Key Points and Summary – Vladimir Putin’s information strategy relies on selling inevitability: Russia wins because Russia says it wins. That narrative strains under data.
-Poland’s MFA rebutted ten of Putin’s highest-profile historical distortions, while Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s UN assurances ring hollow against battlefield math.
Moscow’s Math Doesn’t Add Up: Why the Kremlin Inflates “Victory”
It’s common knowledge that Russia’s illegitimate president, Vladimir Putin, is a master of mendacity, so much so that one has to assume that everything he says is a lie.
No surprise there: after all, Putin was a career KGB agent schooled in the wily ways of the Soviet secret police.
And as Russia’s dictator, he knows that lying to his minions, to elites, to the people, and to the world is part of his job.
As Richard Moore, chief of the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service, recently put it, “Putin has sought to convince the world that Russian victory is inevitable. But he lies. He lies to the world. He lies to his people. Perhaps he even lies to himself.”
Putin’s Lies
Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs conveniently provided a list of ten lies propounded by Putin during his notorious 2024 interview with America’s MAGA star, Tucker Carlson:
-Poland cooperated/collaborated with Hitler’s Germany.
-Poles forced Hitler to start World War II against them. Why did Poland start the war on 1 September 1939? It was unwilling to cooperate. Hitler had nothing to do but start implementing his plans with Poland.
-Poland fell prey to the policies it had pursued against Czechoslovakia, as under the well-known Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, part of that territory, including western Ukraine, was to be given to Russia.
-Thus, Russia, which was then named the USSR, regained its historical lands.
-Ukraine is, in fact, an artificial state created by Lenin and Stalin.
-The left bank of the Dnieper, including Kyiv, is a historical Russian land.
-The idea of Ukrainians as a separate nation emerged in Poland.
-NATO bases have been set up on the territory of Ukraine.
-Two coups d’état were committed in Ukraine to break its ties with Russia artificially.
-In 2014, Moscow was forced to defend Crimea because it was in jeopardy.
The list of Putin’s whoppers can easily be continued:
-Russia is winning its war against Ukraine. Not true.
-The war is not a war, but a special military operation. Yeah, right.
-The Russian economy is prospering. Nonsense.
-Ukraine is neo-Nazi. Ridiculous.
-Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a dictator. Nonsense.
-NATO is a threat to Russia. With its miserable armed forces?
-Ukraine will join NATO. Not for decades.
-Russia never invaded Ukraine. Oh, please.
-Russian planes and drones never violated NATO air space. Really?
And on and on…
Thus, when Russia’s criminal foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, informed the UN General Assembly on September 27 that “Russia has never had and does not have any such intentions” of attacking European or NATO countries and that “any aggression against my country will be met with a decisive response,” the correct way to interpret his statement is to conclude that Putin does indeed plan to attack Europe. The bit about a decisive response is pure bravado, because Lavrov knows that NATO couldn’t possibly muster an invading force.
Given this record of unalloyed mendacity, it’s no surprise that Russia’s Ministry of Defense has been caught with its hand in the cookie jar. According to the non-partisan Institute for the Study of War (ISW), “The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) continues to artificially inflate its claims of advance in Ukraine to support the Kremlin’s false narrative that a Russian victory in Ukraine is inevitable.”
In particular, the MoD has “claimed that Russian forces seized at least 4,714 square kilometers across the theater between January 1 and September 25, 2025,” whereas the reality is 3,434 square kilometers—or 27 percent less.
Breaking down the figures by province, “ISW assesses that the Russian MoD is inflating its claimed advances by 36 percent in Luhansk Oblast; 33 percent in Donetsk Oblast; five percent in Zaporizhia Oblast; 83 percent in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast; 112 percent in Kharkiv Oblast; and six percent in Sumy Oblast.”
One could ascribe five and six extra percentage points to human error, but 36, 33, 83, and 112 additional points smack of an intentional desire to mislead, to create the impression of an unstoppable Russian juggernaut—and, more important, an inevitable Ukrainian defeat.
But the falsified territorial numbers are also intended to divert attention from Russia’s breathtakingly high casualty numbers: well over a million dead and wounded in three and one-half years of fighting. At this rate, Russia will have lost 2 million soldiers in exchange for a thousand or two square kilometers of Ukrainian territory by mid-2026. Putin won’t care, but Russians just might.
Mendacity is a sign of weakness, not of strength, and it’s small wonder that Putin’s regime, which is on the ropes, is resorting to the most effective weapon in its depleted arsenal, rampant lying.
