The Background

Concerning Ukraine (Brief Overview):

"In 1942, [Stepan] Bandera and two other OUN-B leaders wrote a manifesto, Ukrainian National Revolution, that called for the annihilation of so-called ethnic enemies.  OUN-B leaflets read:  'Exterminate the Poles, Jews, and communists without mercy.  Do not pity the enemies of the Ukrainian National Revolution!'  OUN-B's military wing, the pro-Nazi Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), had massacred around 100,000 Poles, Jews, Romani and Czechs in the 1940s, but in the years since 2004, dozens of Ukrainian streets, plaques, squares, statues and buildings have been named after Bandera.  Following the Western-backed 'Orange Revolution' in 2004 ... these violent and intimidating ultranationalist forces steadily grew ... In a 2011 march organised by Svoboda ... to celebrate the World War II-era Waffen-SS Galicia Division (which was formed mostly of Ukrainians), participants shouted, 'One race, one nation, one Fatherland'" [source].  

"By February 2014, the situation had deteriorated to the point where such groups were able to transform the initially peaceful Maidan protests (November 2013-February 2014) into a violent revolutionary scene of chaos and mayhem, the ferocity of which Europe had not seen for many decades ... 'The role of neo-fascist groups in the uprising and its influence on Ukrainian society was well reported by mainstream media outlets at the time.  The BBC, the NYT, the Daily Telegraph and CNN all reported on Right Sector, C14 and other extremists' role' ... Even in the Western mainstream media, then, let alone in Russian media which Russian speakers in Ukraine were watching, the key role of the violent ultranationalist in the Maidan coup was recognised" [source].

"In response to the ultranationalist pressure outside on the Maidan, the agreement of 21 February was then ignored inside the Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada), which forced through a vote that dismissed President Yanukovych and enabled a new government to be created ... Yatsenyuk was the man desired for the post by Victoria Nuland of the [US] State Department ... The new government included five members of the extreme Right, more than any other European country at the time: three from the Svoboda (Freedom) party, one of whom was the Minister of Defence and served as one of three Deputy Prime Ministers, another of whom was Prosecutor-General, and the third of whom was the head of the National Defence and Security Council.  That third man was Andriy Parubiy, a great admirer of Stepan Bandera and co-founder of Svoboda's previous incarnation, three neo-Nazi Social-National Party (1995), with its SS logo, the Wolfsangel.  Parubiy's deputy on the National Defence and Security Council in 2014 was the leader of the Right Sector, Dmytro Yarosh, also a self-styled 'follower of Stepan Bandera'.  These two ultranationalists ... were now in charge of Ukraine's defences" [source].

Concerning NATO and the West:

"'When the Soviet Union was collapsing in late 1991, Dick [Cheney] wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world.'  Vice President Cheney and the neocons pursued a similar strategy during George W. Bush's presidency, expanding NATO aggressively to the east and backing anti-Russian regimes in the region including the hard-line Georgian government, which provoked a military confrontation with Moscow in 2008 ... Now you have Assistant Secretary of State Nuland, the wife the prominent neocon Robert Kagan, acting as a leading instigator in the Ukrainian unrest, explicitly seeking to pry the country out of the Russian orbit" [source].

"[T]he protection of Donbass and the neutralization of Ukraine are only the most visible causes of the conflict.  The second set of causes, and by far the most important, relates to the balance of strategic forces and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction in the event of a nuclear attack.  This balance of terror would have been de facto biased in favor of the West in the event of militarization or Ukraine’s accession to NATO.  Indeed, once Ukraine fell into Western military orbit, NATO would have installed its nuclear weapons there as in Poland and Romania, placing Moscow five minutes away from total destruction and preventing it from retaliating with equivalent nuclear fire and likely to annihilate Europe and the United States in return.  This scenario would have ruined Russia’s independence and sovereignty.  Just as the installation of Russian nuclear rockets in Cuba or Mexico would destroy the ability of the United States to defend itself and force it to submit to Moscow’s will.  Since Russia does not benefit from an early warning system like the United States, it is particularly exposed.  And it feels all the more threatened as the United States has unilaterally denounced nuclear treaties INF (2019) and Open Sky (2020) that guaranteed a certain security and maintained a strategic dialogue.  Under these conditions, the establishment of a buffer zone between Russia and US nuclear missiles in Europe – Ukraine and Georgia in this case – became an existential issue for the Russians.  This cause, which is never explained in the media and by Western politicians because it would highlight their aggressiveness and desire for hegemony, was the triggering factor of the war.  It also explains why powers such as China, India and even Pakistan remain neutral, even favorable to Moscow" [source].

The Importance of NATO and Ukraine:  "With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, many people in the West believed NATO was no longer needed.  NATO claimed to be strictly a defensive alliance and its only rival had disbanded.  Brzezinski and other US hawks saw that NATO could be used to expand US hegemony and keep weapons purchases flowing.  Thus he wrote that, 'an enlarged NATO will serve well both the short-term and the longer-term goals of US policy.'  Brzezinski was adamant that Russian concerns or fears should be dismissed.  'Any accommodation with Russia on the issue of NATO enlargement should not entail an outcome that has the effect of making Russia a de facto decision making member of the alliance.'  Brzezinski was skillful at presenting an aggressive and offensive policy in the best light.  Brzezinski presents Ukraine as the pivotal country for containing Russia.  He says, 'Ukraine is the critical state, insofar as Russia's future evolution is concerned ... Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire' ... Ukraine as part of a hostile military alliance does not only prevent a Russian 'empire' ; it presents a potential threat.  Kyiv is less than 500 miles from Moscow and Ukraine was a major rout of the Nazi invasion" [source].

"If our diplomats and media truly had been concerned to prevent war in Ukraine, they would have:

• denounced Ukraine's disregard for the status of the Crimea in 1995;

• deplored the 2014 coup d'état;

• condemned the discrimination against Russian-speaking, Hungarian-speaking and Romanian-speaking minorities by the unelected Ukrainian authorities in 2014;

• been urging Ukraine from 2014 onwards to comply with its obligations under the Minsk Accords;

• shown some compassion for Russian-speaking Ukrainian civilians in the Donbas, who have been embattled by their own government since 2014;

• drawn international public opinion to the attacks by neo-Nazi militias on civilians in the Donbas;

• condemned, in February and then again in August 2021, the closure of Ukrainian opposition media, which were on the verge of alerting the international community to the preparation of an offensive in Southern Ukraine that had been decided upon in March that year;

• criticised the Ukrainian artillery shelling of civilians in the Donbas in mid-February 2022;

• condemned the banning of opposition parties in Ukraine in 2022" [source].

"[People in the West] are told that Putin is a (1) Tryant, (2) Dictator, (3) Homicidal Maniac, (4) all three.  As someone who has lived in Russia for more than 30 years I can tell you the answer is none of the above.  Many people seem to think that this conflict started in 2022 but it did not and had been in the planning by the USA since 2008 when George W. Bush invited Ukraine to become a future member of NATO.  By 2014, after the Maidan Coup, a major conflict was inevitable as the US was planning it by training and arming the Ukraine army.  Their thinking was that tying up Russia in war, plus imposing draconian sanctions on it and cutting of off from the global financial system, would cripple it and bring about regime change.  The Western (US neo-con) strategy failed badly, and it was Europe that suffered from the sanctions (including the UK) while Russia grew stronger and orientated away from Europe to Asia and Africa.  Now Trump is trying to woo Russia away from China as he has understood the failure of the previous strategy" [reader's comment at source].

