– I think the Russians need to show that things are not going too badly, Lieutenant Colonel Geir Hågen Karlsen tells Dagbladet.
That’s his explanation for the Russian Defense Ministry which said on Sunday that 600 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in a rocket attack on the city of Kramatorsk, while the city’s mayor wrote on Facebook that the number was zero.
– I didn’t think so either
For a few hours on Sunday afternoon, confusion reigned over who was right: President Vladimir Putin’s Russian Defense Ministry or the mayor of Kramatorsk.
Then the news agency took Reuters he approached the buildings where hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers were allegedly killed.
Nor have they seen dead Ukrainian soldiers.
RACE ATTACK: Russian forces carried out a rocket attack on the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine on Sunday night. There are reports of injuries, as in this photo, but according to the city’s mayor, no Ukrainian soldiers were killed. Photo: NTB Scanpix/Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne
sea View
Karlsen does not believe that the Russian Defense Ministry itself believed the information provided.
– No, it’s obvious. They did it to keep up the morale of the population, even among the mobilized soldiers, he says.
Karlsen is an expert on Russian and Ukrainian military affairs and head teacher at the Norwegian Defense Staff School
– Other versions drowned
The downside to the Russians coming out with these claims, he believes, is “absolutely minimal,” even though Reuters news agency has now been on the scene, seeing no sign of dead Ukrainian soldiers.
– Not many people in Russia follow foreign media, so what Reuters writes reaches very few people. If someone were to come up with a different story, it would be drowned in state-controlled media stories, says Karlsen.
Claims to have killed 600 Ukrainian soldiers
He believes the Russians’ figure of 600 dead Ukrainian soldiers is due to what happened when several Russian soldiers were recently killed in a Ukrainian attack on the building where they were stationed, near the war front.
– After the loss figures from New Year’s Day, when the Russians admitted 89 dead Russian soldiers, and there were probably many more, they have to show that things are looking up, says Karlsen.
“Very Unpleasant”
– They say that the truth is the first casualty of war. Do you trust what Ukrainians wear?
– I don’t trust either side, because it is an existential war, but I trust Ukraine more than Russia.
– How come?
– Because the Russians have a completely wrong propaganda tradition, and because Ukraine has to come to terms with the fact that they are completely dependent on Western support, and therefore cannot use the same methods as the Russians, says Geir Hågen Karlsen.
He thinks it’s “very unlikely” that the Russians will come up with any corrections, even if they discover their figure was wrong.
Criticized by his followers: he wants a tougher Putin
