1 year ago
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It’s not often that the Ukraine Update spends much time referencing articles or interviews in major U.S. publications or online sources. That’s not because there hasn’t been some sterling reporting in this war. The people who are actually there, on the ground, and doing what war correspondents have done, going back to the Battle of Megiddo—placing themselves in danger in order to bring back to everyone else the essence of the conflict—are generally fantastic.
The problem with most war reporting as it appears in the U.S. is more subtle. It’s the framing. It’s that pretense of impartiality that pulls back from condemning actions, no matter how vile, and holds itself aloof from judgement, no matter how well deserved. I think I can safely speak for everyone who has covered this illegal, unprovoked invasion at Daily Kos when I say that we are not impartial. We not only believe that Ukraine is winning, and will win this conflict, we want them to win. We believe that Vladimir Putin didn’t just make a mistake in invading Ukraine, but that his acts were malicious, self-serving, cruel, and, for lack of a better term, evil.
In the war between democracy and authoritarianism, we have picked a side. And we feel no need to engage in the least bit of apologia for the murderous thugs on the other side in this conflict. Hopefully, that never affects the accuracy of what appears here, but it absolutely affects the tenor. We’ve also, hopefully, dropped the decades of viewing Russia as a Great Power whose every action must be treated with deference.
With that out of the way, there is an article in The New York Times this morning that really deserves your attention. That article, from Michael Schwirtz, Anton Troianovski, Yousur Al-Hlou, Masha Froliak, Adam Entous and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, isn’t well served by the Times online obsession with scrolling images and HTML tricks, because it’s really the text that is worth reading. However, that text is very much worth reading.