The Immediate Causes

"In violation of the Minsk Agreements, Ukraine was conducting air operations in Donbass using drones, including at least one strike against a fuel depot in Donetsk in October 2021.  The American press noted this, but not the Europeans; and no one condemned these violations ... In February 2022 ... the Ukrainians still refused to apply the Minsk Agreements, apparently under pressure from the United States" [source].

"In February 2022 ... Ukrainian preparations in the contact zone continued.  The Russian Parliament became alarmed; and on February 15 it asked Vladimir Putin to recognize the independence of the Republics, which he initially refused to do ... since the 16th [February], the artillery shelling of the population of Donbass had increased dramatically, as the daily reports of the OSCE observers show.  Naturally, neither the media, not the EU, nor NATO, nor any Western government reacted or intervened.  It would be said later that this was Russian disinformation.  In fact, it seems that the EU and some countries have deliberately kept silent about the massacre of the Donbass population, knowing that this would provoke a Russian intervention" [source].

"As early as February 16, Joe Biden knew that the Ukrainians had begun intense shelling [of] the civilian population of Donbass, forcing Vladimir Putin to make a difficult choice: to help Donbass militarily and create an international problem, or to stand by and watch the Russian-speaking people of Donbass being crushed ... If he decided to intervene, Putin could invoke the international obligation of 'Responsibility to Protect' (R2R)" [source].

"The Ukrainian artillery bombardment of the Donbass population continued, and, on 23 February, the two Republics asked for military assistance from Russia.  On 24 February, Vladimir Putin invoked Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which provides for mutual military assistance in the framework of a defensive alliance" [source].

"In order to make the Russian intervention seem totally illegal in the eyes of the public, Western powers deliberately hid the fact that the war actually started on February 16.  The Ukrainian army was preparing to attack the Donbass as early as 2021, as some Russian and European intelligence services were well aware" [source].

"The dramatic developments we are witnessing today have causes that we knew about but refused to see:

• on the strategic level, the expansion of NATO;

• on the political level, the Western refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements;

• and operationally, the continuous and repeated attacks on the civilian population of the Donbass over the past years and the dramatic increase in late February 2022" [source].

"The key issue is Russia's refusal to ever trust the UK/EU again.  This stems from the fact that between 2014 and 2022 there were numerous occasions when the war in Ukraine could have been stopped.  Sadly, the Europeans chose to encourage Kiev in its war against the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass.  At this point, some readers may say that's just not true and Putin is an evil warmonger who seeks to conquer all of Europe.  However, the historical record reveals that the war in Ukraine was started by the Kiev regime in April 2014 and then proceeded to ignore all attempts at ending the conflict with the connivance of EU/UK leaders" [source].

"Zelensky is an actor who played being a simple, sympathetic, nice guy who made it to the top and became president of Ukraine in a TV series.  In real life, this character was promoted by a billionaire to actually become President of Ukraine and that is where his philanthropy stopped.  He continued acting, receiving scripts from both the USA (keen to replace Putin with a more malleable Russian President) and from his Ukrainian billionaire who supported right-wing extremists determined to 'cleanse' Ukraine of all ethnic foreigners, not just ethnic Russians.  Those in eastern Ukraine had resisted, had declared independence and were subsequently treated to daily shelling by the Ukrainian armed forces in the west.  The Minsk agreements were supposed to bring peace to the area but the two prime signatories, Merkel for Germany and Hollande for France, both subsequently publicly admitted the agreements were only a trick to allow the West to further arm and train Ukrainians to fight against Russia, to weaken Russia and hopefully cause Putin to be thrown out of office.  And so the farce of the West causing Ukrainian lives to be sacrificed on the altar of destroying Putin has continued for 3 years now, at a cost of billions of dollars and euros to the West's tax payers, and probably one million Ukrainian lives, not to mention more than one hundred thousand Russian lives.  All of this is well documented in 'alternative' media.  Apologies if we sceptics rejoice at a US President being elected who possibly (with Trump you never know) may end the ridiculous circus that is being played out by this actor and his supporters in US and European politics" [reader's comment at source]. 

Donbass, Maidan Coup, Minsk Agreements

The Donbass and the Maidan Coup

"For the people of Donbas ... the war began 8 years ago, in April 2014.  It was preceded by the November 2013 Euromaidan demonstrations, which culminated in the February 2014 coup (that illegally removed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych), followed by mass riots in a polarized society and then the so called Maidan Revolution.  This development marked the beginning of a series of ultra-nationalist and chauvinistic Ukrainian policies against Russian-speaking populations (in a largely bilingual country) and other ethnic minorities.  This far-right [sic] wave has brought neo-Nazi groups to power, and, as a result of that, has further alienated large parts of the Eastern Ukraine's population culminating in a civil war" [source].

"In order to make the Russian intervention seem totally illegal in the eyes of the public, Western powers deliberately hid the fact that the war actually started on February 16.  The Ukrainian army was preparing to attack the Donbass as early as 2021, as some Russian and European intelligence services were well aware" [source].

"[U]ntil the 2014 election, the people of of the city regions of Luhansk (LPR), Donetsk (DPR), and the Donbas had little to fear from the Ukrainian government.  These regions are the important industrial, manufacturing and mining centres of Ukraine while the western half is far more agrarian.  Regardless, east and west lived in relative harmony post-1939 until 2014.  On Feb 20 that year pro-democracy [sic] snipers murdered in cold blood forty-nine innocent Ukrainians and four policemen in one night during the US-backed post-election protests against Yanukovych at Maidan Square.  The murders - falsely blamed on Russia - had the intended effect of sending Ukraine into a tailspin of East vs. West anti-Russian ultra-violence ... Thus began the Ukraine war ... The United Nations Human Rights Commission reported that the Azovs have killed over 14,000 eastern Ukrainians since 2014, as the East begged Russia for military help ... To stop this slaughter in 2014 Russia brokered a truce called the Minsk Protocols which the AFU ignored.  This was followed in 2015 by Minsk II which also had no practical effect on the AFU genocide.  For seven years this terror continued unchecked" [source].

"It is curious to note how Ukraine has promoted an increase in violence but is unable to deal with the consequences of its own actions.  This Saturday, a Ukrainian soldier was killed, and others were injured in the explosion of a landmine in Donbass.  Kiev uses cases like this to endorse the rhetoric of Russian aggression and call for support [from] NATO, but in fact, Russia is not yet directly involved in Donbass, only providing logistical support to popular militias in the region.  The recent troops' moves have had no effective military results - they have only put Russian soldiers on standby in the face of threats ... in its anti-Russian ideological extremism, the [Ukrainian] government prefers to risk the lives of its soldiers by investing in an escalation of violence in order to justify a NATO intervention on the basis of an alleged 'Russian aggression' - when the aggressor is precisely Kiev" [source].

"Where is the Western media reaction?  All those @BBCWorld, @ReutersWorld, @AFP, etc who were shouting about damage to [the] maternity hospital in Mariupol used by Ukrainian nationalists as a firing position?  #Ukraine is deliberately targeting civilians.  Will we hear a word of condemnation?" [Tweet by Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia's Deputy Representative to the UN, June 13, 2022, 21:07].

