Over the course of the Ukraine
War – or the “Special Military Operation”, as Russia is careful to term it – I have
confidently concluded that one of the essential sources for reasonably accurate
information regarding the far-flung combat operations in the theater is … The
Russian Federation Ministry of Defense daily briefing.
Of course, those inclined to support
Ukrainian perspectives on this war immediately rise up in arms at such a
suggestion. “How could you possibly believe anything the Russians have
to say? They lie about everything!”
Well, I’m not typing out this
brief missive in an attempt to disabuse the Russia-haters of the world of their
fondest prejudices. That would be a fool’s errand, at best. But I will
briefly explain the rationale I have employed to reach the conclusion that, in
fact, the most accurate picture of ongoing Ukraine War combat operations
available to the general public is, indeed, coming from the daily Russian MoD
briefings.
First of all, I want to freely
acknowledge that there is no way they can always be correct. The very nature of
battle is fraught with inherent challenges to accuracy. Squad, company, and
battalion commanders naturally inflate their successes and downplay their
failures. Air defense crews and fighter pilots observe a clear hit on an
aircraft, watch it fall to the full extent of their perspective, but sometimes
fail to see that it somehow managed to recover before crashing into the ground,
and then miraculously limped back to its base. These sorts of things are an
unavoidable and not all that uncommon reality, and contribute substantially to
the pervasive “fog of war” in any conflict.
Fully accurate data for a war
takes years to emerge, and even then can be corrupted by inaccuracies that are
never detected and corrected. So the best one can hope for in the midst of a
war is a reasonably accurate “rough sketch” of what is really happening at any
given time, as well as a constantly coalescing picture of what has really been
happening over the course of time.
To achieve the latter, one must
also examine the positional maps, taking into account which strategic locations
are being won and lost, and what the general trajectory of operations suggests
as reflected in the way the lines of contact move and evolve.
But the one thing, above all,
that should be kept in mind is that, as a general rule, the side that is really
winning is much more likely to tell the truth, and the side that is
losing is, far more often than not, lying through its teeth.
Of course, this hardly means that
the winning side always tells the truth. They may have very good reasons
for lying, obfuscating, or simply having inaccurately ascertained what the
truth really is.
On the other hand, the losing
side, at the first realization they’re in over their heads, starts lying some
of the time, and as their prospects deteriorate further, they quickly resort to
lying nearly all the time.
Indeed, it becomes imperative to
do so, both to shield troop morale from the full truth, and (as attested very
notably in this particular war) also to reassure allies and benefactors that,
despite a few “minor setbacks”, everything is actually going “according to plan”,
and glorious victory is “just around the corner”, if only you keep helping us
out with more weapons, guns, ammo, victuals, and coin to pay our ever-dwindling
numbers of soldiers.
Also, it must be appreciated
that, in any war, even a lopsided one, the dominating power is bound to
make stupid mistakes on occasion, and incur an embarrassing setback that he
will desire to deny, spin, or otherwise downplay. Similarly, if the weaker army
pulls off a rare triumph, he will exaggerate its magnitude and relative
significance, and will predictably forecast “much more of the same” going
forward.
For these reasons, the determination
of “things as they really are” in wartime can be a complex calculus – but
nevertheless not outside the capability of the experienced observer/analyst to
ascertain to a reasonably accurate degree.
And make no mistake, to any
reasonably objective and knowledgeable observer/analyst not intellectually crippled
by mindless bigotry or riven with ulterior motives, the Russians are
winning this war, and winning it big. And therefore their natural inclination
will be to tell the truth in order to lend weight to that perception in the
public mind.
The mountains of propaganda that
have dominated western media reports and the “expert analysis” of its stable of
arms-manufacturer-funded think-tank monkeys and talking-head “retired generals-for-hire”
have, unfortunately, irredeemably tainted the perceptions of those for whom
these voices constitute their only sources of information.
I wish there were a way to scrape
the scales of darkness from their eyes, but alas, I have concluded it is more
or less futile at this juncture. For most, not even “settled history” many
years down the road will dissuade them from resolutely clinging to their most
cherished delusions.
In any case, as pertains to the regular
daily briefings of the Russian Ministry of Defense, those who follow them
closely, as I do, will observe that they are typically detailed, not apparently
prone to exaggeration, and delivered in a totally matter-of-fact fashion – no superfluous
commentary about “glorious victories” or “trampling the enemy under our feet”,
etc. “Just the facts, ma’am.”
Furthermore, it must be
understood that the Russians are also in a far superior position to know
what has actually occurred on the battlefield. They have access not only to high-resolution
satellite-based imagery, but more importantly to the countless hours of video
shot every single day from their hundreds (thousands?) of loitering observation
drones that are a constant fixture over almost every engagement of appreciable
size.
That said, it is important to
understand that, for obvious reasons, they’re absolutely not going to permit
the general public and the OSINT practitioners of the world to have access to
imagery as they see it. Instead, they consistently downgrade the
resolution of shared video and still photos, and employ edits to remove any video
footage they deem to be “privileged information” – such as what weapon is being
used for an airstrike, or the angle from which it came.
As for the Ukrainians, it is
apparent they no longer have a significant drone capability over the
battlefield, and are therefore “flying blind” in a great many instances.
In conclusion, all perceptions of
battle are distorted to some degree. Some things which are claimed to have
happened may, on occasion, be substantiated with incontrovertible evidence of
some kind: conclusive imagery, multiple credible witnesses, or the frank admission
of the other side to an effectively undeniable loss or setback.
I would roughly estimate that the
perception of truth of any given event, under the best of conditions – even for
the respective combatants armed with far superior intelligence and imagery –
probably never exceeds 90% accuracy. The general public, using open-source
intelligence and reasonably reliable on-the-ground reporting, can optimistically
hope for maybe 60% - 70% accuracy.
For these reasons, the acquisition of a knowledge of "things as they really are” in war is never an exact science. But it is an
art that can consistently produce conclusions highly consonant with the
objective facts of the matter.
