“Putin’s Silence on Kursk Offensive Would possibly Be a Big Mistake RAND”
I can’t even…
I perceive that the thought is, I assume, to supply a plurality of viewpoints, however at this price we would as effectively be placing up Hamish de Breton-Gordon’s opuses up within the hyperlinks part. His, a minimum of, are funnier. Just like the one from a few days in the past, evaluating Putin to Napoleon after the Battle of Borodino, which comparability is within the “what number of mushrooms did you eat intravenously immediately” class.
However getting again to the RAND piece. For instance, let’s take the headline concept that Putin doesn’t converse of Kursk too regularly. Why ought to he?
– The hour-long nationwide nightly information on state-owned Channel 1 devotes roughly 10 minutes of protection to the Kursk area each single day, normally break up evenly between reporters visiting with the troops and speaking to civilians. It’s the identical reporters, by the best way, so not an ad-hoc “whom can we ship immediately” however an precise “beat” for the media group. As effectively, the weekly information overview on Sunday evening replays many of those stories in expanded format (i.e. together with filmed materials that had not made it into the nightly information).
– The Ministry of Defence has created two separate every day briefings particularly for the Kursk area, one below its personal auspices, and one other one given by Group of Armies North.
– Solov’ev Dwell’s media advanced – which incorporates a number of hours of radio exhibits that you just couldn’t pay me to take heed to, in addition to a five-times-a-week (Sunday by Thursday) tv spectacular, and which can also be “state-owned” by the identical media company as Channel 1 – spends hours upon hours upon hours speaking about Kursk each single day, together with giving platform to a minimum of one of many common army bloggers (Rybar).
These are only a handful of examples, however actually, Kursk is, one may argue, talked about a lot over there that Putin piping up every day a la Cuomo’s COVID briefings, each single considered one of which I’d watched (as a result of masochism), can be, frankly, counter-productive. It’s like Russia is seventeenth century France (however with out the wigs), the place completely nothing occurs with out the king’s private involvement – and even Louis XIV had his ministers and different proxies.
I gained’t even point out the truth that when the RAND “analyst” tries to search out any proof of Russian civilians being dissatisfied, discouraged, deserted, et cetera, he hyperlinks to…drum roll, please…a Radio Free Europe piece. Nearly all the opposite hyperlinks that I checked are to articles within the Washington Publish, the Nationwide Curiosity, the Atlantic Council, Kiev Publish…you get the drift.
Severely, if we wish to embrace stuff from the pro-Ukraine facet, I enhance for Hamish de Breton-Gordon!
