War propaganda is starting to meet reality

WaPo’s Glimpse of the Battlefield

Contrary to widespread triumphant Western narratives, this reporting describes Ukrainian troops surviving on one potato per day and deserting their posts.

The Washington Post has published an acknowledgement that Ukraine’s war against Russia has not been nearly the cakewalk that much of the public has been led to believe.

In “Ukrainian volunteer fighters in the east feel abandoned,WaPo reports that contrary to the triumphant narratives the Western world is being spoon fed, many troops in eastern Ukraine have been surviving on one potato per day and deserting their posts because they feel their leaders have turned their backs on them and they’re being sent to certain death.

“Stuck in their trenches, the Ukrainian volunteers lived off a potato per day as Russian forces pounded them with artillery and Grad rockets on a key eastern front line. Outnumbered, untrained and clutching only light weapons, the men prayed for the barrage to end,” The Washington Post reports, citing multiple named sources.

“Ukrainian leaders have projected and nurtured a public image of military invulnerability — of their volunteer and professional forces triumphantly standing up to the Russian onslaught,” the article reads.

“But the experience of Lapko and his group of volunteers offers a rare and more realistic portrait of the conflict and Ukraine’s struggle to halt the Russian advance in parts of Donbas. Ukraine, like Russia, has provided scant information about deaths, injuries or losses of military equipment. But after three months of war, this company of 120 men is down to 54 because of deaths, injuries and desertions.”

WaPo reports that volunteer troops in that part of the country “quickly found themselves in the crosshairs of war, feeling abandoned by their military superiors and struggling to survive.”

“We are being sent to certain death,” said one volunteer. “We are not alone like this, we are many.”

“Hours after The Post interviewed Lapko and Khrus, members of Ukraine’s military security service arrived at their hotel and detained some of their men, accusing them of desertion,” WaPo reports. “The men contend that they were the ones who were deserted.”

Some commentators have remarked on how, at long last, we’re seeing some realistic coverage of this war in the mainstream press.

This is indeed a major break from standard mainstream reporting on this conflict, which is normally more in line with this recent Newsweek article, headlined “Putin’s Elite Soldiers Getting Wiped Out as Russia Makes Mistakes—U.K.,” sourced entirely in unevidenced claims by the British government and the military industrial complex-funded neocon think tank Institute for the Study of War.

So anyway, there it is. That’s the reality on the front lines of this conflict that Westerners have been cheering on from their comfortable homes while calling anyone who advocates a negotiated peace settlement a Putin apologist and a Kremlin troll.

These big brave sofa warriors have been on social media demanding that Ukrainians keep fighting in this way until they’ve secured total victory over Russia and reclaimed Crimea and the Donbas, tweeting “Slava Ukraini” with their little blue-and-yellow flag emojis during the commercial breaks of their favorite TV show in between mouthfuls of Funyuns.

Westerners would be a lot less cavalier about demanding a foreign population keep fighting until total victory if they truly understood the horrors of war. Unfortunately, there’s a propaganda machine of unprecedented sophistication that has spent generations preventing them from obtaining that very understanding.

That’s why they’re so happy to throw endless Ukrainian lives into the gears of the imperial war machine, and that’s why the WaPo article we are discussing here is receiving very little mainstream attention online as of this writing. It will be dismissed and ignored by empire managers and their brainwashed flock with a “Hmm, you just can’t hire good cannon fodder these days.”

There’s no real reckoning with exactly what’s happening and exactly what these people are being called on to put themselves through. In the children’s crayon drawing version of this war that lives in the heads of Western so-called centrists, this is a team of heroic Good Guys righteously beating the tar out of hordes of Bad Guys because that’s what happens in the movies and on TV.

But this is not the movies, and this is not TV. People are dying in a U.S. proxy war that was deliberately provoked by the U.S.-centralized empire, and behind all the narratives and spin they are ultimately doing so for nothing more noble than the agenda to secure U.S. unipolar hegemony.

Many of the blue-and-yellow flag wavers are well-intentioned, and really do think they are advocating for Ukrainian freedom and sovereignty. But in reality, they’ve been cheering for Ukrainian subservience and enslavement to the empire, Ukrainian death, Ukrainian suffering and the continuation of a dangerous proxy war between nuclear superpowers that threatens the life of everyone on earth.

