ISW: Kremlin Army Failure Destroying Russian Information Space

The propagandists were not prepared for the failure of their troops.

The Russian Defence Ministry's pointless explanations that the flight of their units from Kharkiv region is a planned "regrouping" designed to reinforce the Donetsk direction is as false as the "goodwill gesture" in retreating from under Kyiv at the end of March. The Russian defence ministry is incapable of admitting defeat and is hurting itself even more by doing so, say analysts at the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW), as they wrote in their findings on September 11.

"The Russian Ministry of Defence falsely claimed that Russian troops had carried out a series of demonstrative actions and used artillery and aviation to secure the withdrawal of Russian troops. These Russian claims are not relevant to the situation on the ground," ISW said in its findings. "The failure of the Russian Defence Ministry to acknowledge Russia's miscalculations in Kharkiv Region and to create information conditions effectively is destroying the Russian information space".

The experts noted that the Kremlin propagandists were so unprepared for the failure of the Russian army on the battlefield that they "offered a wide range of confusing explanations" for the situation, in order not to acknowledge the Ukrainian successes. First they would say that "Russian troops are fighting against the entire Western bloc", then they would diminish the importance of the Kupyansk direction for the logistics of the Russian troops.

"Kremlin propagandists proved to be extremely disorganized in their narratives: some of them confirmed the liberation of some towns, while others denied such reports. The invited experts also failed to confirm the hosts' narratives that Ukrainian successes were irrelevant to the Donbas axis. Such programmes may reveal the real course of Russia's 'special military operation' to the Russian public, entrusted to the state media and the Russian Defence Ministry to get updates," ISW experts noted.