Published On: Sat, Mar 12th, 2022

Utilising Mi7 propaganda to tell the story of Russian success in Ukraine it doesn’t want to

A fact of life for anyone who is frustrated by not having a complete and accurate and frequently updated awareness of the progress of Russian forces, as they execute their “Special Operation in the Donbas”, is that these things are not being done for your benefit so that you should expect constant briefing.

If you need steady reassurance because you have picked Russia’s side in the fight, and you are dismayed by the propaganda produced by UK Government’s military intelligence media complex (in an information war against Russia), which has an express purpose to create a distorted presentation of events to its advantage, then you need to get a grip. It should by now be very evident to you that the Russian military likes to operate silently, and is not interested in letting the world (and its enemy) know where and how the execution of its plan is proceeding. Following from this, it should occur that if you do find the consolation, or entertainment that you are looking for, it is hardly likely to be an entirely accurate representation – and that is an understatement – of the disposition of forces involved in the conflict.

Moreover, if one does not allow oneself to be affected by Mi7 (corporate-media) propaganda, as is the intention of those who produce it, one can criticise it, and find it to be a revelation of an appreciation of events as they really are had, from their close proximity to them, by the people who are effectively the controllers of the Ukrainian Nazi-praetorian regime.

Take for instance a piece published on 11th March, composed by the agent Jeremy Bowen, nominally working for the BBC and who appears to claim to be in Kiev, where, in an effort to make the issue of which army controls Kiev appear to be the most significant military consideration of the conflict so that he can award failure to the party who doesn’t have the capital city in their possession, happens to reveal that Russia has been incredibly successful in what must be her primary goal.

The Russians blundered; the Ukrainians resisted. Around Kyiv the Russian advance stalled. In the south, it was a different story. They worked steadily towards opening a land corridor between Crimea and Moscow’s enclaves in eastern Ukraine.

But it has been clear from the outset that control of Kyiv is crucial to winning arguments in politics as well as on the battlefield. While President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government holds the city, he can claim not to be defeated, and President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin cannot claim victory.

It appears to have been widely forgotten that after Putin signed the order recognising the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics, and at the same time created a mechanism whereby they could call on a military alliance with Russia in their defence, the new states swiftly activated the relevant clauses. If Russia’s progress in the south is the opposite of “stalling”, as Bowen can’t help but admit, then the Russians have done very well in respects of dealing with the casus belli. Never forget that the US/UK and all its agents appear to be submerged in a custom where the norm is to have a military apparatus squat on a country (even in Vietnam), without necessarily controlling all of it, to steal its resources, with no other objective than that. Of course, then, Bowen is going to place great importance on a race to control Ukraine for a symbol, and only the appearance of controlling the entire arena.

Quite contrarily, the Russians clearly have specific objectives by which real success and failure should be gauged. It is therefore important to try and understand what these are rather than accepting the US/UK commentary that stems from its perverse vampirism.  And then, having understood Russian goals, one can appreciate the way that the Russians are conducting themselves – which includes a very good reason for not entirely controlling Kiev in the earliest phases of their expedition. Such analysis is about to be done in this article, before which there must be a little bit more criticism of this Bowen contribution of our current study.

So, notice that Bowen places supreme importance of controlling Kiev because of political appearances. Although he says that these have equivalence with military considerations – struggling with his Outer Party doublethink as he must to do it – this is what he has to say to remain plausible. In actual fact, the truth is that the military control of Kiev is only important to Mi7 propaganda production. If Russia is controlling the arena outside Kiev so that possession of the city is irrelevant in terms of measures of Russian success, then Ukrainian claims of being victorious are completely hollow. As stated above, Russia is well on the way to kicking the Ukrainians out of Novorossiya, and making Donetsk and Luhansk secure.

Consider the maps shown below (clickable for resizing). The first one is taken from the Bowen article that features above. The second one is from the SouthFront site. The third one is that which the so-called great alternative media geopolitical expertise website, The Saker, has most recently presented to its audience. The BBC map understandably – from its perspective –  understates Russian progress into Ukraine, because that is a race that is clearly not being won according to the shock-and-awe mentality. The SouthFront map looks like it accords to a claim the producers of the site make about a certain level of impartiality (the issue of this site’s independence is not one that the author concerns himself very much with). The third map is entirely what one might expect from a site that has an occupational necessity to keep a large pro-Russian, or anti-American audience pleased (while at the same time purveying to it American ultimacy-ism [where each anti-American development is sure to be met with US retribution, or betterment in some shape or form, so as to present a notion of ultimate American dominance]).