Thread:

Share
up
20 users have voted.

Comments

snoopydawg's picture

https://www.veteranstoday.com/2022/05/29/kissinger-zelensky-davos-and-th...

Let the criminal Henry Kissinger live long enough to see the death of the evil System he served throughout his miserable career.

Alexander Mercouris of The Duran recounts as only he can what is really going on at Davos with Henry Kissinger’s statements on Ukraine and Russia. It is clear that Joe Biden, Zelensky, George Soros, Klaus Schwab, the governments of the UK and the EU, and the Zio-Cons are close to being on the ropes in their panicked attempts to bring Russia into GloboHomo and the New World Order. Kissinger now urges Ukraine to “negotiate” with Russia, especially since “the stability of Europe” is at stake.

In Kissinger-speak, this really means that the survivability of the New World Order and GloboHomo is at stake.

For the record, the time for talking should be over. Putin and Russia should deal the knock-out blow to this Satanic system and all of its advocates in both the United States and the West generally. Kissinger knows that the jig is up if President Putin presses on as he should. A Russian victory would also free up the American, British, and European nationalists to run the table on these career criminals by expunging them from their respective countries governments and media in a backlash of mass rage at a global political elite playing around with the lives of millions of people in their insatiable desire for a supernatural power lust.

up
12 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg referring to the perversion of LGBT and I don't think I added enough letters in that stuff,
But the rest of it was spot on.
If anyone can speak to the reality of war, it is a war veteran.

up
11 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

snoopydawg's picture

@on the cusp

Lots of homophobia in the essay, but I think the rest was good. Russia could bring the world to its knees if they wanted to, but they are still fulfilling their contracts which shows that they are the adults in this conflict.

up
9 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg

A Russian victory would also free up the American, British, and European nationalists to run the table on these career criminals by expunging them from their respective countries governments and media in a backlash of mass rage at a global political elite playing around with the lives of millions of people in their insatiable desire for a supernatural power lust.

would be nice.

It seems that the Ukraine leadership (Zelensky or ??) have been channelling Hitler's Eastern Front 'no retreat, stand and fight to the last man' approach - sensible retreats off the table - with about as much success.

up
6 users have voted.

some truth is being reported.
None too late.

up
8 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

a modicum of truth. Recently, the MSM Ukraine coverage has approached a level of absurdity not seen since Baghdad Bob (aka "Comical Ali") during our 2003 invasion of Iraq.

With the imminent collapse of the Ukrainian Army in the eastern areas, the truth incongruity level needs to be dialed back a bit. Otherwise, even our most credulous consumers of MSM propaganda will clearly see the “man behind the curtain” and the raging stream of blatant lies we are being fed.

I expect these small cracks in our propaganda wall will be patched up shortly and that our regularly scheduled diet of government disinformation will resume shortly. Don’t worry, this disruption is not an ‘awakening’. It’s just a temporary aberration.

up
16 users have voted.

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

@ovals49 @ovals49
and a wry sense of humor. YMMV, but I find his irreverence and panache strangely refreshing.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRYxJ5KIhGQ]

up
10 users have voted.

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

@ovals49 @ovals49

Recently, the MSM Ukraine coverage has approached a level of absurdity not seen since Baghdad Bob (aka "Comical Ali") during our 2003 invasion of Iraq.

From the beginning of the RF SMO, the MSM has been echoing Baghdad Bob. Daily Mail coverage, based on the headlines as I don't bother reading DM for information, has had Putin dying, the Russian military collapsing due to deaths/injuries and equipment losses, and mega-heroism on the part of Zelensky and Ukie forces.

up
6 users have voted.
janis b's picture

@Marie

As a global concept of a singular structure (meaning universal compliance), the actuality is probably doomed. That no independent division of character and government prevails seems inconceivable.

I can’t imagine that support of Zelensky’s and Azov’s ambitions aren’t dropping by both the soldiers and the public. They must be questioning their future.

I think (and hope) the american narrative is collapsing, or at least being questioned.

"Awareness is spreading like wildfire and the panic of the elite increases as their narrative crumbles and people become more and more immune to the propaganda."

