initially it's quite a good read but then you meet passages like this:

"The biggest campaign, at least by poster count, is for the 3rd Assault Brigade. The ad shows a man with his back to us, in a plaid shirt, camouflage trousers and a back-to-front baseball cap, riding a motorbike towards floodwater and war smoke. Wrapped around him with her face over his shoulder towards us, clenching him in fishnet-clad legs and bare arms, a pistol in one hand, is a tousle-haired young woman. ‘I Love the Third Storm,’ the slogan reads."

- So...no mention that this "sexy" 3rd Assault is the main Azov Nazi brigade?...well, it didn't seem relevant at the time right?

When he moves on to Putin and the Russians though, it's less omission and more of the standard pro-Ukie fantasy fare: just updated a tad:


"...more than anything else, the recent Russian success has come down to Putin’s willingness to expend lives in thousands of small-scale infantry attacks that eventually, after enormous casualties, overwhelm the defenders. As Russia advances, and its dead and maimed pile up, the bonuses it is having to pay to find volunteers – it wants to avoid the socially perilous path of mass mobilisation in the big cities – mount in tandem. It is recruiting mercenaries from Africa, as well as inviting North Korean troops to join the fight. For now, with Russia’s deeper resources of money and men, as far as the grim goals of attritional conquest are concerned, the strategy is working. Judged by his actions, Putin deems it worth having several Russians die for every Ukrainian wiped from the battlefield and for every few hundred square metres of territory. "


Whatever happened to all those "meat assaults" with the enormous casualties ? Well, they have been mutated into the small potato of "small-scale infantry attacks" with umm...with just the same "enormous casualties": tisk! those Russians just can win without those "enormous casualties" no matter how they operate it seems...

But hang on... the Russians haven't mobilised to replace those "enormous casualties" and are still turning out as volunteers... How so? Well, that's fully explained by the pernicious influence of being, um, "paid" you see, bonuses and all...and of course those phantom Koreans too help fill the desperate hiatus with their ghostly asian magic presence and explain why though "Putin deems it worth having several Russians die for every Ukrainian wiped from the battlefield" the shortages of manpower are quite the reverse and that while Russia is still signing willing recruits up the Ukrainians are providing a pre-match press-ganging service for entire amateur football teams with no Bovril unfortunately till you reach the front next week...and umm, Ukraine is still losing.

-I gave up at that point as the writer was clearly either dishonest or deeply delusional and the article unfortunately not up to what I would expect from the LRB.