Is Russia doing as badly in the war as we are being led to believe?

If we deliberately exclude or ignore Russia’s version of what is going on, the risk is that we wake up one day to discover that Russia has won, writes Mary Dejevsky

The contempt for Russia’s performance seems just that bit too glib and dismissive (Reuters)

How are the Russians doing in Ukraine? If you were entirely dependent on British, American and Nato officials, as mediated by most of the media, you might think you have a reasonably clear picture. And that picture suggests the Russian forces have been doing pretty badly. Already, this war represents a huge miscalculation by President Putin.

An operation Russian commanders had expected to take a couple of days is now entering its third week. The Ukrainians who were supposed to be strewing flowers in the Russians’ path have been throwing Molotov cocktails instead, and the promised capitulation of Kyiv is nowhere in sight. Instead, Ukraine’s latter-day Churchill of a president is broadcasting daily to the parliaments of the western world.

And it only gets worse for the Russians in our telling. They have lost thousands of troops and at least two, maybe three high-ranking officers. They have a 40km column that has been stuck on the approach to Kyiv because of problems with supply lines. Their troops are running out of rations and morale is low. Every now and again, a generous Ukrainian takes pity on a hapless young recruit who dissolves in tears when offered a bowl of hot soup and a chance to phone his mum.

Indeed, so desperate has Russia become to get any sort of quick win, that it is now lashing out, disregarding all the laws of war. It has destroyed tracts of Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv. It has deliberately targeted the maternity wing of a hospital complex in the strategic port city of Mariupol. It has so far captured only one city – Kherson, right opposite occupied Crimea – and even there rebellious citizens are out in the streets stepping around the tanks and waving Ukrainian flags.

And all this, or at least some of it, may be the real picture. But the truth is that none of us on the outside really knows, and that might include Russia’s top brass, its defence minister and even President Putin. Western intelligence might have a better idea – it seems to have been able to tap into high-level communications. Even so, the contempt for Russia’s performance, not least from the UK’s defence minister and ex-military man, Ben Wallace, seems just that bit too glib and dismissive. Nor does it correspond completely to what some of the journalists are reporting from the ground (if you listen carefully) or to what you see on the maps.

First, as to whether the Russian operation has really gone wrong, or as wrong as we are being told. That depends on whether the plan really was, as we are told, to march in and take Kyiv in something like hours. If that was only the ideal scenario, or no scenario at all, then Russia’s plans may not be in such tatters. As for that convoy stuck outside Kyiv, might it not be standing there deliberately, as a last bargaining chip? You can save Kyiv, Zelensky might be told, if you concede on this, that or the other condition. If not, well... Russia is ready to fight.

Second, almost all the information we are receiving in the west is coming exclusively from the Ukrainian side. That is in part because the Ukrainians, and their president in particular, have shown themselves extraordinarily proficient at presenting their case, and – as the victim of an unprovoked invasion – have both moral right and popular sympathy on their side.

But the other reason we are not hearing the other side is that we are blocking it out rather effectively. Russia’s overseas television channel, RT, can no longer be received on most platforms in the UK, because of a ruling not from London, but from Brussels. While Ukraine has been helpful in providing access to journalists on the ground, knowing how crucial it is to get out their side of the story, no western reporters are “embedded” with Russian troops (though it is said some Chinese are) and those western reporters remaining in Russia and following the latest restrictions focus more on what is happening inside the country than on how Russia is reporting the war.

This is not to say that listening, watching or reading Russian sources would necessarily give any more accurate idea of what is going on – the claim made by Maria Butina, the one-time accused agent turned Russian MP, that Ukrainians are attacking themselves, is patently absurd. However, if one side has a virtual monopoly on the information we receive, the picture that emerges will be the one that side – our side – wants us to have.

A Russia-massaged view might include the defence that the vast majority of their targets have strategic value as they would define it, so fall within their stated objective of “demilitarisation”. It might take in their position that they have switched off the power to Chernobyl for safety reasons, and that the fire at Europe’s biggest nuclear plant at Zaporizhia was not at the reactor itself, but at an adjacent building, and was not started by Russian troops, but by Ukrainians to destroy a secret arms facility. As I say, you don’t have to believe this, but it is as well to know that there are other versions.

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It might also be worth knowing a few slightly inconvenient truths that have emerged thanks to careful western reporting. One is that Ukraine has suffered quite considerable casualties too. More than a thousand may have died in Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, alone. Another is that the “humanitarian corridor” out of Mariupol had been mined, not by the Russians, but by Ukrainians to hinder Russia’s advance. And a third is that, while its long convoy may be stuck, Russian troops have already advanced much closer to Kyiv than we are being told. That was vouchsafed, as confidential information, by one of three war correspondents speaking at a recent Zoom session with London’s Frontline Club.

And this is where the map comes in useful. Much of the reporting so far tends to ignore the south, with the exception of the fierce fighting in Mariupol which also tends to be seen in isolation. But Russia has been steadily advancing in the south. Having captured Kherson, it appears well on the way to taking what is left of Mariupol and is already threatening Mykolaiv. From there it is not so far to Ukraine’s largest commercial port, Odesa.

If there is no ceasefire, Russia could be within a week of taking the whole of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast and blocking all its outlets to the sea. Whether Russia’s plan would then be to leave post-war Ukraine a landlocked country or to demand other concessions in return for sea access hardly matters. The point is that this advance conflicts with the multiple reports of Russian failure.

The west’s desire – our desire – is not to say anything that would crush Ukraine’s morale, especially given the refusal of western governments to back their fine words with actual deeds that might provoke a full-blown Nato-Russia war. But if we deliberately exclude or ignore Russia’s version of what is going on, the risk is that we wake up one day to discover that Russia has won.

And this could have two consequences, neither beneficial to the west or Ukraine. It would further diminish the credibility of western politicians – and reporters – if they were found to have been deliberately economical with the truth. And it would risk leaving everyone except the Russians grievously unprepared for “the day after” – as though the US and the UK had learned nothing from the very same failure in Iraq.