Thanks Phillips, your analysis is so valuable as a sanity check when reading the wider press coverage. So many journalists seem incapable of reporting Ukrainian sources without providing the context of how the war might be perceived by equivalent Russian sources IF such sources were able to communicate with western news channels. Lazy journalism and quite infuriating that the NYT, WSJ, FT, and others often seem to be propogandizing on behalf of Putin, either consciously or otherwise.
Thanks SImon--this is a big problem. We get reports about how the Ukrainian military is suffering, and give them prominence (which is not a bad thing) but then because of a lack of sources act like all is going ok with the Russian military
It's one thing for USA Today or even CNN to play the "Today on Twitter" game, but NYT, WSJ et al are (were?) *capable* of critical, evidence-based journalism and there are *some* reliable sources available. They could just pull from ISW daily updates and they'd improve dramatically with minimal additional effort.
In short, there seems to be a profound laziness and disinterest disinterest here that contrasts so markedly with the fevered coverage of the Gulf wars or, say, more recent in-depth public service journalism of the Panama Papaers. It's as if, somewhere along the way, they all decided they were jealous of Social Media and went all-in on vibes over evidence.
Thank you for this Update Phillips. You're basically explaining and confirming what was my gut feeling for a long time: That the press has a strange bias in favor of everything that Russia does and against everything that Ukraine does. I feel like every little thing that could be seen as "bad" for Ukraine gets blown out of proportion by the press (one recent example is that Ukraine seems to have lost one F-16 and the accompanying pilot). I think this kind of reporting can be damaging, especially if it happens over long time scales, since it can affect public opinion and, in turn, even policy decisions. I wish for change in the way that the war is reported, but, let's be honest, that probably won't happen anytime soon.
Thanks Benjamin. I agree with much of what you say. I think its partly down to the influence of an analytical community that invested much of their credibility in the Russia strong narrative, and are looking for evidence of this wherever they can
I agree; hell may have no fury greater than a woman scorned, but a close second is an academic or policy wonk, whose prestige depends on being right, having been contradicted by reality. Always useful to remember that: “in theory, theory and practice are the same; but in practice they’re not.”.
I've got two ideas why the Western press/academia is far more critical of Ukraine than Russia.
Since Russia is so much bigger than Ukraine, there has been a simplistic snap assessment that Ukraine cannot hold its own, either initially or in the long run. The press keeps looking for signs that this snap assessment is finally panning out.
Second reason: the "Trump" rules. The press knows that Trump and the Russians are crazy liars and will never engage the press in good faith. So, they focus all their intention on the relatively sane side that is open to their influence. I don't know when the press got it in their heads that it was their job to influence policy, but they now regard it as their primary function.
Hi Kathleen--this size thing is fascinating, When you add that to the (bad) historical assumptions about Soviet power, I think there really is something there that influences opinion.
I hope you are not right about the Trump rules-----but you may be.
I've come up with a third reason why Americans intelligentsia might be inclined to pessimism about Ukraine. We've done nothing but fall short in wars recently--Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. We've come to expect that our side is going to lose. And the press is very suspicious of any governmental optimism. They've heard too much happy talk from military officials.
They know little about the military in general and military history in particular. Few of them have served in the military, let alone fought in wars. Even historians nowadays don't do much military history, and so much of modern teaching of history (especially in schools educating the elites) has been corrupted by the quasi-Marxist approach of seeing everything through the prism of the oppressors vs. the oppressed. So many elites are inherently suspicious of our side because "Western imperialism" or whatever. Never mind that Russia is one of the oldest European empires (and the only one still in business), its authoritarian rulers are white and ostentatiously Christian, a few years ago they legalized wife beating (some parliamentarians even says that women are only good for childbearing and should not get college education because it only spoils them - even J.D. Vance does not dare to repeat THAT part of Russian propaganda), they have a lot of anti-LGBTQ+ laws and right now they are advertising their country as a refuge for Westerners who are sick and tired of wokeness in their countries. Still, Russia is definitely non-Western and in fact very anti-Western. So their nakedly imperialist aggression against Ukraine somehow becomes a defense of poor misunderstood non-Westerners from evil Western imperialism.
