A typical New York Times propaganda piece is demonstrating how it intentionally misleads its readers:
Moscow’s Military Capabilities Are in Question After Failed Battle for Ukrainian City
As Moscow steps up its offensive in eastern Ukraine, weeks of failed attacks on a Ukrainian stronghold have left two Russian brigades in tatters, raised questions about Russia’s military tactics and renewed doubts about its ability to maintain sustained, large-scale ground assaults.
The battle for the city of Vuhledar, which has been viewed as an opening move in an expected Russian spring offensive, has been playing out since the last week of January, but the scale of Moscow’s losses there is only now beginning to come into focus.
The piece claims that the Russian attack on Ugledar (Vuhledar) has failed to achieve its purpose. But that is wrong.
The attack on Ugledar was a diversion operation. Ugledar was originally defended by two territorial brigades. The Ukrainian command pulled two artillery brigades, one motorized infantry brigade and parts of one tank brigade from other front lines to hold onto Ugledar. The Russian attack thus did what it was supposed to do. It allowed for Russian breakthroughs at the northeastern Kharkiv front and in Bakhmut because Ukraine had moved forces away from those fronts. The fighting around Ugledar has cost Russia some, but not big losses.
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The Times itself admits that the Russian effort in Ugledar put the Ukrainian army into a bad situation:
The fighting over Vuhledar has come at a cost for Ukraine, too, both in terms of casualties and in the vast amounts of ammunition it has expended to repel Russia’s growing number of ground troops. Kyiv’s allies this week expressed concern about their ability to meet the demand, raising the possibly that Ukrainian commanders might at some point have to limit shelling to the most important targets.
Well, well …
[Col. Oleksii Dmytrashkivskyi, a spokesman for Ukrainian military forces in the area,] said the attacks on Vuhledar had been no surprise — the Russians even warned the Ukrainians of the coming assault through social media channels, in an apparent attempt to scare them. “It was announced and spread,” Colonel Dmytrashkivskyi said. “It was done to diminish the morale of the fighters.”
Yes. It was announced and spread. But that was obviously done because it was a diversion attack designed to drag Ukrainian units away from other fronts. The Ukrainian military fell for it and moved more then 10,000 soldiers from other fronts to Ugledar to defend an empty city.
The Russian president Vladimir Putin has lauded the marines who were fighting in Ugledar for doing their job well:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has highly praised the fighting efforts by marines during the special military operation, according to his remarks in a television program, an excerpt of which was posted by journalist Pavel Zarubin to his Telegram channel on Sunday.
"Marines are at work <…> right now. Fighting heroically. Both from the Pacific Fleet and the Northern Fleet," the president said following a meeting of the supervisory board of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives on February 9, according to the excerpt from the program called "Moscow. Kremlin. Putin" that comes out on the Rossiya-1 television channel.
But the British disinformation minister insists:
Mr. Wallace, the British defense secretary, cited reports on Wednesday that “a whole Russian brigade was effectively annihilated” in Vuhledar, where he said that Moscow “lost over 1,000 people in two days.” The British Defense Intelligence Agency reported last week that Russian units had “likely suffered particularly heavy casualties around Vuhledar.”
In reality the Russian army lost probably two company sizes equivalents. Some 300 casualties plus three dozen piece of larger equipment. That was simply the cost of the business.
Within the Times piece there several other misleading claims which also regularly appear in other pieces of the outlet.
In recent weeks, Moscow has rushed tens of thousands more troops, many of them inexperienced new recruits, to the front lines …
There are no 'inexperienced new recruits' in the Russian forces in Ukraine.
I was drafted into the German army at the age of 18. I thereby was what one calls a conscript soldier. After four month I signed, mostly for financial reasons, a time limited contract. I had thus turned into a temporary regular soldier or contract soldier. When my two year contract ended I became a reservist. I was then mobilized thrice (each time on my request) to take part in large exercises in Canada and Britain and for additional qualification training. As a mobilized reservist I received the same pay, terms and conditions as a temporary regular soldier. There were also professional regular soldiers who had joined the military for a life time carrier.
Russia has fought most of the Ukraine campaign with contract soldiers and Wagner mercenaries. Conscripts were not supposed to take part. (A few accidentally did early on but were soon removed.) Only the Luhansk and Donetsk People Republics militia have used conscripts. Russia has mobilized reservists. These are trained former conscripts and contract soldiers who had done their regular time of service. They were retrained and then send into regular units to take part in Ukraine.
It is completely wrong and misleading to call these "inexperienced new recruits".
Then comes this:
Britain’s defense secretary, Ben Wallace, told the BBC on Wednesday that “97 percent of the Russian army” is in Ukraine, though he did not elaborate or offer evidence for the claim. U.S. military officials estimate that about 80 percent of Russia’s ground forces are dedicated to the war effort.
Before the war the Russian ground forces were 360,000 men strong. The mobilization activated 300,000 additional reservists. Some 70,000 volunteers have also joined military services. The numbers of Russian troops in Ukraine may be 200 to 250,000, a third of the 700,000+ men currently in the Russian ground forces.
It is not just the Times that is spreading utter nonsense. This is from the Washington Post:
As Russians inch forward near Bakhmut, Ukrainians dig fallback defenses
The soldiers here expect the same grinding dynamic to continue, with Russia throwing mostly untrained conscripts at the new Ukrainian defensive positions as they have in the bloody streets of Bakhmut.
Same bullshit, same unacknowledged bullshit source.