Ukraine: a lack of reliable information

By Richard North - March 7, 2022

For the media – or, at least, the Guardian, if that is the same thing – not reporting on military development in the February War is a win-win situation.

With his paper having lamentably failed to devote any serious energy to the ebb and flow of the fighting, “senior reporter” Peter Beaumont now gets to write an article headed, “Clear picture of war in Ukraine clouded by large areas of unknowns”, in which he complains that the “lack of reliable information has made it hard to assess the Russian military’s successes and failures”.

He is, of course, partially right. There has indeed been a paucity of reliable information, although the irony evidently escapes Beaumont. The purpose of the media – so it constantly tells us – is to provide reliable information, and especially on complex and fast-moving events such as the war in Ukraine.

One would be slightly more sympathetic if, after having largely failed to identify and report on the strategic significance of the fighting along the Irpin-Hostomel axis, the world’s media had not yesterday indulged in a huge war-tourism exercise of filming the inhabitants of Irpin escaping from the war zone.

It was only then that they discovered for themselves the consequences of poor reporting. No sooner had they set themselves up for their emote-fest, then they found themselves coming under fire from the Russians who had moved back into the town and were being actively engaged by Ukrainian forces – as we had reported before most of them arrived.

That there was active fighting going on in the area was tragically evident from a number of social media sources, and the local media, and it was followed up by the tragic news of the death of Ukrainian actor Pavlo Lee, who had been killed during the fighting.

As to the intensity of the fighting, we saw a report attributed to a soldier from near Hostomel, who remarked: “We kill them, but the new ones come. And the new ones … And the new ones…” – thereby to an extent confirming the reports on the high casualty levels in the Russian Army.

After the events of the day wore on, we had the bizarre situation where Ukrainian army reinforcements rushing to the scene needed a blue-light escort to get them to the scene (pictured – see video from the link).

Despite the army intervention where, in addition to fighting off the Russians, blocking their attempt on this front to reach Kiev, soldiers also helped evacuate civilians, the consequences were tragic for some of the would-be refugees.

Irpin’s mayor, Oleksandr Markushyn, was reported as saying that he had seen four people die, two adults and two children, who were trying to evacuate. He said, in total, eight died, adding that part of the city was under Russian control “but ‘Irpin has not surrendered, Irpin is fighting”.

This was not the only flashpoint in the area though. Bucha, which had previously been the site of Ukrainian Army successes, was taking a hit. The city council reported that the town was in dire need of humanitarian corridor. The Russian military was shelling buildings and, cars, and shooting at civilians. There was also no access to water, heating, electricity, and food.

On a more general note about the flow of information, I could not help but note at a piece by BuzzFeed reporters Peter Aldhous and Christopher Miller, headed: “How open-source Intelligence (OSINT) is helping clear the fog of war in Ukraine”.

Telling us that a combination of sources, “from high-resolution satellite images to TikTok videos, governments no longer control information from the front lines”, the pair illustrated their report with a Maxar satellite image which they captioned as showing the destroyed vehicles and bridge damage in Irpin.

In fact, the image showed the blown bridge further south on the E40, which we noted on 28 February, sourced from local media, which does not seem to have registered with the international media stars.

Actually, there are three bridges over the Iripin River in the same vicinity, two close to the town of Irpin. The northernmost one of the two is a twin-span railway bridge, across which the lines to and from Kiev traverse.

It would be interesting to learn the fate of those bridges, but that would require information – either from boots on the ground, or satellite imagery. Despite the many journalists attending the scene at the road bridge, though, we know nothing of its status or whether the Russians sought to force a river crossing at this point.

Whether they did or not, the Irpin River stands as the western front line in the defence of Kiev, one of the lines where the actions of the Ukrainian Army have been successful in preventing the Russian advance.

Further west, in Zhytomyr, 150 kilometres from Kyiv, civilians have pledged to remain and fight despite heavy Russian shelling that devastated dozens of buildings and killed several people, including children.

On the eastern side of the Dnieper, there is also the active defence by forces centred on Chernihiv. According to local media, the Ukrainian military have defeated the enemy forces that were advancing on Kyiv city.

In addition, Operational Command North wrote: Russian equipment was burned and disabled, and the occupiers had run away. “However”, said their report, “this will not save them: Russian enemy soldiers have no food, fuel, they are demoralised and ready to surrender”.

Even in besieged Mariupol – where successive attempts at evacuation have failed – the defenders have had some success. A successful counterattack destroyed three enemy tanks, four infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), two Tigr armoured 4×4 vehicles and killed about 30 Russians.

Two tank crew surrendered and were taken prisoner. “The rest of the crews, who were in the broken column of armoured vehicles, remained in the burning vehicles forever”, the Ukrainian military report observed.

It is such actions which doubtless have enabled the Pentagon to observe that, despite the Russians deploying 95 percent of their forces and equipment, they have not made any significant progress on any front in the last 24 hours. The UK MoD says that Russian forces made “minimal ground advances” over the weekend.

As to the “40-mile convoy”, the Pentagon notes that it has remained in the same place. But, demonstrating a degree of disconnect that has plagued the entire recording of this convoy, it suggested that the was “most likely” because “they got stuck in mud and burned up all their fuel”. Nothing is said of the staunch defenders of the bridges who were barring the way.

Much the same view of the lack of progress is taken by the Institute for the Study of War, although it asserts that “Russian forces continue to mass for renewed offensive operations east and west of Kyiv, west of Kharkiv, and toward Mykolayiv-Odesa”.

The ISW, however, says that the Russians have not yet initiated any new large-scale ground attacks and have instead spent the past 24 hours largely regrouping and preparing for renewing offensive operations around Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Mykolayiv. It has to be said, though, that fighting has continued in many areas throughout Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces for instance destroyed a Russian column in the Sumy Region, and a substantial column of Rosgvardyia vehicles was “smashed”. Rosgvardyia is independent of the Russian Army, founded by Putin in 2016, effectively as his own private security force.

On top of that, an active air defence which continued to have some successes. Another two Russian aircraft (one Su-25 near Kharkiv and one of unclear model over the Black Sea) were shot down today. On the basis that the Russians are flying about 100 combat missions daily, they are taking losses of about 2-5 percent.

All this has Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Radakin, venture that Russia has “got itself into a mess” with the invasion of Ukraine which is “not going well”. It was not inevitable, he suggests, that it would succeed in taking over the country.

Radakin’s view is shared by David Petraeus, of Iraq and Afghanistan fame, author of the “surge” which turned the situation round in Iraq. He believes there is going to be a very long fight for Kiev, and points out that its extensive surface is a major obstacle for the Russians. It is spread across around 320 square miles, larger than New York City and a little over half the size of London’s sprawl. They just don’t have the numbers to occupy the city, he says.

But, as long as the media devotes the bulk of its attention to the human drama, as in today’s front pages, the Guardian’s complaint of “lack of reliable information” will stay on the table and such details will pass it by.