Very interesting discourse analysis of the Western press on Ukraine. Western news agencies like AP and Reuters are fed with bulletins from their Russian counterparts TASS and Interfax. Quite often, journalists just copy paste the news. Sure, they know the importance of being objective. The problem is that Russian combat propaganda actually is quite sophisticated and very good at manipulating the news feeds, read for more information https://theins.ru/en/opinion/vladimir-yakovlev/249595. These dark arts of propaganda are poorly understood by many. It is one of the reasons a more or less famous journalist quit at national television in my country, the Netherlands. He was fed up with the way Russian propaganda continued to find its way to national news and television, https://x.com/RolfSchuttenh/status/1810970704394732017?s=19.
This is such an important point. As a personal example, I've learned so much reading the ISW updates section on "Russian Information Operations" regularly over a period of time. It's opened my eyes to an area of expertise that I didn't fully appreciate even existed, and now I see more of these "dark patterns" showing up (e.g., where hard-to-refute "facts" conveniently align with a speaker's motives and a backer's funding).
Great point re "strategic". Whenever I see the word used I always look for a justification for it's use. It's vanishingly rare to find one. And as you point out its usage is staggeringly lopsided. Coming up to three years and still the wrong and conventional thinking about unbeatable Russia and feeble Ukraine pervades the narrative. Thanks again for providing the antidote!
Not to defend its misuse, but it becomes understandable if the fighting over this one section of the Donbas is treated (nonsensically!) as a war in itself. If so, the loss of each town alters how this “war” is being fought.
Just like companies who all engage in “strategic planning” when so much of is is hardly so, but it makes it sound really important and impactful when it is not so.
Excellent analysis. It is good that you have focussed this week on the misuse of the word strategic by western press but unfortunately as you have stated before the media are reinforcing their errors from the start of the war and are trying to make news NOT report it. Not only are they trying to make news, but they have completely lost sight of the bigger picture as have the Russians. They have lost their situational awareness.
Let us look at Pokrovsk. As we can see the Russians are advancing, albeit very slowly and at great expense in casualties and equipment losses but the Ukrainians are conducting a very disciplined withdrawal which is extending the Russian lines of communication. The Russians have only recently started to expand this salient to the south and they are pushing their reserves into the salient so as to maintain this slow advance.
One could argue that the Kursk operation was undertaken to inject an additional factor for Russian command to consider. However, I suspect that the Ukrainians always suspected that the Russians would want to try and maintain the initiative in the east and so they continue grinding towards Prokovsk. As I have said in previous posts, Kursk is only the beginning, and I suspect other operations to take place elsewhere given that Russia appears to have lost all situational awareness. This is probably Putin's influence and his demand for certain objectives to be achieved by certain dates.
Whilst I don't want to give the Russians any ideas, look for a counterstroke from the north that will isolate the salient and a lot of Russian reserves, given their extended lines. Plus, something happening across the Dnipro aimed at isolating Crimea. Always remember that Ukraine's mission is to restore their internationally recognised borders, and that Crimea is the key terrain.
The next four weeks are going to be fascinating and what Ukraine does is going to set how modern conflicts are conducted in this fast-moving technological age.
Kursk has drained what's left of Russian reserves nationwide -- this was pretty much verified by the motley collection of aircraft ground crew and so forth who Russia rushed in. Russia now *must* move troops from one part of the front if they want to reinforce another. I have no doubt that Syrski is plotting the next attack on a weak part of the front with this in mind.
Excellent article. Difficult question for you now : Why do you think that Western media seems to have a pro-Russian tilt?... Or at least a "Russia is Impressive/Ukraine is not" doomsday tilt?
Hi Stephen, answered that a little just a second ago. My guess is that part of the answer is an analytical community that invested their credibility in the Russia strong narrative
Absolutely in the first three as they materially changed the flow of goods and military supplies across the globe for the powers. If the Allies lose Gibraltar, for instance, it means that access to the Mediterranean (invasion of North Africa and Italy) would have been impossible. Antwerp in 1944 is more that it affects the course of a campaign that was only going to have one result. Does that make sense?
Yes. That's more or less what I thought. I always thought Hitler made huge mistake by not pressing Franco on Gibraltar in 1940. I was not sure about the Suez Canal as in the book you did not seem to describe El Alamein as important, and it's importance was as the last defensible position before the Canal, not in terms of materiel destruction. But maybe I don't remember everything correctly from the book.
