanctions on KBP after Israel proved that missiles produced at the plant were sold to Syria and eventually fell into the hands of Hezbollah.
This, however, was far from being the first case, as after the 2006 Lebanon war, Israel provided Russia with evidence that the same Kornet missiles sold by the Russian Federation to Syria had been used against the Israeli army.
Israel's position indicates that Syria, in violation of its contract with Russia, transferred these weapons to Hezbollah. It was then smuggled into the Gaza Strip and fell into the hands of the Hamas terrorists.
Despite the fact that Hamas' use of the Russian Kornet ATGM became known as early as in 2006, Russia's arms shipments to Syria only continued to increase, peaking at over $600 million in 2011.
In October this year Ali Barak, head of Hamas' national relations abroad and one of Hamas’ senior officials based in Lebanon even detailed Hamas’ weapons production in an interview with the Russian-controlled Arabic news channel – the Russia Today RT Arabic:
"We have local factories for everything, for missiles with a range of 250 kilometres, for 160 kilometres, 80 kilometres, 10 kilometres. We have factories for mortars and their shells. [...] We have factories to produce Kalashnikov rifles and ammunition for them. We produce ammunition with the permission of the Russians. We are building them in Gaza"..
The head of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's intelligence agency, Kyrylo Budanov, in his recent interview has alleged that Russia assists Hamas in other ways too, stating that a Russian spacecraft capable of electronic warfare and intercepting satellite signals was in fact transferred to Israel's geostationary orbit on 24 September 2023.
He added that from September 22 to 24, the Russian military delegation was on a visit to Iran:
"We know that the Iranians had several requests, so to speak. One of them concerned the expansion of intelligence capabilities. It is now clear to all interested parties what kind of intelligence information the Russians have begun to provide. I emphasize that we are talking not only about Iran, but about all interested parties," Budanov said.
Disinformation and sowing discord
Moreover, there is every reason to say that Russia is transferring weapons to Hamas not just for combat operations against Israel, but also for disinformation reasons.
For instance, almost immediately after Hamas’ attack on Israel, a number of Western bloggers and social media accounts began publishing videos that alleged the sale of weapons to Hamas by Ukraine.
The video shows a man "thanking Ukraine" in Arabic for selling modern Western weapons to Hamas militants. The footage shows a presumably British NLAW ATGM system, some grenades and an M2 machine gun.
At the same time it is absolutely impossible to understand from the video where and under what circumstances it was shot – in a studio in Moscow, on some Russian positions in the east of Ukraine, or at a Wagner military base somewhere in Syria.
On 12 October, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, mentioned that the Russians had supplied the Hamas group with infantry weapons that they had managed to seize in Ukraine:
"We know for a fact that the weapons seized in Ukraine were supplied by the Russians to the Hamas group. It was mostly infantry weapons. There is information that something was sent to Hezbollah, but at the moment we don't know for sure."
Budanov also believes that the Russians taught Hamas fighters how to use the FPV drones against Israeli armoured vehicles: "No one but people with experience in our theatre of war could have done this. Since it wasn’t us [the Ukrainians], that means it was the Russians."
All of this is an integral part of a massive disinformation campaign that Moscow has launched after the 7th of October. For instance, Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president and close associate of Vladimir Putin, known for his extremely aggressive, deceptive and xenophobic remarks, has stated the following on his official Telegram account: "Weapons handed over to the regime in Ukraine are being actively used in Israel".
By the way, this is not the first time when Russian propaganda accuses Ukraine of selling weapons to terrorists. Exactly a year ago, they spread a similar fake allegedly about the sale of Javelin systems and Matador grenade launchers to Hamas and Hezbollah.
Nevertheless, the mentioned Medvedev’s statement coincided in time with the appearance of a video that has been widely circulated on social media, allegedly being a BBC report claiming that Bellingcat investigators have found evidence of arms shipments to the Gaza Strip from Ukraine. A Euronews investigation has, however, exposed it as a fake, being actually an imitation copying the BBC logo and text to fool social media users into thinking it is a real report.
Bellingcat hastened to deny the fact of publication of such report, having twitted: "We did not come to such conclusions and did not make such statements". The BBC also denied the alleged report.
Finally, Euronews summarized that today, there is absolutely no evidence of any links between Hamas' military arsenal and Ukraine, according to numerous arms experts..
Nevertheless, this case clearly shows how Hamas’ attacks and Russian disinformation efforts are intertwined and are both following the same objectives – weakening the coalition of democracies that oppose terrorism and authoritarianism and sow any possible discord among the members,
Money, websites and cryptocurrency
In 2022, following it’s illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia became the most sanctioned country in the world. For this reason, the Russians developed many mechanisms to circumvent the numerous sanctions. Most likely, they shared their knowledge and experience with Hamas.
The Wall Street Journal reported that a Russian cryptocurrency exchange – Garantex, is moving money for criminal gangs, wealthy Russians and a Hamas-linked terrorist groups even despite the U.S. sanctions.
The U.S. put the Moscow crypto exchange on the blacklist in 2022 to prevent Russians from avoiding sanctions. WSJ claims, however, that Garantex has become the main channel through which Russians move their funds. According to the U.S, authorities, the crypto exchange is a vehicle for laundering the proceeds of Russian cybercriminals.
