Shortly before last year ended, the New York Times ran a front page article entitled, “Putin’s War,” (December 18th, 2022) where the authors advanced numerous claims in bold faced print containing subparagraphs that describe how on the Russian military is struggling with a “collapsing front,” “internal rot,” “shoddy intelligence,” “divided ranks,” whose cumulative effect against “mission delusion” consolidates into an incapable Russian military.
Preceding these claims is what appears to have been an outlandish diatribe, aimed at degrading the Russian military within the eyes of the public. “Russian soldiers go into battle with little food, few bullets and instructions grabbed off the internet for weapons they barely know how to use,” the authors wrote.
“They plod through Ukraine with decades-old maps, or no maps at all. They speak on open cellphone lines, revealing their positions and exposing the incompetence and disarray in their ranks. They have trained at dilapidated bases in Russia, hollowed out by corruption. They are given wildly unrealistic timetables for taking Ukrainian territory and complain of being sent into a “meat grinder.”
In none of these descriptions is there is a single piece of evidence. The New York Times has systematically lied about the Russian military during the entire duration of the battle of Bakhmut, peddling lie after lie.
The repudiation of these lies is the fact that Russian military forces, at the head of which the Russian military’s Wagner Group has played a leading role, have successfully sacked the city of Bakhmut.
How can an incapable Russian military sack a city?
In a Telegram post with a video widely analyzed within the Internet, the head of the Wagner Group, Evgeny Prigozhin announced on Friday, May 19th, 2023 that Bakhmut is now “fully under the control” of the Russian military, ending no less than 224 days of fighting over the span of no less than 10 months in the longest lasting battle of the entire Ukraine war.
While it is true that the Russian military has suffered immensely for the fall of Bakhmut, the failure of newspapers like the New York Times to provide precise details deprives the public of information needed to determine what is happening on the battlefield, if not the war altogether. In particular, none of the claims about the Russian military after the fall of Bakhmut measure up to reality.
It does not appear as though the New York Times could point to anything which may indicate a “collapsing front,” “internal rot,” “shoddy intelligence,” “divided ranks,” whose cumulative effect is “mission delusion” among the members of the Russian military, especially those in service during the battle of Bakhmut.
Notwithstanding the New York Times ’s repudiated assessment of the Russian military, the war continues to take a devastating toll upon the civilian population. In the city of the now fallen Bakhmut, in which more than 70,000 people in Ukraine claimed residence prior to the battle, no one remains. The city itself is reduced to rubble, blown out buildings, barely standing walls.
In the city of Chasiv Yar, which lies beyond Bakhmut to the West, no more than than 1,500 residents remain from the pre-war population of 15,000. Many of the city’s buildings resemble those in Bakhmut.
It is unknown exactly how many of those previously residing in cities are now dead as a result of the war. On November 10th, 2022, General Mark Milley, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, for instance, estimated that Ukraine’s civil loss of life amounted to no less than 40,000 deaths. Compiled more than half a year ago, the number is likely to be much higher now, especially for the now fallen Bakhmut.
It is estimated that more than half of Ukraine’s pre-war population has fled the country, seeking refuge primarily in the countries which share an immediate border with Ukraine. Although the statistics are still under review, a study as early as February 2023, published on the eve of the war’s first anniversary, revealed a significant decline in Ukraine’s population. In § 2.5 of its recent study entitled, Ukraine Support Tracker: Which Countries Help Ukraine, which openly reports how the Ukraine war is resulting in human suffering and destruction, “more than 10 million Ukrainian were forced to flee their homes, and almost five million of these left Ukraine to [find] refuge in other countries,” according to the Kiel Institute’s study.
A recent article by the New York Times estimates the number to be much higher than 10 million. Entitled, “The Resolved Return Home, by the Millions” the authors describe how “more than 13 million Ukrainians—a third of the country—fled from their homes” at the outbreak of the war. In regards to that particular estimate, the authors, however, make no reference to a study. It is more than likely that anywhere from 13 million to 17 million people have already fled Ukraine. Despite attempts to portray otherwise, there is no reason to believe that these Ukrainians are returning anytime soon, especially after the fall of Bakhmut.