Heard about it but didnt read it. The road criticisms are overblown as the Russians dont need to take Pokrovsk to cut the roads. They already have on one side and are closer to the road than the town on the other.
The biggest recent threat to Ukraine is not the Pokrovsk incursion, it's the fact that China just suddenly banned the export of drone parts worldwide. It's going to be so hard for Ukraine to replace those imports.
Do you mean microchips or other replacement parts for drones? Ukraine has a big 3D printing operation. They could cope with many things but cheap semi-conductors might be a problem.
I think Kevin is absolutely right. This is an almost perfect example of the non-geographic strategic vulnerability.
Unfortunately, Chinese-made FPV drones are useful because they are dirt cheap. It makes them an expendable substitute for artillery. Ukraine does build similar single-use drones, but they depend upon imported Chinese components. The same is true of for Ukraine's larger specialist drones (alongside, as you mentioned, those they import from elsewhere). Btw, a tear-down of a DJI drone in 2020 by a tech consultancy discovered that approximately 80% of the semi-conductors used in its component parts were from Europe and the US. Taiwan dominates the industry but it specialises in high-end chip design. Cheaper, simpler chips are also churned out by many nations including China and those are then used to manufacture the components in China that create a drone. Western nations could, of course, sanction the sale of our own chips to China, but that might just mean a game of whack-a-mole until China's rapid expansion of its semiconductor industry is complete. This banning of dual-use components by China is very bad news for any other nation manufacturing military drones especially Ukraine. That's because you cannot set up alternative production lines overnight. For example, a new semi-conductor plant takes a decade to construct. Meanwhile, China is very happy to sell drones to Russia.
"...one that some historians say turned the tide of the war in Europe almost a year before the D-Day invasion of Normandy"
There are also crazy casualties claims: "The cost to Hitler’s forces was steep, with casualty figures ranging up to 200,000 or more killed..." (actually 45,000 KIA and MIA - and the claims about Stalingrad are also exaggerated).
And then there's some historian actually mentioned by name (who apparently never read How The War Was Won):
“What Kursk did was eliminate the German armor reserves and thereby made it impossible for the Germans to successfully defend the Russian front for the rest of the war,” Mansoor said.
“After Kursk, the Germans could no longer replace their manpower losses and they lost the cream of their armored corps there,” he said.
I dont know if I can really handle reading that story Andrew. Does it talk about the huge (though in reality almost nonexistent) Battle of Prokhorovka?
No. Most importantly, it just makes wild claims about the importance of the battle in which in fact Russia suffered almost 6 times more casualties and lost several times more equipment.
I think you have hit the nail on the head. Western journalists have long been prone to lazy reporting, and at times have been either in awe of a side they perceive to be the stronger, or guilty of both siding, or worse.
I’m reading Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine, as well as looking through journalistic output from western mass media at the time of the Holodomor when Gareth Jones reported what was happened in Ukraine and other black earth regions of Russia.
On one extreme you had the New York Times, with “their man in Moscow”, Walter Duranty, busy writing Kremlin approved narratives.
On the other sides some western newspapers printed Gareth’s story.
And then there was Time magazine, which printed a piece featuring both Gareth’s story and Duranty’s denial. Classic both sideism.
Not sure if the NYT especially has leaned anything from the 1930’s.
The NYT made excuses for *leaded gasoline* in the 1920s, when the competitor paper, Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, was calling out the dangers of leaded gasoline loudly.
These update are always valuable and informative unless the media in the west. I look forward to seeing your work with Eliot Cohen. Maybe the two of you can open some eyes on the abject analytical failure and malpractice here is the US on Russia and Ukraine.
As for AFU hitting power infrastructure in Russia and Moscow is even better, let’s see if they can find ways to hit generation and substations that could lead to a cascading outage.
Is it me or has Putin basically backed down in his rhetoric given AFU attacks on oil infrastructure and holding part of Kursk Oblast? Calling it not a big deal in short? Red line…not! Now if only Washington and Berlin would grow a pair and let AFU use ATACMS and other weapons to hit deep within Russia.
