It somehow took five writers to do it, but the New York Times let the cat out of the bag on Tuesday with a report that detailed how the Pentagon has been sending American military hardware stored in Israel to the Ukrainian army.

It took less than a day for Russia to come out swinging, with an article in a Kremlin-linked tabloid accusing Washington of “dragging Israel” into conflict in Ukraine. That is not, in truth, what Washington is doing.

The New York Sun’s C.M. Vik reported weeks ago the story of America tapping its global ammo reserves. The news that American munitions parked in the Middle East are now shipping to Ukraine via Poland underscores only the global dimensions of the fight for Ukraine nearly a year after the Russian invasion. 

Among the journalists enlisted by the Times is a politically connected reporter, Ronen Bergman, who is known in Israel for his love of a good scoop. Confirmation that “the Pentagon and the Israelis reached an agreement to move about 300,000 155-millimeter shells” to the front lines in Ukraine from war reserve stockpiles in Israel is something of a nugget, even if the information was attributed to unnamed “Israeli and American officials.”

It was enough for Komsomolskaya Pravda, a well-established Russian daily with close ties to Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom and by extension to Vladimir Putin, to jump on its anti-American bandwagon. It reported dryly that “one can only guess how much pressure the Americans put on the Israelis to ‘give up their principles’ — to maintain normal relations with Moscow, which, in turn, has very close relations with the Arab countries, which is so important for Israel, which lives in an unfriendly environment.”

The Russian tabloid paired that cynicism with a veiled threat: “If Tel Aviv is drawn into activities hostile to Russia — and the supply of ammunition to the Ukrainian army, albeit American, but at the disposal of the Israelis, is just the case — then Moscow has something to answer.”

That “answer” was spelled out quite specifically: Moscow should now look to “strengthen the armed forces of Israel’s neighbors, who are hatching very unfriendly plans towards it.” 

Like some other countries, including Ukraine, Russia maintains an embassy in Israel not in the capital, Jerusalem, but at Tel Aviv.

According to the Times, “the shipment of hundreds of thousands of artillery shells from the two stockpiles” — there is another in South Korea — “to help sustain Ukraine’s war effort is a story about the limits of America’s industrial base and the diplomatic sensitivities of two vital U.S. allies that have publicly committed not to send lethal military aid to Ukraine.”

The newspaper also reported that Israel has “imposed a near-total embargo on selling weapons to Ukraine, fearing that Russia might retaliate by using its forces in Syria to limit Israeli airstrikes aimed at Iranian and Hezbollah forces there.”

Unnamed Israeli officials said that Israel was simply “acceding to an American decision to use its own ammunition as it saw fit.” The stockpiles of American munitions in Israel, which are intended for potential use in the Middle East in case of emergencies, originated with the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. 

According to Israel’s Army Radio, Israel was permitted to tap into them during the war with Hezbollah in 2006 and again the 2014 Gaza War (known in Israel as Operation Protective Edge). The stockpiles do not contain Iron Dome anti-rocket defense systems, a critical element of Israel’s homefront defense arsenal and one that Ukraine has asked for on prior occasions.  

The Jerusalem Post reported that Washington will reimburse Israel for the weapons being transferred to Ukraine, even though technically speaking they are the property of the Department of Defense. The newspaper added that the transfer required approval from the last government headed by Prime Minister Lapid.

The Sun sought comment from the Israeli Embassy in Greece for comment about the reimbursement, but did not receive a response by the end of the business day. Although the transfer of military hardware does not signal any policy change from Jerusalem, right now Ukraine needs all the ammunition it can get because, as the Times reported, “the conflict has become an artillery-driven war of attrition, with each side lobbing thousands of shells every day.” 

It almost goes without saying that if one thing doesn’t inflame the Kremlin these days, then something else surely will. Rather cryptically, however, the Russian newspaper said that “Israel has to rotate between Washington, its main military ally, and Moscow, its most important political partner.”

Was that a reference to a recent phone call between Israel’s new foreign minister, Eli Cohen, and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov? One might have to ask Mr. Putin that question, but this at least is clear: Israel knows that regardless of what is happening in Europe, at the end of the day the Middle East is still the roughest neighborhood of them all.