Russia appears to have launched a “renewed offensive” against Ukrainian troops in the eastern part of the country as the war inches closer to entering its second winter, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Friday.
But Russian troops haven’t made much progress, Kirby said, adding that the new attacks are “not a surprise.”
“The Russian military appears to be using human wave tactics where they throw masses of poorly trained soldiers right into the battlefield without proper equipment, and apparently without proper training and preparation,” he said.
This is a shit argument and you know it. It’s a shit argument for the same reason that spreading MoD numbers claiming that the RAF are there doing the blowing up is a shit argument. Even in a vacuum with perfect reporting to the AFU/MoD, those numbers would end up being inflated for morale reasons.
In fact, the RAF has also been remarkably silent in terms of SIGINT leakage, so even “verified sources” are becoming heavily distorted: looking at Oryx would have you believe that almost half of Ukrainian tank casualties in June 2023 were Leopard 2s, for example… And definitely not because posting destroyed Leopard 2s looks really good for Russia.
Don’t spread shoddy numbers, whether from Ukraine or Russia. It’s not helping anyone.