Russian President Vladimir Putin starred in a new Kremlin propaganda video Friday touting battlefield gains in Ukraine after being freshly fluffed by President Donald Trump’s show of support.
Footage circulated widely by the Kremlin and state-controlled media showed Putin visiting a command post of Russia’s Joint Group of Forces, where he was met by Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
The 74-year-old Russian leader showed up in military garb before walking into the command post, which oddly featured camouflage netting on the inside rather than the outside. Reading from papers in front of him, Putin rattled off a series of fantastical Russian “successes” on the battlefield since the start of the year.
He reported the seizure of 6,500 square kilometers of Ukrainian land by Russian forces, approximately 45 percent more than independent monitors have documented, or five times more than what the DeepState battlefield map reflects.
Citing these “successes,” Putin went on to declare that “massive, coordinated strikes against Ukraine must continue.”
Gerasimov, in his performative briefing before the TV cameras, fed Putin a string of other demonstrably false claims about fresh gains on the battlefield. Nearly a year after first proudly reporting that Russian troops had taken control of the city of Kupyansk in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Gerasimov did so again.
The claim was immediately debunked the first time it was made last November, and analysts say it’s still a lie; while...
THE BILLING GRID A weekly column on research billing and coverage analysis, by Krishma Shah A coordinator submits a lab requisition. The central lab bills it to the site. The site bills it to Medi...