GAME PLAN featured interview on India’s WION broadcaster: “Russia gains territory in Ukraine as Zelensky loses troops & armoured vehicles in Kursk”

GAME PLAN featured interview on India’s WION broadcaster: “Russia gains territory in Ukraine as Zelensky loses troops & armoured vehicles in Kursk”

In past essays, I have described the Indian broadcaster WION (acronym for The World is One) as the country’s leading English-language global television network. Two days ago I was interviewed by one of their presenters based in New York for a live program. My latest 7-minute interview, taped yesterday and released this morning can be found following the link given below. It was conducted by anchor Shivan Chanana in their main Indian studios.

WION’s published figures for its subscriber base today show 9 million. That is enormous drawing power.  

Given their prominent place within Indian broadcasting, it is understandable that WION tends to reflect the predominant mood of people and government at any given time.  When I first was invited to participate as an expert commentator chiefly on Russian affairs, WION and its audience were pro-American leaning.  Some of the first comments on me posted by their viewers amounted to: “how did you let this guy on the air?  Good for you!” What was meant, of course, is that the Russian perspective had not been aired till then, only the Washington narrative that you hear on most global media networks.

However, government and public opinion in India have moved steadily against the United States due to easily identifiable missteps of American foreign policy. The latest color revolution in neighboring Bengladesh that is widely assumed to have engineered by the United States has turned that country against India, something which is deeply resented in Delhi. Accordingly, the audience that my interviews now attract on this station, which is heavily Indian, though with an admixture of viewers from many other countries, is considerably more open to information about Russia and the logic of its conducting the war against Ukraine and NATO.  You see this in the Comments section.

Happy viewing!

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Postscript: Today’s Comments section on this WION interview is well worthy of attention. The interview is doing very well at 7 hours after release. Presently it has 77,000 ‘hits’ and it may well rise in a day towards the 360,000 ‘hits’ record of an interview I gave with them a month ago. Meanwhile, the thumbs up numbers are also decent and no thumbs down. BUT there is a cluster of viciously anti-WION comments a dozen Comments down from the top which to my thinking have been planted by pro-Ukrainian agitators. Never a dull moment!

Transcript submitted by a reader followed by translation into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Shivan Chanana, WION: 0:00
Russia has made it absolutely clear that there cannot be any talks with Kiev after its attack on Russia’s Kursk region. But as Ukraine nurses the ambition to take over more Russian territory, Russian troops took over Viyemka railway station, the Donetsk People’s Republic, over the past day, along with Artemovo, one of the largest Russian gains of recent weeks. And Russian troops are inching close to Pokrovsk, where Ukraine has asked for pe’ople to move out of. Now, in Kursk, during the past day, Ukraine lost more than 330 troops and 27 armored vehicles. Is Kiev losing more on its home turf than it could gain inside Russia as Russian troops continue to advance inside Ukraine and pound Ukrainian troops in Kursk? What is Ukraine’s game plan from here? To discuss this further, we’re being joined by Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, who’s an international affairs analyst, historian and author, joining us right here on “Game Plan”. It’s always a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for joining me. Doctor, do you feel Ukraine has left its home territory open to Russian advances by directing its men and resources inside Russia?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 1:06
This is not my opinion. It’s a consensus opinion of analysts in the West as well. I was listening this morning to BBC News, their reporter on the ground, who was saying exactly this, that the Ukrainians have taken a gamble and they are risking great losses in Donetsk, some of which are taking place as we talk, by diverting their elite troops to the incursion, now we can call it an invasion, of the Russian Federation in the Kursk Oblast.

WION: 1:43
Doctor, if we now shift focus to Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk, a Russian Su-34 struck Ukrainian manpower and armoured military hardware in the borderline Kursk region with glide bombs. Now, I’m quoting from reports which have come in from the Russian side. And during the past day, Ukraine lost more than 330 troops and 27 armored vehicles, including four tanks, a combat infantry carrier, three armored personnel carriers, 19 armored combat vehicles, eight automobiles, two artillery systems, and three mortars. These are details which the Russian state media is sharing. Has Ukraine miscalculated the impending larger losses for short-term gains?

Doctorow: 2:21
Let us look for a moment at these losses of equipment. Not much is being said as to why. Yes, the Russians have very good killer drones. They have very good artillery. But their tasks have probably been made easier by something else that is not in the headlines or even in the third or fourth paragraph down in Western media accounts. That is the question of fuel supply. The Russians, two or three days ago, destroyed a large fuel storage area in the neighboring territory of Ukraine that is on the other side of the border. This was a vital supply of fuel to those vehicles now engaged within Kursk territory. In short, you have situation where Ukrainian tanks, Ukrainian armored personnel carriers, run out of fuel. They stall, and they are sitting ducks for Russian artillery. That leaves the infantry, the Ukrainian infantry, who were protected by these mechanized units, vulnerable on the ground, on foot, to find safety as best they can. And all of this leads to much heavier casualties Ukrainian side.

WION: 03:41
Doctor, if I were to just compare, there are reports coming in that Russia is constantly gaining ground inside Ukraine and as far as Kursk is concerned, Ukraine is losing manpower and it has run out of fuel, a very pertinent point that again, as you mentioned, we’ve not read in most reports that fuel is something that they’re running out of and only leaving them and their military vehicles as sitting ducks. So in a way, on both fronts, they are losing ground. Now, of course, this is, all these developments, you know, there are reports which are coming from the West and there are reports coming from Russia, a lot of reporting has happened from, you know, inputs which have come in from the West side, here are reports which are coming in from Russia’s side that suggest that in Kursk, Ukraine is losing out, both manpower, troops as well as military vehicles. Where does Ukraine go from here? What’s the game plan? Are they expecting to now be slaughtered there and then as they wait as sitting ducks? Do they plan to go even further? And they are begging the West to allow them to use Storm Shadow missiles deep inside Russian territory. Do you think that is a possibility? What’s the game plan from here?

