In the 17th and early 18th centuries Sweden was a great power in Europe, with a formidable army. It’s hard to credit now, but back then the Swedish king was an aggressive military campaigner and had hegemonic ambitions. He fought the Great Northern War against Russia and its allies at the beginning of the 18th century, but his early successes ended with a devastating defeat at the Battle of Poltava, in what is now Ukraine, in the summer of 1709. Sweden’s failure in the Great Northern War broke its control of the Baltic region, and effectively ended the Swedish Empire.
Last Tuesday Sweden suffered a new defeat at Poltava when some of its military advisors were reportedly killed by a Russian missile strike on a military training center. Accounts of what happened at Poltava are hedged about with propaganda from both sides, as is true of everything in the Russo-Ukrainian War, so that determining an accurate casualty count is very difficult. The official Ukrainian report of the number of dead has now risen to 58, with well over 250 wounded, so there’s no doubt it was a devastating setback for Ukraine. Estimates from other sources give much higher totals, and say a large number of foreign “mercenaries” (which I gloss as incognito NATO troops) were among the dead. The casualties include an undetermined number of Swedish military personnel, who were at the site to train the Ukrainians in the use of two AWACS aircraft that had been delivered by Sweden.
That’s the bare bones of what occurred in Poltava last Tuesday. As I mentioned, the incident is clouded by massive amounts of propaganda and disinformation put out by both sides, making it hard to determine what actually happened.
If you want to begin separating the wheat from the chaff, Simplicius the Thinker is the one to read. He’s very much pro-Russia, but he’s a fair reporter. He tells you when something is rumor, and when it’s well-sourced. Rather than relying on official Russian sources alone, he sifts information from various milblogs and social media. And despite his support for Russia, he doesn’t hesitate to criticize it when he thinks such criticism is warranted.
He’s one of the few writers covering the war in Ukraine whose predictions have a very good track record. Predictions made by partisans on both sides have generally been wildly off, but Simplicius’ matter-of-fact outlines of what he expects to happen usually turn out to be quite accurate. That’s one of the main reasons I read his stuff regularly.
I mentioned the official Ukrainian casualty figures above — 50+ dead, 250+ wounded — but other Ukrainian sources, milblogs and so on, give much higher numbers, with a lot of NATO “advisors” among the casualties.
Now we come to some of the dezinformatsiya surrounding the missile strike in Poltava.
Two posts on X give a lurid account of the massive numbers of Ukrainian and NATO troops killed and wounded. I’m not going to quote from them, because I don’t want to extend the reach of what I consider disinformation.
I searched the Internet using specific phrases from the posts, and could find only the same X account, and other posts quoting from it. Nothing else.
Both posts credit “24 News” as their source. There are two news sites called “24 news”, one in India, in the Malayalam language, and the other in Pakistan, in English. I couldn’t find any stories remotely like these on either of those sites.
So I think we’re being Twitter-played, yet again.
The Poltava strike was probably much worse than is being reported in the media. However, it looks like someone, maybe the CIA, is running a QAnon-type operation on us, laying out flypaper for right-wingers by making the situation look sensationally worse than it is, so that when the information is eventually revealed as being bogus, it will discredit any reports that paint a more horrific picture than what the MSM is telling us. Then anything other than the official line can be dismissed as right-wing “conspiracy theories”.
Once again, in order to separate what seems reasonably credible from the obvious fakes, I recommend a careful reading of Simplicius’ material. I’ve collected some extensive excerpts below from two of his recent posts. When his block quotes are not explicitly sourced, I assume they come from X, but I’m not certain of that. See the original posts for the image inserts and videos.
The first is from last Thursday:
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Ukraine’s largest drone attack so far struck the Moscow region today, wrecking dozens of homes. One woman was killed, and about 50 flights had to be diverted from regional airports.
