by The Saker at The Saker
So now we are 50 days into this Special Military Operation (SMO) and right in between the end of the first phase and the beginning of the second one. So I want to begin by list a few things which were unclear/ambiguous/misunderstood and which now are becoming clear(er):
- There is this saying “no plan survives the first contact with the enemy” which I would even expand to “no plan survives the first contact with reality”. Why? The first one is obvious, the enemy will try to foil your plans, but the second one is less known: in war there is always a large element of chaos simply because your entire country and your military are in one mode up until the initiation of combat operations and because they have to very quickly switch over a completely new reality. The point is therefore not to stick to plan A at any cost, but neither is it to ditch it all and reinvent the wheel. What is needed is a quick response time to identify the problems and fix them. I would say that with this in mind, the Russian military did a very good job by quickly transforming an integrated Ukrainian military capable of strategic operations into a broken-up entity with its various parts isolated and unable to support each other. What is my evidence for that? There has not been a single Ukrainian counter-attack higher than on a subunit (battalion, company) level. Considering that the Ukrainians have the double advantage of being on the defense and having a larger force, this is truly a remarkable achievement. Add to this the money, weapons and intelligence support from the US/NATO and it is nothing short of a triumph.
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The clueless RT still has this on its webpage even though the Moskva sank 24 hours ago!
At the same time, Russia as a whole, and especially the military, did an absolutely awful job talking to the public, both in Russia and in the West. See a typical example of the image on the right. The only mistake the US PYSOPs made was that they really “overdid it”, which profoundly angered and alienated the Russian public which went from “what is going on?” to “we are in a fight for our very survival” very quickly and most Russians are now in what I would refer to a “WWII” mode: total warfare until total victory. In the West, however, the US PSYOPs truly triumphed and totally defeated the Russian counter-propaganda efforts which, the truth be told, were primitive, clumsy, slow and even self-defeating at times. Does that matter? Yes, very. Why?
- Because most people in Zone A sincerely and truly believe that “Russia is losing the war”. Now these are the same folks who until February of 2021 were all virologists/epidemiologists/microbiologists/etc. and who in a remarkable feat, became overnight military experts and now are sincerely advising the Russians on how to wage a war. The fact that no “real” war has even begun does not elicit any second thoughts or doubts in these “experts in everything” folks who simply don’t believe that some matters require years of training to achieve the expertise needed to understand even the basics. And no, as Andrei Martyanov always points out, a BA in communications or a law degree do not make you into a military expert overnight (by the way, I notice a very large “overlap” between the COVID death cult members and the armchair generals).
- Objectively, there is also a double language and culture barrier at work here. Very few folks in Zone A are fluent, or even conversant, in Russian and even fewer understand the Russian mindset. So if all the English speaking media (including putatively pro-Russian ones – more about those later) says something it makes no sense to expect most English speakers to find the correct Russian language Telegram channels to get the other side of the information. As for RT and Sputnik, in their naive and clumsy efforts to appear “objective” they just reinforce the western propaganda narratives.
- Then there is an interesting phenomenon that became very apparent over the past 50 days: there are quite a few websites and blogs that PRETEND to be pro-Russian but, in reality, that support is conditional on Russia supporting their agenda and if Russians do things differently those putatively pro-Russian outlets quickly take up the exact same talking points as the US PSYOPs. There are also a number of PRETEND “liberal” or “Leftist” or “Anti-Imperialist” websites which were ALWAYS CIA-operated but which, over the years, acquired some (totally undeserved) credibility and which have now suddenly “flipped”. Pro-Nazi “liberals”, got to love that…
The result of all this? FUD: fear, uncertainty and doubts of course.
Even worse are the implications of this FUD on many levels:…
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