Russia Ukraine #2: The Art of War Propaganda
This week I learned the meaning of "The first casualty of war is truth"
This is not the usual stuff that you read my substack for. It has only been a week since the Russian invasion, and I have truly learned the meaning of “the first casualty of the war is truth”. The longer the war continues, the uglier it will get. I wanted to do this post early on before I feel bad about exposing propaganda.
Needless to mention, Putin was a monster and a war criminal long before he invaded Ukraine. It is just that when Putin attacked close to home, the West finally decided to take off their rose-tinted glasses, except for not imposing sanctions on Russian oil, of course.
For me, the amount of propaganda the Western accounts have carried out is eye-opening because they duped me early on. I mainly follow what is referred to as Econ Twitter and Finance Twitter and all of them were engaged in it either through retweeting it or quote tweeting the stuff.
The post has benefited from my discussion with someone who knows more about this stuff than I do. Without further ado, let’s get on with it.
Redemption of US Intel agencies
When Russia attacked Ukraine, the Twitter accounts started singing praises of Western intelligence agencies, saying they have redeemed themselves. After getting hundreds of thousands or maybe millions killed on fake dossiers and supporting murderous regimes, all it took for redemption was getting one fact right that Russia is about to attack. I didn’t know this is how redemption works.
Ben is a journalist and an author, and Roula that he is retweeting is the chief editor of Financial Times.
The Bloomberg Opinion columnist and a prolific substacker.
The comedian President had better intel, but then his aides say he was joking.
Ghost of Kiev
Early in the war, news started coming in that a Ukrainian fighter pilot has taken down multiple Russian planes. He was named “Ghost of Kiev” and my timeline was spammed with the news from various verified accounts. You can click on the tweet below to see the video from this verified account.
The truth is, there is no ghost of Kyiv. The early videos shared of the Ghost of Kyiv in battle were all from a video game. But if you look at the dates of the above tweets, you see that it doesn’t matter to these accounts whether he is real or not.
The Snake Island soldiers
The famous soldiers were valorized for their martyrdom. Professor Scott Galloway is known to all the students of business.
This is the guardian reporting it.
This is CNN
Then there were the memes
But it turns out that is not the case. The soldiers had surrendered.
It appears that the Ukrainian president is working the media really well.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said later on Thursday that 13 soldiers on Snake Island all died "heroically" by Russian bombardment. But -- after the Ukrainian border guard said that it had information disputing the deaths -- a statement on Monday from the country's navy suggested this was certainly not the case
According to the navy the soldiers on the island repelled two attacks by Russian forces but in the end were forced to surrender "due to the lack of ammunition."
The statement added that Russian attackers have completely destroyed the island's infrastructure, including lighthouses, towers and antennas.
Russian state media also showed the arrival of the Ukrainian soldiers in Sevastopol, Crimea where they are being held.
Flying planes is like driving a car
Shashank is the writer on military affairs for The Economist and earlier worked at RUSI, the article he is sharing.
A final factor to consider is the relatively low number of flying hours that VKS pilots receive each year relative to most of their Western counterparts. While accurate numbers across each unit are hard to find, periodic Russian official statements suggest an average of 100–120 hours per year across the VKS as a whole. Fighter unit flying hours are likely to be lower than those for transport or helicopter units, so the real figure is probably a little under 100. RAF and US Air Force fighter pilots often complain that they struggle to maintain multirole combat readiness with around 180–240 flying hours a year, access to modern high-fidelity simulators for additional training, and better cockpit ergonomics and weapon interfaces than their Russian counterparts. Therefore, it may be that despite an impressive modernisation programme that has seen the acquisition of around 350 new modern combat aircraft over the past decade, VKS pilots would struggle to effectively employ many of the theoretical capabilities of their aircraft in the complex and contested air environment of Ukraine.
As per the article, one of the reasons Russians aren’t entering the Ukraine airspace is that they don’t have enough flying hours on their plane.
The same Shashank then tweets to let us know that Ukraine pilots will be flying Polish jets without, I presume, any hours flying those aircraft.
Turkish Drones and the Russian convoy
Even the US presidential hopeful Marco Rubio jumped in on it.
Our Zaid Hamid isn’t far behind either
If the TB2 is so lethal and the Russian air force is so weak or afraid, why was there a 40 km (17 miles) long convoy yesterday moving towards Kyiv? It should be easy pickings for the Ukrainian air force, what Shashank calls “juicy pickings”
He goes on to say that they would have degraded by now.
