MANIPULATION: Western media push Ukraine towards counteroffensive

Information is being circulated online claiming that Western media are “publicly hinting” to the President of Ukraine about the need to launch a counteroffensive.

However, this is a manipulation. The material reflects the personal opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the stance of governmental bodies. Moreover, the article does not explicitly call on Ukraine to start a counteroffensive soon. Instead, the author noted that Ukraine’s success in negotiations partly depends on success on the battlefield.

The article “Now Is Not the Time to Negotiate with Putin”, which users are referencing, was published in Foreign Policy magazine on June 3, 2024. It is categorized under “Argument”, indicating it reflects the personal opinion of the author, Rajan Menon, a professor and director of the analytical organization Defense Priorities Foundation, which advocates for a more “realistic and restrained” U.S. foreign policy.

In the article, the author discusses several scenarios for ending the war: “Some claim that the best Ukraine can hope for is a deal that includes its partition. Even assuming this prognosis proves true, the nature and extent of a partition matters: There are worse and better variants. Ukraine’s ability to negotiate a postwar settlement that it can live with depends on its military performance over the next 18 months or so. In other words, negotiating from a position of strength matters”.

It is likely that users interpreted the penultimate and final sentences as a “public hint” to Kyiv to start a counteroffensive. However, this excerpt does not contain a direct call for the Ukrainian authorities to launch an offensive. Moreover, the author is not a government official and merely expressed his subjective opinion on the matter.

The author also refers to the goal of returning Ukraine to its 2014 borders as “quirky” and hints that Ukraine might have to compromise: “Perhaps those advocating negotiations expect that Kyiv will conclude that continuing to fight will produce an even worse outcome and, moved by that logic, seek a compromise with Moscow. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi hasn’t indicated the slightest inclination to take this step — not since the failure of the talks held in Belarus and Turkey soon after the invasion.

His goal remains retaking all lands lost to Russia since 2014 — Crimea included. This objective isn’t written in stone and could change if the facts on the ground do, but so far it has not. One can dismiss it as outlandish, but what matters is that it persists.”

In previous writings by Rajan Menon, similar narratives to Russian ones can be observed. For example, in March 2022, the author wrote that supplying Western weapons to Ukraine only escalates the Russia-Ukraine war and poses risks that Russia might attack countries bordering Ukraine. In April of the same year, he claimed that Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO were one of the reasons for Russia’s full-scale invasion.