"Over the weekend we witnessed a dramatic increase in Ukrainian forces shelling of the city of Donetsk.  The Mayor of Donetsk, Mr Alexey Kulemzin, has reported that on 13 June indiscriminate artillery strikes of the city centre lasted over 6 hours, killing at least 5 and wounding 33 civilians.  The intensity of fire, with over 700 rockets and shells falling over the peaceful city and other towns and villages of the Donetsk People’s Republic, amounts to a full-fledged and purposeful military operation. In the recent days, bombardments covered a number of purely civilian areas and targets, including Vishnevskiy maternity hospital and Mayskiy market.  Deliberate targeting and shelling of civilian objects is a war crime.  It has been confirmed that equipment used by the Ukrainian forces during these attacks included NATO-standard 155mm artillery.  It is therefore clear that such assaults on civilians are only possible due to Western encouragement and Western military supplies to Kiev, in which the United Kingdom claims a leading role.  We have repeatedly called upon the British Government to exercise caution and to respect its own export control standards when supplying arms to Ukraine.  These calls have fallen on deaf ears.  The latest events show it is time for the UK to assume full responsibility for its short-sighted policy" [source].

"Since 2015, most of the Ukrainian army and the neo-Nazi battalions Azov, Aidar and Pravy Sektor have been massed in the Donbass, raising fears of a full-fledged assault at any time, as well as in the strategic cities of Odessa, Mariupol and Kharkiv (hence the resistance of thee cities to the Russian army, with neo-Nazi battalions refusing to release civilians and using them as human shields" [source].

"In the country where I currently live, I can still receive Russia Today (RTD) and view the US-West's murderous proxy war in Ukraine from a different perspective than through the eyes of German [likewise UK, USA, et al] mass media.  Their unspeakable war-mongering from warm hacks' offices ... can hardly be endured by a civilised person and should be banned by an ethics commission.  The daily TV images from completely destroyed and smoking war zones choke the throat and stomach.  They are mainly TV reports about the indescribable agonies of the civilian population and the multinational military.  Old women and men as well as young mothers with their babies and children vegetate out of mortal fear together with pets in the dark, damp basements under bombed-out houses - often for days without bread, water or medical care.  Full of hope, they wait for a merciful soul to save them from starvation.  Anyone who arrogantly dismisses these testimonies from the Donbass or other parts of the war zone as negligible Russian propaganda has already had their heart petrified by the propaganda roller of the US West - they can no longer feel like a human being" [source].

"The reason why the peoples of the Crimea and the Donbass opted for separation from Ukraine in 2014 was because, like the Jews [in 1933], they too could see the writing on the wall.  In the decade 2004-2014, they had seen, either with their own eyes or in Ukrainian and Russian media, the steady growth of Ukrainian ultranationalist forces that were full of chauvinist pride and hatred and were fanatically opposed to both both Russia and the large Russian-speaking minority in eastern and southern Ukraine, as well as to Poles, Jews, and Romani.  They could see the many torchlit marches, the growing attacks on members of minorities on the streets, the burgeoning number of ultranationalist political groupings (Svoboda, C14, Social-national Assembly, Patriot of Ukraine, Right Sector, Azov battalion) and various youth groups, youth camps and events organised by these factions, as well as the lauding and hero worship of the man who had been the ultranationalist Ukrainian leader of the genocidal terror group OUN-B (Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists - Bandera) in the 1930s and 40s, Stepan Bandera (1909-1959).  Bandera was subsequently elevated to almost cult status and eventually to the official accolade of 'Hero of Ukraine', formally bestowed on him posthumously by President Yushchenko in 2010: an act condemned by the European parliament, the Russian federation, Poland and various Jewish groups ... in the years since 2004, dozens of Ukrainian streets, plaques, squares, statues and buildings have been named after Bandera.  Following the Western-backed 'Orange Revolution' in 2004 that brought Vikto Yushchenko to power as President, these violent and intimidating ultranationalist forces steadily grew" [source].

"Anyone who arrogantly dismisses these testimonies from the Donbass or other parts of the war zone as negligible Russian propaganda has already had their heart petrified by the propaganda roller of the US West - they can no longer feel like a human being" [source].

"The trigger for the Russian special operation was the Donbas.  The victims in the Donbas will never be mentioned because they are the real reason for the Russian intervention.  Some will say that they were merely a pretext for it; that is perfectly possible.  But we have done everything to provide Putin with this pretext, one which, incidentally, is perfectly legitimate in itself: it is nothing other than the application of the principle of the 'responsibility to protect' (R2P).  If our diplomats had made an effort to comply with international humanitarian law from 2014 onwards, we would not be in this situation" [source].

"We can naturally deplore and condemn the Russian attack.  But WE (that is: the United States, France and the EU in the lead) have created the conditions for a conflict to break out.  We show compassion for the Ukrainian people and the two million refugees.  That is fine.  But if we had had a modicum of compassion for the same number of refugees from the Ukrainian populations of Donbass massacred by their own government and who sought refuge in Russia for eight years, none of this would probably have happened" [source].

"The majority of Ukrainians supported Russia prior to the UK coup pf 2014 [Maidan].  All you need to do is look at the 2010 Presidential elections.  Those living in the east and south of Ukraine know the war was caused by the Ukrainian Banderites, neoNazis, paramilitaries and ultranationalists and followed through by corrupt Ukrainian Presidents and politicians since 2014.  It is likely the support for Russia in east and south Ukraine has increased.  Russia has no designs on west Ukraine where they have little support.  Russia was quite willing for Ukraine to be 'independent' from 1991 to 2014.  The US ploughed millions of dollars into Ukraine from 1991 onwards which culminated in the US-led coup of 2014.  Russia are no different to any other powerful country to take exception to hostile forces taking over a neighbour which threatens its own existence.  When domestic policies lean towards joining the aggressive NATO and when jumped-up Nazis persecute, shell and kill the ethnic Russians in east Ukraine, then it is entirely Russia's business.  What other country would have allowed that on their doorstep without consequences?" [reader's comment at source].

"Russia's response to a threat on their border was no different to any other country.  Imagine the response by the US if a hostile bloc sent weapons to a neighbouring country to the US and sent politicians to incite insurrection.  The US would bomb them to oblivion and install a puppet government friendly to the US as they have done in many other countries throughout the years" [reader's comment at source].

"Let us go back to the Maidan coup of February 2014 and examine facts that the Western media does not want you to remember or know at all.  On February 21st 2014, a day before the coup, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanakovich and the opposition, mediated by Germany, Poland and France, reached an agreement intended to stop the bloodshed and pave the way for a political solution to the crisis.  After Yanakovich ordered the withdrawal of police from the centre of Kiev, neo-Nazi groups such as the Right Sector and Svboda led the storming of government buildings.  The next day the armed opposition on Maidan Square announced the removal of Viktor Yanakovitch as President and that a 'government of the victors' would be formed.  The West turned a blind eye to all the violations of the previous day's agreement and hurried to declare a 'change of power' in Ukraine" [source].

The Minsk Accords

"[T]he main Western players in the Minsk Agreement themselves admit that they entered into the agreements with no intention of ever keeping them.  So they have lied to the Russians, then, as well as to the people of the Donbas and the Ukrainian people.  I remind you that Russia's position until February 2022 was autonomy (and not independence) of the Donbas republics under Kiev's authority, as provided for in the Minsk Accords ... not only did the West allow the riots against Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the Donbas, but it did not even have any intention of enforcing the Minsk Accords that were the subject of UN Security Council Resolution 2202 (of 2015)" [source].

"When Russia launched its operation in February, its first goal was to ensure the safety of the people in the Donbas.  That was the goal of the Minsk Accords, which the Ukrainians did not wish to implement.  This is what the West has deliberately overlooked.  The threat of an invasion targeting the population of the Donbas in early February 2022 then prompted the Russians to enforce that security with their intervention" [source].