I had just finished reading this enlightening installment by the good professor as well as all the commentary, when I next read Newsweek's new article by Brendan Cole, "Zelensky's Kursk Incursion could be playing into Putin's hands." OMG this latter piece is the perfect proRussia biased example of "journalism" that one could ask for. Its shameful bias is completely transparent and almost a caricature...no it IS a caricature...of the weird, indefensible tilt toward Russian propagandizing that has been masquerading as reporting by American media about developments in this war. For some reason I find myself reminded of all the now discredited pro war "weapons of mass destruction!" "reporting" in the US leading up to the Iraq war. Such biased and mistaken reporting can be very destructive in its consequences.
Thanks, Phillips. I greatly appreciate your analysis; it is usually the first thing I look at when it appears. Unfortunately "strategic" is not the only word systematically misused by authors. Another one is "exponentially," used as a synonym for "growing," when the actual meaning is "growing at a compounding rate." Alas, you misused it here.
You are with a crowd, including in my experience a doctoral engineering student whose thesis prospectus did so. For many reasons he was sent back to try better next time. But one can hope...
On the bright side, I came across two articles this week where the word "strategic" appeared once and referred to some of Ukraine's resources. One is by the former commander of US forces in Europe - General Ben Hodges. The other is by NATALIYA GUMENYUK, a Ukrainian journalist, CEO of the Public Interest Journalism Lab, and Co-Founder of The Reckoning Project who appears in Foreign Affairs.
Thanks Phillips, your analysis is so valuable as a sanity check when reading the wider press coverage. So many journalists seem incapable of reporting Ukrainian sources without providing the context of how the war might be perceived by equivalent Russian sources IF such sources were able to communicate with western news channels. Lazy journalism and quite infuriating that the NYT, WSJ, FT, and others often seem to be propogandizing on behalf of Putin, either consciously or otherwise.
Thanks SImon--this is a big problem. We get reports about how the Ukrainian military is suffering, and give them prominence (which is not a bad thing) but then because of a lack of sources act like all is going ok with the Russian military
It's one thing for USA Today or even CNN to play the "Today on Twitter" game, but NYT, WSJ et al are (were?) *capable* of critical, evidence-based journalism and there are *some* reliable sources available. They could just pull from ISW daily updates and they'd improve dramatically with minimal additional effort.
In short, there seems to be a profound laziness and disinterest disinterest here that contrasts so markedly with the fevered coverage of the Gulf wars or, say, more recent in-depth public service journalism of the Panama Papaers. It's as if, somewhere along the way, they all decided they were jealous of Social Media and went all-in on vibes over evidence.
Thank you for this Update Phillips. You're basically explaining and confirming what was my gut feeling for a long time: That the press has a strange bias in favor of everything that Russia does and against everything that Ukraine does. I feel like every little thing that could be seen as "bad" for Ukraine gets blown out of proportion by the press (one recent example is that Ukraine seems to have lost one F-16 and the accompanying pilot). I think this kind of reporting can be damaging, especially if it happens over long time scales, since it can affect public opinion and, in turn, even policy decisions. I wish for change in the way that the war is reported, but, let's be honest, that probably won't happen anytime soon.
Thanks Benjamin. I agree with much of what you say. I think its partly down to the influence of an analytical community that invested much of their credibility in the Russia strong narrative, and are looking for evidence of this wherever they can
I agree; hell may have no fury greater than a woman scorned, but a close second is an academic or policy wonk, whose prestige depends on being right, having been contradicted by reality. Always useful to remember that: “in theory, theory and practice are the same; but in practice they’re not.”.
I've got two ideas why the Western press/academia is far more critical of Ukraine than Russia.
Since Russia is so much bigger than Ukraine, there has been a simplistic snap assessment that Ukraine cannot hold its own, either initially or in the long run. The press keeps looking for signs that this snap assessment is finally panning out.
Second reason: the "Trump" rules. The press knows that Trump and the Russians are crazy liars and will never engage the press in good faith. So, they focus all their intention on the relatively sane side that is open to their influence. I don't know when the press got it in their heads that it was their job to influence policy, but they now regard it as their primary function.
