Kremlin-controlled Channel One pushes false story of “American footprints” in Lebanon, Syria pager blasts

RU

The news program on Russia’s leading propaganda broadcaster, Channel One, recently aired a segment titled “Political Analyst Mukhin Explains How the U.S. Might Be Involved in the Lebanon Terror Attack.”

A Channel One news item describing the program summarized it as follows:

“Political analyst Alexey Mukhin suggested that U.S. authorities were involved in the detonation of communication pagers in Lebanon. He noted that in one Beirut hospital, these devices were confiscated from staff a day before the incident.

'The U.S. and its officials are blatantly lying because there’s proof that a hospital linked to the U.S. in Beirut confiscated pagers from its staff. This shows that the U.S. is acting in its usual manner — it’s lying. Israel, in its usual manner, kills,' Mukhin said on the 'Vremya Pokazhet' program on Channel One.

The political analyst called the incident one of the largest terror attacks in world history, saying it was designed to cause public harm, carefully planned, and cynical, with elements of state terrorism.”

In his on-air comments, Mukhin seemed to be referring to the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC). However, the university is private and independent, and has no ties to U.S. government agencies. Following the pager explosions, the medical center released the following statement:

“At a crucial time when AUBMC physicians, nurses, and staff have been fully mobilized to deal with the aftermath of today’s injuries, several malicious social media outlets have started spreading rumors and conspiracy theories about the types of communications systems AUB has in place, attempting to link AUB to this tragic event. The university categorically denies these baseless allegations.

Following are the facts. Our paging system infrastructure was upgraded in April 2024. The Go-Live for switching to the new system took place on August 29, 2024. The scope of this upgrade was to enhance emergency and code communication, as several devices and systems had become obsolete.

The American University of Beirut Medical Center has received over 160 seriously injured individuals over the last three hours, with more to come. Our full focus must be on saving lives and caring for the wounded to the best of our ability. Rather than waste time spreading baseless rumors, we urge all to rally to support AUBMC and the heroic but overwhelmed medical system in Lebanon.”

The Lebanese English-language publication L'Orient Today then published the following clarification:

“The issued statement follows the circulation of at least one voice on messaging networks, in which a woman claimed her father, a doctor, had told her that the AUBMC administration asked all staff to turn in their pagers for maintenance 10 days earlier.”

Mukhin shortened the original 10-day period from the message to just one day, presumably for added effect.

A key point in the medical center’s statement is the confirmation that it operates its own independent paging system with dedicated transmission equipment, as indicated by the reference to upgrading “our [paging] infrastructure.” The notion that Hezbollah and the university hospital shared the same private network is — to put it lightly — implausible. Aside from this, pagers exploded not only in Lebanon, but also in Syria, where the Beirut medical center had no reason to maintain a paging network.

Veteran Israeli intelligence officer and security expert Sergei Migdal told The Insider that Hezbollah purchased communication system equipment, including computers, relay towers, radios, and pagers, from an external Chinese supplier — in other words, Hezbollah's paging network was entirely its own.

Commercial paging networks, once common before the widespread use of mobile phones, have largely disappeared. No online references to commercial paging operators in Lebanon exist, suggesting that only private, closed systems are in place — including one controlled by Hezbollah. Therefore, Mukhin's attempts at finding an “American footprint” here simply does not align with the facts.

The online publication Axios, citing sources in Washington, wrote that not even high level American officials were aware of the pager plot until shortly before the explosions began:

“On Tuesday afternoon local time, several minutes before the pagers started exploding across Lebanon, [Israeli Defense Minister Yoav] Gallant called U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and told him Israel was about to conduct an operation in Lebanon soon, but refused to give any specific details.

A U.S. official said the Israelis didn't tell the U.S. about the specifics of the operation, but added that Gallant's call was an attempt to avoid keeping the U.S. totally in the dark.”

Alexey Mukhin, a regular guest on Channel One’s “Vremya Pokazhet” (lit. “Time Will Tell”) and director of the pro-Kremlin Center for Political Information, has a history of spreading false claims. In August 2024, he alleged that the U.S. had supplied Ukraine with tactical nuclear weapons along with F-16 fighter jets, basing this assertion solely on his personal belief. In that particular case, the part about the F-16s being delivered was in fact true — but as usual, the more sensational claim about nuclear weapons was not.

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