The majority of those who have remained are unemployed, in search of work, indicating that one of the most devastating consequences of the war is its continuous disruption of Ukraine’s economy, causing massive unemployment. Ukraine’s economy, as reported earlier in the year, is almost completely devastated. In April 2022, the World Bank estimated that Ukraine’s economy would shrink by more than half.
In the aforementioned article, the authors explain how Iryna Ilina, a Ukrainian, “was running out of money” after leaving Pavlohrad on her way back to Kramatorsk, who could not afford rent in the latter city as a fitness instructor. Dr. Medvedieva, another Ukrainian remaining in the country, said: “I need to work.”Dr. Medvedieva’s statement indicates that ordinary, working Ukrainians have faced the brunt of the war’s fallout.
Culture is also one of the unfortunate victims of the war. On Monday, May 8th, 2023, in an panoramic, full, two page spread from the New York Times various “scenes of life” are pictured from left to right, top to bottom. In the right, top is a picture of an enormous, life size bust of a Russian poet on its side with its head tipping towards the ground, indicating how even the faintest memory of unacceptable literature is being uprooted by revisionists. The revisionists, the vast majority of whom a fascist ideology based upon Stephan Bandera motivate, seek to eliminate the non-Ukrainian roots of its slavic culture. A victim of revisionism, a monument to Alexander Pushkin, one of the greatest poets of mankind, now deteriorates in a scrapyard in Kremenchuk, Ukraine.
In the panoramic, full, two page spread from the New York Times on May 8th, 2023, one of the other “scenes of life” is not life. It is death. In the right, bottom corner is a picture of a cemetery with row upon row of Ukrainian dead. Described in the article as “outside the city of Dnipro, a cemetery is expanding rapidly with the graves of soldiers killed in the war.” The identical wooden tombstones stretch almost endlessly. It is a highly classified secret to know exactly how many from the Ukrainian dead have been buried there or elsewhere.
Although the heavy losses have depleted, if not entirely, almost all of the forces fed into the ‘meat grinder’ at Bakhmut, there is no respite. NATO Member States, Washington most especially, continue to press for a counteroffensive. In a recent display of commitment, the Biden administration authorized a new round of military funding for Kiev, amounting to no less than $375 million dollars.
Over the course of the months long war, Washington has authorized numerous rounds of military funding, totaling no less than $113,000,000,000 as early as the beginning of this year. The unprecedented funding indicates that Washington is still committed to exploiting Ukrainian armed forces, a NATO proxy force, as canon fodder to advance its geopolitical interests in the country.
After announcing the new $375 million package of military aid to Ukraine on Sunday, Biden informed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the United States intends to strengthen Ukraine’s defense for the continuing war with Russia. The new package includes additional ammunition for the HIMARS system, artillery shells, likely produced at the plant in Scantron, Pennsylvania, anti-tank guided missiles, bridge systems, armored medical equipment, spare parts, and other field equipment.
In an article entitled, “Ukraine Builds Up Special Forces,” published in the Wall Street Journal on May 20th — 21st, 2023, the authors note how “[the] Ukrainian military is racing to turn civilians into elite soldiers for the cutting edge of a critical summer offensive.”
The acknowledgement by one of the three primary sources of propaganda (i.e., Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post) for the Ukraine war that the “Spring” counteroffensive is no longer viable as a source of disinformation comes as a result of the fall of Bakhmut. After the fall of Bakhmut, the “Spring” counteroffensive suddenly became a summer offensive.
The fact that Ukrainian armed forces have had to train a separate army behind the lines during the battle of Bakhmut indicates that the third Ukrainian army perished among the rubble of Bakhmut. The new soldiers, which comprise the ranks of the fourth Ukrainian army, are inexperienced, less battle hardened, less likely to be aware of war strategy commensurate with a counteroffensive. Since an offensive force’s men die at a conservative rate of 3 to 1 against defensive forces, there is no reason to believe that the upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive, once a “Spring” offensive but not a “Summer” offensive, is scheduled to result in anything less than a catastrophe.
The collapse of Ukrainian armed forces during the upcoming counteroffensive portends the direct involvement of a NATO Member State into the Ukrainian war. If Ukrainian armed forces cannot make a breakthrough or collapse, the likely outcome is that either Poland or the United States is scheduled to enter into direct military conflict with Russia, creating a new war between nuclear armed superpowers on the soil of Europe.