Hi Kathleen--this size thing is fascinating, When you add that to the (bad) historical assumptions about Soviet power, I think there really is something there that influences opinion.
I hope you are not right about the Trump rules-----but you may be.
I've come up with a third reason why Americans intelligentsia might be inclined to pessimism about Ukraine. We've done nothing but fall short in wars recently--Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. We've come to expect that our side is going to lose. And the press is very suspicious of any governmental optimism. They've heard too much happy talk from military officials.
They know little about the military in general and military history in particular. Few of them have served in the military, let alone fought in wars. Even historians nowadays don't do much military history, and so much of modern teaching of history (especially in schools educating the elites) has been corrupted by the quasi-Marxist approach of seeing everything through the prism of the oppressors vs. the oppressed. So many elites are inherently suspicious of our side because "Western imperialism" or whatever. Never mind that Russia is one of the oldest European empires (and the only one still in business), its authoritarian rulers are white and ostentatiously Christian, a few years ago they legalized wife beating (some parliamentarians even says that women are only good for childbearing and should not get college education because it only spoils them - even J.D. Vance does not dare to repeat THAT part of Russian propaganda), they have a lot of anti-LGBTQ+ laws and right now they are advertising their country as a refuge for Westerners who are sick and tired of wokeness in their countries. Still, Russia is definitely non-Western and in fact very anti-Western. So their nakedly imperialist aggression against Ukraine somehow becomes a defense of poor misunderstood non-Westerners from evil Western imperialism.
Very interesting discourse analysis of the Western press on Ukraine. Western news agencies like AP and Reuters are fed with bulletins from their Russian counterparts TASS and Interfax. Quite often, journalists just copy paste the news. Sure, they know the importance of being objective. The problem is that Russian combat propaganda actually is quite sophisticated and very good at manipulating the news feeds, read for more information https://theins.ru/en/opinion/vladimir-yakovlev/249595. These dark arts of propaganda are poorly understood by many. It is one of the reasons a more or less famous journalist quit at national television in my country, the Netherlands. He was fed up with the way Russian propaganda continued to find its way to national news and television, https://x.com/RolfSchuttenh/status/1810970704394732017?s=19.
This is such an important point. As a personal example, I've learned so much reading the ISW updates section on "Russian Information Operations" regularly over a period of time. It's opened my eyes to an area of expertise that I didn't fully appreciate even existed, and now I see more of these "dark patterns" showing up (e.g., where hard-to-refute "facts" conveniently align with a speaker's motives and a backer's funding).
Great point re "strategic". Whenever I see the word used I always look for a justification for it's use. It's vanishingly rare to find one. And as you point out its usage is staggeringly lopsided. Coming up to three years and still the wrong and conventional thinking about unbeatable Russia and feeble Ukraine pervades the narrative. Thanks again for providing the antidote!
Appreciate that Andy--the way the word is used makes no sense!
Not to defend its misuse, but it becomes understandable if the fighting over this one section of the Donbas is treated (nonsensically!) as a war in itself. If so, the loss of each town alters how this “war” is being fought.
Just like companies who all engage in “strategic planning” when so much of is is hardly so, but it makes it sound really important and impactful when it is not so.
Excellent analysis. It is good that you have focussed this week on the misuse of the word strategic by western press but unfortunately as you have stated before the media are reinforcing their errors from the start of the war and are trying to make news NOT report it. Not only are they trying to make news, but they have completely lost sight of the bigger picture as have the Russians. They have lost their situational awareness.
Let us look at Pokrovsk. As we can see the Russians are advancing, albeit very slowly and at great expense in casualties and equipment losses but the Ukrainians are conducting a very disciplined withdrawal which is extending the Russian lines of communication. The Russians have only recently started to expand this salient to the south and they are pushing their reserves into the salient so as to maintain this slow advance.
One could argue that the Kursk operation was undertaken to inject an additional factor for Russian command to consider. However, I suspect that the Ukrainians always suspected that the Russians would want to try and maintain the initiative in the east and so they continue grinding towards Prokovsk. As I have said in previous posts, Kursk is only the beginning, and I suspect other operations to take place elsewhere given that Russia appears to have lost all situational awareness. This is probably Putin's influence and his demand for certain objectives to be achieved by certain dates.
