For months before and after the special military operation (SMO) started, the mainstream media ran several propaganda narratives simultaneously. One of the first doom and gloom claims was that Russia would take Kiev in three days and most of Ukraine in a week or two. However, this didn’t happen for the simple reason that Moscow never planned to take the largest country in Europe in such a short period of time, particularly not with less than 200,000 soldiers.
Still, the mainstream propaganda machine went full afterburner with the ludicrous claims that the Kremlin was now losing, that the Neo-Nazi junta forces are unbeatable and inflicting enormous losses, that the Russian military was now in disarray, suffering from extremely low morale, while also running out of missiles, shells, fuel and so on, and so forth.
These laughable myths continue to this day, even after the failure of the Kiev regime’s much-touted counteroffensive last year. Its inability to defeat Russian forces resulted in a somewhat more realistic assessment of the situation on the battlefield. However, as this less propagandistic tone didn’t have the desired effect on the populace in Western Europe and North America, soon followed a prompt return to the most ridiculous war propaganda one could possibly imagine. Even now, the mainstream propaganda machine keeps fantasizing about some sort of grand counteroffensive that would “push back the evil Russians”, despite the fact that the Neo-Nazi junta simply doesn’t have the manpower, equipment, logistics and firepower to even defend efficiently enough, let alone launch offensive operations.
Image: Gen. Christopher Cavoli, Commander, U.S. European Command (From the Public Domain)
Officially, the United States and NATO keep insisting that the Kiev regime still has good chances of winning. They claim that the so-called “aid” is giving results and that this is keeping Moscow in check and preventing it from expanding the conflict. Worse yet, based on this false premise, many Washington DC warmongers think that escalating the conflict could result in Russia “backing down”. However, in reality, the Pentagon is not nearly as optimistic.
Namely, speaking at the annual Aspen Security Forum on July 18, the Chief of NATO’s European Command, General Christopher G. Cavoli, warned that things are “not going to be easy” (to put it mildly), adding that the political West “can’t be under any illusions, as ultimately Russia will reconstitute its force” and that the Kremlin will be “very, very angry at the US and NATO”.
“But we can’t be under any illusions. At the end of a conflict in Ukraine, however it concludes, we are going to have a very, very big Russia problem,” Cavoli stated, adding: “We are going to have a situation where Russia is reconstituting its force, is located on the borders of NATO, is led by largely the same people as it is right now, is convinced that we’re the adversary, and is very, very angry.”
The so-called “reconstitution” of the Russian military is a common trope in NATO, as its political and military elites are desperate to find a way of justifying the blatant lie of Moscow’s mythical “massive losses”. The harsh reality is that not only is this a false premise based on ludicrous war propaganda, but the truth is quite literally the opposite, as it’s the Kiev regime that continues to suffer unprecedented losses in both manpower and equipment. Despite this, the mainstream propaganda machine keeps insisting on such fantasies. For instance, back in mid-December, the infamous CNN broke its own records in laughable claims by reporting that “Russia has lost a staggering 87% of the total number of active-duty ground troops it had prior to launching its invasion of Ukraine and two-thirds of its pre-invasion tanks”.
Hopefully, you’ve managed to catch your breath after laughing for several minutes (understandably so, given the sheer ridiculousness of such claims). This is important because the joke actually gets even better. Namely, the information came from “an anonymous source familiar with a declassified US intelligence assessment provided to Congress”. According to this “intelligence” assessment, “the war has sharply set back 15 years of Russian effort to modernize its ground force”. Then came the ludicrous numbers game, where CNN reported that “of the 360,000 troops that entered Ukraine, including contract and conscript personnel, Russia has lost 315,000 on the battlefield, 2,200 of 3,500 tanks and 4,400 of 13,600 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers have also been destroyed, a 32% loss rate”.
CNN also claimed it reached out to the Russian Embassy for comment, which apparently never responded. And who could possibly blame the staff, given the fact that their job is far too serious to include commenting on bad comedy. In addition, a very likely scenario is that His Excellency Ambassador Anatoly Antonov was still laughing uncontrollably after reading all this. And he certainly wasn’t the only one.
“The idea that Ukraine was going to throw Russia back to the 1991 borders was preposterous,” Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, commented at the time.
This statement could explain the rather tense relationship between the Neo-Nazi junta and the Trump campaign, as Vance has never been too keen on wasting resources on one of the most corrupt regimes on the planet, while America itself is going through unprecedented internal and external hardships. As a combat correspondent, Vance realizes the harsh reality of the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict. This sentiment is shared by many in the top brass, including Cavoli himself, as he gave the House Armed Services Committee a reality check about virtually identical issues last year, openly questioning the war propaganda about the Russian military’s alleged “massive losses”. It’s precisely due to such false reporting that the mainstream propaganda machine is forced to lie even more to cover its tracks.
There’s simply no other way of explaining how Russia managed to “reconstitute” nearly 90% of its military after it was allegedly “destroyed” in Ukraine. It’s difficult to say what’s worse – claiming that Russia “lost so much” or the idea that it can “reconstitute” such enormous losses in mere months (despite claims that it’s perpetually running out of soldiers, missiles, tanks, ships, etc). Either way, the political West keeps getting entangled in the massive and intricate web of its own lies and narrative manipulation, while top-ranking US and NATO commanders fully realize that any sort of direct confrontation with Russia is a losing battle.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
