How often do we allow ourselves to seek advice from a person who is constantly wrong? How many times do we forgive her wrong judgments, wrong assessments, failed predictions? Three? Five? Ten? But we forgive military experts for mistakes every day, and we have been doing it for years. Probably, the thing is not in the forecasts. Experts usually offer the public optimistic scenarios for the deployment of military operations and a quick victory. In their summaries, they select those facts that inspire hope. They provide a wide panoramic background for the victory march. Media researchers often criticize military experts, whom they ironically call “interpreters of everything”, both for excessive emotionality and extreme subjectivism.
Media analytical resource Texty.org.ua offers his top military experts, to whom he is quite skeptical – both because of their ultra-popularity and because of the unprofessionalism of comments and forecasts.
We used the top ten rating of the mentioned resource AND through filtered queries on Google found the level their YouTube media presence. The time range includes the period from the start of full-scale war to April 30, 2024.
What happened to us?
Roman Svitan (39,900 results), a reserve colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a participant in the Russian-Ukrainian war, who was an adviser to the head of the Donetsk Regional Government S. Taruta and was captured by the Russians in 2014, shows the most prominent media presence. Svitan positions himself as an aviation expert, although he comments on a much wider range of topics, also delving into strategic issues of geopolitics. He does not have a personal YouTube channel, but is a frequent guest of Ukrainian broadcasts. The three media with the most mentions of R. Svitan, inviting him as a military expert, include Channel 24 (14,500 results), TSN (11,900 results), Radio NV (11800 results). Svitan appears fragmentarily on the airs of UNIAN, ZAXID.NET, Fabrika noviny, etc. On channel 24, he has a permanent column “Military reports from Roman Svitan”. Until the beginning of 2024, he was invited as a permanent expert to the telecast of the “Edyni Novyni” marathon.
Recently, the media space was shaken by a verbal duel between the former spokesman of the PSU Yuriy Ignat and Roman Svitan. Ignat accused the expert of almost being an impostor. Like, no one in the Air Force of Ukraine knows pilot Svitan. To this accusation, the military expert replied that “Ignat still walked under the table on foot when he was flying fighter jets.”
The second place in terms of media presence is occupied by Oleg Zhdanov, a former soldier, a reserve colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a teacher at the National Defense Academy of Ukraine, and an employee of the Main Operational General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (28,900 results). He hosts a monochannel on YouTube, and is also a regular guest of news broadcasts on TSN (9250 results), Channel 24 (6230 results), Radio NV (4050 results). The lower representation of O. Zhdanov in media broadcasts than that of R. Svitana is obviously explained by the presence of a personal channel.
The third step in the rating of media presence is occupied by the head of the Center for Military and Legal Studies, lawyer Oleksandr Musienko (28,200 results), who runs his own YouTube channel and at the same time has a wide presence on other media sites: Radio NV (14,900 results), channel 24 (7,460 results), TSN (6960 results). He is an episodic guest on the broadcasts of “Fabrika Noviny”, UNIAN, Rada TV channel, which is part of the “Edyny Novyni” broadcasting system. Yuriy Fedorov (4th step) is an atypical military expert. A physicist by education, a practicing sociologist who, together with the outstanding Russian scientist Boris Hrushin, studied public opinion, he positions himself as an expert on disarmament and diplomacy. In one of the broadcasts, Fedorov admits that he read many Soviet and American books in order to understand these issues. Most often, he is a guest on the broadcasts of Channel 24 (8450 results), TSN (1080 results), Popular Politics (797 results).
Serhiy Kryvonos (5th step), reserve major general of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, first deputy commander of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (2016–2019), appears in the media broadcasts of Channel 5 (5610 results), NEWSROOM (4820 results), News Factory ( 1660).
Petro Chernyk (6th position), a reserve colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, most often appears on the TSN channel (2920 results), is invited to the broadcasts of the First Western (869 results) TV channel Rada (695 results).
Harry Tabach (7th place), retired Navy captain, former adviser to the US ambassador and special representative of the US president in the Soviet Union, an official in NATO missions, has his own YouTube channel and is simultaneously invited to the broadcasts of News Live (625 results), Apostrophe TV (327 results), News Factory (299 results).
The media presence of Viktor Yagun (8th position), Major General of the Security Service of Ukraine, former Deputy Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine in 2014–2015, is almost entirely exhausted by broadcasts on Radio NV (3550 results). Mykola Malomuzh, Ukrainian military officer, former Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, General of the Ukrainian Army, Advisor to the President of Ukraine (2010–2014) mostly appears on Channel 5 (954 results), TSN (649 results), Fabrika Noviny (549 results ).
Hryhoriy Tamar, reserve officer of the Israeli army, journalist, former employee of one of the Israeli special services, is a guest expert of the News Factory (952 results), Radio NV (393 results), TSN (381 results) broadcasts.
As you can see, the listed experts communicate with the audience on the same media sites. There is currently no question of the monopolization of experts by media channels. At the same time, we see that each of them works autonomously, often refers to himself and does not mention other experts at all in his messages. Therefore, the mainstream field of military expertise is currently not being formed. Such isolation indicates that an institute of military experts is not being formed in our country, and those communicators who work with the general public take care, first of all, of monetizing content and promoting their own and other people’s YouTube channels.
An expert survey of the professional media community showed a wide range of personalities outside the top ten. Its leaders became the senior analyst of the Charitable Foundation “Return Alive” and the analyst of the National Institute of Strategic Studies M. Beleskov and T. Chmut. Respondents also pointed to:
- international journalist V. Portnikov;
- Austrian military analyst T. Cooper;
- leading researcher of the State Aviation Museum V. Romanenko;
- Ukrainian political technologist, journalist, major of the 1st separate special brigade named after Ivan Bohun T. Berezovets;
- politician and public figure, veteran of military intelligence and special assignment R. Mashovets;
- former military intelligence officer A. Muraveynyk;
- military analyst, senior lieutenant of the ground forces of the Israel Defense Forces I. Levin, journalist, editor-in-chief of the news social and political internet portal Censor.net Yu. Butusov;
- reserve colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine S. Grabskyi.
In our opinion, the increase in the number of military experts and the growth in audience demand is due to the non-acceptance of the unified and censored information disseminated by the Single News marathon. Let’s also pay attention to the fact that the expert pool is being multiplied by foreign analysts, primarily American and Israeli military personnel. This demonstrates the need to go beyond the local information bubble and scale the experience of interpretations of the war in other countries to the Ukrainian information field.
As for the issue of unverified forecasts, experts have their own professional explanation here. Roman Svitan, in particular, admits that he relies on the facts available “here and now” in his forecasting. Based on them, he builds the trend of the development of the situation. However, his predictive modeling often turns out to be wrong, because the current situation changes very quickly and unpredictably.
And in a situation of uncertainty, our experts have not yet learned to forecast. So mistakes are inevitable here.
Lilia Temchenko
