Politics: the invisible war

By Richard North - February 27, 2022

It strikes me that much of the media – and certainly the BBC – is treating the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the manner of a football match. Only, instead of focussing on the players and the game, the reporters devote most of their attention to the crowd, endlessly interviewing spectators about their feelings, and filming their reactions to the score, to which only passing references are made.

So it was yesterday evening with the BBC television news report, where by far the bulk of coverage was given to the crowds of refugees at the border, would-be refugees packing trains, survivors of rocket attacks and even home cooks making Molotov cocktails.

Apart from a short “on-the-spot” report from Orla Guerin on the site of a burnt-out Ukrainian Buk – from a strike which happened the previous day – the most we got of the military situation was about 30 seconds of very generalised burble from “award winning” chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet, tucked in to her general broadcast. This was in a bulletin lasting half an hour.

No one can claim that the media are entirely hampered by censorship. A great deal of information is out there, yet so much of the war is invisible to the Western media. One example was the early-morning demolition of another bridge, this one on the Kyiv-Zhytomyr highway, near the village of Stoyanka.

Only a few kilometres to the west of Kiev, this closed off the main road to Lviv and the Polish border – the escape route taken by many refugees – after a Russian column had advanced down the road from the west, and had been destroyed in night-time fighting inside the capital.

That news was initially brought to us by local media via this, and illustrated on YouTube but, apart from a brief mention by an Economist correspondent on Twitter, no British media seems to have published details – despite the obvious importance of the event.

Fighting in the area has continued, however, and shortly after 8.30 pm the Ukrainian military reported that they had “neutralized” the Chechen general, Magomed Tushayev. He had commanded the 141 motorized regiment of the so-called Kadyrov guard: one of the most elite units in Chechnya and whose contingent would be made up of about 400 men.

Tushayev, was known as one of the “Lords of War” and his death (now confirmed) is seen as a severe blow to the Chechen contingent that was drafted into Kiev to support the Russian army. And yet, nothing of this seems to have found its way into the legacy media. All we get from the might of the BBC is that “Russian forces have regained control of Hostomel airport, to the west of Kiev, which was attacked by airborne troops”.

Despite the lack of detail from the legacy media, I thought it was just me, the compulsive grouch, complaining, but we’ve had similar thoughts from Seoul-based reporter, Andrew Salmon, author of books on the Korean War, such as this, and no stranger to military affairs.

In the current edition of the Asia Times, he writes a piece headed “Fog of war falls dark and thick over Ukraine”, complaining that: “There are more questions than answers about ground operations as the capital Kiev holds out and Moscow offers talks”.

“Western broadcast networks”, he writes, “have deployed correspondents in Kiev, reporting news of air attacks, vox pop interviews with a resistant citizenry taking shelter in subways, and hearsay about fighting beyond the city limits”. However, he adds, “none are reporting the kind of frontline, on-ground combat that journalists from those same networks have covered in recent conflicts such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq”.

Adding to the confusion, he goes on to say, “news anchors are reporting fighting in Kiev during discussions with correspondents standing at vantage points inside the city, on a bright, clear day, who are unable to give any confirmation thereof”.

Nevertheless, despite the lack of detail, it is beginning to be agreed that the Ukrainians have offered the Russians much tougher resistance than they appear to have expected, or planned for – under the inspired leadership of Zelensky. This is no Kabul where the national army melted away and the leaders scuttled off to safety at the first sign of trouble, their suitcases filled with cash. It is a double irony, therefore, that the Taliban are calling for peace.

Yet, while the degree of Ukrainian resistance is encouraging, there are worrying signs that the Russians are ramping up the military effort. The “spin” that was being put about yesterday was that Putin had ordered a halt to the advance Friday, pending negotiations with Zelensky. But once the government in Kiev allegedly refused talks, operations have resumed.

This much we got from CNN correspondent Frederik Pleitgen, broadcasting from the Russian city of Belgorod, 40 km north of the Ukrainian border, almost adjacent Kharkiv. He had witnessed a stream of heavy equipment and tanks throughout Saturday, headed for Ukrainian territory and Kharkiv. To see the Russians move that much equipment in one column towards the front line, he said, “is remarkable”.

It likely that some of these tanks and other armoured vehicles were destined for settlements in the Slobozhansky operational district, advancing from there onto Starobilsk, 80 km north of Luhansk, where fierce battles are taking place to prevent Russian troops consolidating their positions on the left bank of the Dnieper.

Probably, it was a different column of tanks and armoured vehicles that was spotted yesterday in the Ukrainian town of Bakhmach, almost 350 km due west of Belgorod, on the edge of the Chernihiv Oblast, 180 km northeast of Kiev. But in an instance that was instantly to achieve media fame, gushing reporters pick up on social media video footage, showing the town’s citizens standing in front of tanks, attempting to stop them from moving forward.

None of the many incurious journalists who commented on the footage sought to establish the destination of the armoured vehicles, even though they were well south of the Desna River, by-passing the contested city of Chernihiv potentially on a direct route to Kiev.

This is a worrying and potentially dangerous development as Russian armoured thrusts on Kiev down the west of the Dnieper have so far been blocked by intensive fighting to the north of Chernihiv.

After attacks on that city during both Thursday and Friday, a third attempt to break out on Saturday also failed, after street fights through the morning, when Russian troops had fired Grad rockets on the city, hitting hospitals, kindergartens and residential buildings and leaving one building in flames.

The outcome of the clash was the destruction of two Russian tanks (one pictured). Jubilant Ukrainian soldiers boasted of capturing several tanks, happily declaring: “Now they will serve the good of Ukraine”. The military wrote that the local population had helped them “beat the invader”, making Molotov cocktails for Russian “brothers”, draining fuel from petrol stations, and destroying railway bridges.

Later, in what must be some of the most poorly-reported battles (albeit with plenty of competition), the military reported blowing up 56 Russian fuel tankers in the area, thus – as they succinctly put it – “depriving units of combat capability”.

This doubtless has added to the woes of the invading force, where vehicles have been seen stranded for lack of fuel and persistent supply problems have been noted. As one senior US official asserts that Russia anticipated a fast victory and may have neglected to plan for sufficient resupply. Supply lines, he says, are a “definite vulnerability”.

Perhaps this is just as well as the Russians seem intent on creating supply problems for the Ukrainians. Overnight, there were two large explosions near Kiev, seen on the skyline to the southwest. These turned out to be oil tanks near the town of Vasylkiv, some 30 km from Kiev, close to the airbase that was attacked yesterday night. They had been hit by Russian missiles.

The Russians have also blown up a gas pipeline in Kharkiv, giving rise to a powerful explosion in the shape of a mushroom cloud in the sky over the city.

With that, despite the distressing shelling of a children’s cancer hospital in Kiev, with the reported death of two child patients – such is Putin’s hour of glory – the night (in Kiev, at least) seems to have been less eventful than last, despite earlier warnings of heavy air raids. It is unlikely to last.