Fake Generals and Fake News From the Ukraine

Ian Kummer
THE READING JUNKIE

Sorry for the long absence. I don’t announce travel plans in advance, so I am pleased to announce that as of last Saturday, I am in Moscow visiting friends. More on that later.

I’m not an expert on geopolitics by any stretch of the imagination, but I know how to do basic fact checking. Apparently, a large percentage of the American population has forgotten how to do that (assuming they knew how to begin with). But seriously, remember all that sanctimonious noise we were subjected to over the past several years about only accepting information from “credible” sources? Well, nowadays, the western world’s largest media outlets will copy/paste “news” from Ukraine’s defense ministry, or even random .ru blogs, without any attempt to verify it. That said, BBC seems to have gone into James Bond territory. They apparently weren’t content with just being stenographers of war propaganda, but actually go out of their way to synthesize fake news. Here is an example.

From Fox News:

A retired Russian Air Force major general was reportedly shot down over Ukraine on Sunday.

The fiction general Botashev. How far can the Western deception factory go? The "facts" (including his age) surrounding this "retired general" don't add up.

Kanamat Botashev, 63, is a top Russian military commander and former major general. According to reports coming out of Russia, Botashev was killed over the weekend after his SU-25 attack plane was shot down in Ukrainian airspace. Multiple subordinates confirmed Botashev’s death to the BBC, but requested to keep their identities anonymous.

If the reports of his death are true, Botashev would be the highest-ranking pilot to be killed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

This story appears to originate from BBC (see their Russian edition here).

So, I decided to research this guy. But as far as I can tell, “Kanamat Botashev” didn’t exist before May 23. The Ukrainian(!) Wikipedia page for him is the earliest digital reference to him I could find, and that’s so new, when I looked it up on May 26, even the Wayback Machine bots hadn’t had time to archive the page. This wouldn’t necessarily be suspicious for a common soldier or low-ranking officer, since many people don’t have social media profiles and never did anything high-profile enough to be in the news, but generals are public figures.

Just to give you some context, I’ll refer to an American general I met, Brigadier Gen. Stacy Babcock. As you can see on Google, it is very easy to find many photos of her, and the top results are the formal pictures taken for the various command positions she’s worked at. It is equally easy to find various biographies of her, also from her commands. A couple minutes of effort will even turn up the thesis paper she wrote as a lt. colonel at the US Army War College. So I’m supposed to believe this Botashev guy has never pursued a post-graduate degree, never been a keynote speaker at an event, never participated in a ceremony, never spoken to the press about anything, and never had a proper photo taken of him? Color me skeptical.

I’m not the only one calling BS on this story. For more, see this great piece from Moon of Alabama.

Look, just about every mainstream news outlet in the West is uncritically repeating Ukrainian war propaganda, but this story in particular makes it clear that BBC is going the extra mile and actively participating in generating bullshit.

Now consider encyclopedia style sites, most famously Wikipedia, and their policies on “reliable sources.”

Step 1: A Ukrainian makes up a fake story on Telegram or Twitter.
Step 2: A “reliable source” like CNN or BBC copy/pastes the story.
Step 3: Encyclopedias quote CNN and BBC as fact.
Step 4: Profit?

But this isn’t just a matter of casual internet users having a wildly inaccurate understanding of the war. Our own military and academic institutions are poisoned. From a pragmatic and neutral viewpoint, this war is exceptionally important, as it is the first war in decades featuring a fight between two peer forces. It should be studied, dissected, and understood. Instead, we make up our own stories and dissect those, all of it safely shielded from reality.

Here’s a particularly delusional story from The Atlantic:

Russia has launched the greatest war the world has seen in decades, all in the service of empire. To avoid the risk of further wars and more senseless bloodshed, the Kremlin must lose what empire it still retains. The project of Russian decolonization must finally be finished.

Finally be finished? A final solution?

Here’s an interesting NPR piece featuring the commanding general of the California National Guard, Dave Baldwin:

Behind some of the success of Ukraine’s military in its fight against Russia is a little-known U.S. initiative, an initiative built around a state National Guard. Jay Price of North Carolina Public Radio brings us this story…

[Baldwin] knew that because for nearly 30 years, California’s citizen soldiers have been helping Ukraine shape its military. And after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the guards of several other states began pitching in. They’ve taught sniper skills, ambush tactics, aerial combat and how to launch the Javelin missiles celebrated for destroying so many Russian tanks. They also helped Ukraine build an asset Russia doesn’t have – a cadre of noncommissioned officers who know how to lead from the front lines. Troops from Ukraine and California have flown back and forth dozens of times for exercises and training. Baldwin lost count of his own visits to Ukraine after 40.

As for what’s going on with Sweden and Finland’s application to join NATO, it looks like Turkey is playing hardball, and asking for a lot in return. Still, I’m astonished and disappointed that 28-29 countries so readily agree to a mutual defense pact that is all but certain to escalate into a war, and possibly a nuclear exchange.

Regarding all this noise that Russia is going to start a general mobilization – maybe, but I don’t think so. I have three reasons for believing this.

Reason 1: All those units withdrawn from northern Ukraine could be rested, refitted, and reinserted elsewhere.
Reason 2: If they run into a shortage of fresh contract soldiers, there’s the fairly obvious solution of asking reservists who wants to sign a contract. Signing a contract creates a contract soldier, it’s not some mystical thing.
Reason 3: Russia recently lifted the age limit on contract soldiers.

MOSCOW, May 25 (Xinhua) — The Russian parliament passed a bill on Wednesday to scrap the upper age limit for those who want to serve in the army under a contract.

Previously, Russian citizens aged 18-40 and foreigners aged 18-30 were entitled to conclude the first contract for military service. Now those who are older will be able to serve under a contract until the end of the working age, said Russia’s lower parliament house the State Duma.

The adoption of this bill will make it possible to attract more specialists to the military service, said Andrei Kartapolov, co-author of the initiative and chairman of the Defense Committee of the State Duma.

An explanatory note said highly professional specialists are needed for the use of high-precision weapons, and the operation of weapons and military equipment, while experience shows that professionals in that area are usually in the age range of 40-45.  ■

For some reason, western experts interpreted this as a sign that Russia has a shortage of soldiers and needs to start a general mobilization, which is ridiculous to me and actually indicates the opposite. Under a mobilization, the government can draft whoever they want so it’s not necessary to lift the age limit. Removing age restrictions for volunteer specialists is something a government does when they’re planning to not do a mobilization – like the American government for the “surge” in Iraq.

That’s all I can think of for now. Oh, please press F for all the idiots who declared a Ukrainian victory back at the beginning of April.

See my series for why Russia is NOT losing the information war

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.