Don’t miss the last line under ‘notes’, at the bottom of this article.
https://geopolitics.co/2022/02/22/world-economic-forums-young-global-lea...

up
6 users have voted.

Venezuela, Nicaragua, etc
You know something is wrong with the empire when we have so many enemies that have never attacked us.

up
8 users have voted.

another former senior government official that was instrumental in championing very bad USG policies:

Perpetual Debt, Perpetual War, David Stockman. (For those that don't know, Stockman was Reagan's OMB Director. One of the architects of "Reaganomics" that led to the current non-tax and spend ethos in DC. And for which Stockmman takes no responsibility and only criticizes the deficits and ever increasing national debt. FYI - I've loathed Stockman since 1981. He was also a Peter Peterson guy, another fiscal evil-doer.)

Massive fiscal deficits year-after-year have become a way of life in the Imperial City, but even then CBO’s latest 10-year forecast is a shocker. It shows that even if there is no recession for the next ten years (fat chance!) and existing tax and spending policies (dashed red line) remain in place without enactment of a single new spending program or tax cut (even fatter chance!), the deficit will exceed $3 trillion per year by the end of the decade.

The National Debt when Reagan took office was just under a trillion dollars and just under three trillion eight years later. I include the above paragraph to merely set the stage for Stockman's general lament but no need to read the rest of that part.

Indeed, what in the world is wrong with these blithering knuckleheads? Last week’s action brings already spent and promised Ukraine weapons and aid to $54 billion.

For crying out loud, Ukraine’s GDP last year was just $155 billion. At the current run rate, they have spent 120% of Ukraine’s GDP on its own destruction, and with no end in sight.

It is no wonder, therefore, that the pretentious little peacock who parades as the country’s president is now telling the world that the war will go on until the last Ukrainian soldier is dead and Washington’s endless bounty is finally used up.

After all, at a moment when Russia is making steady gains in Donbas, reportedly now poised to take all of Luhansk province, Zelensky instructed the grandees gathered at Davos that Ukrainian forces would fight to liberate all occupied territory:

Ukraine will fight until it reclaims all its territories," he stressed. "It’s about our independence and our sovereignty." This as there have been calls from a handful of European leaders to make some territorial concessions for the sake of ending the war based on a negotiated settlement.

Zelensky had said the day prior, on Tuesday, that negotiating recognition of Russia’s possession of Crimea is not on the table. "Russia will also have to leave Crimea," he had said during a daily briefing according to the Kyiv Independent. Speaking of Kherson, Melitopol, Enerhodar, Mariupol, he said the Russians must exit these and "all other cities and communities where they are still pretending to be the owners."

There is no other way to say it: Washington has empowered a madman, who is so smitten by his own strutting on the world stage that rationality itself has become the victim.

There is not a snowball’s chance in the hot place that Putin is about to give back Crimea, nor the Donbas and all the cities listed above by Zelensky. And when they stay in Russian possession it will not make a damn bit of difference to America’s national security anyway.

But, of course, that’s not what Ukraine is actually about. Those 271 Dem "yea" votes were merely an exercise in political virtue-signalling. They were a vote against Donald Trump’s avatar on the scene – the endlessly demonized Vladimir Putin.

That’s why the discourse about this calamity has lost all touch with reality. For instance, Zelensky is now saying that if Ukraine is not victorious, the Baltics will be next on Putin’s agenda and American servicemen will soon be shedding Article 5 blood in Latvia.

That’s absurd, yet nary of word of rebuke was to be heard from Washington. The town is in full on war heat with no compunction at all about the massive waste of American treasure or putting the American economy itself in harm’s way.
...

The rest of the article is worth reading.

up
6 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@Marie

I didn’t know that about Stockman. Paul Craig Roberts is kinda the same way. But bingo on this:

It is no wonder, therefore, that the pretentious little peacock who parades as the country’s president is now telling the world that the war will go on until the last Ukrainian soldier is dead and Washington’s endless bounty is finally used up.

They’ve created a false character and most people don’t know that he was elected to stop the war on the Donbas. Or that The vote to go with Russia in Crimea was witnessed by the people who watch to make sure that votes are valid and besides Russia’s military was already there.

There is not a snowball’s chance in the hot place that Putin is about to give back Crimea, nor the Donbas and all the cities listed above by Zelensky. And when they stay in Russian possession it will not make a damn bit of difference to America’s national security anyway.

