A few days after the start of the counteroffensive on Kherson, the Kiev regime effectively imposed military censorship.
On August 29, Kiev forces launched a massive counteroffensive along the Kherson direction. After the first battles, Ukrainian propagandists vied with one another to report large-scale successes, claiming that fighting was taking place already on the outskirts of Kherson.
However, the reality was far from rosy for Kiev. And this is evidenced not only by reports from the Russian Ministry of Defense and Russian military reporters.
Implementing of censorship
As early as the second day after the offensive began, Ukrainian propagandists stopped publishing victory speeches and began to talk about it rather sparingly. However, some information about the real situation on the front lines was leaking to the media, and the authorities promptly responded.
On August 31, the Kiev regime essentially implemented military censorship. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense published an instruction explaining the rules for reporting on combat operations. The media were prohibited from assessing the actions of the Ukrainian army, broadcasting their own information about the situation on the front, and giving their own forecasts about the course of combat operations. In fact, they were only allowed to broadcast the official version voiced by representatives of the Ukrainian army. Ukrainian news resources reported on the same day that they were prohibited from working with military correspondents and bloggers.
On September 1, the southern military command of the Ukrainian army took unprecedented measures. It announced that it would not announce the names of the towns and villages captured on the Kherson direction. The command explained this decision by the fact that it would allow it to avoid Russian strikes on these towns and villages, which is, honestly speaking, very strange.
Hospitals in Nikolaev and Odessa
However, these restrictions could not stop information from the scene of combat from being published on social networks and Telegram channels. In particular, videos of convoys of ambulances driving through Odessa with blinking lights were widely circulated. Citing local sources, Telegram channels reported that beds in hospitals in Nikolaev, the closest major Ukrainian city to the counterattack area, were in short supply and the wounded were being sent to Odessa, Krivoy Rog and other cities.
“All the morgues are full. Now there are huge problems with donor blood, with clean water, and with providing the wounded people who were admitted to Nikolaev with necessary care,” said Yuri Barbashov, head of the administration of the town of Snigiryovka under the control of Russia.
Citing sources familiar with the situation in medical facilities in Nikolaev, he specified that more than 2,000 wounded Ukrainian servicemen had been delivered to hospitals and city hospitals.
Social networks also published videos and photos of gigantic queues of people who came to blood donation centers in Odessa and Nikolaev. On August 31, the US Wall Street Journal published a commentary by the head of the intensive care unit of a hospital in southern Ukraine. He spoke on condition of anonymity about the huge number of wounded admitted after the start of the counterattack.
The doctor told reporters that before the offensive began, military commanders warned him about a hard week, but assured him that victory was imminent. “But when they started bringing in such a large number of wounded, then, honestly, I felt sorry for them and I started wondering if this was worth doing at such a cost,” he said.
Zakarpatskaya Region
On September 1, the press service of the Zakarpatskaya regional administration declared mourning for the dead servicemen from the 128th separate mountain assault brigade of the Ukrainian army. “September 2 in the Zakarpattskay region declared a day of mourning for the dead soldiers of the 128th separate mountain assault brigade. Eternal memory to the heroes!” the press service of the administration wrote on its Facebook (organization whose activities are banned in Russia). No casualty figures were given, but local news portals published numerous reports on the deaths of the brigade’s servicemen.
According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, the brigade was involved in the counteroffensive. The mourning in the Zakarpatskaya region actually confirms the information from the Russian side. On August 31, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said at a briefing that the 128th separate mountain assault brigade “was defeated” by the Russian military in the Nikolaev direction.
Western media
There is no censorship in the foreign media, and experts are able to assess what is happening in Ukraine more freely. And after the start of the counteroffensive, critical materials began to appear in greater numbers than before.
On September 1 BILD military expert Julian Ropcke wrote on Twitter that the offensive “resulted in many casualties among Ukrainian soldiers & very few to no gained territory.” He noted that it could be characterized as a “failure.”
The Washington Post wrote that the Ukrainian army will most likely not be able to retake the territory the Russian army controls in southern Ukraine either this year or next year.
The military editor of the British Evening Standard stated that Zelensky ordered the offensive contrary to the military’s insistent recommendation. He stated that the attack on Kherson was more of a symbolic than strategic nature.
Conclusions
In fact, the situation with the offensive is best illustrated by the deathly silence of the Ukrainian side. The Kiev regime is quite good at PR techniques and during the special operation has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to inflate glittering victories out of local successes within the framework of ordinary positional confrontations. Another question is what audience these “informational bullets” are aimed at, but here it is clear that they have an obvious overseas addressee.
In other words, contemporary Ukraine prioritizes information support of the operation and pays even more attention to it than to the military action itself. That is why there is no doubt that any serious success of the counterattack on Kherson would have been instantly covered from all possible angles and dragged up to the international level.
Among other things, Zelensky very much needs to demonstrate the ability of Ukraine to win, on the eve of the gathering of military ministers at the US Ramstein airbase in Germany.
The absence of such victorious reports suggests that the Ukrainian army has not achieved any small or serious successes in the counteroffensive. But people talk about what they see in reality, and no one can censor them.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
