In the past, I’ve criticized Seymour Hersh’s reporting relating to Russia and the Russia-Ukraine war as I’ve noticed that his understanding of Russia seems to be reliant upon his government sources and establishment writers who are the intellectual fellow travelers of Fiona Hill.
I have to say I don’t understand why such a respected and seasoned investigative journalist who covered the worst of the Vietnam and Iraq wars shows no discernment or inclination to question some of the nonsense he’s being fed by his sources.
As a recent cross-post by Simplicius made clear, the high numbers of Russian casualties being bandied about by US/Western government officials and establishment media are not credible when subjected to a modicum of scrutiny. But this shouldn’t be a surprise to those who remember that it was admitted at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war that they considered this an information war and that US government officials would be promulgating stories and information that made Ukraine and the west look good and Russia bad – with the implication that the information would not always be accurate or truthful. Did Hersh forget that admission from 2022?
I don’t deny that there are analysts and commentators who are clearly sympathetic to Russia and put out stories and commentary about how Russia is 20 feet tall and is going to defeat Ukraine next week. I won’t mention any names. I’m interested in those who are attempting to report a reasonable approximation of the truth to the extent that is possible during a proxy war between superpowers who both have motivations and purveyors of biased narratives.
On to some relevant excerpts from Hersh’s article from this past week:
…Zaluzhnyi is now seen as the most credible successor to Zelensky. I have been told by knowledgeable officials in Washington that that job could be his within a few months. Zelensky is on a short list for exile, if President Donald Trump decides to make the call. If Zelensky refuses to leave his office, as is most likely, an involved US official told me: “He’s going to go by force. The ball is in his court.” There are many in Washington and in Ukraine who believe that the escalating air war with Russia must end soon, while there’s still a chance to make a settlement with its president, Vladimir Putin….
…I have been provided with new Russian casualty numbers, from carefully evaluated US and British intelligence estimates, that show that Russia has suffered two million casualties—nearly double the current public numbers—since Putin started the war in early 2022. “Putin is not afraid of losing power, but he is losing popularity,” the US official said, “and Donald Trump is Zelensky’s supplier and the only one who can keep the Ukraine war going. Who’s got real power? It isn’t Zelensky. His only lifeline is the US. Trump is asking, ‘How do we get the pissants to stop? He thinks he’s the only one who can make the deal.
“The message to Putin is you can still say you won” if Zelensky is replaced.
The Russian combat losses are seen in Washington, I was told, as key to a renewed urge to get new leadership in Ukraine in order to begin serious negotiations to end the war, given Putin’s contempt for Zelensky and the possibility of escalation. The losses were at an all-time low of twenty per month last fall, as Putin waited for the results of the US election. “When Trump won,” I was told, the Russian leadership organized a spring offensive “to capture as much territory as possible” before another round of expected peace talks with Ukraine started.
The results were dismal. The offensive has only progressed 120 miles beyond the areas Russia already controlled in Ukraine. That gain, amid high casualties, was of minimal importance, I was told: “all farmland, no fortified towns or critical communication sites. The monthly casualties have been 380 a month through May. The total now is two million. Most importantly,” the official stressed, “was how this number was described. All the best trained regular Army troops, to be replaced by ignorant peasants. All the best mid-grade officers and NCOs dead. All modern armor and fighting vehicles. Junk. This is unsustainable.”
For more comparative context, here is what Russia Matters – a project that relies on western establishment media and commentators – had to say about Russia’s recent advances in Ukraine:
“In the battle for Ukraine, the front line is increasingly at a standstill,” The Wall Street Journal reported on July 13.1 Four days later this newspaper described the situation on the frontline as a “slowdown.” But is it? According to RM’s latest Russia-Ukraine War Report Card, the week preceding July 16 saw Russian forces gain 61 square miles of Ukrainian land, which is triple the rate of the previous week.Moreover, if one compares the monthly rate of change in territorial control in June 2025 (the latest month for which full monthly data is available) with the average monthly rate of change in such control in the five preceding months of this year (Period 1) and in the 18 months (year and a half) that had preceded June 2025 (Period 2), then one sees that the June 2025 rate was considerably higher than the average rate during either of these two periods, regardless of which organization’s data was used to make the calculations (U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War or an online resource that reportedly relies on data from Ukraine-based DeepState, which is affiliated with the Ukrainian MoD). Moreover, the June 2025 rate of advance was higher than that of May 2025 (see Table 2). Thus, it is perhaps not accurate to portray the situation on the Russian-Ukrainian front as “increasingly at a standstill.” [much less a dismal result as Hersh states – Natylie]
I agree – Hersh has of late repeated a lot of nonsense — propaganda with no serious consideration of reality. But he sometime gets something right like his June 19 prediction that the US would bomb Fordow nuclear enrichment site — which the US did a couple days later. However, most of that June 19 article was about how regime change would go down in Iran — nonsense mixed with hopium.
Hersh’s past journalistic successes have inflated his ego. After Hersh offered some (probably valuable) insight into the Nordstream 2 explosions, he’s been a conduit for neocon propaganda. The question is whether he is witting or unwitting. Seems to be the latter.
Parenthetically, if Russia has truly sustained 1M to 2M in casualties, there would no need for Ukraine to terrorize Moscow with drones, as the Russian populace would be distressed enough by casualties.
Hersh seems to have lost all sense of critical, independent thinking and assessment, and to compare data from different sources. He’s plummeted in my estimation.
I was surpised to see you referring to two sources uttlerly lacking in objectivity, namelty, the WSJ and Deep State!
Seymour Hersh is 88 years old and I don’t remember that he ever has had much to do with the USSR or the Russian Federation. He is probably much better informed/qualified to evaluate leaks about Syria or Israel, and so on.
I suspect he is putting a bit too much trust in the main stream US media that repeats a lot of this nonsense and in a bit too trusting of his (presumably US Gov’t) sources and lacks the background it accurately assess some of information he is being fed.
He was right on the Iranian bombing so he probably trusts the same sources when they feed him the casualties nonsense.
“I have to say I don’t understand why such a respected and seasoned investigative journalist who covered the worst of the Vietnam and Iraq wars shows no discernment or inclination to question some of the nonsense he’s being fed by his sources.”
I’ve read some years ago that his biography of JFK’s time as president, The Dark Side Of Camelot, was sourced primarily from one CIA member, who hated JFK and was in some way involved with his assassination. Then I read his self-confession that he’d never go after non-governmental organizations after all the hard work, double and triple checking it took to do his expose of Gulf &Western. Using one source together with laziness, that sealed the deal for me.
As to getting a prediction right, whelp, throw thousands of them out their, and then promote the ones you got right and people will forget all the ones you got wrong.
their = there