The hatched area on the third map is said to show a “zone of fighting activity”, so this is supposedly territory into which Russians have advanced, but do not yet control (as opposed to the solidly shaded areas). As it happens, the way that the Ukrainians defences are said to be crumbling on the Novorossiyan front would be suggestive that a pocket around them (the blue area) is indeed in effect, because such a situation creates an isolated, unsupplied, less organised defensive force that becomes easier to beat. In any case, it is clear to see that the Russians are well into the process of clearing the Ukrainians out from Donetsk and Luhansk (with an assault on Odessa expected).

There are other ways that these maps are informative about how Russia is executing its operation towards what ends. It stands to reason (and anyone should be able to realise this without having attended West Point) that if an army wants to exert a very tight sort of control over a battlefield, it must engage the enemy at as many points of contact as possible in order to pin them down, and advance at most of these points will not be the objective. On the other hand, at other points, usually where an army can act most decisively, the entire objective will be to push through an offensive. In support of this, the stationary points of combat are for keeping the enemy under control so that one can achieve one’s own manoeuvres. Looking at the better of these maps (so, not the BBC one), the author would argue that, the Russians have engaged the Ukrainians every where they can for the main purpose of destroying the Ukrainians on their Novorossiyan front with pincers from the south and the east. The objective at Kiev in the early days, then, would not have been so much about disconnecting it, as it would be about the general requirement of keeping the Ukrainians from reinforcing the south. Moreover, because the author is led to understand that the vast bulk of the Ukrainian forces were on their Novorossiyan front at the beginning of the Russian operation, there is cause to believe, from looking at these maps, that they don’t have forces in reserve, and any that are not in the Novorossiyan pocket are trapped where they have been engaged by the Russians. Now, recall if you will reader, another stated objective of the Russian mission is to demilitarise Ukraine. It’s quite clear that to do this in the circumstances presented to them, the Russians had to crush the army in the south as compulsory prerequisite. What, then, matters control of Kiev if this is going on, and the Ukrainians cannot reinforce? In this case, there is no point to any command and control to be effected from Kiev that the Russians need to decapitate.

In fact, while positioned in such a way that one of those famous Russo-Syrian humanitarian escape routes can be had to the south of Kiev, one wonders if total encirclement is superfluous to a grander scheme if, as suggested by the maps, the Russians are trying to create a larger pocket with control of territory from the capital to Odessa.

That being said, suspecting that the Ukrainian Government will not be allowed to capitulate by US/UK, the Russian objectives will have to be met by encirclement of cities as per a methodology used, if not actually developed in Syria. Although it has been stated as a separate aim, the denazification of Ukraine is part and parcel of the demilitarisation because of how the regime is evidently a martial one stemming from the relationship with government had by a Nazi political element, with its own battalions assimilated into the Ukrainian army, and forming its elite forces, that is akin to a praetorian one.

Consider two pieces of reporting from The Guardian and the BBC respectively. The first forms part of a 11th March live update service, hence the timings:

10:53

In its latest intelligence assessment, the UK Ministry of Defence said the Russian forces were committing increasing numbers to encircling key cities, reducing the forces to continue their advance which “will further slow Russian progress”.

10.58

MoD predicts renewed Russian offensive in Ukraine

The Russian military will probably launch a renewed offensive, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said, as officials concluded it was “highly unlikely” the Kremlin had successfully achieved its invasion plan so far. An MoD intelligence update said:

Russian ground forces continue to make limited progress. Logistical issues that have hampered the Russian advance persist, as does strong Ukrainian resistance.

Russia is likely seeking to reset and re-posture its forces for renewed offensive activity in the coming days. This will probably include operations against the capital Kyiv.

The BBC report is also from 11th March:

On day 16 of the invasion, Russian forces widened their attacks, targeting several Ukrainian cities that had previously escaped the worst of the onslaught.

The central city of Dnipro was among those directly targeted, with air strikes hitting a shoe factory, an apartment block and a nursery.

The BBC’s Sarah Rainsford, reporting from the city, said it had previously been something of a safe haven for people fleeing cities under sustained Russian attack.

The mayor of Lutsk, in the west of the country, said air strikes on a military airfield there killed at least four Ukrainian soldiers.

Another airfield was hit in the southwestern city of Ivano-Frankivsk.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the go-ahead for foreign volunteers to fight against Ukrainian forces.

Speaking at a Russian security council meeting, he said those who wanted to volunteer to fight with Russia-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine should be allowed to.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said there were 16,000 volunteers in the Middle East ready to fight alongside Russia-backed forces.

US officials said these could include Syrians skilled in urban combat. But analysts have questioned how useful such fighters would be to Russia, with one saying they may just become “cannon fodder”.