About the Author: Dr. Alexander Motyl, Rutgers University
Dr. Alexander Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires, and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, including Pidsumky imperii (2009); Puti imperii (2004); Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (2001); Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (1999); Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (1993); and The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919–1929 (1980); the editor of 15 volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism (2000) and The Holodomor Reader (2012); and a contributor of dozens of articles to academic and policy journals, newspaper op-ed pages, and magazines. He also has a weekly blog, “Ukraine’s Orange Blues.”
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Jim
September 28, 2025 at 12:43 pm
Do the Russians have an interest in promoting the idea their victory is inevitable?
Of course they do.
As Ukraine has also done. But with much less evidence showing such is the case.
Where does it stand? Trump suggests if things are going so swimmingly for Ukraine, then Europe and NATO shouldn’t need any U. S. help, just go win it, yourselves, all the way to the 1991 borders and beyond.
Everybody knows Europe and NATO (without U. S. financial & weapons support) can’t do that.
Especially the Europeans themselves.
Kaja Kallas, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs, stated last Thursday, the 25th, while at the U. N. General Assembly, the EU cannot support Ukraine alone (and neither can NATO without U. S. financial backing).
What’s the bottom line? War supporters want to continue the war, but nobody wants to be seen throwing money down an unending sinkhole, so they claim Ukraine is winning.
Things are starting to look grim at the front for Kiev.
But when its’s a propaganda war from both sides, one thing still remains, the battlefield.
Who’s right? Look to results on the battlefield, ultimately, you can’t spin your way out of defeat, harder still, a systemic collapse across entire sections of the front.
It hasn’t happened, for sure, but things are moving in that direction.
For which side? We’ll find out.
Swamplaw Yankee
September 29, 2025 at 3:10 am
Strange how a much watched MSM figure, Tucker, can interview a world class democidist, pretending that he, Tucker, has no clue about the 10 points that Dr. Motyl has pointed out put the lie to the utterances of this democidist. Will Tucker have a show with the Polish PM, where Tucker can claim that he will never challenge the democidist as he, Tucker, discovered that clean, stocked supermarkets exist in mass abducted Ukrainian child Moscow.
One notices that Tucker just could not find a mass abducted Ukrainian child in Moscow. Oh, the table top dancing spots were edited out! Is that pre-bunking or pre-emptive censorship, peer readers?
Great that Dr. Motyl has re-appeared with cogent revelations from the Ukrainian perspective.
The other falsehood is that the democidist is not a killer of other people, that is, not his own captive small nation nationals.
The reality is that the largest nuclear plant in Europe and in Ukraine is on the brink of an explosion. Or, is that all western disinformation?
Democist Putin has ensured that all electrical transmission lines to it are severed, necessary to be functional so as to ensure the safe operation of the 5 reactors.
Putin is playing Lavrov Redline poker as he, tsarling Putin, ensures the emergency generators malfunction one by one.
The MSM pretends that there is no way, millions of victims of radioactive poisoning from a nuclear reactor breach will feel any pain. Why flee from the reactor blast, seems the MSM mantra. Reminds one of the huge get togethers in Brighton Beach, NYC, of the whole complete healthy nuclear safety team from Ukraine’s CHORNOBYL. No sticking around for the safety squad at CHORNOBYL, as the skilled technicians promptly fled Pripyat, Ukraine, to the safety of the USA.
The reality of the re-start in 2014 of the ancient 1000 year old Genocide of Ukrainians by ruuzzkie ethnics may be getting on Putin’s nerves. Sure, Putin is distributing FREE Ukrainian real estate to all his ruuzzkie orc supporters. There are just so many free homes, farms, businesses, Industries stolen and Putin needs to give them free to his supporters.
But, the pesky Ukrainians are self-arming themselves with potent missiles, even though Putin instructed MAGA POTUS Trumpkins to cut those free military hardware needs from flowing to Ukrainians. Oh, that was so Ukrainians could more quickly succumb to the scam unilateral MAGA POTUS peace deal, where ancient Ukrainian soil is given FREE, a no-cost give away gift from Trump himself to his Buddiekins Putin.
Sort of, like 2014. That’s when POTUS Obama + his Democrat Cabal unilaterally greenlit the loss to NATO of the geopolitical advantage of the ownership of Ukraine’s Crimean soil, families and Black/Azov Sea jurisdictional zones to the prime, vile Cold war enemy of the WEST, tsarling Putin. 11 long years of mass abduction of Ukrainian kids by these ancient ruuzzkie sex/slave traders. -30-