DISINFO: The Hill: No matter whoever wins the US election, Ukraine will have to capitulate
SUMMARY
The Hill columnist Joseph Bosco writes that for Ukraine it doesn’t matter who wins the next election, it will have to capitulate anyway. (…) Americans respect and admire the heroic people of Ukraine, but they should also pity them for being subjected to the incoming whims and fears of US politicians. Ukraine will have to endure a forced capitulation either during Trump's or Biden's second term.
RESPONSE
This disinformation story is a disingenuous distortion of the original article by former US defence official Joseph Bosco at The Hill aiming to promote a recurring pro-Kremlin narrative about the inevitability of Russia’s victory in its brutal invasion of Ukraine.
This disinformation story mixes accurate quotes from Bosco’s article with others that are deliberately manipulated, while omitting fragments that are essential to understand his argumentation. Bosco’s op-ed criticises the current strategy of the Biden Administration, arguing that not providing more support for Kyiv means that the final outcome of the invasion ultimately may not be very different than having a Trump Administration in the White House.
Bosco's exact words are: “Americans respect and admire the heroic people of Ukraine, but they also should pity them, subject as they are to the passing whims and fears of U.S. politicians. After all the horror and monstrous cruelty Ukrainians have already suffered at the hands of Putin the war criminal, they must now endure the likelihood of a forced capitulation during either a second Trump or a second Biden term”, with parts in italics omitted in the disinformation story.
Contrary to what this disinformation story claims, Bosco never states that Ukraine will have to capitulate no matter what, only that this is likely if there is not a course correction in the US. In addition, he formulates several “US political scenarios that can still save Ukraine”.
Pro-Kremlin media frequently resort to this manipulative technique of quoting sentences from serious publications or journalists and then introducing a distorted message as if it was part of the original story.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that military experts of The National Interest predicted a US and NATO defeat in a war against Russia, that a prestigious British journalist claims denazifying Ukraine is fully justified, that The Guardian refutes the myth of Russian involvement in Bucha events, or that a British analyst explains in Foreign Policy why Washington needs a “Russian intervention”.