Trying to find information as to what is actually going on has been near impossible to say the least. Both sides understandably give wildly different accounts, but independent analysis seems nonexistent, and it seems that no one knows what’s going on.
Russia is saying that the situation is under control and that Ukraine is being pushed back; while Ukraine says that it’s still advancing while showing limited proof of their gains. Not to mention Russia saying that Ukraine has simultaneously taken massive casualties but is still able to advance and hold what they’ve taken. Russia says they’re flooding reinforcements into the area but it’s been over a week and it seems that there is very little counteroffensive action underway.
Not to mention the question of where Ukraine even got the reserves to commit to such an attack? Even then, if they drained their other fronts for this final push, why aren’t Russian forces capitalizing on Ukrainian depletion and fatigue by striking in the south or north?
US sources talk about this as if Ukraine will be in Moscow by the weekend and are entirely useless for gleaning the reality of the situation, but all Russian sources do is claim that nothing is wrong and 1 gorbillion Ukrainians are being killed each day, despite never going into any further detail.
What’s actually happening? Does anyone have any good sources on the reality of the situation for both sides?
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5372215
Thank you! That’s definitely a start!
But that kind of exemplifies what I’m talking about. After reading through it, their only source is the Economist and Time which they cite over and over, and then the author giving basic analysis of that Time article. Is there anything more substantial then a random blog from a person in Alabama?
I don’t really see the Economist and Time as entirely trustworthy. Lenin still said it best about the Economist.
I mean they could have cited Russian sources but then a lot of people would say that what they write can’t be true because it’s coming from biased pro-Russian media. The point of citing western sources is not that they are more accurate (Russian ones most of the time are far more reliable, so long as they’re not some random Telegram channels that could very well be Ukrainian psyops for all we know), it’s to be able to say to people who distrust Russian sources “look, even the pro-Ukrainian western media admits this”.
But i get your point. And the answer is no, we don’t have anything more reliable at the moment. There is a lot of fog of war, a lot of propaganda, psyops and fakes being spread by Ukraine, and on the Russian side they have pretty tight opsec.
Personally i would say that the most reliable source throughout this conflict has been the Russian MOD because they tend to be very conservative, unlike the Russian milbloggers and “OSINT” channels and such who will often misreport or fall prey to psyops.
And yes the MOD are sometimes purposely vague and often slow to report developments, but when they report you can be sure it’s fairly accurate as enough time has passed that other sources can verify said information. Of course they are biased and will present the information in such a way as to create a better image for themselves, but from my experience they won’t outright lie except by omission.