Mick Hartley

It didn't take long for journalist and Putin fan Mary Dejevsky to make her comeback, after her numerous articles rubbishing the idea that Russia would ever invade Ukraine. Her return (to Spiked, naturally enough) was heralded yesterday by a podcast with Brendan O'Neill, and today she's back with an article that casts doubt on Western triumphalism:

British and US officials, for their part, observed variously from the sidelines that Russia’s moves were evidence of how badly its forces were doing and that any troop movements so far were negligible and presaged nothing more than regrouping. A more intriguing theory was that the deployments in northern Ukraine had been part of a classic feint that had successfully served to keep Ukrainian forces tied down in the north and south of the country, while giving Russia a largely free hand in the east – and that this had been the point all along. Russia, some forecast, would now move on the east in a big way, encircling the concentration of Ukrainian forces that had hoped to recover the breakaway regions of the Donbas – the Donetsk and Luhansk self-styled people’s republics.

This remains to be seen. But it is worth injecting at least two caveats. The near-universal disparagement of Russia’s military performance, as put about in Western political and media circles, does not necessarily mean that Russia is either down or out. The other is that the widespread scepticism that has been applied to prospects for talks so far may have been overdone….

The widespread scepticism about those early talks, convened just across the border in Belarus, as being nothing more than a cynical Russian ploy, may also have been misplaced. It is true that Zelensky, not unreasonably, objected that Belarus could hardly play the honest broker. But those talks never really broke down. Both sides sent serious negotiators, and third parties – including Israel, Abramovich and others.

Another noteworthy aspect of the concurrent talking and fighting is the sudden silence from most of Ukraine’s Western supporters, even as they continue to shovel weapons and supplies in to fuel Kyiv’s war effort. All those deliveries nonetheless fall far short of what Zelensky is calling for, and NATO’s refusal actually to fight for Ukraine has drawn a bitter recognition from Zelensky that NATO membership will not be Ukraine’s future…

Why should we pay any attention to her, after her lamentable record prior to the invasion? Why indeed. Private Eye had this in their last issue (click to enlarge):