But most of the Trump deranged people don’t know that. And of course that’s one reason why shitlibs et all hate Putin. They think that he robbed HerHeinous of her coronation when actually it was a rejection of Obama and his betrayal of his voters. It seems that more news sites are trying to let people know that Ukraine will not win this conflict.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/05/ukraine-arty.html#more

up
4 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

snoopydawg's picture

@Marie

Here’s the thing, however. Such horrendous projections do not phase these clowns one single bit – as was underscored in spades by Congress’ shameful boondoggling on the Ukraine aid bill. That $40 billion was rushed into law sight unseen and without the benefit of any committee hearings at all.

Worse still, the historic party of the antiwar left went abjectly AWOL. The vote among Dems was 48-0 in the Senate and 223-0 in the House. And those stunning counts include Bernie Sanders and the House "squad" all in the "yea" column.

That is to say, if Washington cannot muster even a single Dem "nay" vote on the funding of a mindless war that has no bearing whatsoever on America’s homeland security, then the prospects for restoration of even a semblance of fiscal discipline are somewhere between slim and none.

Not one word from Pelosi on how they were going to pay for the $40 billion being sent to Ukraine like she insists be done for any money spent on we the people. And it’s funny how they forget what Obama said about Ukraine. "It’s no concern to our national security."

Bingo!

Historians will someday wonder how today’s insanities actually came to pass, but there is actually no mystery. Washington has become the world’s capital of perpetual war because it was able – for a time – to perpetually issue debt and then monetize it at the central bank.

At the end of the day, that’s the greatest central banking sin of all: It has turned the nation’s politicians – including so-called progressives – into Sunday afternoon warriors who are a menace to the nation, and, for that matter, to the entire planet.

Congress votes for higher military budgets because they know that millions of the billions will funnel back to them as campaign donations. How much of the money will be ciphered off into their bank accounts is unknown, but you can bet your patootie that they are doing it.

I posted an article on Zelensky's backer and the massive corruption in Ukraine in Saturday’s OT that is worth a read if interested.

up
5 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg
because a pro-war Congress is a long-standing GOP objective. Recall that Reaganomics was about cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations, increasing the “defense” budget, cutting entitlements for ordinary people, cutting public investment spending (education, roads, bridges, etc.) and killing off unions. Republicans have been bashing the so-called “anti-war left” since it emerged during the Vietnam War and team Reagan got the ball rolling on killing that off as well.

Thus, I don't want to hear any whining by Republicans about the absence of an “anti-war left.” They have no standing to make such criticisms. And there are plenty of decent people with standing to listen to. (Sort of like why I dismiss anything Kissinger may say even if I agree with it.)

As far as Congress not having seen nor debated where the money for the Ukie-Nazis would come from and go to, same thing was true for Reagan's SDI and the Bushes iraq adventures. Other than the GW Bush team claiming that it would only cost $20 to $40 billion and be paid for by Iraq's oil. Totally preposterous to any rational and informed American. (My back of the envelope calculation was minimum $150 billion if there was an exit strategy within three months. Two months in, it was clear that no exit strategy existed, and therefore, the costs would skyrocket.)

I did debate posting this article, but went with it because supporting the Ukie-Nazis is more overwhelming than we've seen since the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and it's dividing long-held partisan positions.

It [Gulf of Tonkin resolution] was opposed in the Senate only by Senators Wayne Morse (D-OR) and Ernest Gruening (D-AK). Senator Gruening objected to "sending our American boys into combat in a war in which we have no business, which is not our war, into which we have been misguidedly drawn, which is steadily being escalated".

Then and today there are few sane and rational voices in Congress. (The Democratic split on the IWR was a minority opposed in the Senate but a majority opposed in the House. So, Congress has devolved in the past twenty years.)

up
3 users have voted.

@Marie

It is bad for life on earth, societies, people in general, the environment, mental stability and
critters, but hey, congress goes where the money flows!
Apparently, it has become undemocratic to oppose war. Sad

up
5 users have voted.

@QMS
filling them back up funded by deficit spending. Although the hole digging casualties are much lower; so, that would be the better option.

up
1 user has voted.