Having read the AFP-authored ‘No let-up in attacks’ in The Citizen of 21 February we pondered over journalists’ responsibility to the public and what role they can play in helping to resolve a crisis.

The subtitle of the article reads ‘Russians don’t care about soldiers’ lives as they send waves of men to deaths.” We’ve seen that before: Western journalists and pet historians claimed USSR prevailed in World War II having allegedly drowned his enemy in the sea of Soviet soldiers’ dead bodies. This was done to push the ‘Russia-evil-empire’ narrative and make people forget the heroism of Soviet people who liberated Europe from Nazi plague. (While military losses of the USSR and Germany in WW2 were roughly 1:1).

Today mainstream media resort to the same dirty tricks with the goal of prolonging the conflict. For that Western elites need to convince people that Ukraine supported by the West is prevailing on the battlefield.

In fact, Ukrainian armed forces are about to abandon Artyomovsk (Bakhmut) where they suffer horrible losses: dozens – if not hundreds – dead, wounded and taken POWs daily. As one of CNN’s headlines reads, ‘Situation in Bakhmut is "much worse than officially reported," Ukrainian soldiers say.’ Israeli intelligence service Mossad, for instance, estimates that Ukraine’s casualties during the special military operation are 8.5 times higher than those of Russia.

As mainstream media continue lying about the true situation on the battlefield, Western politicians need to make public opinion believe that victory over Russia is just around the corner and all they need to do is to spend a little more. This is how ‘collective West’ is getting involved more and more in the conflict.

The West has consistently broken its own taboos in terms of weapons supplies to Ukraine, as chief of EU diplomacy J.Borrell acknowledged several days ago. Long-range artillery, tanks, and other weapon systems and military equipment are supplied to Ukraine by the EU in violation of Europe’s own arms export control regulations. Currently, fighter jets are viewed as the next ‘red line’ – and we bet this one will be also crossed very soon.

Western leaders repeat over and over again that Russia must not win on the battlefield; it must suffer a ‘strategic defeat.’ Essentially, they got themselves into a political trap, as they can no longer backpedal and have to follow this path no matter what it would entail. Why are they doing that? Because the project of Ukraine as anti-Russia is too important for them; too much has been already invested to recognize the failure and abandon it.

Still Ukraine is losing. And NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg confessed the other day that expansion of NATO’s aid to Ukraine is impossible without a risk of escalation, but for the military bloc, Russian victory carries even greater risks.

So where will they take the world with this permanent escalation?