Dispatches From Woke War I

ONE of the amusing things to do of a morning these days is to check in for the latest on the war in Ukraine. The stories are almost always sourced to “intelligence officials” or “Ukrainian officials.” In other words, they were drafted by the CIA or the British MoD. Nearly two months after this and other sites ridiculed the “Ghost of Kiev,” The Times published ‘news’ of his death and his 40 kills. Not one journalist or subeditor at News Corp raised an eyebrow. Even if a few were sceptical, they weren’t prepared to risk being blacklisted as “pro-Putin.” Yesterday, anonymous “officials in Kiev and London” (ABC) and “military analysts” (The Times) reported that a drone-smartphone-radar wonder weapon ‘wiped out’ an entire Russian battalion last week in a single blitzkrieg attack at a pontoon bridge over the Siversky Donets River. No evidence was presented that it happened but The Times did quote – and I’m not making this up – two Ukrainian cutouts named Volodymyr and Victor who supposedly invented the wunderwaffe. This is so obviously an attempt by the United States to create a local backstory for its own participation in the war that no reputable newspaper should have published it without a disinformation warning.

...