Politics: a tale of two “wars”

By Richard North - March 8, 2025

Addressing the “real” war first, recently in this blog, I observed that, despite the high politics attending the Ukraine conflict, most likely it was going to be events on the ground which decided the outcome of the current crisis.

The day previously, I had also taken a sceptical view of extravagent media claims about the most recent “successes” of Ukraine forces, suggesting that the advances might get bogged down in the oncoming rasputitsa and that the Russians would roll up the stranded Ukrainian forces when the ground hardened in the summer fighting season.

In that latter respect, I was wrong in expecting that the Russians might wait until the summer. Yesterday, we were assailed by reports of a Russian breakthrough in the Kursk salient, with even the Telegraph telling us: “Russia breaks through Ukrainian lines in Kursk”.

The Politico website headlined “Intense Russian attacks force Ukraine to consider pulling out of Kursk”, with the sub-head: “Kyiv is trying to hang on to the territory it holds inside Russia despite fierce counterattacks by Moscow’s military”, while Bloomberg told us that: “Russia Close to Cutting Off Ukrainian Troops Fighting in Kursk”.

The day’s reporting culminated in a release from Reuters which referred to open source mapping which showed that the bulk of Ukrainian forces fighting inside Russia were almost cut off.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops who smashed into Russia last summer and took control of a swathe of territory there, Reuters reported, “are nearly encircled by Russian forces and cut off from their main supply lines”. Ukraine’s situation in Russia’s Kursk region has deteriorated sharply in the last three days after Russian forces retook territory as part of a gathering counter-offensive that has nearly cut the Ukrainian force in two.

The precarious situation for Ukraine, we are told, raises the possibility that its forces may be forced into a politically awkward and psychologically difficult retreat back into Ukraine, or risk being captured or killed at a time when Kyiv is under mounting pressure from the US to agree a ceasefire with Russia.

Pasi Paroinen, a military analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group, then tells Reuters that “the situation (for Ukraine) is very bad”, something that needs little explaining.

The UAF and the Ukrainian government has invested heavily in the Kursk incursion, committing some of its best-equipped elite troops.

Crucially, as Politico reports through military analyst, Yan Matveyev, the only real reason to hold onto the Kursk foothold was to use it as a bargaining chip in future negotiations. This would potentially allow Kiev to trade the Russian territory it occupied for territories taken by the Russians in Donbass elsewhere.

Thus, as Matveyev notes, “losing a substantial number of experienced troops and advanced equipment in a drawn-out defence could severely weaken Ukraine’s military capacity in other regions”. But that is only one of the penalties. Without the bargaining chip, Ukraine could be further disadvantaged in any peace negotiations.

Given the implications of this development, one might have thought that it would have been prominently reported in today’s national editions of the legacy media but, apart from down-page coverage in the Telegraph updating its previous report with the news that “10,000 Ukrainian troops [are] at risk of encirclement”, there is very little to be found.

Even an intervention by US president Donald Trump, barely merits a mention, Earlier in the day yesterday, he took to social media to declare that: “Based on the fact that Russia is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now, I am strongly considering large scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions, and Tariffs on Russia until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED” (his capitals).

He concluded with a message to Russia and Ukraine, telling them to “get to the table right now, before it is too late”, albeit that the US was supposed to be spearheading the negotiations without the direct involvement of Ukraine.

All we get is a report in The Times that hopes for a ceasefire rest on Saudi Arabia talks between Zelensky and US officials next week, after the proposed minerals deal stalled. We then learn from this source that Trump said he found it “easier” to deal with Russia than Ukraine after claiming that Putin was “doing what anybody else would do” by intensifying his bombing of the war-torn country.

This point is raised by the BBC and others, none of which seem to be bothered about the Kursk development, despite its potential impact on any peace negotiations.

To be blunt, I still do not understand why the legacy media is so reluctant to report battlefield developments coherently, the lack of which gives a lopsided view of the war and its progress, while failing to provide a context against which political developments can be measured.

This is all the more remarkable when many papers do give some space to reporting on my second “war”, a so-called civil war which has broken out in Farage’s Reform party.

I wrote briefly of the events leading up to this yesterday after Reform MP Rupert Lowe had voiced concerns over Farage and the conduct of his party.

Peter offered an analysis while I wrote that, in all likelihood, Lowe’s days are numbered as a Reform MP, and we may well be seeing the start of a more visible fragmentation of the Reform party, of a nature that plagued Ukip over the many decades of its existence.

Less than 24 hours later, this has come to pass with a Reform statement posted on Twitter in the early evening yesterday signed by party whip Lee Anderson, and chairman Muhammad Ziauddin Yusuf.

This made serious allegations of misconduct on the part of Lowe, which he has strenuously denied, asserting that the party was trying to kick him out “over false claims” where there was no “credible evidence” of any wrongdoing.

This has had an explosive effect on social media, with most comments entirely hostile to Reform, with Pete again offering an analysis. To him (and many others) it looks as if the Reform inner circle have been planning on dispatching Lowe for a while.

It’s telling, he writes, that they had a ready-made assassination plan ready to drop at the first sign of dissent which means “they’re fitting him up good and proper”. That’s how Farage operates, he adds – no shred of honour, asserting that “there’s a twenty-year long pattern of this behaviour from Farage and it is never going to change. It is a messianic cult that churns through members”.

As a casualty of the same treatment by Farage back in 2003, I’ve added my own input suggesting that the Farage pathology extends as far back as 1997 when he forced Ukip-founder Alan Sked out of the party he had started. Many activist since have been disposed of, I wrote, “all with roughly the same methodology. Lowe is but the latest casualty”.

Interestingly, Sked’s response had already been tabled, where he confirmed that Farage had been regularly double-crossing and insulting him behind his back before they had publicly fallen out.

No-one is going to assert that this spat is anything near the same magnitude as the Ukraine conflict, although the Telegraph has devoted more space to it, with columnist Camilla Tominey asking whether Farage is “really fit to lead”, in addition to a news report on the spat.

If, as many forecast, this spat has a damaging effect on Reform, it could halt its progress in the polls and limit future electoral prospects, thus re-shaping once again British politics. The issue, therefore, is not unimportant.

However, the contrast between the treatment of the two “wars” cannot escape notice. We live in strange times and the way they are reported doesn’t make understanding them any easier.