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Supporters of Ukraine have condemned the hypocrisy and double standards of the US and its allies to rush to Israel’s air defence, while refusing to intervene in missile attacks from Russia over more than two years of near-constant bombardment.

The US, UK, France and Jordan were instrumental in helping Israel destroy 99% of missiles, rockets and drones launched by Iran on Saturday evening. The “show of airborne prowess” by Western allies and their partners in the Middle East “proved the effectiveness of Israel’s missile defence system when combined with some of the world’s most advanced aircraft”, said Politico, but “it also pointed to a yawning difference in the way Western powers treat Israel compared to Ukraine”.

At the same time, “the Middle East entering uncharted territory (short of full-blown war) is the best that can happen to Putin now,” Hanna Notte, a senior associate with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote on X.

With Ukraine facing hundreds of missile and drone attacks a week, the response by Western allies to Iran’s aerial assault against Israel has produced “uncomfortable comparisons”, said The New York Times.

While Washington and other allies have provided Kyiv with tens of billions of dollars in military equipment and ammunition – including some powerful air defences – since the war began “they have not directly confronted Russian forces”, noted the paper. “It’s very stupid; it’s hypocrisy,” Amil Nasirov, a 29-year-old singer, told the paper. “And it’s like some devaluation of Ukrainian lives.”

When asked why the West could not offer the same level of air support to Ukraine as it had to Israel, Foreign Secretary David Cameron said that doing so would risk a dangerous “escalation” involving “Nato troops directly engaging Russian troops”.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was quick to counter by claiming on X that “Israel is not a Nato member, so no action, such as triggering Article 5, was required,” referring to the Nato provision on collective defence that regards an attack on one as an attack on all. “No one was dragged into the war. They simply contributed to the protection of human life.”

Pro-Kyiv supporters argue Israel’s successful defence of its territory reveals the key problem for Ukraine is an unwillingness from the West to provide the supplies and support it needs to defend against, and ultimately defeat, Russia.

But the US has “fundamentally different security relationships” with Israel and Ukraine, said The Wall Street Journal, and the hesitancy towards a more combative stance against Russian attacks is “shaped by concerns that Russian President Vladimir Putin could resort to nuclear arms”.

Ukraine is also facing a more capable enemy than Israel, Ben Hodges, a former commanding general of US Army Europe told DefenseOne: “I don’t know or believe that Iranian attacks can match the quality or capability of Russian attacks against Ukraine.” 

What next?

For the Kremlin, “the potential benefits to be reaped from Iran’s attack on Israel are both broad and quite specific”, said Radio Free Europe. It firstly “draws attention away from the war in Ukraine at a crucial time when Kyiv is facing major challenges on the front line”. And in the context of Putin’s portrayal of the conflict as part of a wider confrontation against global liberal-democratic forces, Iran’s attack on Israel “may play into the Kremlin’s propaganda, handing Russia new material it can use to press its public narratives about the war in Ukraine and its showdown with the West”.

More specifically, the attack against Israel “adds a new element to the uncertainty over the prospects for long-delayed US aid for Ukraine”, said the news service.

The question now for obstructive House Republicans, said The Independent, “is what change this new development has on the calculus around the supplemental aid package meant to bolster the militaries of both Israel and Ukraine”.

Amid all the talk of escalation in both Europe and the Middle East it is important to note one key difference between Ukraine and Israel that could play into Western thinking: nuclear capability.

“The answer seems to be that the US is desperate to, in its mind, limit the chance of Israeli escalation and is not really that bothered about Ukraine having the ability to escalate,” concluded Phillips O’Brien for the Kyiv Post. “Well, the big difference in escalation concerns is that Israel is a nuclear power and Ukraine is not.”