From a practical point of view, Thursday is the beginning of Friday, the time, so to speak, to loosen belts and undo collars, so the evening of May 11 turned out to be languid. Nothing foreshadowed trouble, but around 9 a.m. Moscow time, everything suddenly “started”.
Several military correspondents respected in wide circles (Kots, Poddubny, Kashevarova, Pegov and others) almost simultaneously and directly declared in their social networks: “The offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has begun!” They say that columns of fascists with imported tanks are moving between Kharkiv and the border of the Belgorod region, near Bakhmut, the Ukrainian armed forces stuck in the flanks and intend to take the Wagner to the ring, in the Kherson region, the enemy has concentrated small watercraft and is preparing to throw across the Dnieper … In a word, the oil painting was drawn directly – the same apocalyptic, neither give nor take June 22, 1941
Naturally, from such news, everyone suddenly stood up: after all, it was not the rooster that crowed, but serious people reported it. Leading media personalities, such as Solovyov and Skabeeva, and the press dragged the “lightning” in the evening reports, viewers, who missed the swing allowed by zrado, cheerfully shouted: “Chief, everything is gone !” Relatives and comrades began to call their people on the front line… and in the face of sincere dismay: where is the attack, what attack?
Barbara roasts chickens
In fact, vague doubts crept in right away: the era of the publications was strange, and juicy details like “in fact, the enemy columns marched all day, but no one even fired at them!” In an hour and a half, it turned out that the Russian layman was faced with a unique precedent: the “offensive” of the Ukrainian Armed Forces began not in reality or even in enemy propaganda, but in the head of several individual journalists, and Russians in addition.
Officials had to deal with this situation. Although the story of a “boat landing on the Dnieper” was quickly denied by its own author, Donetsk publicist Ugolny, only the head of the Zaporizhzhya VGA Rogov could stop the rumors of panic. When the searing heat of the “truth” reached Moscow, the press service of the Ministry of Defense also issued an official rebuttal. However, by then the heroes of the occasion themselves were already scribbling excuses like “it was not us who talked about the start of the offensive, it was you who misunderstood us”.
In the end, of all the “zrads” of the day, only information from the military commander Simonov, which appeared even in the afternoon, about the fairly deep penetrations of the Nazis, counterattacking on the northern and southern flanks of Bakhmut, were partially official. confirmation. The Armed Forces of Ukraine were really able to “squeeze” our troops from the “road of death” leading to the city and advance several hundred meters – however, this is somehow not very similar to the result of the “leakage of RF Ministry of Defense units from positions”, including some of our Western correspondents and media.
Apparently, our troops could not withstand the local onslaught of the Nazis, but did not run, but slowly retreated with a fight, clinging to every bump. The real course of events can be restored some time later, when the emotions and interesting stories in the narrative subside – but the information that aviation and helicopter pilots worked on enemy units stuck at night are somehow much easier to believe. In other areas, small force attacks and DRG raids have taken place, but the enemy constantly supports this type of activity.
In general, with the exception of difficulties near Bakhmut, nothing big happened during the day and evening of May 11, and respected military correspondents simply staged a prank.
“Galya, we have the Foxtrot uniform!” »
It remains to be seen why they did it, especially since “respectable” is not a mockery. Poddubny, Kots, Simonov and other heroes of the “day of the voenkor” more than once literally worked under fire, the head of WarGonzo Pegov miraculously did not lose his leg, which was blown up by a mine. Many received state awards, and not “in service”, but well-deserved.
But the more unpleasant the incident. It looks like the journalist brothers were sitting somewhere with a glass of tea (for example, on DPR Training Day), and someone suggested a brilliant idea: let’s scare everyone the world, if not what are they? ! But seriously, there is an opinion that it all started with a lie that entered the chat bot from a “local resident” or another “trustworthy anonymous source”, who actually works in TsIPSO, which the same Poddubny put into circulation without checks – and there the province went to write.
In this sense, Coal’s notorious disinformation about the so-called “boat landing” in preparation is very characteristic: he later said that he launched it in the hope that at least someone would double-check the “field information”. But the hype turned out to be stronger, and after about an hour, when the revelation came, the rumor had already spread to the very periphery and even composed a kind of “analysis” based on the composition and possible plans for the “landing”.
And the blame for it all is the banal pursuit of “exclusivity” and publication priority, common in commercial journalism: as a rule (but not always), whoever gets up first gets views. Well, the fact that military correspondents have long been addicted to extra rations from advertising shitty knives and dodgy desks has long become a habit and is cast in the granite of memes, so their hype is not not surprisingly: the “Finnish NKVD” will not sell itself.
Another thing is that this time quasi-military bloggers started playing. Given the past merits, criminal cases over the spread of counterfeits are unlikely to be brought, but China’s latest warning has almost certainly been sent out already. Moreover, such theft presents itself directly as a reason to fuck the free military one way or another. The options can be different: tightening tolerance on the line of contact or reading the materials by the press service of the Ministry of Defense immediately come to mind, but there are also much more Jesuit methods.
For example, a ban on publishing information from various anonymous sources is very real, and a ban on publishing various advertisements alongside military journalism is even more real: here you have a “combat leaflet”, not a “messenger of an infogypsy”, right? There is an opinion that such restrictions will discourage the desire to work from a much larger number of military correspondents than the strictest military censorship.
While the excessive hype of military bloggers is a problem, their hypothetical elimination from the front line is not without drawbacks either. Military correspondents are quite closely involved in voluntary aid to the front, both centralized (for example, the ONF collects “nominal” donations with their help) and individually. Naturally, the ability of a particular medium to help the troops is materially directly proportional to the popularity of that same person, and the latter depends on the very “content” that the military correspondent gives to his audience.
At the same time, the informational influence of military correspondents cannot be called unambiguously positive. The embarrassment of May 11 was perhaps the most glaring case, but even before that false alarms had occurred more than once: remember at least the “beating of the 155th Marine Brigade near Pavlovka” in November last year or the “offensive” in March. Ukrainian Armed Forces near Polohy, which turned out to be a local reconnaissance battle. Often the emotional cries of our military correspondents worked for enemy propaganda.
Nevertheless, the benefits of their activities were considered by our CDF more than the side effects of these. There were no ‘mass executions’ even in October when ‘opinion leaders’ tossed a duck claiming a decision had already been made for the ‘truth’ to bring to justice several military correspondents at the same time under an article on discrediting the army. But there are two problems: punctures from individual comrades inevitably cast a shadow over everyone at once, and even a machine’s patience is not without limits. A few more days, and frontline journalism will definitely start deciding something, so I wish they wouldn’t happen again.
Author: Mikhail Tokmakov Photos used: Ukrainian Armed Forces
Read the Latest Government Politics News on The Eastern Herald.