"Peace failed because the West had no intention of honoring Peace Agreements.  Former German Chancellor Merkel, former Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko, and former French President Francois Holland all admitted that the Minsk Accords ere used to buy time and to build up Ukraine's military to NATO standards" [source].

"[S]ince 2014, Russia has systematically demanded the implementation of the Minsk Agreements while refusing to be a party to the negotiations, because it was an internal matter of Ukraine ... there were never any Russian troops in the Donbass before 23-24 February 2022.  Moreover, OSCE observers have never observed the slightest trace of Russian units operating in the Donbass before then" [source].

"If we had insisted that Ukraine abide by the Minsk Agreements, which we had negotiated and endorsed, none of this would have happened ... there is no point in whining afterwards - we should have acted earlier ... The EU was unable to promote the implementation of the Minsk Agreements - on the contrary it did not react when Ukraine was bombing its own population in the Donbass.  Had it done so, Vladimir Putin would not have needed to react.  Absent from the diplomatic phase, the EU distinguished itself by fueling the conflict" [source].

"Russia lived side by side with its Slavic brothers and sisters in Ukraine for many, many years.  From 1991 to 2014 Russia regarded Ukraine as an 'independent' state.  The 1994 Budapest Memorandum confirms this until Ukraine reneged on the agreement in 2014" [reader's comment at source].

"The Minsk Agreement was forged in order to maintain peaceful relations between the West and Russia.  Ukraine was to remain a buffer zone between East and West.  As soon as the globalist empire builders began their shenanigans, it led us to this point" [reader's comment at source].

Referenda in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia

"Despite endless 1984-astyle announcements of 'heroic Ukraine military breakthroughs' four Russian-controlled regions of Ukraine - Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhxhia - began voting last Friday in what Russia describes as referendums.  Loyalty to either Russia or Ukraine is the voter's choice.  The Guardian newspaper described these votes in scathing terms: 'So-called "referedums" are under way in areas of Ukraine occupied by Russian troops, with residents told to vote on proposals for the four Ukrainian regions to declare independence and then join Russia.'  Funny old world isn't it?  I seem to recall that in 2016 a so-called 'referendum' was under way in the United Kingdom with residents told to vote on proposals for the four UK regions to declare independence and exit the European Union.  However, as the Ukrainians have probably realised by now, if voting changed anything they wouldn't allow it in the first place" [source].

NATO, the USA, and the West

"The dramatic developments we are witnessing today have causes that we knew about but refused to see:

• On the strategic level: The expansion of NATO;

• On the political level:  the Western refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements;

• On the operational level: the continuous and repeated attacks on the civilian population of the Donbass over the past years and the dramatic increase in late February 2022.

"[The West has] created the conditions for a conflict to break out.  We show compassion for the Ukrainian people and two million refugees.  That is fine.  But if we had had a modicum of compassion for the same number of refugees from the Ukrainian populations of Donbass massacred by their own government and who sought refuge in Russia for eight years, none of this would probably have happened" [source].

"[T]he root causes of this war trace back to 1997 when Zbigniew Brezinski, the most influential advisor to American presidents for thirty years, published the book 'The Grand Chessboard', in which he explained that the strategic goal of the United States is to seize Ukraine and dismember Russia to break its power in Europe and prevent it from joining Germany.  1997 was also the year in which the first phase of this plan was set up with the entry into NATO of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary" [source].

"What is happening in Ukraine is wrong.  Innocent people are suffering and losing their lives because they are trapped inside a feeding frenzy of three power blocs.  The war in Ukraine has as much to do with Russian aggression as it has to do with American ambition and European expansionism.  Had the US and the EU not antagonised Russia - and deliberately antagonised Russia with a premeditated view to destabilising it - this war would not be happening.  This is not to say that Putin’s Russia is not an aggressive state entity.  It’s a superpower - or near-to superpower - state.  Of course it’s aggressive.  But with a neutral Ukraine to the south-west it felt safe and unthreatened.  Russia had no reason to invade a neutral Ukraine - and it never invaded a neutral Ukraine.  Ukraine’s peace and security were guaranteed by its neutral non-alignment" [source].

"[T]he West has quite actually sleep-walked itself right to the very edge of nuclear annihilation and into the depths of an international crisis - blindly following US ambitions - and is unable to see the danger of the present because it is fixated on the fears of the past.  Europe is accelerating to a precipice and it thinks it has its eyes on the road ahead while staring fixedly in the rear-view mirror.  Russia may well be a danger.  The United States most certainly is a danger.  But what is certain beyond all doubt is that we in the West will never see what danger Russia may or may not be while we remain transfixed by a Russia that no longer exists" [source].

"Even prior to Russia’s SMO, The West had been deliberately violating the international sovereignty of the Black Sea and Russia’s proximity as the HMS Defender recklessly sailed willy-nilly as if the entire world was its oyster.  By February 2022, Ukraine, NATO, the US and its EU coalition of western groupies had crossed Russia’s red line in their refusal to implement the 2014 Minsk Agreement as Russia reacted to protect its own sovereignty" [source].

"From their silos Ukrainian mandarins spout hallucinatory bombast.  On July 18 Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba rejected peace talks until 'after the Russians have been defeated on the battlefield.'  The next day Deputy Defense Minister Volodymyr Havrylov vowed to sink Russia's Black Sea Fleet and re-take Crimea.  Ukraine's government is wholly dependent on foreign, principally American, funds.  Ukraine's government banned 16 political parties, including the main opposition party; and nationalized the country's media.  Ukraine's government seems hellbent on feeding millions of Ukrainians into the wood-chipper.  Of course, this isn't 'Ukraine's' government anymore.  This is a Biden Administration subsidiary and it's committing colossal crimes against humanity" [source].

"Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson sees the activity in stark terms, while also commenting that the CIA has not won a semi-clandestine insurgent war in forty years.  He observes that 'Ukraine is a proxy; the West is trying to destroy Russia, it’s that simple. It would be one thing if Russia was the most evil, oppressive, authoritarian regime in the world. It’s nowhere even close. Even though the West keeps trying to portray Russia as such. The fact of the matter is, the West wants the resources that Russia has and it wants to control Russia. [But] Russia is not about to be controlled.'  In other words, Washington might be seeking an unending war entangling Russia and limiting its options globally" [source].

"NATO had been brought into existence after World War II to ostensibly protect Western Europe from an invasion by the Soviet Union.  But the notion of such an invasion was ludicrous from the start.  Russia had been devastated by the war.  As many as 27 million Soviet citizens were killed as a result of the war ... That's a lot of people.  Moreover, the entire industrial might of the country had been decimated.  The Soviets knew that if they started a war with their former World War II partners and allies, the United States would immediately come to their assistance.  The United States had not suffered any damage to its industrial capacity and was still fully capable of fielding a massive army.  Moreover, the United States had a monopoly on nuclear bombs and had displayed a willingness to use them against people living in populated cities.  Thus, there was never any realistic possibility whatsoever that the Soviet Union was going to invade Western Europe.  NATO served no purpose whatsoever" [source].

"Sounds like a forever war is being planned.  Of course if the neocons under Victoria Nuland had not deposed the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014 trying to expand NATO right to the borders of Russia, over half a million Ukrainians and Russians might still be alive and we would not be denuded of our own arms constantly exporting high tech weapons to the Ukrainians to blow up brick ****houses.  I don't really think this is Putin's war ... Nice one Victoria" [reader's comment at source].

