WHAT ARE WE SEEING?

I'm seeing mostly egregious war reporting and from every channel. Regarding the situation in Ukraine, ludicrous claims are continuously offered by authoritative sources. And they seem invited on our mainstream media channels to do just that. Information is being mistaken for or deliberately presented as valuable intelligence. Heavily edited or entirely decontextualized images are offered as irrefutable evidence. It's absurd. As ever, I don’t know how any of this is making it to print or on air. Even if every bit of it is just our own propaganda or that of the favoured side, it is all of such poor quality it does little more than convince those on other continents how embarrassingly poor our media is.

For instance, broadly, folks argue that cellphone footage shows attacking Russians forces being thumped by Ukrainian military and civilians alike. All I know is that I stop getting cell/data coverage even in my own town or just immediately outside. And, while I’m sure Russia has far better phone infrastructure than Canada, I’m also willing to bet Russian troops aren’t likely to be streaming or sharing favourable events in the manner Ukrainians are. But Russians are not just away from home, the West has effectively eliminated virtually all Russian outputs from our mediascape, labelling it “propaganda.” This combination of factors means their already diminished volume of footage, true or false, doesn’t get any of the distribution or coverage afforded any content of any kind coming from Ukrainians. So, to begin with, the context is not one in which anyone should be saying anything about what’s happening in Ukraine with any confidence; certainly not anyone without serious intelligence clearance or access to live satellite footage.

Aside from this basic information sourcing problem and all the propaganda that all sides must by necessity be aggressively engaged in, serious folks are still making outlandish claims based on exactly no information. I’ve seen and heard an endless number of reports, for example, about Ukrainians laying waste to Russian tanks or entire tank columns. Only, the accompanying footage never shows anything of the sort.

I’ve probably watched fifty hours of footage looking for evidence of what I’m told is happening. And I can report that, if you go looking, what you’ll typically find are Ukrainian troops laying in a ditch or standing in a grassy field or behind a fence wielding one of several flavours of shoulder-mounted weapon. The video will show a soldier launching their weapon and a puff of smoke go up at a distant location, often among some trees on the horizon. But almost all these videos should leave any viewer with far more suspicion and questions than conclusions.

To start, often there’s little evidence that the footage is from a battle or even that what is being attacked is the enemy. Most often it’s not obvious that Ukrainian forces are being engaged by Russian troops prior or that they’re even concerned they’ll be fired upon after launching their attack. As such, these videos look more like they’re from a training session or something.

Then, it’s too often unclear if anything was even struck. In a significant number of these videos it is certain that something was hit but what, exactly, is not obvious. Others clearly show a vehicle being hit but not necessarily a Russian vehicle. And still others show what seems to be Russian model equipment, and with a ‘V’ or ‘Z’ painted in white on its side or top, being attacked; however, often when this is the case the Russian equipment is not obviously active or occupied.

Other footage shows a clear hit on what is clearly a Russian tank or support vehicle. A video will show a missile system or rocket propelled grenade landing a direct hit on a moving vehicle or one with troops milling about – only to have the video cut to show a disabled or destroyed vehicle, footage from a very different vantage and often with seemingly different damage to the vehicle. There is seldom any indication of any kind what time has elapsed between cuts; we cannot tell that there wasn’t a battle with other tanks in the intervening period, that other anti-tank weapons or a drone didn’t land a fatal strike and do effectively all the work; and all too often it’s not even clear that what is claimed to be the carcass of the earlier tank is in fact the same vehicle. Frequently, it’s not even clear if the footage after the cut is in fact from the same location.

I’ve watched videos, seemingly from weeks into the fighting, showing Ukrainians firing off anti-tank weapons at a distance insufficient for their weapon to arm itself before striking its target; thus, this devastating weapon (costing $200,000 per shot) having no impact at all on an advancing tank, and the gaggle of “troops” launching the attack being left exposed and, seemingly, without a second missile to follow or any plan for what to do next. And I’ve watched enough of these, ones with folks firing an RPG or even anti-tank missiles and then wildly celebrating as it strikes its target – but with seemingly little significant impact on the vehicle or those inside – to have all kinds of questions about who is being armed, with what, and to what effect.

A couple of the most popular videos out there show Russian tanks being struck in different ambushes. With millions of views and being picked up and disseminated by popular mainstream news outlets, these videos have been widely shared and commented on by laypersons and experts from around the world. These, too, offer us nothing that’s commonly and forcefully claimed of them.

CNN titles one set of clips “Ukrainian military claim defeat of Russian tank regiment near Kyiv.” To this they explain “videos appear to show a number of tanks on fire or destroyed.” Of this same footage, the Telegraph reports “Ukraine destroys Russian tank column in Brovary near Kiev.” Here in Canada, Global News labels the same video “Russian armoured convoy destroyed in ambush near Kyiv, Ukrainian soldiers claim” adding, “Ukrainian soldiers said they captured Russian tanks and destroyed an armoured convoy on Wednesday in the city of Brovary, near Kyiv.” But nothing of the sort is apparent from any of the footage these news sources offer. And, of course, they're not on the ground shooting the scene or talking to people but just eagerly laundering this propaganda.