Cryptocurrency is among the most well-known ways to finance illegal activities, and Garantex has become one of the main platforms for terrorists' financial transactions. In total, digital wallets controlled by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has joined Hamas in its attack on Israel, received part of its $93 million budget through Garantex.
In addition, Hamas is also cooperating with Russian companies in IT and electronic resources. For instance, the website of the al-Qassam Brigades, the militant wing of Hamas, has moved to a Russian hosting provider a few days after the Hamas militants attacked Israel. This was discovered by the employees of Insikt Group, the threat assessment department of the private intelligence company Recorded Future. In particular, on October 11 the al-Qassam Brigades website, faced with blocking issues since October 7, moves to a Russian IP address and ‘VDSina’ hosting provider, both belonging to a Russian company "Hosting Technologies".
In addition, the same Insikt Group researchers discovered a previously unknown network of web-domains believed to be Hamas-related. All of them used the same Google Analytics code as the al-Qassam Brigades site. The experts found the same code on sites previously registered or hacked by pro-Palestinian hackers from the Hamas-linked TAG-63 group.
Instigating hatred
These terrorists’ crypto-funds and websites, safely harboured by the Russian hosting providers, are instrumental in another activity, which both Russian Federation and Hamas have been heavily engaged into – fuelling hatred on religious and ethnic grounds. To facilitate this, they are establishing various media vehicles and outlets, that become the beacons of hate-speech.
In one of his recent interviews the Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov mentioned that a Russian radio station Sputnik, broadcasting in Lebanon in Arabic, was officially launched in Israel just a week before the fighting began. "Such broadcasting has an absolutely propagandistic style," stresses Budanov.
Indeed, Russian propaganda has become nothing short of one of Russia's most vile yet powerful tools. Russian broadcasting in the Middle East region, such as the aforementioned Russia Today RT Arabic, disseminates absolutely radical, extremist anti-Israel narratives to Arab audiences.
In 2007, the Kremlin began reaching out to Arabic-speaking audiences with the launch of RT Arabic. Over the past few decades, there have been two important events that have made RT Arabic a critical resource in the region. First, the Arab Spring and the role that social media played in those events. Second, Russia's military intervention in Syria in 2015 marked Russia's return to the region and consequently forced the Kremlin to create a local propaganda outlet. As a result, close ties have been established between Russian and Syrian media resources, facilitating cooperation through information and experience sharing, training on best practices of modern social media platforms, and co-production of TV and radio programs. In 2016, two of Syria's most popular radio stations, Sham FM and Sputnik, jointly launched a daily hour-long radio program on military developments in the country, according to the Middle East Institute.
Another resource was Sputnik Arabic, which along with RT Arabic, came under sanctions of democratic countries in 2022 . The over-reliance on social media for news content in the Middle East and North Africa allows Moscow to reach out to hundreds of millions of people. The Middle East Institute points out that RT and Sputnik Arabic produce significantly more content on Twitter than BBC Arabic or the popular Al Jazeera. While RT Arabic and Sputnik Arabic have posted an average of 180 and 87 tweets respectively on a daily basis since their inception, Al Jazeera averages 55 tweets and BBC Arabic only 32. In general, RT and Sputnik emphasize that the United States and its European allies are responsible for instability in the Middle East, while cultivating the image of Moscow as a stabilizing force and a peacemaker.
While abroad Russia is working to strengthen its image and provide a platform for Hamas representatives, inside Russia the state propaganda machine is spreading anti-Semitic narratives and instigating ethnical hatred. For starters, Putin’s and other Russian top officials’ regular insults and attempts to ridicule the Jewish origins of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky are among the most disgusting examples.
On Russian state channels, TV anchors regularly speak out against Israel, criticizing it, ridiculing it and spreading various conspiracy theories. For instance, Margarita Simonyan, the director of the Russia Today holding company, began attacking and ridiculing famous Russian artists who decided to go to Israel after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Andrei Gurulev, a member of the Russian State Duma from Putin's United Russia party, bluntly said on Russia 1 state TV channel that since Israel is an ally of the United States, Russia should support Iran and the Muslim forces allied to it (obviously referring to Hezbollah and Hamas).
In another TV program, Ilya Kiva, a hardcore pro-Russian propagandist who fled Ukraine after the invasion, started spreading a conspiracy theory that Israel would lose the war and the Jews would then evict Ukrainians from Ukraine by occupying it, thus trying to antagonize the Ukrainian and Israeli population
The most disgusting comments, however, came from the authors of Russian military Telegram channels, who openly called for the murder of Jews and marvelled at the execution of civilians by the Hamas terrorists. Among them are not only the channels of popular military bloggers, but also those of Russia-backed Donbas criminals and PMC Wagner.
The crimes of Hamas militants are indeed heinous and indefensible. But the most frightening and menacing thing about this situation is that a number of autocracies have united into a new full-fledged axis of evil that not only allows the commission of grave war crimes, but openly supports, if not encourages them.
Today, Russia and Iran have become full-fledged analogues of Hamas, forming an axis of evil, terror and aggression that the democratic world will have to resist together. Otherwise, in just a couple of months, we might not recognize the world we are living. But by that time it will be too late.
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