Dispensing war news with an eye-dropper

Both Russia and the West have released only carefully selected news about military developments this past week. The omissions distort perceptions of the decision-making processes that are carrying us

Both Russia and the West have released only carefully selected news about military developments this past week. The omissions distort perceptions of the decision-making processes that are carrying us along to WWIII.

When it comes to “news” about the war issued by Kiev, we do not have to think twice about its worth. Nearly everything said by Zelensky and his entourage is fake news. They systematically invert figures on casualties and materiel lost published by the Russians on any given front to claim that it is the Russians who have taken a beating. Or they falsely claim to have taken some hamlet on the front line, thus demonstrating the victorious advance of their counter-offensive, only to quietly retract the claim a couple of days later when it is proven that the Russians have control over the hamlet.

In the West, these falsehoods, however outrageous and contrary to common sense they may be, are trumpeted by the State Department in Washington and are passed uncritically to the general public by mainstream media. There are exceptions to this rule, such as The New York Times this week debunking the story of Russian responsibility for a 6 September missile attack on a market town under Ukrainian control, but the exceptions are very, very rare.

However, I believe the bigger issue we confront is propaganda resulting from only partial disclosure of what is going on at the front. And it concerns both sides in the conflict. This may have a number of explanations, including at least one that is meritorious: namely to avoid incensing the domestic public over outrages committed by the enemy thereby allowing rabid nationalists, who exist both in the East and in the West, to take control of policy and hasten Armageddon.  In today’s discussion, I will allow that possibility to stand. But whatever the intentions of news managers in the respective governments and in the respective editorial boards, the net result is the public everywhere is under-informed and incapable of intervening in the decision-making processes that are leading us to all out war by baby steps, if not by the gallop that the nationalists would like.

This past week witnessed a successful Ukrainian attack on the general staff building of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea. The building was set alight and the destruction was apparently extensive. We can only guess at how extensive from terse statements made by the civil Governor (effectively the mayor) of Sevastopol, which is by itself a ‘subject’ or region of the Russian Federation. He said that firefighters had worked for several hours to bring the fire in the building under control. Moreover, debris from the missile strike was spread to a distance of several hundred meters. The Governor warned city residents to stay away from the city center, so as not to hamper the work of emergency crews and not to fall victim to possible follow-up missile attacks. One clue to the level of destruction was a small article on today’s Russian news ticker that a miracle-working icon in the staff building had itself miraculously survived the attack. As for human casualties, the Governor mentioned only one serviceman who is not accounted for. The Russians did officially identify the attacking missiles as British manufactured Storm Shadow air-to-ground cruise missiles.

A devastating attack on staff headquarters and only one victim?  That should tip you off to what you will find only on a very few essentially underground Russian websites: namely that the Russian naval staff had been evacuated from the museum-like headquarters building long ago and is working normally from underground premises at unknown locations. 

So far, up to the present, Russian state television has had no coverage of the missile attack on Sevastopol. We shall see whether it is discussed in the News of the Week program hosted by Dmitry Kiselyov this evening.

As for the West, it took two days for government news managers and editors of the mass media to decide on the ‘spin’ to give their publics with respect to the missile attack on Sevastopol and the separately reported surprise decision of the Biden administration to ship to Kiev the long demanded ATACMS medium range cruise missiles. As recently as midweek, during Zelensky’s visit to Congress and to the Oval Office, Jake Sullivan told reporters that this issue has been withheld for the indefinite future. Is there no connection between the Sevastopol attack and the go-ahead for ATACMS to Kiev?  That means the public has no understanding whatsoever of how and why the United States is being drawn deeper and deeper into the Ukraine quagmire.

Let us look, for example, at an article in today’s Financial Times entitled “Biden to supply Kyiv with long-range ATACMS missiles after months of lobbying.”

The ‘spin’ in this article comes right at the get-go. We are told in paragraphs three and four:

“The decision was made before Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the US this week, but the Biden administration chose not to announce it publicly. One person said this was to avoid tipping off the Russians, prompting them to move their supply lines further back from the frontline. The missiles have a range of up to 300 kilometres, or 190 miles, allowing Kyiv to strike Russian forces at longer range than they have previously been able to reach. The US will send them in the near future, in small numbers, at first, the people said.”

