Did The Russian Navy Really “Retreat” 100 Kilometers From The Ukrainian Coast?

Since progress is reportedly being made on the Russian-Turkish talks to open up a "grain corridor" in the Black Sea, it makes sense why Moscow might have ordered its naval forces to pull back a bit to show that it’s negotiating in good faith, although there hasn’t yet been any confirmation from the Kremlin about this.

Kiev claimed that its forces coerced the Russian navy to “retreat” 100 kilometers from the Ukrainian Coast, though this development hasn’t been independently confirmed. In the event that there’s any credibility to Moscow’s reported naval movements, then it’s unlikely that they were done under duress like its opponents allege. Rather, they might have been part of a goodwill gesture undertaken by the Kremlin in response to talks with Turkey over demining the waters around Odessa as part of the so-called “grain corridor” that they’re trying to create.  

The global food crisis has been artificially manufactured by the US-led West since its origin lies not in Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine but in the economic consequences of those governments’ response to COVID, the anti-Russian sanctions, and Kiev’s mining of its own ports. Furthermore, Kiev refused Belarus’ offer to use its territory for shipping grain to Baltic ports for reexport to the Global South. Even the Chairman of the African Union who represents the countries most directly affected by this crisis doesn’t believe America’s “official narrative” about it.

Since progress is reportedly being made in the context of the Russian-Turkish talks on this issue, it makes sense why Moscow might have ordered its naval forces to pull back a bit to show that it’s negotiating in good faith, although there hasn’t yet been any confirmation from the Kremlin about this. In any case, in the event that it happened or will soon happen, it’s predictable that it would be presented as a so-called “retreat” even though it most definitely wouldn’t be one. That’s because Kiev is desperate to concoct more fake news alleging that it’s “winning”.

Even though Zelensky and the US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) have recently begun telling the truth about how poor Kiev’s forces are faring on Eastern Ukrainian front, they know how addicted their captive audience is to so-called “victory porn”. They genuinely yearn for it and some even invent their own nowadays as a coping mechanism in response to the hard slap of reality that they received in recent weeks after their “trusted” media sources finally started telling them the truth about the conflict’s latest dynamics.

This explains why Kiev is back to its old tricks again by pretending that it just achieved a major victory on the Southern Ukrainian front at sea. Nothing of the sort happened, of course, but claiming otherwise might be intended to lessen the blow that their supporters received after learning some “inconvenient facts” about the Eastern Ukrainian front. Observers should always be aware of these perception management motivations whenever assessing any claims coming from Kiev since its officials have vested interests in twisting the truth for their own soft power ends.

In this case, something that should universally be praised – the potential opening of a “grain corridor” – is being spun into a false victory by one of the conflicting parties, which will always exploit whatever it can to propagate its information warfare narrative. That just goes to show how desperately the military situation truly is for its side otherwise they wouldn’t have to take advantage of this possible development. With this observation in mind, nobody should ever trust anything that Kiev says about the Russian Armed Forces since it’s guaranteed to be fake news or some perversion of reality.