{"id":320925,"date":"2025-12-31T08:08:51","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T08:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=320925"},"modified":"2026-01-01T14:55:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T14:55:33","slug":"bbc-now-peddling-fake-news-from-fallen-pokrovsk-embedded-with-nazis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=320925","title":{"rendered":"BBC now peddling fake news from \u2018fallen\u2019 Pokrovsk, embedded with Nazis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Martin Jay \u2013 Strategic Culture Dec 29, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Who was it who said that the first casualty of war is truth? In the Ukraine war, could it be that Pokrovsk\u2014a crucial town in the Donbas\u2014is the epitome of that adage? Many Western analysts sympathetic to Russia, even Americans, have been claiming for weeks that this strategic town has fallen to the Russian army, when the reality is that it is very close to falling\u2014but not yet. Ukraine is holding on and, in all fairness, has put up a formidable fight. But the truth is they simply don\u2019t have the numbers of battle-hardened soldiers, and it is infantry numbers that ultimately matter. Russia has encircled the city except for a part of the north, where the last remnants of hardcore Ukrainian soldiers are holding out.<\/p>\n

Much has been made in Western media about Russian casualties, but little if anything is reported about Ukrainian losses in mainstream outlets. For that, you have to go to social media\u2014like footage of a recent raid involving three American-piloted Black Hawk helicopters, which were shot down, with all Ukrainian special forces on board believed to have perished.<\/p>\n

How much of the Pokrovsk story is told\u2014or misrepresented\u2014through journalists\u2019 reporting? Quite a bit, in fact. One recent report by the BBC on December 9 is starting to draw attention in Russia for a number of odd reasons, primarily because of how revealing the dispatch was, despite its clear objective of misleading the Ukrainian army and its people.<\/p>\n

The report was, in many ways, very poor journalism. In war zones, correspondents are often placed in a logistics or operations room, which the host army offers as a kind of privilege\u2014it\u2019s the heart of the action, with live feeds from monitors and commanders shouting into radios. This happened to me in Afghanistan in 2008 with the British army, and I can relate to the \u201clive\u201d feel of it, as well as being at the centre of communications. But at least then, everything was in English.<\/p>\n

In Pokrovsk, a BBC correspondent took up the same offer. His report didn\u2019t make any bold statements or provide clear facts, figures, or claims\u2014except for one, which may have been a slip-up by the Ukrainian ministry responsible for manufacturing such \u201cnews.\u201d A Ukrainian soldier revealed that the army was still holding part of the town\u2019s north and had 300 soldiers there. Three hundred. What an extraordinary admission to make to the press, given that troop numbers are critical intelligence\u2014if they were true.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll never know for sure, because the nature of such BBC reporting is to do the least amount of due diligence possible when covering wars in which London has a stake. The same disinformation operates on a colossal scale in the BBC\u2019s coverage of the war in Gaza, as a recent investigation revealed\u2014exposing the extent of editorial influence over the language used in such reports.<\/p>\n

We can assume the same in Ukraine. The BBC\u2019s report on the Ukrainian army\u2019s control centre lacked credibility on every level. It felt as though the whole point of the segment was to boost morale among Ukrainian soldiers across the country by suggesting their comrades were still holding out. One interviewee even implied as much, while the camera framed him against a neo-Nazi flag in the background. A nice touch.<\/p>\n

The entire piece seemed constructed around a commander on the radio telling a soldier on the front line to step out of a building and wave a Ukrainian flag\u2014just to make a point to the BBC journalist. Look: a soldier. With a flag. Surely this proves Pokrovsk hasn\u2019t fallen and reports of Russian dominance are wildly exaggerated!<\/p>\n

Such amateur dramatics is presented as old-school reporting, and with an English middle-class accent narrating, it can almost feel like journalism. But the piece was, at best, a diary entry\u2014and it was written up verbatim as such on the BBC\u2019s website. The BBC\u2019s reporting in Gaza, and earlier in Syria, has been so shamefully biased\u2014and in some cases fabricated\u2014that this Ukraine \u201cman with a flag\u201d report must be categorised accordingly. Nothing to see here.<\/p>\n

Given the timing of the report\u2014nine days before the EU shamefully signed off on a \u20ac90 billion loan to keep the war going in Ukraine via its national budget\u2014the segment put a brave face on Ukraine\u2019s dire situation. Still fighting. But for how long? Ukraine has maintained a drone campaign there with some impressive results, but it will eventually face the same fate German units in northwest France faced during the Allied invasion of 1944. The Germans fought incredibly well, and their tanks\u2014Panthers and Tigers\u2014were superior to those of the Allies. But in the end, they were simply outnumbered. This will be Ukraine\u2019s fate in Pokrovsk, whether they can hold on for a few more weeks or a few more months.<\/p>\n

Martin Jay is an award-winning British journalist based in Morocco where he is a correspondent for The Daily Mail (UK) who previously reported on the Arab Spring there for CNN, as well as Euronews. From 2012 to 2019 he was based in Beirut where he worked for a number of international media titles including BBC, Al Jazeera, RT, DW, as well as reporting on a freelance basis for the UK\u2019s Daily Mail, The Sunday Times plus TRT World. His career has led him to work in almost 50 countries in Africa, The Middle East and Europe for a host of major media titles. He has lived and worked in Morocco, Belgium, Kenya and Lebanon.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It felt as if the whole point of the BBC report was to boost morale among Ukrainian soldiers across the country by suggesting their comrades were still holding out. One interviewee even implied as much, while the camera framed him against a neo-Nazi flag in the background. A nice touch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42,91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-320925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-controlling-the-news-andor-the-free-exchange-of-ideas-and-information","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=320925"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320926,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320925\/revisions\/320926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=320925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=320925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=320925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}