Taken by itself, does any of the foregoing make sense?  The FT narrative is illogical, self-contradictory rubbish. The new American missiles have exactly the same range as the British-French Storm Shadow air to ground cruise missiles, so the need for the Russians now to move their supply lines further back is nonsense. If indeed, the missiles still have to be shipped, then what difference would it have made if their approval was announced on Wednesday, with Zelensky present, or today, after he left Washington empty-handed?

I say this just to make the point that you need only apply your wits to what you read in mainstream to understand that you are being fed propaganda suitable for the kindergarten and not for the sophisticates who are subscribers to FT.

A subtitle to this article informs us that “Washington will send a version of the weapon that uses cluster munitions, according to people familiar with the matter.”  Now what is the fairly transparent message here? It is that Washington is supplying Kiev with rockets suitable for continuation of its terrorist attacks on residential neighborhoods in the Donbas as the Ukrainian forces are pushed further West by Russians in the coming Russian offensive that Pentagon officials understand is coming now that the Ukrainian counter-offensive is kaput. These cluster bombs are not going to sink Russian naval vessels in Sevastopol harbor.

I close this examination of deceptive reporting that amounts to propaganda in a very important Western media outlet by quoting the last three paragraphs in the article:

“Ukraine has been using British and French long-range Storm Shadow missiles, as well as short-range US Himars guided missiles, to strike Russian logistics, weapons stores and command posts in its summer offensive.

“On Friday Ukraine’s air force fired two Storm Shadow missiles that hit the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea.  It was the latest strike in an intensifying air campaign against Moscow’s military on the Black Sea peninsula.

“ATACM have an advantage over the British and French missiles because they can be fired from Himars launchers rather than Ukraine’s ageing Soviet-era fighter jets.”

“Ageing Soviet-era fighter jets!”  My hats off to the FT editors for formulating an explanation of the situation that avoids telling the simple truth, namely that those Soviet-era fighter jets are being hunted and destroyed by the Russians so that shortly they will be no more.

I say this with reference to the Russian response to the Storm Shadow attack in Sevastopol that occurred within hours of the blast at the staff headquarters: namely they used a swarm of nearly invisible and unstoppable cruise missiles to devastate the Kremenchug airfield from which the attack on Crimea had been launched. I quote now from an article in today’s online news portal Tsargrad:

“On the night of 23 September, the airport of Kremenchug was attacked by a large number of Russian cruise missiles. At the time no air raid alarms went off. The Ukrainian public supposes that these were ‘the hardly noticeable’ X-50 cruise missiles.

“The Russians destroyed valuable cargo: SCALP and Storm Shadow rockets which were delivered to the air base. They also destroyed several SU-24M bombers.

“There is a huge number of fire fighting and first aid vehicles now at the air base. They write that there have been big losses of pilots and maintenance personnel, as well as dead NATO officers, including from Poland, who had arrived to coordinate the rocket launches.”

I acknowledge that Tsargrad is denounced by Western governments as a disseminator of fake news and its website is inaccessible from some countries in Europe. However, what I quote above has also been issued by other portals.  None of this is so far officially acknowledged by the Russian state. What we have here is the same deniability which explains the use of mercenaries instead of regular troops on some military operations.

                                                                                *****

If I may draw a line under the foregoing, it is that the sudden and unexpected decision of the Biden administration to send ATACMS to Ukraine is the direct result both of the illusory success of the Storm Shadow in destroying an iconic building in Sevastopol and of the clear signs that the effective use by Ukraine of air to ground missiles like Storm Shadow is coming to an end as the Russians annihilate the park of jets capable of carrying these missiles together with their pilots.

So now the United States is crossing its own red lines and risking escalation of the war and finger pointing of the Russians to its co-belligerent status by sending the ATACMS to Ukraine. We can be sure that U.S. military will be sent with the hardware.

Finally, I come back to the news item I mentioned yesterday on Russians finding the crew of a Leopard tank they destroyed in the battlefield this past week to have been regular Bundeswehr servicemen.  My colleague in Germany informs me that as of today there has not been a word about this in Germany.  However, there soon will be.  From the unofficial news portals in Russia, I see that the Kremlin has every intention of bringing this scandal to the attention of the broad German public in the hope that it will touch off popular demonstrations against Scholz.  Time will tell..

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023