I saw two beavers flopping around in the Dnipro River early this morning. I knew a family lived on Venetsiantskyy Island across the way but wasn’t aware they swam over to the right bank for breakfast. Jimmy has also spotted beavers.
On the war jacket, Gulliver Cragg, a correspondent for France 24, has admitted, finally, that it was obvious that Russia ran the puppet “republics” in Donbas. He said he is sorry for not saying so and instead playing along with the Russian ruse and reporting bullshit.
Gulliver’s colleagues from The New York Times, The Washington Post, to CNN, The Telegraph, The New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times and AFP might also want to apologize. Or quit. They informed us for years that the conflict in Ukraine is partly a civil war involving separatists and rebels, reporting the crisis as if it was a weird domestic affair brought on by language politics, identity clashes and historical grievances.
Since at least 2015, we unsuccessfully argued that using terms like rebels, separatists, breakaway regions and insurrection to describe Russia’s invasion of Ukraine serves no purpose of diplomacy or journalistic balance. It is a failure to serve the public interest. Russia’s war against Ukraine should be described as what it is: an armed conflict instigated and sustained by Russia’s armed intervention.
To imply that there has been any acts of self-determination by shell-shocked refugees from Mariupol, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Berdiansk or from any besieged city of Ukraine contradicts the highest available organized expressions of international law. If editors, journalists, politicians and pundits decide to regurgitate Kremlin talking points, then, at least, they should explain why.
If we patch together all the Kremlin narratives about Ukraine that have found their way into mainstream western press over the last nine years, a horribly distorted picture emerges1.
Looking on the bright side, reporting improved after Russia attempted to decapitate Kyiv last year.
Sabrina Tavernise from The New York Times (Ukrainian Forces Close In on Rebel-Held Luhansk, Ukraine Pushes Back as Rebels Attack in the East, Patchwork Makeup of Rebels Fighting Ukraine Makes Peace Talks Elusive, Whisked Away for Tea With a Rebel in Ukraine, For a Weekend, Ukrainian Rebels Make Love, not War, et cetera) and Keith Gessen led the steeplechase of hacks who invented and popularized jingo-resistant rebel bullshit, along with Christopher Miller (Kyiv Post, RFE/RL, Buzzfeed, Politico, now FT) and several other dullards writing for British tabloids, including The Telegraph and The Independent.