Wartime Truth And The Bodyguard Of Lies

Winston Churchill said, "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." We've had a couple of stories lately that are hinky enough that I keep thinking of Churchill. Let's take the unfortunate Russian frigate Admiral Makarov, which last Friday was briefly reported to have been hit and disabled by a Ukrainian missile. Then there were new posts asserting that the video being circulated of the burning ship was maybe sorta kinda almost certainly fake, the product of a video war game simulation. However, in response to questions about just which war game could have produced this video, the answer was it doesn't matter, they've all gotten real, real good.

For whatever reason, nobody then went to Ultra Real Super War Game Blaster 7.0 and recreated the video in question to prove it could be done just that way. We're just hearing it's "almost certainly fake", case closed.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby added to the skepticism, saying on Friday, “We’ve seen the reports [about the Admiral Makarov]. . . we’ve been looking at this all day and we have no information to corroborate on these reports.” But isn't this a little along the line of "the golden mountain does not exist?" What golden mountain? What were they looking at all day? I would assume that the US has real-time coordinates for every Russian ship in its navy, updated 24/7. Gosh, where could the Admiral Makarov possibly be? We've been looking for it all day, can't confirm a thing!

If anyone wanted to pooh-pooh the story, they could just point to some open-source unclassified photo of the Makarov intact and in port over the weekend. But then the story disappeared with no further confirmation or denial.

In fact, we have no information on exactly when the attack on the Makarov did or didn't take place. Now, I'm a skeptical guy, but I'm a skeptical contrarian. If everyone agrees on something, they're probably wrong. Nevertheless, let's go to Wikipedia's account of Snake Island's brief history on the world stage, interleaving this with other news on the Russian Navy in the area. On April 14, Ukraine sank the Russian Cruiser Moskva, its lead asset in the Black Sea. After that, attacks on Snake Island intensified:

From 26 to 30 April OC South claimed strikes on the Russian forces on the island left a control post hit and two anti-aircraft missile complex Strela-10 destroyed as well as 42 Russian soldiers killed.

On 1 May, Ukrainian Air Force Command South claims to have launched an attack on Snake Island that destroyed Russian equipment stationed there.

On May 2 at dawn near the Snake Island in the Black Sea two Russian Raptor patrol and landing boats were sunk by a Bayraktar TB2 drone. A video footage was released showing Russian Raptor multi-purpose boats being struck by guided bombs followed by explosions and fires on them.

On Friday, May 6, a Ukrainian missile is claimed not to have damaged the Russian frigate Admiral Makarov, which maybe wasn't even in the area, because why on earth would it be? And we don't know exactly when this didn't take place anyhow, since it didn't happen. Nevertheless,

On 7 May, Ukraine officials reported and displayed footage of a Russian Serna-class landing craft located in the Black Sea being destroyed near Snake Island by a Ukrainian drone. The same day, a pair of Ukrainian Su-27s conducted a high-speed, low level bombing run on Russian-occupied Snake Island; the attack was captured on film by a Baykar Bayraktar TB2 drone. Later, footage of a Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian helicopter on Snake Island was released.

As of late yesterday, the Institute for the Study of War authoritatively reported that "the US has no confirmation that Ukrainian forces recaptured Snake Island, off the coast of Odesa Oblast". There's just a whole bunch of stuff that ain't happening in the Black Sea. But I've got to think for it not to happen, a lot of things would have had not to happen to the Russian navy in that area, huh?

Let's go to the recent kerfuffle over whether US intelligence is helping Ukraine kill Russian generals:

The United States has provided intelligence that has helped Ukrainian forces kill several Russian generals since Vladimir Putin's troops invaded the country, senior US officials said.

The US officials said that of the approximately 12 Russian generals killed by Ukrainian forces, 'many' had been targeted with the help of US intelligence, reports the New York Times.

Or whether US intelligence helped Ukraine sink the Moskva:

Unnamed officials said Ukraine had asked the US about a ship sailing to the south of Odesa.

The US said it was the Moskva and helped confirm its location. Ukraine then struck it with two missiles.

But then, there came pushback from the Big Guy:

President Joe Biden was furious about leaks that said US intelligence helped Ukraine kill Russian generals and sink its warship, report says, The New York Times reported on Monday.

A senior administration official told The Times that after the reports of US involvement in the attacks emerged, Biden reprimanded several top defense officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, the Director of National Intelligence Avril D. Haines, and CIA director William J. Burns.

Biden was concerned that the reports would further provoke Russian President Vladimir Putin, The Times reported.

Gosh, darn, this could all Start World War III! Cut it out! Oddly, though, Biden's profile on Ukraine hasn't been high, especially since he vetoed Poland's transfer of Migs to Ukraine, which it then seems to have taken Secretary Blinken some weeks to work past. His signature issues in recent weeks have been protecting the rights of minor children to have gender-affirming surgery and preserving Roe v Wade. I'm not sure if the issue is so much concern about provoking Putin as it is about doing what had to be done in World War II -- Allied intelligence had to conceal from the Germans that they were reading Enigma code. There were limits to what they could do if suspicious attacks gave away the source of the information. So what are we to make of this?

Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, visited the Donbas front in the Ukraine war last week, a Pentagon official said, but reports that he was injured in a Ukrainian attack could not be confirmed.

“What we can confirm is that we know that for several days last week he was in the Donbas,” a senior US defence official told journalists on Monday.

“We don’t believe that he’s still there – that he has left and he’s back in Russia,” the official said.

“We cannot confirm reports that he was injured.”

Nevertheless,

On Monday, there was a notable absence from Russia’s ‘Victory Day’ parade in Moscow: Valery Gerasimov, the Russian military’s chief of general staff, was nowhere to be seen.

. . . A senior military figure like Gerasimov would normally be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in such an event.

Gosh darn, what's not going on here?