Western press has gone to town with 69-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin redeploying his forces from Kharkiv to the Donbas and costal regions of Ukraine. But just like the last time Putin retreated from Kiev Feb. 28, Ukraine’s 44-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky declared victory together with every other media source on both sides of the Atlantic. Putin’s decision to redeploy troops out of Kharkiv has won another round of Putin-bashing, saying as farfetched things as he’s ready for surrender. “Russia invasion of Ukraine has been a strategic defeat. So far the Kremlin has not been abele to achieve its strategic level of objectives and it has incurred significant costs. Russia’s military is going to have to rebuilt,” said George Barros, a military analyst and propagandist at the Washington D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War [ISW]. ISW, led by retired Gen. Jack Keane, has been wrong about everything.
Keane produces his own maps of Russian controlled territory in Ukraine, updated daily for anyone to see the staggering amount of sovereign land lost by Zelensky to Putin over the last six months. Zelensky never admits or talks to the public when Ukraine loses sovereign territory. Months went buy when Zelensky raved about Russian retreat from Kiev but not one admission about the Kremlin’s seizure of Ukraine’s entire Black Sea Coast and all its ports. Barros said Russia has not met any of its strategic objectives in Ukraine. Yet how does Barros explain Putin controlling the entire Black Sea coast and all of Ukraine’s strategic ports? If Barros looked at his own maps from the ISW he’d confirm Zelensky lost the Black Sea coast and all its strategic ports to Putin. Does that sound like Russia has not met any of its objective in six months of fighting with the Kiev government?
Barros shows he’s more propagandist than military analyst saying Russia has degraded its army to the point it will take years to rebuild. “The conventional ground army ground force that the Kremlin has spent the last two decades on creating—seeking to create a modern military—that force has been just largely degraded and in large part destroyed in the past six months of war with Ukriane, “ Barros said. Barros mentions nothing about the ISW maps that show the Russian Federation controlling about 25% of Ukraines sovereign territory, including the entire Black Sea coast and all Ukraine’s strategic ports. Ukraine has not been able to make much progress reclaiming Black Sea coast ports like Kherson, a devastating loss to Kiev in the first month of the war. So, when it comes to the destruction of the Russian military, how has Putin seized Ukarine’s entire Black Sea coast?
Western press relies heavily on Kiev’s SBU intel agency and British MI6 intelligence that have said since Feb. 34 that Russian has lost the war. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Miley, 64, said last week that Russia has lost the war. If you listemed to Kiev’s SBU and Britain’s MI6, the war has already been won by Kiev. Yet no one from any Western sources admits the staggering losses of Ukraine’s sovereign land to the Russian Federation. Biden said in the past that Ukraine must win more sovereign land back before it can think of peace talks. Barros talks about the Russian army degraded and facing imminent collapse but he says nothing about Ukraine military losses because the U.S. supplies Kiev unlimited cash and weapons. Both sides have sustained painful losses but only one side controls the Black Sea coast with all Ukraine strategic ports.
When Russia decided to leave Afghanistan Feb. 15, 1989, right before the Berlin Wall came down Nov. 9, 1989, does the West really think it’s because the Russian army collapsed? After 10 years of war backed by the CIA and Osama bin Laden, does the West really think that the late Soviet Premier Mkhail Gorbachev thought the Soviet military collapsed? Sometimes governments give up their war plans like 79-year-old President Joe Biden did Aug. 20, 2021 when he pulled U.S. forces out of Afghanistan. Did anyone talk about the collapse of the U.S. military? Or was it time to move on from a long-standing conflict that paid the U.S. zero dividends? If you listen to Barros and the Western press, Putin decision to pivot out of Kharkiv to redeploy to Donbas or the coast was about the collapses of the Russian military. U.S. and EU press reports can’t separate propaganda from facts.
Shortly after the Ukraine conflict began, Kiev’s SBU security service and other Western sources said Putin suffered from a terminal illness. They presented all the medical and legal expert to back up their claims No one today talks about Putin’s health, now it’s shifted to the sickness of the Russian military. If the Russian military were really so feeble, how did they capture over the last six months all of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast and all its strategic ports? Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last week that his Western colleagues have grossly underestimated the Russian Federation. When Biden said he wanted Putin out of office March 26, he changed the war to a U.S. proxy war against the Russian Federation. Never before has a U.S. president trashed U.S.-Russian relations like Biden. Listening to war propaganda gives the public no insight into what’s happening.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
