This will be definitely part of the reason why they're doing that. If more people focus on what's happening in the Middle East, fewer people will be focusing on what's happening in Ukraine.
The way they'll try to increase the polarization will be to spread very extreme messaging, but sometimes they're doing it from both sides of the barricades. We saw the Russians organizing both pro-Muslim and anti-Muslim rallies in the United States. We saw them spreading both radically feminist messaging and very anti-feminist messaging. We saw them spreading both aggressively pro-migration content and anti-migration content.
The point is to portray the other side of the barricade as unreasonable and something you cannot agree with. If you exaggerate the demands or the statements of the other side, then you decrease the possibility of reasonable discussion.