[Salon] Postscript to yesterday's article on Putin's meeting with war correspondents

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/06/13/vladimir-putin-meets-with-russias-war-correspondents/

Postscript, 14 June 2023 Vladimir Putin’s chat with war correspondents yesterday did receive some selective coverage on Euronews and on the BBC. They picked out his mention of Russia having lost 50 tanks so far during the Ukrainian counter-offensive, while he said the Ukrainians lost 150. Moreover, they quoted Putin’s estimate of the respective losses of soldiers to death and injury as far exceeding the classical ratio of 3 attackers to 1 defender. He said the loss ratio currently is 10 to 1. Meanwhile, the Financial Times journalist Max Seddon, based in Riga, has an article in today’s paper entitled “Putin sides with Russia’s military in clash with Wagner.” Seddon and his editors have spun his report on the meeting with war correspondents to feature this one issue: how the decision to sign up all fighters in the war zone to contracts with the regular army in fact regulates the relations between the Wagner Group and Shoigu’s ministry. Yes, indeed, they make a valid point that Putin has sided with Shoigu and against Prigozhin. However, Seddon is not satisfied with that and goes the extra mile to discredit Putin, by taking bits and pieces of the Q&A out of context to make his argument.

Quote:

Even as he backed the defence ministry’s move to subordinate the militias, Putin implied that much of Prigozhin’s criticism of the army had been correct – a possible sign that Wagner had yet to entirely lose his support.

‘At the start of the special military operation, we quickly realized that the ‘carpet generals’ […] are not effective, to put it mildly,’ Putin said. ‘People stared to come out of the shadows who we hadn’t heard or seen before, and they turned out to be very effective and made themselves useful.’

Unquote

Well, journalist Seddon has obviously been working from a written translation of the stenographic record and picked out the last sentence to use in a new connection with the dispute over Wagner, when it had nothing whatever to do with Wagner and was, as I showed in my own Q&A record, merely picking up on a question about prospects for advancement of the new heroes. And I would recommend to Mr. Seddon that he find a better translator. Look up “carpet generals” in Google and you will only find rug designs. The original Russian was ‘паркетные генералы,’ which literally means those sitting in what the Brits call the ‘stalls’ (American – the ‘orchestra seats’) of an opera theater. In the vernacular, Putin was talking about ‘armchair generals.’

However, that is not the only blooper in the FT article. The way Seddon presents the event at which Putin spoke shows utter indifference or inattention to facts that are not useful to him for the construction of his propaganda piece.

Quote

“Russia’s president told a group of pro-war bloggers on Tuesday…”

I rest my case. All of you well educated and gentle folks who think you know what is happening in the world because you are subscribers to the Financial Times and similar mainstream media should admit to being brainwashed and retire from discussion of current events.