“I no longer have an army. My tanks and armored vehicles are junk, my artillery barrels worn out. My supplies intermittent. My sergeants and mid-grade officers dead, and my rank and file ex-convicts.”
This is the quote that set off alarm bells in my head.
I’ve been a friend (and fan) of Seymour Hersh for more than a quarter century.
He and I do not always agree on the major issues of the day.
Russia is one such issue where our opinions part company.
This is not necessarily a bad thing—we are both men with strongly held positions that we ostensibly arrived at through hard work involving fact-based analysis.
I’ll be the first to admit that, with the exception of Iraq and WMD, I do not have access to the totality of the information spectrum on the issues I analyze.
For this reason I am always open to the possibility that others—especially an award-winning Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist like Seymour Hersh—might have put their eyes on data that I had not been able to access, or which I ignored or otherwise failed to give the proper credence.
“I have been reporting on tensions between Washington and Moscow for decades,” Hersh writes in his article, “and have known about intermittent soldier-to-soldier relations between senior American and Russian generals, but I have never been permitted by a source to quote a senior Russian general on a sensitive subject before.”
If we parse this statement out, we are left with the fact that Hersh’s source is either directly familiar with the content of the “soldier-to-soldier” connectivity between the United States and Russia, or has participated in such conversations himself.
General Valery Gerasimov has been the Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces since 2012. His initial “soldier-to-soldier” connectivity in that role began in 2014, when he began a dialogue with then US Chief of Staff Martin E. Dempsey. Gerasimov continued this dialogue with Dempsey’s replacement, Joseph Dunford, and Dunford’s successor, General Mark A. Milley.
These talks never delved into the realm of politics, but were limited strictly to matters of a military nature. By way of example, the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff described one such meeting between Milley and Gerasimov, held on September 22, 2021 in Helsinki, Finland, as “a continuation of talks aimed at improving military leadership communication between the two nations for the purposes of risk reduction and operational de-confliction.”
That was General Milley’s last face-to-face meeting with General Gerasimov. The two spoke by phone on February18, 2022, six days before Russia invaded Ukraine, and again on May 19, 2022, where they “discussed several security-related issues of concern and agreed to keep the lines of communication open,” according to a Joint Staff spokesperson.
General Milley’s last reported conversation with General Gerasimov took place on October 24, 2022, and focused on urgent security issues, including the possibility of nuclear war. Both leaders agreed to maintain open communication lines and, in keeping with past practice, agreed to keep specific details private.
General Milley was replaced by General Charles Q. Brown Jr., who held his only recorded phone call with General Gerasimov on November 27, 2024, to discuss the Ukraine conflict. The call was intended to manage escalation risks after Russia launched a “Oreshnik” intermediate-range ballistic missile at Dnipro, Ukraine, on November 21. Brown was replaced by Admiral Christopher Grady after being relived by President Trump in February 2025, and General Dan Caine took the reins as Chairman in April 2025.
Neither Grady nor Caine had any recorded conversations with General Gerasimov.
The Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, began widely recruiting prisoners for the Ukraine war in early July 2022, . The Russian Ministry of Defense started its own formal prisoner recruitment campaign in October 2022. The first Russian military prisoner recruits had not reached the Ukrainian front by the time General Milley held his final call with General Gerasimov.
This means the only official “soldier-to-soldier” conversation that took place between Gerasimov and an American counterpart where the subject of Russian prisoners in the Russian military could have been raised was the one held with General Brown on November 27, 2024.
At that time, Russia was advancing on all fronts, liberating Kursk from Ukrainian forces and pressing Ukraine hard around Pokrovsk. There would have been zero basis for General Gerasimov to have made the kind of comment quoted by Seymour Hersh.
In short, there is no data whatsoever to sustain any of the politicized posturing which Seymour Hersh attributes to the Russian military "(i.e., “restless senior military command.”)
Instead, we find Hersh’s analysis poisoned by his own personal animosity toward Russian President Putin (Hersh’s comment in his article about Putin’s “willingness to kill to stay in power” mirrors comments he made to a colleague when questioned about his latest article on Russia, where he accuses Putin of murdering his opposition.)
I’m not saying Seymour Hersh made up this quote.
I am saying the quote, as presented, could never have been made by General Gerasimov to an American counterpart—the kind of “soldier-to-soldier” interaction Hersh alludes to in his article.
And the old Seymour Hersh would have known that to be the case.
But just to be sure, I reached out to my own “trusted source”, someone with years of direct experience at the highest levels of the Russian Ministry of Defense and Russian General Staff, a source which, in the intelligence business, would be rated A (Reliable; no doubt about authenticity, trustworthiness, or competency, proven to have direct, reliable access to the information) 1 (Confirmed; Verified by other independent, reliable sources.)
This source noted that Russia has a long history of military-to-military contacts, and did not rule out the possibility of such contacts taking place away from the public eye when it came to the United States and Russia.
But such talks never occur on a personal basis, but always are approved by the Supreme Commander in Chief (i.e., President Putin) and the Russian political leadership. This source emphasized that the Chief of the General Staff was not an independent actor in foreign policy. This is the case regarding General Gerasimov, whose job it is to fight and win a war, nothing else.
The source noted that there is the possibility, indeed probability, of “intrigues and shady politicians” surrounding the Russian Army, naming the former head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, as one such example. But this game is not one that Russian military officers play—especially General Gerasimov.
The source assesses that this quote, if indeed it was ever uttered, came from “intrigues within the political system” of Russia, from the remnants of the pro-Western political elite that emerged in the 1990’s during the time of Boris Yeltsin, and continued to thrive in the early years of the Putin presidency. This element, linked to banking and global transnational financial capital, plays a large role in influencing the so-called “peace party” that has emerged in the aftermath of the Anchorage Summit this past August.
This “peace party”, the source believes, is in close contacts with US government officials, especially those affiliated with the CIA and non-governmental vectors of soft power. There is no doubt in this source’s mind that Seymour Hersh has been played the fool by these forces, promoting themes conducive to the fantasy of regime change in Russia.
Something Seymour Hersh himself actively supports.
Manufactured quotes and a not-so-hidden political agenda are not the trademarks of a journalist, especially one with the pedigree of Seymour Hersh.
But this is what he has become, and it is therefore necessary to call him out.
When a journalist of any age or political stripe allows his personal animosity to over ride the facts of a given situation or circumstance, such that the journalist makes up quotes and other information, then they cease to be believable. Sadly Mr. Hersh has declined into one of those that he used to deride. He is an old man with less access to sources, the pentagon is drying up. Sometimes it’s better to retire on top of your game than keep playing. One recalls “say hey” Willie Mays and his last sad years of professional baseball. The Russian Federation is grinding along and slowly effectively rolling over the east to west axis of attack in the Donbas. It is a matter of time, not if. If the major western powers truly want an end to the conflict they will ask for a meeting with Mr. Putin and fly to Moscow and ask him what he wants to end the fighting. Otherwise it will continue until the last viable Ukrainian fighting force is finished and this defeat of the west in detail will be done. Mr. Hersh, was disappointing in his last posting. It is a pity to watch him falter at this stage of his life and career. Thanks to Mr. Ritter for providing fact and color to the Hersh post.
Hersh *was* a great journalist. How the mighty have fallen! Thank you, Scott, for clearing up the record.