"The West is now undermining international law ... It's clear that aside from its destabilising potential for Europe and Eurasia, this latest multilateral proxy war experiment by NATO has the potential to completely undermine international law structures, and the question then remains: 'Can ... the countries that supply arms to Ukraine be considered co-belligerents?'" [source].

"We were open and sincerely ready for a constructive dialogue with the West; we said and insisted that both Europe and the whole world needed an indivisible security system equal for all countries, and for many years we suggested that our partners discuss this idea together and work on its implementation.  But in response, we received wither an indistinct or hypocritical reaction, as far as words were concerned.  But there were also actions: NATO's expansion to our borders, the creation of new deployment areas for missile defence in Europe and Asia - they decided to take cover from us under an 'umbrella' - deployment of military contingents, and not just near Russia's borders.  I would like to stress - in fact, this is well known - that no other country has so many military bases abroad as the United States.  There are hundreds of them - I want to emphasise this - hundreds of bases all over the world; the planet is covered with them, and one look at the map is enough to see this" [source].

"Finally, in December 2021, we officially submitted draft agreements on security guarantees to the USA and NATO,  In essence, all key, fundamental points were rejected.  After that it finally became clear that the go-ahead for the implementation of aggressive plans had been given and they were not going to stop.  The threat was growing by the day.  Judging by the information we received, there was no doubt that everything would be in place by February 2022 for launching yet another bloody punitive operation in Donbass.  Let me remind you that back in 2014, the Kiev regime sent its artillery, tanks and warplanes to fight in Donbass ... Those who plotted a new attack against Donetsk in the Donbass region, and against Lugansk understood that Crimea and Sevastopol would be the next target" [source].

"We are not at war with the people of Ukraine,  I have made that clear many times.  The people of Ukraine have become hostages of the Kiev regime and its Western handlers, who have in fact occupied that country in the political, military and economic sense and have been destroying Ukrainian industry for decades now as they plundered its natural resources.  This led to social degradation and an immeasurable increase in poverty and inequality.  Recruiting resources for military operations in these circumstances was easy.  Nobody was thinking about people, who were conditioned for slaughter and eventually became expendables.  It is a sad and dreadful things to say, but it is a fact ... The current Ukrainian regime is serving not national interests, but the interests of third countries.  The West is using Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia and a testing range" [source].

"During the 1990's Victoria Nuland worked for the State Department on Russia related issues ... The US meddled in Russian internal affairs in myriad ways ... deploying economic 'shock therapy' and causing widespread social despair.  Meanwhile, the U.S. reneged on promises to Soviet leader Gorbachev that NATO would not expand 'one inch' eastward.  Instead, NATO became an offensive pact, bombing Yugoslavia in violation of international law and then absorbing Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, the Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Albania, Croatia and more.  Coming into power in 2000, Putin clamped down on the oligarchs, restored order and started rebuilding the economy.  Oligarchs were forced to pay taxes and start investing in productive enterprises.  The economy and confidence were restored.  Over seven years, GDP went from $1300 billion (US dollars) to $2300 billion.  That is why Putin's public approval rating has been consistently high, ranging between 85% and a 'low' approval rating of 60%.  Most [Westerners] are unaware of these facts.  Instead, Putin and Russia are persistently demonized ... The demonization of Russia is also especially useful and profitable for the military industrial media complex" [source].

"Victoria Nuland has promoted a foreign policy of intervention through coups, proxy wars, aggression, and ongoing occupations.  The policy has been implemented with bloody and disastrous results in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine.  With consummate hypocrisy she accuses Russia of spreading misinformation in the US, while she openly seeks to put 'stress on Putin where he is vulnerable, including among his own citizens.'  She wants to 'establish permanent bases along NATO's eastern border and increase the pace and visibility of joint training exercises' ... There are hundreds of thousands of victims from the policies she has promoted ... Now Victoria Nuland wants to provoke, threaten and 'rollback' Russia.  A quick look at a map of US military bases shows who is threatening whom" [source].

"Before Russia's intervention in Ukraine, active duty soldier and former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said 'They actually want Russia to invade Ukraine.  Why would they?  Because ... it cements this cold war in place.  The military industrial complex is the one who benefits from this ... If they get Russia to invade Ukraine it locks in this new cold war, the military industrial complex starts to make a ton more money ... Who pays the price?  The American people ... the Ukrainian people ... the Russian people pay the price' ... US foreign policy has been consistent from Brzezinski to Madeline Albright, Hillary Clinton and on to Victoria Nuland.  The results are seen in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine.  As with Afghanistan, the US 'didn't push Russia to intervene' but 'knowingly increased the probability that they would.'  The purpose is the same in both cases: to use a pawn to undermine and potentially eliminate a rival" [source].

"Every event presented by our politicians and media is delivered divorced from its context and the processes that led to it; everything is presented as if it were completely unpredictable and irrational.  Yet what we are witnessing is so predictable that the analysts of the RAND Corporation had already predicted it for 2019 and were warning the West of the risks of its policy against Russia.  So it is we who have deliberately brought about this situation ... Our diplomats had eight years to enforce international humanitarian law in Ukraine.  They failed to do so, thereby creating the conditions for military intervention" [source].

NATO from Russia's Perspective:  "After the Soviet Union broke up, [the United States] began to revise the outcomes of World War II and to build an American-style world ruled by one master.  To do this, they began to rudely destroy the foundations of the international order laid down after WWII in order to cross out the legacy of the Yalta and Potsdam conferences.  Step by step, they proceeded to revise the existing international order, to dismantle security and arms control systems, and plotted and carried out a series of wars around the world.  To reiterate, all of that was done for the sole purpose of dismantling the post-WWII architecture of international relations.  This is not a figure of speech.  This is how it all unfolded in reality.  After the Soviet Union collapsed, they sought to perpetuate their global dominance regardless of the interests of modern Russia or other countries for that matter.  Sure enough, the international situation changed after 1945.  New centres of growth and influence have been formed and are rapidly expanding.  This is a natural and objective process that cannot be ignored.  But the United States trying to refashion the international order to suit exclusively its own needs and selfish interests is unacceptable.  Now, they are using NATO to give us signals, which, in fact, is an ultimatum whereby Russia should, no questions asked, implement everything that it agreed to, including the New START Treaty, whereas they will do as they please.  As if there is no connection between strategic offensive weapons and, say, the conflict in Ukraine or other hostile Western actions against our country.  As if there are no vociferous claims about them seeking to inflict a strategic defeat on us.  This is either the height of hypocrisy and cynicism, or the height of stupidity, but they are not idiots.  They are not stupid after all.  They want to inflict a strategic defeat on us and also to get to our nuclear sites" [source].

"[I]t looks more and more as though Ukrainians are almost incidental to the operation in the sense that they are there to impale themselves on the Russian army and die in great numbers, because the real goal of this entire thing is the destruction of the Russian state and Vladimir Putin" [source].

"Shortly after the US installed a TV Comedian as its client 'President' in Ukraine, Washington think tank RAND Corporation published 'Overextending and Unbalancing Russia: Assessing the Impact of Cost-Imposing Options' (24 April 2019).  These options included:

• Intensifying Ukraine's border dispute with Russia and giving it lethal armaments,

• Reposturing NATO fighters, bombers, troops, and tactical and nuclear weapons along the NAT/Russian border, and

• Interfering (via the CIA and USAID) in Russia's democratic processes to promote the overthrow of the Russian government.