Whilst I don't want to give the Russians any ideas, look for a counterstroke from the north that will isolate the salient and a lot of Russian reserves, given their extended lines. Plus, something happening across the Dnipro aimed at isolating Crimea. Always remember that Ukraine's mission is to restore their internationally recognised borders, and that Crimea is the key terrain.
The next four weeks are going to be fascinating and what Ukraine does is going to set how modern conflicts are conducted in this fast-moving technological age.
Kursk has drained what's left of Russian reserves nationwide -- this was pretty much verified by the motley collection of aircraft ground crew and so forth who Russia rushed in. Russia now *must* move troops from one part of the front if they want to reinforce another. I have no doubt that Syrski is plotting the next attack on a weak part of the front with this in mind.
Excellent article. Difficult question for you now : Why do you think that Western media seems to have a pro-Russian tilt?... Or at least a "Russia is Impressive/Ukraine is not" doomsday tilt?
Hi Stephen, answered that a little just a second ago. My guess is that part of the answer is an analytical community that invested their credibility in the Russia strong narrative
What are they going to say after Russia loses? Would not it make more sense for them to start shifting very gradually?
The standard reaction of an authority to a mistake is to forget that he ever said it.
So true
Its because many people mistake cynicism for wisdom
Just curious. Would you describe Gibraltar in WWII as strategically important? Suez Canal? Singapore? Antwerp starting in late 1944?
Absolutely in the first three as they materially changed the flow of goods and military supplies across the globe for the powers. If the Allies lose Gibraltar, for instance, it means that access to the Mediterranean (invasion of North Africa and Italy) would have been impossible. Antwerp in 1944 is more that it affects the course of a campaign that was only going to have one result. Does that make sense?
Yes. That's more or less what I thought. I always thought Hitler made huge mistake by not pressing Franco on Gibraltar in 1940. I was not sure about the Suez Canal as in the book you did not seem to describe El Alamein as important, and it's importance was as the last defensible position before the Canal, not in terms of materiel destruction. But maybe I don't remember everything correctly from the book.
I take it you've seen the Telegraph's 'Master stroke or folly?' this morning? Lots of 'strategic' claims about road and rail links etc.
Heard about it but didnt read it. The road criticisms are overblown as the Russians dont need to take Pokrovsk to cut the roads. They already have on one side and are closer to the road than the town on the other.
The biggest recent threat to Ukraine is not the Pokrovsk incursion, it's the fact that China just suddenly banned the export of drone parts worldwide. It's going to be so hard for Ukraine to replace those imports.
Do you mean microchips or other replacement parts for drones? Ukraine has a big 3D printing operation. They could cope with many things but cheap semi-conductors might be a problem.
Ukraine can assemble its own drones and can buy chips from Taiwan.
Russia, on the other hand, *can't* buy chips from Taiwan...
But Ukraine has a robust drone industry and they also import from Turkey & the U.S.
I think Kevin is absolutely right. This is an almost perfect example of the non-geographic strategic vulnerability.
Unfortunately, Chinese-made FPV drones are useful because they are dirt cheap. It makes them an expendable substitute for artillery. Ukraine does build similar single-use drones, but they depend upon imported Chinese components. The same is true of for Ukraine's larger specialist drones (alongside, as you mentioned, those they import from elsewhere). Btw, a tear-down of a DJI drone in 2020 by a tech consultancy discovered that approximately 80% of the semi-conductors used in its component parts were from Europe and the US. Taiwan dominates the industry but it specialises in high-end chip design. Cheaper, simpler chips are also churned out by many nations including China and those are then used to manufacture the components in China that create a drone. Western nations could, of course, sanction the sale of our own chips to China, but that might just mean a game of whack-a-mole until China's rapid expansion of its semiconductor industry is complete. This banning of dual-use components by China is very bad news for any other nation manufacturing military drones especially Ukraine. That's because you cannot set up alternative production lines overnight. For example, a new semi-conductor plant takes a decade to construct. Meanwhile, China is very happy to sell drones to Russia.
https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3274968/china-expands-export-controls-drones-parts-potential-military-use
You want more misuse of big words like 'turn the tide"? https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/27/europe/world-war-two-battle-of-kursk-1943-soviet-victory-intl-hnk-ml/index.html
"...one that some historians say turned the tide of the war in Europe almost a year before the D-Day invasion of Normandy"
There are also crazy casualties claims: "The cost to Hitler’s forces was steep, with casualty figures ranging up to 200,000 or more killed..." (actually 45,000 KIA and MIA - and the claims about Stalingrad are also exaggerated).
