Guest Post by Nikolai Storozhenko
Original Link: https://m.vz.ru/world/2022/5/17/1158916.html
There was no surrender by Azov National Battalion militants, Kiev assures us. There was only an “evacuation” (not clear to where), and this bit of demagoguery was happily picked up by both Ukrainian and world mass media. The effort to conceal the embarrassing truth about the situation on the frontlines is consistent with how Kiev explains the catastrophic state of the economy.
“If I had the Pravda newspaper, the world would have never learned of Waterloo!”, Napoleon Bonaparte said in a famous Soviet anecdote. Pravda is no more, but the anecdote’s punchline holds true, since narratives need not depend on events.
Today the role of the collective Pravda is played by the talking heads on Ukrainian TV (president Zelensky, press secretaries of SBU, Ministry of Defense, political scientists, it doesn’t matter who).
This time Waterloo is the Azov Steel Works with the Azov Regiment militants who have been trapped there (for the most part). Together with soldiers from several AFU brigades, border guards and, as has been persistently claimed by the media, an uncertain number of either mercenaries or instructors. Who was and was not there, we’ll find out soon enough.
Continue reading “A major national embarrassment is being hidden from Ukrainians”