Russia invaded Ukraine after seeking assurances that NATO (i.e., the US) would not implement this doctrine, and NATO's (i.e., the US's) refusal to offer such reassurance" [reader's comment at source].

"Russia has been promised time and time again that NATO would not move eastwards. They were promised not one inch east when they gave their blessing to the reunification of Germany. Every promise has been broken"  /  "It's funny that those who are usually so keen to self-denigrate and blame the West for all the ills of the world, when it comes to Russia and Putin choose to ignore our part in the development of the situation (NATO expansion, etc) and instead treat Putin as if he's some kind of figure of absolute evil.  Reflecting on it, I think what it is, is that to these types, Putin/Russia represents the ultimate 'white supremacy' threat"  /  "One of the things they hate about both Trump and Putin is that they are champions of the nation state.  Putin is only a threat to the globalist imperialists [readers' commen at source].

Peace Talks Under Donald Trump

"War is hell, but less so when you only fight in other people's countries.  Three years on and a million-plus dead later, the myth of Ukraine v Russia stands exposed as the struggle for rare-earth minerals it always was.  Trump surrogate JD Vance talks turkey to NATO's chickenhawks and suddenly everyone notices the American elephant in the room.  Rats are scattering from Kiev as the last Christians left alive in Reichsfuhrer Zelensky's rubble heap reflect that God moves in mysterious ways.  With a single speech, America's VP has rolled out a New European Order, and the socialist nutjobs who spent the last three years milking the Eastern Territories to death don't like it one bit" [source].

"Fascinating, the only take away from President Trump's speech yesterday in Miami, FL, is that he said Zelensky 'started the war.'  No mention today on any MSM outlet that nearly 2 million adult men have lost their lives, that Ukraine has been decimated, that the Ukraine and Europe have had three years to sit around the table with Russia to discuss peace.  Nope, none of that nonsense.  Just the one-liner President Trump made about the Ukraine being the one who started the proxy war.  The MSM-speak reminds me of something they did about four years ago - something to do with 'safe and effective.'  Fascinating.  Can we see where this is headed?  Trump = bad guy, Zelensky = angel.  Buckle up folks, President Trump has had enough of the Ukraine and Europe BS.  He simply won't tolerate it.  Thank goodness" [reader's comment at source].

"The US laid the foundations for this war by pumping billions of dollars into Ukraine from 1991 onwards, poisoning Ukraine against Russia.  It culminated in the UK coup of 2014.  The US is as much to blame as Ukraine for using them as a proxy"  /  "'Ukraine is not Trump's to give away'.  I think you'll find it is.  The US bought it a few years ago.  Zelensky trousered the money"  /  "Biden and the Filth may have led the charge with the cash for the meatgrinder, but it could not have started without the driving by the Nazis of Ukraine.  Trump is quite right - they have had three years to settle the conflict but have doubled down at every opportunity"  /  "There was no need at all for this bloody conflict"  /  "They needed a reason for their massive money-laundering schemes.  Deaths of innocents is of no consequence to the money-worshipping monsters" [readers' comments at source].

"The US and Russia can have as many talks as they like.  The Ukraine doesn't have to accept anything the US and Russia agree.  They can fight on if they like.  They can reach a peace settlement with Russia if they like.  With their own leverage of course"  /  "That is the trouble with being a proxy for the US, and as we have seen, a change in the administration can mean a change in the rules" [readers' comments at source].

"I would like a referendum of the Ukrainian people; how many of them now want this war to continue.  It's just an opportunity for the world's thugs, despots and thieves to thrive"  /  "I think everyone who supports a perpetual Slavic genocide in Ukraine on American money are freaking out because of Trump peace negotiations are inhuman monsters and genocidal warmongers and should all be sent to die in Ukraine to be consistent with their own warmongering.  Maybe Starmer supporters would go to fight in Ukraine THEMSELVES rather than endlessly b******* about it?  Just a thought" [readers' comments at source].

Peace Talks: The Oval Office Debacle

"'You don't have the cards right now' - 'I'm not playing cards, Mr President' - 'Oh, you're playing cards; you're gambling with the lives of millions of people' " [President Donald Trump and Ukrainian Leader Volodymyr Zelensky, 28th February 2025].

"Come back when you're ready for peace" [Donald Trump to Volodymyr Zelensky, 28th February 2025].

"If the Oval Office dustup offends people who want this war to continue indefinitely, possibly going nuclear, then by all means be outraged.  But if you want to end this lost war utterly [which is] destroying Ukraine [simply] so [that the] US can weaken Russia, then join the peace community in supporting Trump's peace initiative" [source].

"Before Zelensky got owned by Trump and Vance, he met with major warmongers in the US government.  Everyone in this room should be primaried or fired.  They're what's wrong with America" [Tweet (X), Paul A. Szypula @bubblebathgirl, 01 March 2025].

"I'm so relieved after watching the whole discussion here and here, I had just seen the clip showing Trump and Vance with raised voices, talking over Zelensky.  Now it all makes sense"  /  "Zelensky knew he was not going to sign it before the conversation even started"  /  "It was written all over Zelensky's face, so much that it was obvious this was going to fall apart.  The unusual thing is that we got to witness it in real time"  /  "Vance was watching Zelensky where Trump couldn't, and caught what was happening ... I think he needed to signal to Trump that Zelensky could no longer be '[patted on the back' to go through with it, and his speaking up was key in this conversation ... Trump keyed in on what he already had a hunch was happening.  So when [Zelensky] turned around to start pulling 'power' with JD, crossing his arms, Trump, [said] no.  I found this a masterful moment between a fantastic President and his protegé.  They were both protecting each other AND the offices they had vowed to hold.  Anyone who saw this as anything but Zelensky as a bad actor is delusional" [viewers' comments at source].

"Great powers, including the US, pursue an imperial and not ethical foreign policy.  Trump's art of the deal always has been to ask for everything, judge the point at which the other party has made his final offer and then take what he can get.  Mix and match the two sentences, and we can better understand what Trump is doing on Ukraine.  It is not for the President of Ukraine to lecture the US President, Vice President and Secretary of State on their burden of a globe-spanning train of interests and values, nor where each one should be ranked in the hierarchy of foreign and defence policy goals.  Especially in front of the trolling TV cameras.  Given his know volatility, Trump managed to temper his visibly growing irritability for quite some time" [source].

"Ukraine and NATO - meaning the Biden administration in Washington as well as the European powers - have lacked any discernible strategy for either victory or peace.  Nor have they articulated an exit strategy from the grinding and mutually hurting stalemate.  As Marco Rubio said on a subsequent appearance on ABC News's This Week ... 'Wait and see after "another year of death" is not a plan.'  Hence Trump's message to Zelensky on his Truth Social platform after the meeting collapsed into acrimony: 'Come back when you're ready for peace' " [source].
 

"Trump, who in his first term famously became the first President in office in recent memory not to begin a new war, is tying to put a halt to the meat grinder of war.  [He] made it clear during his unscripted sprat at Zelensky that he takes offence at being portrayed as a Putin stooge.  He sees himself rather as a peacemaker and dealmaker in the middle of a war that has the potential to trigger a third world war.  He took issue with Zelensky's demands for the US to condemn Putin as the warmongering aggressor with the caustic comment that he couldn't 'say really terrible things about Putin and then say, "Hi Vladimir, how are we doing on the deal?"' ... The conflict resolution literature has long noted that mediators should avoid public scoldings of any conflict party in order to retain access to the ears of all" [source].

