Are we supposed to believe that the modern Russian soldier is still wearing the same uniform as his grandfather did at Stalingrad?

Preamble

Both the Ukraine and its backers are in need of some good news as Artemovsk falls and the billions doled out to Kiev appear to be for naught. This shorter article will look at the latest ‘news’ from London and see how it stacks up against real world happenings.

Dig For Victory

The UK may have had to ‘Dig for Victory’ in the depths of World War Two, but the BBC is certainly trawling the depths with this tall tale.

‘Dig For Victory’ was a campaign launched by the British government during the Second World War when the War in the Atlantic was at its peak and there was a real risk of starvation. Fast forward to today however, and 10 Downing Street’s tame media outlet is digging deep with this story, yet as a consequence, it is merely heaping ridicule on itself in spades as it accuses the Russian Army of being a bunch of shovel-wielding savages.

Stories in Spades

In spite of the media spinning the Bakhmut storyline faster than a washing machine, the BBC have outshone their rivals with the latest ‘revelation’ regarding Russian fighting tactics. Not satisfied with telling us that Putin was using parts from refrigerators, washing machines and dishwashers to keep his tank fleet running, the latest yarn is that Russian reservists are using spades to kill their opponents due to a shortage of munitions. Quite how any sane person can believe this tripe is beyond comprehension, yet it does lead us to ask some interesting questions.

Digging Death

The first question is how some Russian can get close enough to a Ukrainian soldier to dig him with a digger without getting shot himself? We all know that many Ukrainian servicemen are in-theater against their will, but surely they know how to use an AK?

Digging for the Dead

Or perhaps there has been a misunderstanding here? It has not gone unnoticed that the Ukrainians just leave their fallen comrades lying around like litter. Perhaps the Russians with their shovels have come to bury those fallen Ukrainians that they find along the way?

Looking for a Scoop?

The whole Ukrainian storyline is starting to bore Western audiences of late, and this latest ‘scoop’ might have been penned in order to invigorate public interest in an increasingly tiresome subject.

Dishing the Dirt

Reading further down the article, it quotes the UK Ministry of Defence as saying that ‘the lethality of the standard-issue MPL-50 entrenching tool is particularly mythologised in Russia’, yet remembering the myth of the Ghost of Kiev, (has anyone seen him lately?) Western governments are prone to telling tall tales when the going gets rough.

Moving the Mulch

The BBC article then furthers this by claiming that

‘Analysts say that although there is indeed an ammunition shortage, the situation is more complex than the intelligence update suggests, with Russian forces still using twice as much ammunition as the Ukrainian side.’

It was analysts a year ago that were predicting that Russia had run out of missiles, yet a million gigawatts of lost Ukrainian electricity later, Russian drones are still droning nearly as much as the misguided pundits in the West.

Summary

When the going gets tough, the journos get going, and in the face of a now apparently irrelevant Artemovsk being finally taken by the Russians, the Western media has to move into high gear in order that Ukrainian failures do not look like failures by the Ukraine. As time goes by and the situation becomes more desperate, we can be sure that the BBC et al will continue to regale us with increasingly fatuous reports about the Russians…