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:

The direct reports from Ukrainians on the ground about the Poltava strike’s losses are staggering.

One Ukrainian medic claims 215 killed and 340 injured:

Ukrainian medic in Poltava claimed that the losses from the strike on the military training center is closer to 215 killed and 340 injured. The video has since been deleted but she is a medic of the AFU.

But this may have been at the start, before the majority of the bodies were pulled, because subsequent reports spoke of even more cataclysmic numbers. A local Ukrainian blogger gave the tally as over 700 dead alone:

[…]

POLTAVA HOSPITALS JAM-PACKED WITH SOLDIERS AFTER RUSSIAN STRIKE: Poltava City Council Chief Kaplin admits chaos reigns in Central Ukrainian region (vid above), with overcrowded hospitals filled with wounded troops after pinpoint Russian strike blasts army infrastructure in city. #Kiev officials claim 49 troops killed and 219 wounded, but Ukrainian sources on the ground insist death toll as high as 190 even as Mad Vlad #Zelensky tries to clamp down on concrete info regarding HUGE army loss.

In fact a Ukrainian medic was livid that underage children were being coerced to supply blood:

This medic is livid that, apparently, school kids are pretty much forced to donate blood for Swedish instructors wounded in Poltava. She brings up the fact that people under 18 years old are not eligible to donate and asks uncomfortable questions, such as what are medics supposed to do with fainting children – treat them instead of the wounded military?

[image insert]

She mentions the Swedish instructors, which are at the center of the story. This was validated by a post from a woman who says her mate from Sweden’s Linkoping University perished in the Poltava attack: [image insert]

Reports that Swedish “instructors” among soldiers killed in Russian strike, allegedly working to train Kiev cannon fodder pilots on Swedish-supplied AWACS aircraft.

Among the students were several foreign instructors from Sweden — they were also destroyed. Britta Ellwanger, a foreign volunteer who was with them, writes about this. A few months ago, Sweden announced the transfer of two ASC 890 AWACS aircraft to Ukraine, and accordingly the Swedes trained future specialists on these boards.

Presumably, they were instructing Ukrainians on the Swedish Saab ASC 890 AEW&C ‘Erieye’ plane, pledged earlier to the Ukrainian airforce: [image insert]

Such staggering losses are hard to believe, but apparently it was a Kinzhal or Iskander “double tap”. Granted, the losses appear obscenely high, but recall there’s not one Russian source there: who am I to argue with Ukrainian sources directly from the ground?

And speaking of Kinzhals: [image insert]

New York Times link

Denys Kliap, the 26-year-old director of Free and Unbreakable, a volunteer emergency response team, was asleep when the first blast rocked him out of bed. “As soon as it happened, we went straight to the site,” Mr. Kliap said. “When we arrived, the only thing I remember was the pile of bodies scattered all over the territory of the institute.”

The NYT article remarks specifically on the missiles’ speed being such that they struck almost at the same time as the first warning sirens, which could not come on fast enough to give people time to escape:

Witnesses said the strikes, one after the other, had come shortly after the air raid sirens sounded. The Ukrainian Air Force said that the short time between the warning siren and the strikes demonstrated the speed of the missiles, which arrived “literally a matter of minutes” after launch.

[…]

By the way, many poked fun at Sweden receiving such a big blow in Poltava, the predestined town where the previous Swedish Empire had seen its demise.

Now only a day after the Poltava strikes reportedly wrecked the entire Swedish-Ukraine program, Sweden’s FM mysteriously resigns: [image insert]

HELSINKI, Sept 4 (Reuters) – Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said on Wednesday he will step down next week after almost two years in office, during which his traditionally non-aligned country joined NATO.

“It is with a mixture of sadness and pride that I have today informed the prime minister that I will leave the post of foreign minister at the opening of parliament next week,” Billstrom, a member of the conservative Moderate Party, said in a post on X.

[…]

The second excerpt is from yesterday’s post:

The reverberations from the massive Poltava strike continue echoing as more information leaks regarding the consequences.

For instance, many people doubted the Swedish connection, dismissing the “Swedish trainers/mercenaries killed” angle as just an exaggeration, despite the fact that the Swedish FM responsible for Sweden’s transition into NATO shockingly stepped down literally a day after.

One thing few noticed was that in the aftermath footage of the strike, there were even reportedly Swedish-speaking rescuers helping the wounded:

An interesting story has transpired.

After the missile strike in Poltava, a man speaking Swedish or Norwegian is seen.

[…]

Other ‘interesting’ news continued coming forth, such as a high-ranking US Army Lt. Colonel “died suddenly” in his apartment in ‘Poland’ on the very next day after the massive Russian strikes in Poltava and Lvov: [image insert]

Immediately after the massive strike of the Russian Aerospace Forces on Ukraine, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Kamara died in Poland. He was 45 years old. It is reported that he died in the US Army military camp in Poznan. Kamara was awarded the Legion of Honor, the Bronze Star, and the Medal of Merit, as well as other awards.

That’s how it happens. Missiles land in Poltava, and US Army officers suddenly die somewhere in Poland. Moreover, the number of NATO officers killed after that attack of ours has already reached dozens.

This comes in conjunction with reports that a swarm of NATO transport planes were recorded descending on Poland, presumably to evacuate the mass amounts of dead NATO representatives:

The most obvious evidence of the effectiveness of the missile strike on Poltava was the swarm of NATO medical aircraft (USA, Germany, Poland, Romania).

They were evacuating both wounded instructors and the dead bodies. In cities like Berlin, police guarded convoys of ambulances rushed to hospitals by the evening. (Follower witness)

At the same time, the “legalization” of the dead NATO personnel began: US Army Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Kamara died suddenly in Poland.

Ahead of us are many unexpected helicopter, yacht and private jet crashes or hiking incidents all over the world, with sudden passing NATO personnel.

[map insert]

Sputnik appeared to validate the high casualty count, citing a ‘high-ranking military source’:

“As a result of the strike, about 500 specialists were killed and wounded. Among the dead and wounded are servicepeople of the Ukrainian armed forces and the National Guard – communication specialists, operators of radio-electronic warfare systems, electronic intelligence, unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as foreign mercenaries from Poland, France, Germany and Sweden, who were training the Ukrainian military,” the source said.

[…]

My take on the whole ugly mess is that the Russians were targeting a secret NATO base in Poltava. They knew damned well that it was there, but they had refrained from striking it up until then, possibly changing their minds only after Ukraine’s Kursk incursion and/or its missile and drone strikes on targets deep inside Russia.

But that’s just a guess on my part. I have no idea how accurate it is.