One method of evaluating BS is to consider the consequences for whoever cooked it up. That’s why I react to any narrative peddled by the U.S. Establishment with either skepticism or outright incredulity.
As long as you’re serving its interests in DC, your risk of prosecution is minimal to non-existent depending on your stature, even if you commit obvious felonies like perjury to Congress. In terms of foreign policy, it’s the same people steering the ship from one disaster to the next while making predictions that never come true.
So, when they first claimed that Ukraine was winning as an incompetent Russia ran out of fuel and ammunition, while it took disproportionate casualties and resorted to massacring civilians, my immediate suspicion was farce. The most substantial evidence proffered was expert analysis, so it wasn’t much different than Saddam’s WMDs in this regard.
The Russians never disclose figures on their own casualties and it’s not surprising that a modern army would be able to inflict casualties on another modern army. However, each morning their MOD puts out a briefing on strikes carried out in the past 24 hours and a running tally of how much Ukrainian military equipment has been eliminated. From April 26th:
“Overall, the following targets have been destroyed since the start of the special military operation: 141 aircraft, 110 helicopters, 583 unmanned aerial vehicles, 269 surface-to-air missile systems, 2,576 tanks and other combat armored vehicles, 287 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,111 field artillery guns and mortars and also 2,392 special military motor vehicles”
This comports with what one would expect to happen when a military is subjected to an opponent with air superiority and a massive qualitative and quantitative advantage in firepower. If the Russians are fabricating what’s going on, they’d eventually be exposed as liars and lose credibility because they depend on series of cooperative international relationships. Serious countries actually care about “eventually.” By contrast, if the U.S. is lying no such consequences exist because the it’s leading “The Free World,” which is under military and plutocratic occupation.
The new narrative is backing off Ukrainian victory and gearing towards it becoming a sort of Afghanistan for Russia. That’s ridiculous but it appears likely this tragic process for Ukraine will continue until collapse because surrender doesn’t suit this narrative. After that, whatever’s left of Ukraine will probably be in a state of ruin and dumped on the West to try and fix. We can be sure the lies about what happened will never cease.
As a dissident, it can be a pretty exasperating to wait until these people who can’t be held accountable for all the death and suffering they inflict to finally deplete their credibility and prestige – you wonder if this is even possible. The answer is that I don’t really know. But, they don’t either, so they’re not going to relent at doing their best to make it happen.
I’m proud to officially announce my candidacy for the office of Dogcatcher.
Indeed. Regardless the righteousness of the Russian cause or the UA suicidal defense, Western media and policy is so comically out of sync with reality that it’s not even upsetting anymore. There are many smart and informed voices out there explaining what is in fact happening and the inevitable outcome…Alex Christoforou of the Duran, TheSaker.is, Jacob Dreizin, even Scott Ritter. The real possibility however that the death cult gets its wish and escalates this needs to be soberly considered. We are all subject to normalcy bias.
Fred Kagan. Hmmm. Any relation to Elena Kagan or Lazar Kaganovitch?