Last week, the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Ukraine was targeted by a Russian missile attack. The children’s hospital, Ukraine’s largest, sustained significant damage and killed two people. The attack was just one element of a deadly Russian attack that has killed at least 38 people and wounded more than 100.

Despite the devastating nature of the attack on the hospital, the international public reaction was relatively muted. Social media campaigns against Russian aggression in Ukraine, such as #StandWithUkraine and #StopRussianAggression, have generated broad engagement, but no campaign has been specifically designed to address the attack on a children’s hospital.

This muted response stands in stark contrast to online activism surrounding the war between Israel and Hamas. In May, an AI-generated image of tents set up to spell out “All Eyes on Rafah” went viral, garnering more than 44 million shares on Instagram and nearly 28 million on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. The post was inspired by the Israeli military’s action in the southern Gazan city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians were sheltering at the time.

During the past 10 months of the war between Israel and Gaza, 10.7 million posts were made on Instagram with the hashtag #FreePalestine. In comparison, during the two years of the war in Ukraine, only 1.9 million posts were made with the hashtag #StandWithUkraine.

Ukrainian media expert and political analyst Alexei Kovzhun explained the contrast by pointing out that the public has become accustomed to images of Ukrainian suffering.

“Ukraine is slowly but surely being seen by our allies as Syria,” he said. “People are getting used to it: ‘Ukraine was hit with missiles. Another Russian atrocity, nothing special.’”

He said the waning public outrage over Russian war crimes is a predictable phenomenon.

“It is human. As we know, the death of one person is a tragedy, but the death of a million is a statistic,” he said.

Kovzhun also accused Russia of financing and training Hamas members and funding pro-Palestinian protests.

“When we see such a coordinated chorus, flags of the same size and professionally printed posters, we understand that this is a simulation of an organic, natural protest. And I am deeply convinced that behind these European, American and apparently pro-Palestinian demonstrations there are Russian funds,” he said.

Political scientist Leonid Goldenberg said the different narratives about Gaza and Ukraine can be traced back to the Cold War. Leftists see both Ukraine and Israel as “proxies for American hegemony,” he said.

The Russian narrative paints the West as hypocritical for allowing Israel to bomb Gaza, but punishes Russia for only “saving its own people,” he said, noting that such discourse “fits well into the left’s anti-colonial agenda.”

“The anti-Israel narrative has existed for years,” Goldenberg continued. “Western audiences only recently learned about Ukraine, as opposed to the well-known Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When the war in Israel broke out, Russia and its allies — primarily China, Iran, and Qatar — began using already established anti-Israel narratives.”

Russian journalist and historian Maxim Kuzakhmetov also described a double standard between reactions to the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza. He condemned international indifference to the hostages still held in Gaza and criticized the structure of the UN, which gives Russia a permanent seat on the Security Council.

“It was a completely insane decision to transfer all the powers of the Soviet Union to Russia,” Kuzakhmetov said. “It’s absurd. All 15 former Soviet republics should have rejoined the UN, but Russia became the successor state, and this legacy, this sad history, continues to this day.”

He explained that the UN has little influence because of Russia’s veto.

“Russia is a clear terrorist state that is friendly with Iran, Hamas, the Taliban and North Korea,” Kuzakhmetov said. “In contrast, the helpless Western world is still trying to negotiate with someone, while the Ukrainians are paying the price.”

Kovzhun also criticized the UN for its decision to meet with the Taliban, while Taliban representatives had demanded that no Afghan women be allowed to attend the meeting.

According to Goldenberg, some UN agencies are involved in financing terrorism and the organization is often biased in its assessment of humanitarian crises.

He was concerned about maintaining the legitimacy of the UN.

“If the majority of countries in the UN are neither democratic nor liberal, but have the same voting rights as all other countries, how can we protect the integrity of democracy and liberalism?” he asked.