The big news yesterday was Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny’s press conference about forced military conscription, a.k.a mobilization or the draft. At about 15 minutes in, he remarked that western media has written a lot about the prosecution of the war and usually gets the story wrong.
With all do respect to the military expert community in the West, I am not enthusiastic at all about some of the subjects they write about, because they absolutely do not understand what they are talking about. There is a very, very small percentage of them with whom I can agree.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of foreign expertise.
But, er, we told you so1.
Part problem is that many people who are paid to report about what is happening in/to/with Ukraine have never served in the military, don’t understand Ukraine or Ukrainian and have a fuzzy wuzzy understanding about the start of the war ten years ago.
The bureaus of The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN in Kyiv have all but closed down for the holidays. The stuff they do publish is chock full of fatheadedness and mistakes.
For example, this:
I have no idea what prevented Anastacia, Lizzie, Kamalia and Isabelle from sitting down and reading the Constitution before filing their story.
“Mobilizing more soldiers” and “filling the ranks” is not Zaluzhny’s job. Rinse, repeat. It is the constitutional responsibility of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief (Z) and the Cabinet of Ministers, including the Ministry of Defense.
Why flaks parrot social media posts by Mariana Bezuhla is anyone’s guess2.
There is no “war plan.”
Ignore Analysts. Stay away from experts (June 22, 2022)