New York Times Again Prints verbatim Russian propaganda

There’s a reason Russia didn’t just put out international arrest warrants for myself and other journalists who visited Kursk when Ukraine partially seized control of the region. It’s because they had already planned the accompanying propaganda you’re now reading in your living room. The disinformation machine that normally resides in Russia itself has gone international, now playing out on our televisions and in the most respected newspapers.

Pick up a copy of the New York Times this week. You’ll find not just a short news item but a giant feature about Kursk. It’s full of dramatic photos of bombed-out churches and miserable Russian soldiers. It’s designed to make you feel sympathy, to make you see Russians as the wronged party, to make you question who the aggressor is. And it’s working.

But let’s start with something very simple and important: look at who wrote it. This article was written by a journalist based in Moscow. Someone who spent six days embedded with Akhmat, the Chechen-led Russian special forces unit.

You don’t get embedded with Russian special forces in occupied territory if you’re an independent journalist. You don’t get that access in Russia at all without permission from the very top. Russia is a dictatorship with no press freedom. Every single word that foreign reporters write when given that level of access is subject to Kremlin approval either directly or through self-censorship so they don’t lose their visas.

So when you see a New York Times article about Kursk, quoting Russian officials, sharing photos of soldiers looking sad in churches, and blaming Ukraine for shelling homes, remember: the Kremlin approved that. They didn’t approve it because it’s true they approved it because it serves their war effort.

Scroll through that New York Times piece and look closely. You’ll see a giant, sympathetic photo of a ruined Orthodox church, designed to pull at heartstrings, to make you think Christianity itself is under attack. But ask yourself this: where is the equivalent front-page feature about the churches Russia bombed in Odesa? Or the churches destroyed in Izium? Or in Bucha? Where is the big glossy New York Times spread about the priests tortured in Kherson?

You won’t find them. Do a search on the New York Times website and see for yourself. They’re not there. Because those stories don’t fit the subtle narrative they’re selling now: that there are “two sides” to this, that it’s complicated, that maybe Ukraine is at fault too.

One line in that Kursk article really jumps out. It quotes a local resident complaining that this war is “family fighting family.” That’s one of the Kremlin’s favorite talking points. It reframes Russia’s invasion not as an illegal war of conquest, but as an internal dispute, a “brotherly quarrel” that foreigners shouldn’t get involved in. That talking point is designed to make Americans and Europeans feel less urgency to help Ukraine. It’s propaganda, straight from the source, printed uncritically by the New York Times.

And it gets worse. The article just repeats body counts and claims from Russian officials unquestioned. How do they know? How did the reporter verify that? They didn’t. They can’t. And they don’t ask you to question it.

Meanwhile, I actually went to Kursk. My documentary is on YouTube. You can see the footage for yourself. I filmed children cycling through the streets. Residents collecting aid and food from Ukrainian soldiers. People walking around freely and speaking openly, even laughing. There was no Ukrainian censorship, no minders telling me what I could and couldn’t film. My final report didn’t have a single line changed or removed by any Ukrainian authority.

But when Russia retook Kursk, their propaganda machine roared to life instantly. Within hours they were pushing stories about alleged Ukrainian war crimes, bodies in the streets, devastation and chaos. And now, when the dust has settled, the Kremlin’s strategy shifts. It moves from raw propaganda on Russian TV to more sophisticated, polished pieces in Western media features with beautiful photography, emotional interviews, and sympathetic framing. The New York Times article is part of that machine. Whether they know it or not.

This is the real power of Russian propaganda. It doesn’t just scream in your face on RT. It seeps quietly into your trusted media sources, reframing the war as “complicated,” casting doubt on Ukraine’s right to defend itself, and telling you maybe it’s time to stop helping them. That’s how you get a nation like the United States to lose interest, to stop sending aid, to leave Ukraine to be carved up.

And the Times will claim they’re just being “balanced.” They’re not paid by Russia. They’re not agents. They’re worse: they’re obsessed with a false idea of balance. They think there are two sides to every war, and that it’s their job to show both equally. But in this war, there are not two sides. There is an aggressor and a victim. One country invaded another. It’s that simple.

And it’s not even the first time the New York Times has done this. In the 1930s, they ran pieces praising Hitler’s rise to power, describing his speeches as “enthusiastic” and crowds cheering. They printed headlines like “Hitler Seeks Peace in Europe”.

Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt wrote about this in her book, criticizing how the Times treated Nazi Germany as if it were a normal country, refusing to see the truth. They did the same with the Soviet Union’s genocide in Ukraine, the Holodomor. They ran Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer-winning coverage denying that millions were starving to death. The Times has a history of pretending there are two sides even when one side is committing atrocities.

That’s why I went to Kursk myself. I took the risk because I wanted to show what was really happening, without censors or handlers. I wanted to show that Russia was lying. And they were. Now the New York Times is repeating those lies in glossy, well-edited features that make people question whether we should help Ukraine at all.

That’s not journalism. That’s complicity. And it’s dangerous.