"NBC reports that Rubio had received assurances that Zelensky was ready to sign [the rare-earth minerals agreement], and that he, Rubio, had told Trump this.  Two folders containing the agreements were prepared ready for joint signature in front of the media, followed by brief speeches by each from the podia, then lunch.  But as the meeting unfolded, to his embarrassment, Rubio realised he'd been played, and Trump and Vance were taken by surprise.  Zelensky wanted to argue the security guarantees in front of the media.  As Trump said, it made great television, but didn't work out well for the romper-suited one"  /  "Indeed, the New York Post is reporting that Zelensky met with Democrats hours before the Oval Office debacle, who urged him to reject the mineral deal, in an attempt to sabotage Trump's attempt at peacemaking" [readers' comments at source].

"Only a few media reports have mentioned the crucial fact that when the official US negotiator went to Kiev a few weeks ago with the agreement for Zelensky to sign, Zelensky treated the negotiator with contempt, refused to even invite him to sit down for their planned discussion, refused to sign the agreement, and then basically kicked him out.  Zelensky then demanded to meet the US President in person in order to sign the agreement that had already been painstakingly negotiated by US and Ukrainian diplomatic officials, and which Zelensky had already agreed to sign, as Marc Rubio later explained.  But then Zelensky tried his usual tactics which backfired in a spectacular manner" [reader's comment at source].

"The spat began when Zelensky called Putin a terrorist and began a rant, distorting events since 2014 to which JD Vance rightly objected.  What caused the Ukraine war is, therefore, highly relevant to the peace talks ... The official western position, repeatedly peddled by the MSM, is that Valdimir Putin is wholly responsible for the war.  He woke up one morning and decided to conquer Ukraine and make it part of a greater Russian Reich and then re-take the rest of Eastern Europe, and, they say, Western Europe after that.  Putin, they claim, is a warmongering threat to the world and can only be dealt with by force.  But that is a load of old codswallop.  My view, admittedly a minority one, is that the UK and its allies provoked the war.  Yes, Russia invaded Ukraine, but we need to ask why.  The answer is the decision to bring Ukraine into NATO and the EU, followed by the CIA promoting a revolution in Ukraine and a vicious assault in Russian eastern Ukraine.  To deal with this threat Russia launched a preventive war on 24 February 2022.  Both Donald Trump and Nigel Farage had previously agreed, saying that NATO expansion was the driving force behind the conflict.  Despite all the propaganda there is no evidence that Putin wanted to conquer Ukraine and incorporate it into Russia. None" [source].

"The DA of Kiev is full of drugs and even fuller of himself.  He forgot that Trump&Vance is to Biden&Blinken what a pit pit bull terrier is to a dead sheep.  One suspects that part of the put-down by Trump relates to the green t-shirt refusing to help Trump to investigate Biden's son's shenanigans in Ukraine; it was a part of the impeachment process, painful for Trump.  He should have been more rough to order the comic to leave the room.  In Ukraine, meanwhile, the TV channel controlled by the green t-shirt has made some more than disparaging remarks about Trump" [reader's comment at source].

"A beautiful moment to see [Zelensky's] mask torn off his face [at the Oval Office].  He became so smug over the last few years being treated like a demigod wherever he went" [reader's comment at source].

"Zelensky doesn't want the war to end.  [At the Oval Office meeting] he kept trying to get Trump to commit to US boots on the ground [as] 'peace keepers'.  But he said many times the ceasefire would do no good.  It looks like a set-up to me now I've seen clips of the previous meeting Zelensky had with other US politicians who obviously want the war to continue because it would damage Trump.  Zelensky blossomed like a flower under their skilful ego massaging!" [readers' comments at source].

"Zelensky had agreed to, then flipped on the mineral rights plan twice already ... After watching hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars vanish into one of the most corrupt countries on earth with zero insight, it was a breath of fresh air to see our newly elected leaders finally stand up and say enough ... If it weren't for the US endlessly bankrolling this absurd conflict, it would have been over in two weeks.  Instead, the inevitable has been pointlessly dragged out for years, fueling suspicions that this isn't about 'democracy' at all - but rather a massive money-laundering scheme designed to make the rich even richer ... Zelensky's behavior in the Oval Office made it clear - he wants war, and he wants more US money.  Which is precisely why President Trump and VP JD Vance threw him out of the White House, telling him to come back when he's actually serious about peace" [source].

"President Trump and VP JD Vance walked into the White House and actually did what real leaders do: they put America first and demanded accountability.  Zelensky thought he could waltz in, play politics, and strong-arm Trump for more cash, but instead, he got a reality check.  The free ride is over, and if he truly cares about his country, he'll take the deal, embrace peace, and finally put an end to this pointless bloodshed" [source].

Ukraine 'Alone', Zelensky?  Really?

"Many Polish are hurt by Zelensky's words that Ukraine has been alone since the start of the war.  We took millions of Ukrainians into our homes, gave them medical care, free transportation, free education for their children, prioritized them before us.  We sent them food and clothes, weapons, planes, tanks and so on.  At no cost to Ukrainians.  While the crime rate [in Poland] skyrocketed, Ukrainian gangs roam through Poland, murder people, steal, kidnap, our prisons are over the capacity.  This is so ungrateful and selfish by Zelensky.  The world should know what this war is causing to other countries in Europe" [viewer's comment at source].

"I'm in Ireland and we are suffering because of this war; there are thousands of Ukrainians here who have been given so much and they just demand more and more.  So sick of it"  /  "You're the first person I've seen in the media to point out that Zelensky said, 'We've been alone.'  That was the first thing I noticed.  The entitlement in that statement - to completely overlook the immense support from the U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia, Turkey, and so many others.  Alone?  Seriously?" [viewers' comments at source].

"Every Ukrainian I've worked with wants to be part of the EU and look West not East. Why should they not be allowed to make that choice?"  /  "The Ukraine is free to join the EU if it wants and Russia has no objections.  It's the NATO membership that is the red line for Russia.  As far as Ukrainians wanting to be EU members most of them are now living in the EU on welfare"  /  "A good few of them live in my neck of the woods and they are never happy for more than five days with their 'sponsors' who give them house room.  Next they want a house, a car, more money and it goes on and on.  I have seen it.  frankly I am sick of it.  But how can one say anything in a country so BS-up with ideas of the plucky little Ukraine?"  /  "From my own knowledge of Ukraine the majority of those who left the country were in no danger but took advantage of the West's generosity" [readers' comments at source].

'Democracy', Zelensky?  Really?

"Anybody else find it ironic that Zelensky talks democracy, while he has suspended elections, shut down opposition parties, and jailed opposition politicians?  It also bothers me that he talks about Russia jailing clergy, while he has also shut down churches and jailed clergy.  From what I've been able to learn ... Ukraine is also not pure in their handling of rules to warfare, like the Geneva and Hague Conventions.  Zelensky talks out of both sides of his face and I don't trust him at all ... Re: his outfit that he wore to the White House ... Zelensky is not living in a trench. He can look like a head of state in a suit if he wasn't playing a role with his hand out" [viewer's comment at source].

Peace Talks: EU / UK

"It was the West - first and foremost the EU and the UK - that forced Zelensky to withdraw from the negotiations, as otherwise he would no longer have received Western aid" [source].
 

"By siding with Zelensky over Trump, the 'allies' are signalling that they're willing to do to the forty-seventh president what the Deep State did to the forty-fifth.  That's unlikely to work out well for them" [source].

