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Ukraine’s “Turning the Tide” Narrative has Already Sunk

The result is an information environment in which the possibility of mutual coexistence with Russia is treated as almost unthinkable, even as the costs continue to mount for Ukrainians, Russians, and Europeans alike.

How the mainstream media spins each new failure as success – with Leonid Ragozin

Ian Proud, Aug 10, 2026, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/ukraines-turning-the-tide-narrative?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=210596621&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

One of the most striking features of the Ukraine war has been the speed with which Western and Ukrainian narratives appear in the mainstream, dominate the discussion for a while, and then quietly collapse with absolutely no reflection on how they were wrong.

The latest example was the campaign launched this summer that ‘Ukraine is turning the tide’ against Russia in the war.

In conversation with independent journalist Leonid Ragozin, we examined what that campaign actually delivered. Back in June, long-range strikes deep into Russian territory and occupied areas — particularly Crimea — were presented as the pressure that would force Putin to the table on terms closer to Ukraine’s.

Defence Minister Mikhail Fedorov was the public face of the effort. Forty days later the results are clear: Russia’s position has not softened by an inch. In fact, it has hardened.

The possibility of land swaps that once featured in negotiations after Ukraine’s Kursk offensive has now been taken off the table. Fedorov has been removed, triggering a political crisis in Kyiv and the replacement of the Army’s Soviet-style commander-in-chief.

As Leonid pointed out, this follows a familiar pattern. The 2023 summer offensive was sold as the moment Ukraine would roll Russian forces back. The Kursk operation briefly revived the idea of territorial leverage. Each time the goalposts have shifted — and each time they have shifted in Russia’s favour.

What began in late April 2022 (thanks to Liz Truss) as talk of liberating Crimea has now contracted to trying to hold the remaining parts of Donetsk. The human and material cost of the progressive contraction of the narrative has been enormous.

What makes the current moment particularly revealing is the gap between elite rhetoric and public sentiment. Gallup polling over the past three years shows a clear shift among Ukrainians: where two-thirds once insisted the only acceptable end was total Russian defeat, the same proportion now favour a negotiated settlement.

Yet the war continues.

Leonid’s explanation is straightforward and uncomfortable. This is not primarily a war of nations. It is a war of interlocking elites — securocratic structures in all participating countries and defence-industry and bureaucratic interests in the West — whose incentives diverge sharply from those of ordinary people.

The same dynamic helps explain the hermetic quality of Western media coverage.

Having worked for the BBC for twelve years, Leonid notes how far British (and wider Western) journalism has travelled from its willingness to scrutinise government claims over Iraq, to providing a blank cheque for foreign policy idiocy in Ukraine.

Nuance has been replaced by a single vantage point that treats any deviation from the Overton window as suspect.

The result is an information environment in which the possibility of mutual coexistence with Russia is treated as almost unthinkable, even as the costs continue to mount for Ukrainians, Russians, and Europeans alike.

We also discussed the deeper cultural and political roots of this hostility — the way liberal elites, in competing with the populist right, adopted their own version of enemy-creation, and the neocolonial mindset that still treats the region as a theatre for proxy competition rather than a space for independent states with legitimate interests.

Mainstream journalists are now as complicit in the needless blood-letting that continues in Ukraine with no end in sight. One wonders what they will call the next, vanishingly insignificant turn of the tide?

The full conversation with Leonid is available here.

August 12, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, Ukraine