https://gilbertdoctorow.substack.com/p/lies-about-the-status-of-the-ukraine
Lies about the status of the Ukraine war disseminated by private opportunists
Published by gilbertdoctorow
Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels. View all posts by gilbertdoctorow
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Gilbert Doctorow 
Now there was at least proper reports of it on Vesti this morning, but yesterday there was nothing at all about the drone terrorism near Gelendzhik on the news.
Instead they lead with the worthless image of Putin kicking a football around the stage as part of a youth award event. Embarassing.
In a normal country, the President should be making a televised address that same day to the nation over such a serious attack. Making threats to the western supplies and organisers of Kiev, announcing some countermeasures- but he’s long given up the pretense of threatening the west ( nevermind look like he will). What has become implicitly accepted civilian deaths in liberated territories and border regions from Ukrainian attacks is now nonchalantly accepted as inevitable daily mass civilian deaths with 5-8 killed, dozens injured,deep in mainland Russia. No deterrence achieved against this vile regime, mainly because their western controllers have nothing to worry about.
The head of Wildberries, she made a speech that put the likes of Putin to shame in terms of bring upfront with people.
The successful Ukraine strikes are now so daily that a directive of “keep calm” to not spread panic is worthless
This is still in the aftermath of the terror attack in the Moscow restaurant where after 3 days there is still not a single piece of extra information on what happened and ( hopefully not) if General Chaiko was the target with his daughter seriously injured and her husband killed.
Dare I say it, but this indifference in public towards civilian deaths inside Russia deserves to have serious repercussions for Putin and Russian leadership. It’s like the modern day version of the western myth that Soviet generals were throwing around Red Army soldiers to be easily sacrificed- but this time with civilian deaths being treated as non events
And it looks particularly worse as the point you pose remains unanswered- liberation of Donbass won’t lead to the other objectives listed by Putin at the start of the military operation being fulfilled
And as odious as he is, Zelensky was onto something when he talked about Putin’s obsession with secrecy.
There’s secrecy for the purpose for keeping military secrets – and there is this stupid level of secrecy by him . Some statement by him could at least force Kiev western masters into having a word with them about not conducting such brazen daytime terror attacks on beaches- to at least pay lipservice to the Euros claim “following the rules”
And as bad as the American political system is,Belousov should be in front of a Russian senate/duma commitee asking strong questions about what has and hasn’t been achieved by his department
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Thanks for your comment which touches on the issue of Putin’s absurd appearance at the first 10 minutes of Vesti’s premier news program last evening. That was shameful in every way.
I do not think secrecy is the problem in Team Putin. It is their being controlled by oligarchs who have no interest in ending the war now when it is still within Russia’s power to do so. In a couple of years it will be too late.
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I do think Putin is displaying a backwards Soviet mentality in some areas.
He should have the wit to make public statements that harm the shareprices of American and other western defence companies, but he’s too preoccupied with stupid secrecy.
Zelensky claims they are out of PAC missiles, implying they are “great at what they do”,but he’s probably doing his American backers bidding more than anything else – as their already sky-high shareprice has skyrocketed for Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin since he started making this comment
If Putin detailed how easy it has been to destroy many Patriot complexes, list the so-called “ukrainian family killed in their sleep” as being from Patriot missile launches, detail the inefficiency and failures in operation against Russian missile strikes then he could lower that shareprice and give them some incentive to not keep up this constant flow of weapons into Ukraine.
There’s no incentive for Trump or anyone from the west to stop the war if the shareprice is so good.
Putin acting the Sovok stereotype.
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