Doctorow: 4:48
There are various scenarios that we can discuss, but I’d like to focus on the ones with highest probability, and also to focus on the question of what kind of war is being fought. It’s been ignored in Western media that from the Russian perspective, this is a new war. The incursion into Russian Federation territory, as in the Russian accounting, changed the war directly to a Russian-NATO war, because they insist that the incursion was impossible in concept and in implementation without the active participation of NATO officers and of NATO planners in the headquarters of NATO in the United States and Europe. So from the Russian perspective, this is a new war. There’s a war now of national liberation, which nobody is talking about.

5:36
From the Russian perspective, what they were fighting from the start of the special military operation in February 2022 was a war to liberate their brethren, their Russian speakers, first of all, in the Donbas, and then what they call Novorossiya, meaning the Kherson and Zaporizhzhye oblasts of Ukraine. This is a very nice intellectual exercise, which some people could be enthusiastic about, but it’s not a national cause. Once the Ukrainians marched into Russia proper, that changed the nature of the war, to a war of national liberation by the Russians, a war which can most easily support an upsurge in patriotism. And for that reason alone, I can see why the Russians would not immediately try to quash the Ukrainian invasion. It served the purposes of Moscow for this invasion to proceed a little bit and to get just far enough to get the whole Russian nation very excited and very keen to destroy Ukraine.

WION: 6:42
Perhaps this gives Russia the kind of mobilization that it was hoping for earlier in the war, because now again it becomes a question of a foreign enemy, which has now entered its homeland. Perhaps that is the reason that it’s been two weeks and Russia has not given a strong response. Of course, there are several possibilities at this point, but you’ve made several pertinent points. Thank you so much for joining in. That was Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, international affairs analyst, author and historian joining me on “Game Plan”. Always a pleasure speaking with you, sir.

Doctorow: 7:12
Thanks for inviting me.

German translation below

GAME PLAN im Interview mit dem indischen Sender WION: „Russland gewinnt Territorium in der Ukraine, während Zelensky Truppen und gepanzerte Fahrzeuge in Kursk verliert“

In früheren Beiträgen habe ich den indischen Sender WION (Akronym für The World is One) als das führende englischsprachige globale Fernsehnetzwerk des Landes bezeichnet. Vor zwei Tagen wurde ich von einem der in New York ansässigen Moderatoren für eine Live-Sendung interviewt. Mein letztes 7-minütiges Interview, das gestern aufgezeichnet und heute Morgen veröffentlicht wurde, finden Sie unter dem unten angegebenen Link. Es wurde von dem Moderator Shivan Chanana in den indischen Hauptstudios geführt.

Die heute von WION veröffentlichten Zahlen über die Zahl der Abonnenten belaufen sich auf 9 Millionen. Das ist eine enorme Anziehungskraft.

Angesichts der herausragenden Stellung des Senders im indischen Rundfunk ist es verständlich, dass WION dazu neigt, die vorherrschende Stimmung der Menschen und der Regierung zu einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt widerzuspiegeln. Als ich zum ersten Mal eingeladen wurde, als Experte vor allem für russische Angelegenheiten zu kommentieren, waren WION und sein Publikum pro-amerikanisch eingestellt. Einige der ersten Kommentare, die von den Zuschauern über mich gepostet wurden, lauteten: „Wie habt ihr diesen Kerl in die Sendung gebracht? Gut für euch!“ Gemeint war natürlich, dass die russische Perspektive bis dahin nicht gesendet worden war, sondern nur die Washingtoner Sichtweise, die man in den meisten globalen Mediennetzen hört.

Die Regierung und die öffentliche Meinung in Indien haben sich jedoch aufgrund von leicht erkennbaren Fehltritten der amerikanischen Außenpolitik stetig gegen die Vereinigten Staaten gewandt. Die jüngste Farb-Revolution im benachbarten Benghadesch, von der weithin angenommen wird, dass sie von den Vereinigten Staaten angezettelt wurde, hat dieses Land gegen Indien aufgebracht, was in Delhi zutiefst beklagt wird. Dementsprechend ist das Publikum, das ich mit meinen Interviews auf diesem Sender anspreche, der überwiegend aus Menschen in Indien besteht, wenn auch mit einer Beimischung von Zuschauern aus vielen anderen Ländern, wesentlich offener für Informationen über Russland und die Logik seiner Kriegsführung gegen die Ukraine und die NATO. Sie sehen das im Abschnitt Kommentare.

Viel Spaß beim Anschauen!

Nachtrag: Der heutige Kommentarbereich zu diesem WION-Interview ist durchaus beachtenswert. Das Interview läuft 7 Stunden nach seiner Veröffentlichung sehr gut. Zurzeit hat es 77.000 ‘Hits’ und es kann gut sein, dass es innerhalb eines Tages den Rekord von 360.000 ‘Hits’ eines Interviews erreicht, das ich ihnen vor einem Monat gegeben habe. Die Zahl der „Daumen hoch“-Zeichen ist inzwischen auch anständig und es gibt keine „Daumen runter“-Zeichen. ABER es gibt eine Reihe von bösartigen Anti-WION-Kommentaren ein Dutzend Kommentare weiter oben, die meiner Meinung nach von pro-ukrainischen Agitatoren platziert wurden. Niemals ein langweiliger Moment!