Juan Pablo Duch
Correspondent
The newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, August 15, 2024, p. 25
Moscow. If we are to believe the official war reports provided by Moscow and kyiv on the fighting in the Russian Kursk region, one might think that one of the two sides is lying because it is impossible for them to report opposing results: the Russian army claims that it continues to frustrate the enemy’s attempts to advance, offering figures of numerous Ukrainian casualties and destroyed armored vehicles, while Ukrainian troops claim to control more and more Russian towns and their assault units are positioned further from the border every day, while offering to create a humanitarian corridor for the Russian population wishing to be evacuated to Ukraine.
And if both are telling the truth, they are only reporting what suits them best and hiding the enemy’s successes.
Yesterday, the ninth day of fighting in Kursk, the panorama of what is happening there became complicated for two reasons: first, both sides are also fighting another battle, that of disinformation, and second, the Russian Parliament threatened to toughen penalties for spreading fake newswhich was interpreted as a clear message to Russian Z-bloggers, journalists and analysts who support the special military operationbut they criticize the military leadership, so that they stop talking about the advances of the Ukrainian troops.
Yesterday, Russians and Ukrainians – to give just two examples – released photographs and videos of enemy prisoners, but the other side counters, without denying that they are their soldiers, that they were not captured in Kursk or that the images of the impact of a missile destroying an armored vehicle in Kursk are real but correspond to an event that occurred last year and on Ukrainian soil. There is no way to verify this.
The case of Sudzha, the main town of the eponymous district, deserves special mention, and it all happened yesterday: the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Oleksandr Syrskyi, informed President Volodymir Zelensky via video conference that the entire district is under Ukrainian control. The search and destruction of the enemy in the village of Sudzha has been completed. During this day we have advanced in different directions one or two kilometers, and we have also taken more than 100 prisoners.the general says in the video clip that Zelensky posted on the Internet.
Speaking to the news program of the Russian TV channel Pervy, Apti Alaudinov, deputy head of the main military-political directorate of the Russian army and commander of the Chechen special forces in Kursk, said: Today (Wednesday) there are also units of the Russian army in Sudzha. The enemy has surrounded the city and has already entered some parts, but it cannot say that it fully controls Sudzha because it does not control it (sic).
Shortly afterwards, the Ukrainian television channel 1+1 published a report from the centre of Sudzha by Natalia Nagornaya, a TNS correspondent, who showed the empty streets of the city, interviewed a group of women who were hiding in a basement and, to conclude, came on camera to say: And now we find ourselves in the center of Sudzha at the historic moment when the Russian tricolor flag falls to the groundthrown by two Ukrainian fighters from the top of a building.
On Russian social media, several journalists questioned the veracity of the report, saying that the flag was not on the Sudzha administration building but on a school located 300 meters away, and that it was recorded and not broadcast live, since the journalist had already returned to Ukraine when it was broadcast.
However, pro-Kremlin blogger Sergei Koliasnikov posted on his Zergulio channel: Of course, it is infuriating that the Ukrainian army is occupying a district centre; it is painful and sad. But the lies on this subject are beginning to look like a farce. Our people were not there, and they are still not there. There are only loud declarations and promises..
Mikhail Vinogradov, president of the St. Petersburg Political Foundation, shared an analysis of how Russian public television is reporting on Kursk. Based on the 3 pm newscast on the Pervy channel, the political scientist mentions that he devoted 85 seconds to what he calls the situation in the Kursk region, separating it from the special military operation; He put emphasis on the number of Ukrainian casualties and destroyed armored vehicles, above all Americans and British; stressed that the Russian army continues to cut off attempts to advance of the Ukrainian troops; he did not publish any maps, mentioned unimportant localities and did not say a word about Sudzha, Kurchatov or Lgov; he called saboteurs to the Ukrainian prisoners he showed.
And while Russia bombed the Sumy region, from where Ukrainian units entered Russian territory on August 6, and the governor of Kursk, Aleksei Smirnov, announced last night the mandatory evacuation of the entire population of the Glushkovo district (before February 2022, it had 20 thousand inhabitants), Ukraine has been doing the same for several days in its border area and also assured that early yesterday morning it attacked four military airfields in the Russian regions of Kursk, Voronezh and Nizhny Novgorod that served as bases for fighter-bombers. SU-34 and SU-35as well as fuel tanks.