US Media Has Been Wrong About Pokrovsk Falling - For Over A Year Now

Owners and/or senior editors must favor that outcome though it is not clear why. Perhaps for the same reasons they favored Trump to win in 2024.

And so far, they have been very, repeatedly wrong about Ukraine. JL

Phillips O'Brien reports in his substack:

The Washington Post (New York Times and other US media) have been constantly prophesying a Ukrainian collapse around Pokrovsk - and publishing stories about Ukraine being on the verge of collapse - but it stubbornly keeps not happening. The Russian operation has been quickly countered by the Ukrainians who have counterattacked effectively (amazing that considering all their faults). Indeed, the Russian operation seems to be turning into a bit of a fiasco. Its been well over a year and a half that Ukraine was on the verge of collapse, that Pokrovsk was about to fall, that the world was ending. And yet time and again the analytical community pushing this narrative is proven wrong.

What do you do if you’ve been constantly prophesying about a Ukrainian collapse around Pokrovsk and it stubbornly keeps from happening? If you are the Washington Post or a well known military analyst, you simply write that the collapse is about to happen the next time.

Now, the Post is truly remarkable in this regard. It has published stories of Ukraine being on the verge of collapse since early 2024. Six months ago I put together a summary of some of these.

A Year of Ukrainian "Collapse" Narratives: Phillips P. OBrien · Feb 26 Read full story

Lets go back to how the Post has described the Ukrainian military for the last year and a half (all sources are in that piece). Here was the Post in February 2024.

The Ukrainian military is facing a critical shortage of infantry, leading to exhaustion and diminished morale on the front line, military personnel in the field said this week — a perilous new dynamic for Kyiv nearly two years into the grinding, bloody war with Russia….

Well when the Ukrainian military stubbornly refused to collapse in 2024, that did not stop the Post—no indeed. This is how the situation was described in Ukraine in January of 2025.

At the same time, the ranks of Ukrainian soldiers have grown more and more depleted and unequipped to fend off the Russian onslaught. Those in the field describe exhaustion and slumping morale. And soldiers who said they believed in fighting until the last of the Russian occupiers were pushed off all of Ukraine’s territory are increasingly supporting President-elect Donald Trump’s call to begin negotiations to end the war.

The shift in attitude has come as Ukrainian soldiers said they have grown frustrated with their own government in Kyiv, criticizing what has been a slow and disjointed mobilization campaign. Many also said they had to invest their own money or were dependent on civilian volunteers for equipment such as drones and the vehicles they drive near front-line positions because they couldn’t rely on the government for essential equipment.

Now that collapse did not occur either. However when the Russians seemed to make a breakthrough (that was not a breakthrough) to the North of Pokrovsk last week, the Post and the analytical community which has been prophesying a Ukrainian collapse lost their heads again and jumped on the collapse bandwagon.

Here was the situation that got them all excited. By August 11, the Russians had seemingly advanced threateningly in that double pronged fork shape.

Now, Michael Kofman went to great lengths to highlight this development immediately and cast it in the worst possible light. Here are segments from his twitter thread on the subject. First, this advance shows massive Ukrainian problems.

and things are so bad that they might even result in a Russian “operational” breakthrough!

And the real problem (in language strikingly similar to that used in the Post (and Financial Times too it must be said) is Ukraine’s screw ups.

This sets off a large scale focus on Ukrainian weakness and failures, such as these three tweets:

And could this lead to a “collapse”! They love that word.

Well guess what. The Russian operation has been quickly countered by the Ukrainians who have counterattacked effectively (amazing that considering all their faults). Indeed, the Russian operation seems to be turning into a bit of a fiasco. Here is the present Deep State map.

So, what does the Post do? Well, clearly they had been planning to write a dooming piece about how the Russian infiltration was a sign of Ukrainian collapse. However when that did not happen, they decided to press on anyway and write this piece about how it was really a disaster anyway. Guess what—even though the Ukrainians successfully cut up the Russian infiltration—it was really a “calamity” for Ukraine.

That this story could have been written after this last week is a sign that military analysis is getting worse, not better. Its been well over a year and a half that Ukraine was on the verge of collapse, that Pokrovsk was about to fall, that the world was ending. And yet time and again the analytical community pushing this narrative is proven wrong and wrong again. And amazingly, that community almost always errs in one way—in favor of the idea that Ukraine is close to collapse and Russia is a steamroller.

I say this now without hesitation. We have the worst military analysis community in the history of military analysis.