Manipulations about the destroyed city of Bakhmut and the alleged division of Ukraine

A Facebook post falsely describes the destruction of Bakhmut as a deserved punishment for the behavior of Ukrainians, who are portrayed as “used by the West for a war against Russia.” However, Ukraine did not attack Russia, rather, Russia attacked Ukraine. According to the author of the post, Putin and Trump will decide on Ukraine and divide it between them, but Trump announced its inclusion in the negotiations, and not recognition of the Russian annexation. The author draws a parallel between Macedonia in 1913 and today’s Ukraine, which is a recognized state, while in 1913 there was no Macedonian state, so that is a very different situation. There is also a double standard here–the author is outraged by the division of Macedonia in 1913, but rejoices over the imagined division of Ukraine

 

We are reviewing a post from the social network Facebook, which is illustrated with a clip and which says:

The video shows what happens when a country becomes a colony of the West.

The post also says:

Ukraine lost the war that should not have even started, it will be divided, and this would not have happened if the people were politically literate, knew that the West is evil and is using Ukraine and the Ukrainian people for a war against Russia.

The clip compares how the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut looked in 2021 and how it looks now, so we see that it was a decent place to live, and now it is destroyed. The post is pro-Russian, so it says that the destruction is a deserved punishment for the behavior of the Ukrainians and their Western partners, but that is not true. There was no “war of the West against Russia” in this case. The war did not start, let’s say, by NATO and the Ukrainians attacking Moscow, after which it retaliated.

The problem began in February-March 2014 when Russia carried out aggression against Crimea, and then sent agents like Igor Girkin-Strelkov to Donbass, who on 7.4.2014 established the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic there, and on 12.4.2014 attacked the city of Slavyansk, thus starting the Donbass War. There are serious indications that Russia’s regular forces were occasionally and secretly involved in it. These same forces, on 24.2.2022 openly launched a comprehensive invasion of Ukraine.

Russia took over part of Ukraine (it now holds about 20 percent of it), but while Russia won some battles, it did not win the war, which is not over yet. To conclude that “Ukraine lost the war”–as the post says–its author must prove that Russia achieved the goals it set out to achieve, however, it did not. They were:

• Denazification, i.e. the capture of Kyiv and the overthrow and lustration of the government there, which the Russians falsely present as “neo-Nazi”;
• Demilitarization, i.e. destruction of Ukraine’s military potential.

However, in reality, Russia was defeated in the Battle of Kyiv in February-April 2022, and Ukraine became drastically more militarized with cutting-edge Western weaponry.

Ukrainian forces liberated a large territory, including Kherson, the only regional center that Russia managed to capture in the all-out invasion, and even invaded the Russian Kursk region, part of which they held for months, and even Moscow has long been a target of Ukrainian drones.

Due to the failure to achieve the set goals, Vladimir Putin proceeded to retroactively redefine them, and as in the fable of the fox and the sour grapes, he began to claim that the capture of Kyiv was not his goal, but the capture of Donbass, but even there Putin did not win.

A good part of Donbass is still not under Russian control (cities like Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, etc.), even though Russia annexed that region in its entirety, but only formally, on paper. The same applies to the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, which Russia considers its own, but has not fully occupied them.

Russia mainly wins in small and unknown places like Kurakhove, Avdiivka, or the aforementioned Bakhmut, and the question is whether it is a victory if Russia destroys such towns, which it considers its own, and whether it is a victory if it kills the inhabitants there, whom it also considers its own.

Russian conquests of such places usually take too long and with too many casualties, so it is a Pyrrhic victory. Russian forces do not hold victory parades in the streets of Kyiv, and he has not signed a capitulation, so the claim in the post that he lost the war is unfounded.

The post further says:

The Trump-Putin negotiations on Ukraine are exactly what happened to Macedonia in 1913, when Macedonia, instead of being a subject, became an object of negotiations and was divided.

The post here spreads the already seen Russian propaganda that “Ukraine is not to be asked” and that “serious politicians” like Putin and Donald Trump will decide on it, and will supposedly divide it between them, but, according to all available information, that claim is unfounded.

Although the negotiations have only begun between Putin and Trump, the latter has stated that Ukraine will then be included in the process. And, although Trump believes that it should make territorial concessions, he says that it will decide for itself and he is not seeking de jure recognition of the Russian annexation. The plan is for the territories seized by Russia to be only de facto under its control, which leaves the possibility for Ukraine to regain them at some more favorable future.

Judging by the author’s other posts, they consider the division of Macedonia in 1913 to be unjust, but they do not mind Ukraine being divided, thus showing their double standards. The author draws a parallel between Macedonia in 1913 and today’s Ukraine, but not in the sense that they sympathize with Ukraine, but in the sense that foreigners will decide for it as well, however, that parallel is inappropriate.

As painful as the division of Macedonia may be for many of us, the Macedonian state did not exist in 1913 and was not a subject of international law. Macedonia was then considered only a disputed region. Ukraine, on the other hand, now exists as an internationally recognized state and has many supporters throughout the developed Western world, its own army, diplomacy, etc., so a dismemberment like that of Macedonia in 1913 is unlikely.

This happened to Ukraine in the distant past, when it was divided between Russia, Poland, or other neighboring states (read about the Truce of Andrusovo of 1667 and the Treaty of Riga of 1921). However, the situation is different now. It is illusory that Ukraine and its supporters will be passive observers and will not react to decisions made without its consent.

Taking into account everything stated so far, we assess the post as manipulative and untrue.

 

 

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