Either there was no 40km long convoy or Ukrainian air defence isn’t as strong as we were made to believe.
Miss Ukrainian picks up the gun
Turns out that is not true either
Is Miss Ukraine fighting against Russia? She’s seen with gun | Miami Herald
An Instagram post featuring former Miss Ukraine Anastasiaa Lenna holding a gun has gone viral, with many people applauding her for standing up against Russia.
But is Lenna, who was Ukraine’s representative in the Miss Grand International competition in 2015, actually fighting against the Russian military forces?
She clarified her post on Monday, Feb. 27, saying the photo was meant to inspire people.
“I am not a military, just a woman, just normal human,” she said. “Just a person, like all people of my country.”
“I don’t do any propaganda except showing that our woman of Ukraine - strong, confident and powerful,” Lenna added.
Her post last week showed her in tactical gear and holding a gun, but she clarified that the weapon was actually an airsoft gun. In one post, which has since been deleted, she said “Everyone who crosses the Ukrainian border with the intent to invade will be killed,” the New York Post reported.
Mobile Crematorium
Based on footage released by UK MoD to Daily Telegraph which is not a tabloid, I repeat, the Daily Telegraph is not a tabloid. For those who remember, Rob Crilly was earlier a reporter for Pakistan.
Max Seddon is a Financial Times reporter in Moscow and has been praised a lot recently for his Kremlin reporting.
The fact-checking site Snopes says this
Is Russia Using Mobile Crematoriums to Hide Evidence of Casualties in Ukraine? | Snopes.com
We found the video with the exact same footage posted on YouTube in 2015, which provides the contact information of Tourmaline, a St. Petersburg company allegedly behind such machines.
We went to the company website, and clicked on a link (see screenshot below) to their videos showing machinery “for biological waste (cremators, including mobile ones)” (translated from Russian by Google Translate). The original video appears to be from August 2013, and shows the operating process of their incinerator for biological waste.
……
Even though U.S. and Ukrainian officials believed that such crematoriums were operational in the past, the Telegraph report only states that the U.K. believes that this may be used to “cover up any future combat losses,” and shared old, unrelated footage. The actual source of the above video appears to be an incinerator company and was posted as early as 2013. We know that it does not show crematoriums being used by the Russian army in Ukraine in either 2022 or 2015.
Independent reporting on the ground has not verified the current use of such crematoriums. As such, we rate this story as “Unproven” and will update it if more information is available.
UK Ministry of Defence is also behind releasing fake news and part of the propaganda machine
Zelensky - The man, the myth, the legend
Credit where credit is due. It takes a lot of courage to stand up to the murderous war criminal thug that is Putin. And Zelensky just did that. But he and/or the western media also ensured that he appeared in the front lines. All these photos that are showing him with Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines are old stock photos.
The Image
The quote that was heard around the world
It is the Ukrainian embassy in UK that is tweeting this. As we know, no one is verifying any news now.
The man himself in military gear
Notice the sandbags and minimalism for the full effect.
He really knows how to work the media. Modi should learn from him.
Yuval Noah Harari making a legend
Harari, Israeli author of the bestseller Sapiens: Brief History of Mankind, wrote this piece in the Guardian about making of a Ukrainian legend. This is making the rounds today.
Prof Galloway again boosted it.
And I had missed this earlier. Boosted by Steven Pinker, no less
Yuval, the Israeli, is totally blind to the struggle of Palestenians, Kashmiris, Syrians, Afghans, Vietnamese, Algerians, French colonies in Africa and others. As PTI’s history starts in 2008, with Yuval, it appears, history started last week. Amazing historian he is turning out to be.
This was yesterday in Palestine
The purpose here isn’t to downplay the atrocities that are being visited on Ukrainians. It is just to highlight the hypocrisy of western media and intellectuals when it comes to talking about white westerners and the rest of the world, and how they have become a propaganda channel.
For me, finding out Ghost of Kyiv was fake is what sent me down this road. I was rooting for him till I found out he was fake.
I have now muted Russia, Ukraine, Putin, Zelensky on my Twitter for a week as I don’t have the energy to verify every tweet or wait a few days till the news is confirmed or debunked.
The only thing I am sure of is
Putin is a monster and a murderous thug. I hope he gets his comeuppance soon.