As the Ukraine conflict disappears from the world’s collective conscience, now is a good time to strive for truth in a truthless maze of misinformation. Russia’s defensive move to counter an ever-encroaching NATO has made headlines for almost two years. But the biggest battles have raged in an insurmountable war of lies. At the end of the day, the victors in this conflict, as is always the case, are revealed on the battlefield. With Israel eradicating Palestinians as if they were insects and Ukraine virtually destroyed, it’s almost as if the whole Gaza affair was orchestrated to make us forget the hundreds of thousands killed and the millions displaced in the Western alliance’s biggest promised land.
“I understood why we won the Great Patriotic War. It is impossible to defeat this kind of nation with this kind of attitude. We were absolutely invincible. And we are the same now.” V.V. Putin
A Picture of a Thousand Lies
As I type this, I am looking at two recent photographs used to reflect the real situation in Russia’s demilitarisation of Ukraine. The first is by a famous photographer named Evgeniy Maloletka, who supposedly shows hundreds of Russian casualties at Stepove, a village on the battlefront just north of Avdiivka. The second photo is from Reuters photographer Vitalii Hnidyi, showing hundreds of recently buried Ukraine soldiers and new graves dug to accommodate more.
Maloletka, some may recall, is the Pulitzer-winning photographer credited with the sensationalistic pregnant woman leaving bombed-out hospital ruins in Mariupol. The photographer is one of the “chosen” of the Western mainstream now, he even has his own Wikipedia page, even though many experts said the hospital scene was a set piece. Like the notorious White Helmets of Barack Obama’s Syria proxy war, corporate-owned media has its superstar fabricators and blind-eyed editors and journalists.
The point here is that no one knows who to believe anymore. And in this dark playground of treachery, the antagonists are free to do as they please – and no one is fit to judge anymore. Russia’s methodical advance on Ukraine’s obliterated forces near Avdiivka is yet another win for the Zelensky puppet. Or so my countrymen are being led to believe. As a note, here, The Economist is buying Google Ads to boost traffic to the magazine’s horrifying Russian death toll stories. Advertising over corpses of valiant soldiers! Another weird irony is that the IMF and other Western institutions still call for billions in aid to ensure Kyiv’s tentative economic recovery (Financial Times). It’s as if all our leaders and institutions are in a fog.
The reality is over half a million dead Ukrainian soldiers and perhaps a million more wounded. For those who still believe the mainstream about Ukraine casualties and the situation there, all you have to do is compare reports. Wikipedia quotes BBC from February 2022, putting Ukraine dead at just under 90,000. Jimmy Wales’ open-source library of truth also cites the Russian dead as about twice that of Ukraine. A few days ago, Reuters reported that U.S. intelligence calculates the Russians have accumulated 315,000 dead and injured troops. And out of every Western mainstream media, Washington think tank, and government press office, the Russians are losing, losing, and losing some more.
Russia Will Write This History
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Ukraine casualties are ten times higher than Russian killed and wounded. Putin also said that during the highly publicised Ukraine counteroffensive, Zelensky’s forces lost one-third of all the equipment provided to them by the U.S. and its allies. As for the Ukraine war dead, a few reports like this one from the Wall Street Journal creep out once in a while. According to this report from Dnipo, Morgue No. 4 was overflowing with corpses back in November. The WSJ interviewed a coroner there, who said two dozen body bags lay outside his facility and that there was no more room inside. Please understand this is only one morgue in one Ukraine city near the front.
For months now, independent Western analysts like retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor have cited Pentagon sources that put Ukraine’s death tolls in the hundreds of thousands dead. And the distinguished soldier is not alone. On the economic and geopolitical side, Hungary’s PM Viktor Orban said recently that “the European Union is on the brink of self-destruction.” Orban expressed his opposition to the EU’s plans to initiate membership negotiations with Ukraine and to provide financial aid of 50 billion euros to Zelensky’s regime. Given the vehemence with which media, government, and business in the West push Ukraine down everyone’s throat, one has to wonder if destroying the EU is not the purpose.
At the same moment, all the propagandists West of the Dnieper River are telling us Russia is done for, President Joe Biden warns us the Russians will not stop in Ukraine! No, with unlimited bodies to fling into battle, Putin intends to invade the rest of the NATO alliance. You read correctly. Ukraine is murdering Russians and winning on the battlefield, but Putin’s legions will soon head for Berlin and maybe Paris. As I told you, which and who is what? Well, this guest post by an Ukraine journalist and soldier probably comes as close to the truth of this conflict as any report I’ve seen. To quote Artem Chekh, who lay for five days in a muddy trench waiting for certain death in Bakhmut:
“All around was pure hell. Since our positions were on the way out of Bakhmut, retreating troops — wasted, wounded, deafened by explosions — passed by constantly. The enemy attacked them, walkie-talkies went crazy with reports of casualties and drones buzzed endlessly. Branches sheared by shelling fell on our heads.”
Writing the Future in Our Blood
The novelist goes on to talk about the burning city, the smell of death, the bodies littering the battlefield, and about being out of ammunition and food. He ends his NYT’s story with a patriotic flair, as any soldier should. However, the chilling reality in between his lines reveals more truth than Voice of America, The Economist, CNN, CBS, NBC, BBC, and all the rest combined will not. Ukraine is lost. Ukraine was lost from the instant Washington, London, and Brussels perpetrated a coup in Kyiv. Money has been made, but this is the only truth we can count on. Blood has been the currency in Ukraine, and now blood is the currency in Palestine. We can only pray the profiteers lie us all into a worldwide bloodletting market.
A little summary of what’s real seems in order here. For almost a decade now, the elite order’s media has assured us Vladimir Putin is sick, paralysed, dying, or already dead. At the same time, the New York Times and the White House assured us billions in weapons would turn the tide in Ukraine’s favor. We were told that Russia was on the run and that unrest inside Russia would soon lead to his overthrow. None of this took place, of course. For over nine years, our leadership and our experts have prophesied the ruination of Russia and Vladimir Putin. Yet Russia and Putin seem all the more invincible and indestructible. Putin said Russia would build a bridge across the Kerch Strait to Crimea, and every Western fog horn blew steam saying it could not be done. The Russian leader told the world about his country’s new unstoppable hypersonic weapons, and Pentagon experts assured us none of them would fly. We are learning a different truth in Ukraine and on the Russian test ranges. Time after time, lie after lie blasts across every American TV screen. And all that this media campaign has accomplished is to make Vladimir V. Putin more legendary. It’s ironic and a bit funny how my country and the rest of the West have made Russia and Putin more formidable than trillions in military spending by Putin could have achieved.
So, knowing the tiny tidbits I’ve provided, who do you believe now? I understand if you don’t know. I only know who I trust more.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