And then there's some historian actually mentioned by name (who apparently never read How The War Was Won):
“What Kursk did was eliminate the German armor reserves and thereby made it impossible for the Germans to successfully defend the Russian front for the rest of the war,” Mansoor said.
“After Kursk, the Germans could no longer replace their manpower losses and they lost the cream of their armored corps there,” he said.
I dont know if I can really handle reading that story Andrew. Does it talk about the huge (though in reality almost nonexistent) Battle of Prokhorovka?
No.
Does the article mention that most of that raw materiel came from the US? And was shipped by the US when Russia had no navy to speak of?
No. Most importantly, it just makes wild claims about the importance of the battle in which in fact Russia suffered almost 6 times more casualties and lost several times more equipment.
Thanks for this update Phillips.
I think you have hit the nail on the head. Western journalists have long been prone to lazy reporting, and at times have been either in awe of a side they perceive to be the stronger, or guilty of both siding, or worse.
I’m reading Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine, as well as looking through journalistic output from western mass media at the time of the Holodomor when Gareth Jones reported what was happened in Ukraine and other black earth regions of Russia.
On one extreme you had the New York Times, with “their man in Moscow”, Walter Duranty, busy writing Kremlin approved narratives.
On the other sides some western newspapers printed Gareth’s story.
And then there was Time magazine, which printed a piece featuring both Gareth’s story and Duranty’s denial. Classic both sideism.
Not sure if the NYT especially has leaned anything from the 1930’s.
The NYT made excuses for *leaded gasoline* in the 1920s, when the competitor paper, Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, was calling out the dangers of leaded gasoline loudly.
NYT has always been a bad newspaper.
These update are always valuable and informative unless the media in the west. I look forward to seeing your work with Eliot Cohen. Maybe the two of you can open some eyes on the abject analytical failure and malpractice here is the US on Russia and Ukraine.
As for AFU hitting power infrastructure in Russia and Moscow is even better, let’s see if they can find ways to hit generation and substations that could lead to a cascading outage.
Is it me or has Putin basically backed down in his rhetoric given AFU attacks on oil infrastructure and holding part of Kursk Oblast? Calling it not a big deal in short? Red line…not! Now if only Washington and Berlin would grow a pair and let AFU use ATACMS and other weapons to hit deep within Russia.
Washington and Berlin (and the UK for toadying to the US) are patsies, stooges, really suckers, for falling for Putin’s red line bluffs.
I had just finished reading this enlightening installment by the good professor as well as all the commentary, when I next read Newsweek's new article by Brendan Cole, "Zelensky's Kursk Incursion could be playing into Putin's hands." OMG this latter piece is the perfect proRussia biased example of "journalism" that one could ask for. Its shameful bias is completely transparent and almost a caricature...no it IS a caricature...of the weird, indefensible tilt toward Russian propagandizing that has been masquerading as reporting by American media about developments in this war. For some reason I find myself reminded of all the now discredited pro war "weapons of mass destruction!" "reporting" in the US leading up to the Iraq war. Such biased and mistaken reporting can be very destructive in its consequences.
Thanks, Phillips. I greatly appreciate your analysis; it is usually the first thing I look at when it appears. Unfortunately "strategic" is not the only word systematically misused by authors. Another one is "exponentially," used as a synonym for "growing," when the actual meaning is "growing at a compounding rate." Alas, you misused it here.
You are with a crowd, including in my experience a doctoral engineering student whose thesis prospectus did so. For many reasons he was sent back to try better next time. But one can hope...
On the bright side, I came across two articles this week where the word "strategic" appeared once and referred to some of Ukraine's resources. One is by the former commander of US forces in Europe - General Ben Hodges. The other is by NATALIYA GUMENYUK, a Ukrainian journalist, CEO of the Public Interest Journalism Lab, and Co-Founder of The Reckoning Project who appears in Foreign Affairs.