Ukraine Unbowed

May 23, 2024

The next six months are critical for Ukraine and all bets are off as to its outcome. Even so, the US mainstream press has turned negative about Ukraine’s prospects. This is mostly due to what I call “worm-hole reportage” – news reports that are subjective, incomplete, selective, and often influenced by Kremlin narratives. For example, The New York Times’ headline on May 18 was “Russians Poured Over Ukraine’s Border” into the Kharkiv Region and that this was a “stunning incursion”, boding badly for Kyiv. Another gloomy headline followed: “Under Relentless Russian Assault, Ukraine Adopts a Defensive Crouch”. This coverage resulted in military historian Phillips O’Brien weighing in and on May 19 he wrote that “much of the portrayed Russian success is based on prediction”. The facts are that Russian ground troops have scored tiny successes in Kharkiv and crawled to a halt along the main front in Donbas, he wrote. “What we have seen [of Russian forces] in both theaters would be classified as being a failure,” concluded O’Brien. “Their losses are piling up. And indeed, there are signs that Ukraine might finally be getting its hands on more ammo.”