Alt-Media Analysts Should Stop Obsessing Over Kiev’s Casualty Count

It's unimportant whether one takes the Russian Ministry of Defense’s claims about their opponent’s casualty count seriously or not since this factor has proven to be irrelevant despite prior compelling arguments to the contrary.

The Alt-Media Community (AMC), the majority of which embraces the multipolar worldview and therefore supports Russia in the US-provoked Ukrainian Conflict, tends to obsess over Kiev’s growing casualty count. According to them, these NATO proxies are always supposedly on the brink of collapse, after which Russia will make a game-changing breakthrough that could potentially take it to the banks of the Dnieper in record time and thus enable it to confidently dictate its peace terms. As proven by Moscow’s latest military setback in Kharkov Region, however, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Those AMC analysts must urgently apply President Putin’s advice from earlier this summer in ignoring the dangerous allure of wishful thinking no matter how difficult it may be. By falling under its sway like many of them obviously have, those folks came to have twisted interpretations of the conflict that directly influenced the unrealistic expectations that they shared with their audience. Plenty of people are now feeling enormously disappointed after reality hit them hard over the weekend, which makes them emotionally vulnerable and thus facilitates the US’ infowar efforts to sow doom and gloom.

To be absolutely clear, nobody in the AMC is being accused of deliberately advancing the US’ perception management campaign, but there’s also no doubt that the disappointment that now pervades many among their audience as a result of having unrealistic expectations about the conflict does indeed inadvertently work against Russia’s interests. It’s therefore very important to correct perceptions about the course of Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine, beginning with by debunking the popular narrative claiming that Kiev’s forces are always supposedly on the brink of collapse.

It's unimportant whether one takes the Russian Ministry of Defense’s claims about their opponent’s casualty count seriously or not since this factor has proven to be irrelevant despite prior compelling arguments to the contrary. It was earlier thought with good reason that Kiev’s growing casualties will ultimately exhaust its manpower and possibly even prompt socio-political unrest behind the front lines if the authorities continue forcing more men to fight for a doomed cause against their will. Analysts then wishfully hoped that Russia would achieve a military breakthrough that would swiftly end the conflict.

Instead, last weekend’s events prove that Kiev still has plenty of meat to throw into the Russian grinder. The de facto dictatorship that Zelensky imposed with full Western support shortly after the latest phase of the conflict began means that his secret police have almost total control over that former Soviet Republic’s socio-political dynamics. While there’s always the possibility of unrest breaking out over its forced recruitment policy, that scenario now seems unrealistic and can thus be interpreted as a coping mechanism if it’s continued to be bandied about by AMC analysts after Russia’s recent setback.

While some rightly point to the presence of foreign mercenaries in the conflict zone as evidence of Kiev’s manpower shortage, this observation actually works against their wishful prediction in two ways. First, it proves that this side can replenish its ranks with foreign forces, which thus discredits the expectation that growing casualties will weaken Kiev’s front line defenses. And second, it also suggests that those same foreign forces can brutally enforce discipline among the Ukrainian ranks by intimidating recruits into complying with their leadership’s suicidal demands instead of rebelling or running away.

Manpower therefore isn’t a problem for Kiev, which in turn means that this factor shouldn’t be incorporated into the AMC’s analyses about the conflict. Far from being a liability, its growing number of inexperienced recruits forced to fight on the front lines are actually an asset since they’re intended to swarm the Russian defenders as well as provide cover for much more experienced foreign mercenaries. Even if average Ukrainians are fearful of losing their lives for nothing, they can’t really do anything about their forced conscription since Kiev’s secret police have almost total control over society.

For all these reasons, it’s not only irrelevant for AMC analysts to continue obsessing over their opponent’s casualty count, but arguably counterproductive to Russia’s cause because it unwittingly misleads their audience into having false expectations about the conflict. Prior predictions about the potentially game-changing influence of this factor, for as compelling as they were, have been discredited by the latest events. That doesn’t mean that those wishful thinking scenarios connected with them can be completely ruled out, but just that they now mostly function as a form of coping.