Ukraine’s “Center for Countering Disinformation” (CCD) claimed in a post on Telegram that the New York Times’ (NYT) recent article about President Putin’s peace push, which can be read in full here and was analyzed here, was written by American journalists who’d supposedly been recruited by the Kremlin. What follows is the full Google Translated version of their post, which will then be debunked and placed in the larger context of NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine heading into next year:
“The New York Times published an article about Russia’s supposed readiness for peace with a comment from the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Peskov.
Can Putin really be interested in peace talks:
▪️ The longer the war lasts, the more Russia weakens economically, technologically, and demographically.
▪️ The Russian Federation is becoming increasingly technologically dependent on China in many directions, which will make up the economy of the future. The continuation of the war for a couple of years will intensify this process.
The ‘signal’ of the Russian Federation may actually be made to prevent further military assistance to the Armed Forces from the West; and also be an attempt to add ratings to Trump, who is ready to ‘give’ part of Ukrainian territory to Putin.
It should not be forgotten that Russia is playing ‘peace’, investing more and more in the military industry and building up a personnel army. This, of course, is not mentioned in the article.
Also, to write this text, the Russian Federation used American journalists recruited during their work in Russia.”
The biggest whopper is obviously that the NYT’s Moscow bureau chief Anton Troianovski, Washington bureau investigative reporter Adam Entous, and national security reporter Julian E. Barnes are alleged Russian agents. Nothing in their careers indicates that this is true. To the contrary, they’ve all consistently reported on relevant news events in ways that contradict the Kremlin’s interests. Barnes in particular is notable for pushing various versions of the Russiagate conspiracy theory that helped ruin bilateral ties.
The only reason why the CCD would smear those three men in such a malicious way that risks making them targets of deranged pro-Ukrainian trolls is because they fear that elements within the American Establishment are indeed interested in resuming negotiations of some sort with Russia. Therein lies the reason for all of their preceding spin, namely that which attempts to discredit the notion that Russia would abide by any potentially forthcoming agreement aimed at sustainably freezing this proxy war.
The analysis of the NYT’s report that was hyperlinked to in the introduction clarified that President Putin would only pursue diplomatic means for ending the conflict if they helped achieve his country’s three aims of demilitarizing Ukraine, denazifying it, and restoring that country’s constitutional neutrality. Far from being interested in a prolonged conflict, let alone secretly plotting to invade NATO like Biden fearmongered, the Russian leader said last week that he’s not closing the door on trade with the West.
Of course, the prerequisite for restoring such is sustainably freezing this proxy war in a way that achieves his country’s three previously stated aims, but it nevertheless shows that he’s sincerely interested in this so long as his partners meaningfully reciprocate. His Belarusian counterpart Lukashenko also scoffed at chief EU diplomat Borrell’s claim the other day that Russia is preparing for a prolonged conflict, retorting that “Russia and us, we already have our hands full with existing problems”.
The failure of summer’s counteroffensive led to a flurry of concern among many in the West that time isn’t on their New Cold War bloc’s side after nearly 18 months of claiming that it wasn’t on Russia’s. To be sure, such claims were already being made at the start of the year by The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, but only in the context of adding a sense of urgency to Western arms shipments ahead of the counteroffensive. Nowadays this claim is made almost exclusively in a negative way.
It was precisely with that newfound perspective in mind that former NATO Supreme Commander Admiral James Stavridis took a page from Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to call for a Korean-like “land-for-peace” armistice deal in his op-ed for Bloomberg from early November. It was then picked up by Ohio Senator JD Vance, after which the London-based Financial Times’ chief foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman spread this proposal to the other side of the Atlantic.
One of the reasons why Ramaswamy introduced this idea in the first place was to weaken what he described as Russia’s “alliance” with China, which he believes poses the greatest threat to America’s unipolar hegemony. To clarify, no such “alliance” objectively exists and those two have some sensitive differences that they’ve nonetheless responsibly managed, but they’ve objectively grown closer than ever throughout the course of Russia’s special operation so it’s understandable why this scares the West.
The CCD is completely oblivious to these policymaking perceptions after passing off this alleged “alliance”, which they spun as “dependence” due to their ignorance of India’s pivotal role in Russian grand strategy for preemptively averting this, as some sort of Western victory over their Russia. Without realizing it, they just lent credence to the MAGA Republicans’ top reason for freezing this proxy war as soon as possible, thus contradicting the purpose behind their disinformation about the NYT’s report.
With regard to Ukraine’s worries about the West curtailing military assistance, that process already began after the counteroffensive’s failure and accelerated following the start of the latest Israeli-Hamas war. Framing everything as though it either hasn’t yet started or was only just now considered after the NYT’s report is counterfactual to the core and further discredits the CCD. The same goes for implying that Russia’s military-industrial investments are automatically intended to aid forthcoming aggression.
It was none other than NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg himself who declared in mid-February that his bloc and Russia were locked in a “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” over who can outproduce the other on military wares. By the CCD’s own logic, NATO’s participation in this same “race” automatically means that it too is supposedly plotting some forthcoming aggression. While that’s likely true, it certainly wasn’t the point that they intended to make in their Telegram post.
To sum it all up, the CCD concocted its conspiracy theory about the NYT’s journalists supposedly being Russian agents out of desperation to discredit the resumption of talks with that country, which the West has signaled interest in as the conflict begins winding down after the failed counteroffensive. Zelensky’s regime is feeling pressure from its patrons to freeze the conflict, but it continues resisting for politically self-serving reasons and will thus likely keep smearing its erstwhile media allies all throughout next year.