So what does the video show? The bulk of the footage is shot from the air and shows more than forty tanks sitting still on a four-lane street and surrounded by homes and farmland. What we see are maybe three rocket or mortar impacts, ones that arrive at unknown intervals given how the video is edited. One of these shots, which looks to me like a mortar strike coming from above, misses entirely and lands in the road behind a tank near the rear of the column. It leaves a puff of black smoke. The next strike hits a tank closer to the front of the column, striking with a plume of flame and a cloud of grey. Later, in another cut, what seems like a projectile from the ground is launched from somewhere out of the shot at the bottom of the screen, and is only really seen if you look frame by frame. What may be an RPG round hits what looks not like a tank but an armoured personnel carrier. From there, much of the smoke in the footage that follows these impacts appears to be the blue-grey exhaust from vehicles starting up and fleeing. Other smoke is muzzle exhaust from several Russian tanks' main guns returning fire and what seems like Russian self-propelled artillery going off. The video then cuts to some time later and shows us a stream of not less than fifty tanks zooming up the road to leave the area, all exiting the top of the screen. Then there’s another cut and we are shown a close-up shot at ground level near what looks to me like a small infantry vehicle wrecked and on fire. Even if three tanks were destroyed, which could be plausible but we definitely do not see, this would still not be evidence of Ukrainians “destroying a tank column” as demanded not by a random YouTuber or Twitter troll but major national and international news operations. Glowing, transparent bullshit is what it is.

Another popular video is quite similar. It shows what appears to be not less than twenty Russian vehicles distanced apart and driving down a long straight road. There's forest on one side of the road and farm fields on the other. From an aerial view we see the front of the column reach what looks to be a gas station. The second vehicle, a tank, is then struck by a projectile. It is not disabled but instead drives off. The third vehicle in line, a personnel carrier next in line behind the tank, is soon struck by a second projectile from a different source near the first. This second vehicle is not disabled either, but instead zooms away as troops leap from it and flee for hard cover across the road. Before the video cuts away the column of tanks can be seen scattering to get away from the attack or reorienting to address the attack. This is not Russians being made to look like fools or Ukrainians dominating on the battlefield. This is a hit-and-run attack, like happened to the US and allies every day in Iraq and Afghanistan, one in which those who launched it were clearly and dramatically outgunned and likely hunted down and executed shortly after the video cuts out.

One UK tabloid with millions of views suggests what the above video shows Ukraine forces pummelling whole tank battalions “using chillingly lethal anti-tank missiles.” No. Not even close. In fact, the only thing I’d wager from viewing this footage is that the persons (who?) firing on these vehicles (who’s vehicles?) were attempting to commit suicide. I mean, you wouldn’t even do such in a video game where, obviously, your life and those of your pals are not on the line. At best the folks launching the attack were forced to drop all their gear and flee on foot into the woods under heavy, sustained, high-caliber fire coming from 180 degrees by a column of tanks and armoured vehicles that were not deterred in their advance in any noticeable way.

What we do know, and appears unanimously agreed upon, is that some images and video shows some Russian tanks unsupported or poorly supported and, as a result, seemingly, engaged in unusual behaviour. However formidable tanks are, they are also slow and extraordinarily conspicuous in a variety of ways. Of course, they’re big and loud and they expel giant plumes of exhaust and leave large visible tracks everywhere they go. As such, armies have always known these vehicles to be extremely vulnerable and cannot be left without air support, their own active defence against air attack, and, in confined spaces, never without troops patrolling all sides anticipating ambush. Such support appears absent in the one video with tanks loitering in an area surrounded by homes – so what we're seeing is looks like a drastic error with little to no advantage being taken of it by Ukrainian forces.

But that’s one such incident in a month of continuous battles and of a fighting force of hundreds of thousands with a complement of tanks and other vehicles numbering in the tens of thousands. And in the footage we see a tiny minority of vehicles even being struck. So, to the contrary of so much popular commentary, what is shown is not Russia getting hammered but instead what amounts to a best case scenario, given how vulnerable this congregation of dozens of tanks were. These circumstances amount to real-world learning opportunities and little else. It's essentially a live-fire training session. Is there any doubt that if facing any other force three missiles would have been launched (from land, air, or sea) and this whole fifty-vehicle Russian jamboree would have been over in a flash? Instead, the staggering absence of effectively any opposition or even a passive roadblock, means every one of these Russians will forever remember the time they were caught with their pants down and never make the same mistake again.

When you add the earlier noted information context to this seemingly endless stream of bad Ukrainian videos, I don’t know how Western media supports their persistent claims about Russian forces being thumped. The impression I have is of an undisciplined and poorly coordinated force for sure, but one that’s effectively doing whatever it likes and with little resistance of any kind. Whole cities are being levelled, with artillery and mortar positions seemingly going unchecked for days on end, are they not?

And it should be said the heavily armed but just as undisciplined force on the other side is busily sharing their own war crimes, live and in 4K. Apparently none of that is noteworthy while an unmoving tank battalion or an ineffective pot-shot gets 24/7 coverage and outlandish commentary from defence experts and former generals.