Opinion | The Ukraine bubble is starting to burst

By Tom Fowdy

Several days ago, Human Rights organization Amnesty International condemned Ukraine for deliberately hosting military infrastructure and deployments in civilian areas, which had increased the deaths of innocent people. The report created a firestorm on social media from Ukraine supporters who reacted furiously to it, pointing out that Russia was the one having invaded and started the war, which has lasted for over half a year. Critics accused Amnesty in turn of awarding a "propaganda victory" to Putin and Russia, who had long claimed Ukraine had engaged in such tactics, but had been frequently dismissed as misinformation.

Critics of Ukraine pointed out that the report's publication signified that the "Ukraine bubble" in the west is starting to crack. Since the war broke out, western media outlets and leaders have sought to portray the Eastern European nation as a benevolent, righteous and effectively innocent country suffering from "unprovoked" Russian aggression and militarism, morphing the origin of the conflict into little more than a simplified battle between good and evil, than the accumulation of decades-long geopolitical friction sparred on by the west's unquenchable ideological thirst to expand NATO at all costs.

Anyone who has dared suggest Ukraine could have in any instance, done anything wrong, is derided akin to a Medieval person who defies blasphemy laws. As with western thinking as a whole, the moral and theological correctness of the message is deemed more important than facts and reality itself. Hence Galileo was imprisoned for daring to defy the will of the Catholic Church in stating the earth revolved around the sun, and not the other way round. Hence facts have never mattered in western media coverage of the war, which has sought to even explicitly censor Russian sources in the view of hammering home such a one-sided narrative. But as the Amnesty report shows, the longer this conflict goes on, the more and more Ukraine's tidal wave of misinformation is being exposed.

Ukraine utilizes two clear methods of propaganda in order to lull in a continuing flow of western military and financial support to prop up its war aims. First is the premise that Russia is losing the war and that Ukraine can succeed in taking back lost territories and defeat Putin's invasion, hence Kyiv has sought to frequently exaggerate Russia's losses on a scale which has misled many commentators about the reality of the war on the ground. The second is the narrative Russia is committing horrific atrocities against Ukraine and its people, a form of messaging in wartime which is known as "Atrocity propaganda".

Whilst it is of course obvious to point out that war is awful and itself an atrocity, one which does indeed result in the deaths of innocent people in unnecessary circumstances, nonetheless it is also true to point out that Ukraine has deliberately milked and exaggerated this premise to a level in which it becomes completely absurd, and also obscures the reality of how Ultra-Ukrainian nationalist sentiment has provoked inter-ethnic and identity conflict in the country, and have also in turn committed aggression against its Russian speaking population. There is little attention given for example, to the sporadic shelling of Donestk.

But these narratives, despite maximum emphasis upon them from the western media, are becoming considerably more difficult to paint over the cracks. Ukraine is simply not winning the war. The massively overhyped HIMARS "gamechanger", as I predicted weeks ago, has in fact fizzled out and not turned out to be a gamechanger at all. For a long time now, there has been no new HIMARS attacks on Russian-held territory, suggesting Russia's effort to destroy them was not mere military propaganda but had some truth to it. Russia's advance in Donbas has also continued, whilst Ukraine's also long-fabled "Counteroffensive" and "bid to liberate Southern Ukraine" has also come to nothing.

Likewise, as this goes on, the race to portray Ukraine as a benevolent, righteous and progressive country is also facing growing fractures, as the Amnesty report has demonstrated. Another report, appearing on CBS news, stated that only a mere 30% of western supplied military equipment makes it to the frontline, showing how incompetence and corruption in Ukraine's army are taking a toll. In a similar fashion to Amnesty, the broadcaster also experienced a tidal wave of hatred from Ukrainian supporters, who have been bought full hook and slinker into this myopic storytelling of the war. It is of course an ugly and severe conflict, yet it is a complicated one which contrary to western fantasy, doesn't so easily fit into a glossy narrative.

Kyiv is going to find it more and more difficult going forwards to procure more support from European capitals and to also reject talks for peace on the premise of unrealistic and absolutist conditions. They are well aware of course that as soon as the "bubble" truly bursts, they face the unsurmountable wrath of a Kremlin who now sees the states as a life-or-death strategic conquest against the west, and that's why their only hope is to keep these false narratives floating in the desperate bid to stop western countries from disengaging.

The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:

Opinion | China's restraint is not weakness

Opinion | Pelosi's visit is just the start of a bigger crisis