The New York Times Runs Shameless Propaganda on Russia and Ukraine
The Times criticizes Ukraine’s legitimate self-defense against Russia while Vladimir Putin’s troops escort their reporter.
America’s “newspaper of record” boosts shameless Russian propaganda. So it’s a good day for Walter Duranty.
Working as The New York Times’ Moscow bureau chief during the first years of the USSR, Duranty became known for his obsequiousness to the Soviet regime. But it was his conscious denial of the Holodomor, the early 1930s man-made famine in Ukraine, that made him truly infamous.
Yesterday, Duranty’s old employer, The New York Times, published a feature critical of the 2024 Ukrainian counterattack into Russia’s Kursk Oblast. The correspondent who wrote the story concedes that she was escorted by Kadyrovtsy, Putin’s brutal Chechen shock troops.
Call it a big win for the Walter Duranty legacy: His Stalin apologia is now only the second-most shameful propaganda-as-reportage to ever appear in the mainstream US press.
The bold headline evokes “A Landscape of Death,” with the incriminating subtitle: “What’s Left Where Ukraine Invaded Russia.”
Yes, Ukraine invaded Kursk. Two years after Russia launched an unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine (using Kursk as one of the staging points for its aggression). And 10 years after Russia’s first invasion into Crimea and the Donbas. This critical context receives only indirect reference, and it’s nine paragraphs down in passive voice. “Large parts of Ukraine still remained occupied by Russia.” How did those parts of Ukraine come to be occupied by Russia? Inquiring minds would like to know.
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Readers are treated to photos of body bags, wrecked homes, and heart-wrenching stories from locals who lived through the Ukrainian offensive. Meanwhile, it’s not until the final third of the piece that we hear that Kursk residents “generally reported respectful treatment by Ukrainian forces.” The record of the Kadyrovtsy who accompanied the Times’ reporters is never mentioned. These are the guys who participated in the liquidation of a city the size of Minneapolis. Google “Mariupol.”
Ordinary Russians interviewed for the piece offer platitudes about the war being “family fighting family” and how “everything was one” back in the USSR. Anyone with even basic knowledge of modern Russia would be able to detect echoes of Kremlin propaganda in those statements. There’s Vladimir Putin’s 2021 essay “on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which ultimately served as window dressing for genocidal war. Or Sergey Surovikin, the humpty dumpty-looking Russian Air Force commander who repeated in incredulous monotone that “we and the Ukrainians are one people” while his jets unloaded fiery destruction on hospitals and playgrounds. We never hear from the Times that being “one people” actually means being united under Russian imperialism, or how mass murder in pursuit of that goal is quite popular among many Russians.
I doubt the Times editors are aware of any of this.1 So the Putinist party line gets repackaged as the relatable, well-meaning aspirations of regular people.
Duranty was a shameless opportunist. Tucker Carlson is a conman, but he at least puts on the appearance of a coherent worldview when he interviews dictators in Moscow and Tehran. Here’s the problem. The modern New York Times is motivated not by a desire for access and aggrandizement (unlike Duranty), nor any ideological affinity for the Russian regime (as with Carlson), but by an unforgivable naivete. The need to present all sides, and the belief that showing an alternative perspective means a rote repetition of canned talking points. By all means, write about the Ukrainian campaign in Kursk, but give readers the context they deserve. When an interviewee says something misleading or untrue, don’t just let it stand on its own. Don’t abdicate your journalistic responsibility.
Absent any real change from the Times or its peers, it’s on you, the reader, to learn how to spot bad news. If you feel like something is missing, trust your gut. Dictators are banking on elite media’s intellectual over-indulgence and the readership’s willingness to swallow shoddy reporting. Don’t be Putin’s fool.
P.S. If you want to read something worthwhile on Ukraine, I encourage you to check out the Kyiv Post’s interview with my colleague Uriel Epshtein about Renew Democracy Initiative (The Next Move’s publisher) and their work bringing aid to frontline communities in Ukraine. You won’t find this kind of story in The New York Times, which makes it all the more important.
1 The German-born reporter who was the lead contributor for the piece in question has a Russian parent and lives in Moscow. Uncharitably, I’d say it’s very possible that she knows better! Being more generous, we might say someone living in Russia can’t speak truthfully without endangering themselves or their family. Most likely, it’s a combination of the two. Putin plays the The New York Times because they can’t grasp this simple fact.
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As the former, now retired, editor in chief of a Ukrainian-language newspaper, I am grateful that Gary Kasparov still has the presence of mind for outrage. What is scarier for me is that after reading his Substack post, I asked myself why was I not more outraged after I read the same piece, just routinely irritated? Do I really expect so little of the NYT editorially? Am I cynical about the money aspect - the photographer/reporter received some kind of grant for "objective reporting about russia" from a foundation ( for all we know, is a three times removed money-laundering operation for a pro-Putin oligarch) and the NYT was OK, great, you have a grant, all expenses paid for by someone else and we must, after all, present different sides of a story, even if one side is filled with misinformation and lies? Anyhoo.... Thank you, Mr. Kasparov for reminding us that if we begin to accept lies as normal, "alternate facts" as just the "other side" of the same story, just "another perspective" then we will be living in 1984.
Thank you for this. I had earlier read the headline of this NYT article, raised an eyebrow at the pro-Russian wording, and decided to skip it as a likely example of their both-sidesism. I'm kind of proud of the effectiveness of my BS detector in this case.
Your use of the phrase "the size of Minneapolis" to describe Mariupol was profoundly striking to me, giving a much clearer view for me, as an American, of the scale of what happened there. I have a horribly American view of the cosmopolitan superiority of the United States, even though I've done some world travel and seen many vibrant global cities. But still when I hear of a foreign town that I know nothing about, I envision a medieval farming village, for no good reason. I'm ashamed of that, and will try to do better.