A Year of Ukrainian "Collapse" Narratives:

They Were Nonsense, But Did Great Damage.

Hello All,

It was just about a year ago that the predictions and analysis about Ukraine’s military prospects became dire. Starting in February 2024, it started to be claimed in the papers, on the internet, and basically everywhere you looked, that Ukrainian forces were on the point of collapse—and that almost any minute Russian might could break Ukrainian resistance. Here are some snapshots of articles (with links if you want to read them) that repeated this theme throughout the year.

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In maybe the most extreme case of repeating the collapse narrative almost obsessively, Isabelle Khurshudyan, in the Washington Post has basically re-written the same story for an entire year. Along with Christopher Miller and his regular stories about the Russians being close to seizing Pokrovsk, Khurshudyan has been the most regularly damning reporter about the state of Ukrainian resistance.

In early February 2024, She described a Ukrainian Army that was running out of soldiers and whose morale was on the point of failure.

The Ukrainian military is facing a critical shortage of infantry, leading to exhaustion and diminished morale on the front line, military personnel in the field said this week — a perilous new dynamic for Kyiv nearly two years into the grinding, bloody war with Russia….