More lies and “spin” in Western media, while Russian media provides some worthwhile coverage of the attack last night on Odessa

I closed my essay yesterday asking whether the premier Russian state television news program of the week, Vesti Nedeli with Dmitry Kiselyov, would report on Russia’s dramatic destruction during the night of 22-23 September of the Kremenchug airport, planes and pilot. This was the airport, the equipment and the personnel involved in a Ukrainian missile attack hours earlier that destroyed the staff headquarters building of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea.  No, not a word about this was said on Russian television. All that we know from the Russian side is what is published in unofficial, one might say “underground,” private portals.

Last night, early this morning there was another wave of dramatic Russian air attacks on Ukraine, in particular on the port city of Odessa. From some indications, depending on the actual use of the “hotel” hit by Russian missiles, this attack would appear to be the perfect tit-for-tat revenge for the loss of Russia’s Black Sea staff building in Sevastopol. Western reporting speaks of the hotel as “not in use for years” or as being used for military training purposes.  Russian state television, Sixty Minutes, this evening says that the strike on the hotel resulted in the deaths of Ukrainian officers and foreign mercenaries who worked there.  In the shadowy world of unofficial Russian internet sites, there is the view that the building was effectively used as a staff headquarters for what remains of the Ukrainian fleet. For what it is worth, The Financial Times identified the hotel as a “landmark…that had stood at the foot of Odesa’s famous Potemkin Stairs.” Surely that helps cinema fans locate the site.

Additionally, Russian missiles destroyed the maritime passenger terminal of Odessa. More importantly, the Russians destroyed silos and other port infrastructure essential to grain export.  There were explosions and fires that lit up the sky for hours. Even The Financial Times article this morning understood and explained to its readers that the Russians were continuing “their months-long campaign of air strikes aimed at hobbling Ukraine’s grain exports.”

The FT put this in a context of Russia’s seeming inability to enforce a blockade on Ukrainian shipping, noting that several ships have successfully used an improvised corridor hugging the coastline of Romania and Bulgaria “to depart safely with grain cargoes.”  I would call that creative spin.

Put another way, the Russians have decided that it is easier and less risky in terms of conflict with NATO member states on the Black Sea and in terms of relations with Turkey to put a stop to Ukrainian grain shipping at the source, inside Ukraine, rather than out at sea.

If the FT was, like the official Russian media, rather restrained in its report of the Russian missile strikes on Odessa, other British mass media went rogue. I have in front of me the Daily Mail Online report which has the eye-catching headline: “Putin rains down hell on Ukraine’s Odessa in terrifying overnight blitz on Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur – as Russian warmonger’s lawless invasion grinds into its 20^th month.”

It is very interesting that The Daily Mail put the accent on Yom Kippur. A caption under one photo of the Hotel Odessa afire tells us that the powerful missile strike came “just as the city’s large Jewish population marks the holy days of Yom Kippur.”  It is quite amazing what this paper will do to divert attention from real news. To my knowledge, the Jewish population of Odessa numbers 12,000 in an overall urban population of just over one million.  Odessa is not Tel Aviv.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023