Note well the message of the extract from The Guardian which suggests that the UK propagandists are having to adapt so that they are not left behind and exposed in a Baghdad-Bobian way: it will not be enough from now on to explain Russian activity in terms as being stalled, or due to Ukrainian prowess in defence – although it will be important to retain that narrative so as to build upon it a consistent twist of Russian misfortune. Representative of this switch is how that mythical massive convoy of Russian vehicles that has been making its way to Kiev, which is a thing that may exist only in the mind of Winston Smith of Mi7 so that Russia can be criticised for stumbling over its own logistics problems, is now conveniently dispersed, as Bowen, playing his part in the transition, imparts:

The last couple of days have been bright and sunny, after more than a week of thick cloud. That means satellites have a clear view of movements on the ground. One conclusion is that the 40-mile Russian convoy north-west of Kyiv is slowly dispersing and reorganising.

So the idea of new Russian offensives is in part disinformation in the propaganda framework of a race that needs to be run, and how the Russians are now trying to reorganise and catch up from a state of affairs caused by tardiness. At the same time, there will be no hiding how the Russians will gain momentum as they inevitably defeat the Ukrainians and are able to redeploy (whereas reorganising implies regrouping) – and this is what the propagandists must prepare the ground for, according to the narrative of a progress that is being hard to obtain.

In that respect, when the BBC had no choice but to report “Russian forces [had] widened their attacks” by bombing Dnipro and staging attacks on airfields way over in the west of Ukraine, it was phrased that way to give the impression of lashing out, but what was being reflected was the Russians being able to move systematically to another phase of their operation. What was also a masterpiece in arrogance was the idea conveyed by The Guardian on behalf of the UK Ministry of Defence that Russia could be judged to be finished in Ukraine, but the MoD chose not to think that way. The truth is that effective Russian control of the east looks to be complete, with Mi7 only being able to boast on behalf of the Ukrainians about ambushes, which if the Ukrainians (and their helpers) are able to carry out successfully here and there, most likely are done in areas of Russian control (and by infiltrating saboteurs), or as rearguard actions against forces coming to control new territory. There are no Ukrainian counter offensives, it would seem, and no reinforcement, otherwise the Russian air force would be more busy than it is said to be over central Ukraine. Speaking of which, the attack on Dnipro in conjunction with the attacks on the western airfields is very interesting, because it suggests Russian encroachment towards the central Ukrainian city and of preparation for action moving in the westwards direction.

Of course, quite deliciously, in the development of the UK propagandists’ narrative, it still came out that Russian progress was deliberate (and not slow) because of the methodology of encirclement, as introduced above, and which the BBC extract gives us more room to discuss. It’s already been said that this process would be in great part about denazification, and this is because the Nazi element has chosen its battlefield to be in the cities so that Russian deadly intent towards it must be tempered by concern for a prisoner population kept to form a human shield for the defenders.

Now, if one applies a little thought, one must realise that if an army wants to eliminate its enemy (as the Russians do the Ukrainian Nazis), then it must engage them wherever they are, and in a town where there is an innocent citizen population that must be preserved (for the sake of winning hearts and minds) besiegement until starvation and surrender is not an option. Battle must by joined, but the Russians have a way of doing it – a solution to their problem – that is tried and tested (as attested to by what must be thousands of spared Syrian civilians), and so it’s very interesting to see the BBC cheaply convey a message of scorn about the arrival of people into the battle arena who are, in fact, Russia’s invaluable partners in respect of solving the particular problem in question, because they are experts in the field.

The US officials mentioned in the BBC piece are probably correct, because these Middle Easterners are most likely to be Syrians – although the Russians have probably used code when referring to them as “volunteers”. The author suspects that things are not as ad hoc as the Russians pretend: long-held plans are unfolding, and the old teams are being reassembled, and Russian expertise will also combine with that of certain famous Syrian militia-now-incorporated-into-the-SAA‡. Indeed, the taking of long suffering Mariupol, which is apparently happening as this is typed, speaks of the Russians moving without further delay to solve their Nazi problem. Of course, the US and UK know all about which side is cannon fodder when their extremists (commanded by their serving military) are holed up with nowhere to go but die. Surrendering appears to be an option that might have been available in Syria, but not so much in Ukraine.

 

† Lately, other reasons have been cited for explanation of the launch of the Russian operation. These are to be examined and valued for their reasonableness in another FBEL article.

‡ Fascinatingly, today brings a story of a mosque being shelled in Mariupol (Ukraine says), just as if Muslims are supposed by the news to be deterred from participating in the taking of the town.

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