"We are watching Europe and the UK become an irrelevance.  Trump wants peace and business.  Putin wants safe and secure borders between Russia and the NATO countries.  Apparently European politicians have no historical understanding about what Ukraine is and was - it was never an independent country, not ever.  It became independent simply because Krushchev made it a semi-autonomous region, and then, when the USSR collapsed, it just announced it was a proper country.  Which the Russians were ok with provided it stayed independent of western Europe.  It spent its time being corrupt (the country of buy-a-baby, buy-a-wife, buy-a-prostitute, buy-a-biolab, buy-a-ton-of-drugs, buy-a-weapon) and wouldn't recognise democracy if it stood up and punched it in the face!  If NATO and the USA and the EU had left it alone, Russia would have scolded what it considers to be a little brother about its poor treatment of ethnic Russians, probably annexed the Donbass and Crimea, and it would be all over.  But there's money to be made from war, and there's glory to be gained from your cronies if someone refers to you as Churchillian, and the political elite just have to have a baddie to scare their populations with.  Well, I really hope Trump gives Macron and Starmer a right telling-off and I hope he sorts things out with Putin, and the slaughtering can stop, but I think we Europeans are signing ourselves into irrelevance and oblivion - weak countries full of murdering jihadists, 'mentally ill' natives, no money, no industry, no futures" [reader's comment at source].

"The leaders of Europe are shocked - shocked! - that Trump would treat a 'hero' like Zelensky so shabbily, and will gladly and pay to guarantee Ukraine's security.  Starmer has even offered to put British boots on the ground and planes in the air to secure a ceasefire.  The jingoism is at fever pitch, with the usual warmongers and reality-deniers salivating at the idea of young men who don't know each other shooting each other for no reason ... Predictably, all the 'anti-billionaire', 'save the planet', 'eat the rich' pretend liberals are cheering it on.  Because they don't really care about the billionaires who own Boeing or Lockheed Martin raking in their tax revenues, they don't really care about the impact of war on the environment, and they don't really care about the corrupt rich making bank on both sides of the supposed conflict.  They are just Pavlov's Pundits, conditioned to disapprove of everything Donald Trump says he wants just because he says he wants it.  Even peace" [source].

"We are the ones trapped in the past, not Russia.  Russia and Putin when historical causes are discussed at least know their own history ... we apply the Cold War, again and again, as if nothing has changed and more particularly our power and their weakness were both fixed, just like our Goodness and their Evil.  The fact that our leaders are considerably less good than they used to be, our causes considerably muddier, and our reach and power as reduced as Russia's has been restored under Putin, escapes us.  But it doesn't escape the Russians.  What they share in common with Trump, MAGA and blue collar Americans who would rather fix the problems at home is not evil, as European and British snobs and leaders would suggest, but realism.  And that realism can see what a tottering mess Western Europe really is" [source].

"What can Britain or Europe be, if they keep on this path, with our current masters?  If they continue as the last people in Earth still following the mainstream media and dancing to the Globalist command?  When Americans see clearly, and every other nation outside of our Unfree Free World knows real strength from false pretence, when others on all sides pursue their own sane interests?  What can they be in a multipolar future except what their sclerotic bureaucracies train them to be: the masters of decline, the irrelevant custodians of failed utopia, the block of blockheads.  Europe and the UK are determined to be the world's biggest losers" [source].

"These people are talking about:

• Prolonging a devastating war indefinitely when a million people have already died,

• Introducing conscription in nations where they have long insisted that there is nothing about that nation worth defending or fighting for,

• Moving putative armed forces to Ukraine when these forces have been so relentlessly reduced for so many years that they couldn't even make any difference anyway,

• Expending vast resources on these foreign wars while doing nothing about their own children being raped and murdered by the Islamic hordes they have all welcomed in and are in political alliance with,

• Doing nothing to protect their own borders and citizens from Third World invaders of all kinds,

• Criminalising thought and common sense on these topics, putting dissenters in prison for thought crimes, and enacting censorship regimes against all crriticism ...

They are brainwashed, soy-addled Embarrassing Dads behaving more like teenage girls than actual leaders ... If the Muslim rape gangs, crime, tyranny, relentless decline and relentless absurdity don't tell you what our leaders are, then surely a bunch of middle-aged soy-boys posing with their suit jackets half off as a 'defiant gesture' to Putin and Trump should.  These are not serious people.  They are hired soulless clowns paid to be the public face of your destruction" [source].

The United Kingdom

"Responding to Starmer's plan to send British 'peacemaking' troops to Ukraine, one commenter said, 'Great idea, now where are the troops coming from?  Do they have a 'troops money tree'?  We can't even defend ourselves, let alone Ukraine.  The man is a top candidate for Plank of the Year"  /  "Alan Hart writing for GB News really put the UK troops question into perspective, when he pointed out that: 'In the last two years, 77,000 migrants entered Britain illegally via the Channel (mostly hostile alien men of military age).  That's 3,000 more people than are in the entire British Army ... Britain's Army is projected to fall below 70,000 members this year, the smallest since the Napoleonic era, meaning the entire British Army could fit into Wembly with 20,000 seats to spare.'  Since the Russian Army has 1,200,000 troops, Starmer's suggestion is rather like a British Robin squaring up to a Russian Bear" [readers' comments at source].

"Now Starmer has already signed an outrageous 100-year pact with Zelensky, promising to shackle British taxpayers with supporting Ukraine for the next century, violating British law stipulating that Parliament shall pass no law binding a future Parliament" [reader's comment at source].
 

"The British people are already footing the bill for the vainglorious aspirations of its warmongering UK governments.  Three billion pounds a year in military assistance is being sent to Ukraine even before 'official' British boots are on the ground (many UK military personnel are already there as 'advisors').  And the increase in military spending projected by Starmer over the next decade cannot possibly be funded without massive cuts to public services and other state investments.  That is the least the bond market would demand for continuing to purchase government debt.  The British people are funding the Ukrainian Banderites, neo-Nazis, paramilitaries and ultranationalists, at the the expense of its own tax payers, pensioners and the vulnerable when, if the facts were known, Russia were totally 'justified' in the actions they have taken against Ukraine" [reader's comment at source].

"The Black Belt Barrister is running a poll on his channel asking his viewers if they agree with Starmer's assertion that Zelensky has 'full backing across the UK'.  With 35k votes cast the result is Yes - 15%, No - 85%" [reader's comment at source].

"Trump is making the right call on all of this and the UK shouldn't take on yet more debt to throw more monies at Ukraine (irrespective of where that ends up).  If WW3 is averted it won't be by the actions of clowns like Starmer et al" [reader's comment at source].

"What we do know is that whatever 'peace', if any, emerges from Starmer's ambitious if woozily unfocused weekend pronouncements will be far worse for Ukraine (certainly in terms of lost territory) than the deal on the table three years ago in Istanbul - until Johnson flew into Kiev and told Z, 'Don't even think about it.'  So a lot of Ukrainians will have died... for what?" [source].

"Advisors to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky provided the details of then-Prime Minster Boris Johnson's April 9 [2022] visit to Kyiv that were published in Ukrayinska Pravda on May 5, 2022.  They said that Johnson had delivered two messages.  The first was that Putin and Russia 'should be pressured, not negotiated with.'  The second was that, even if Ukraine completed an agreement with Russia, the 'collective West', whom Johnson claimed to represent, would take no part in it" [source].

"Zelensky was a puppet managed by the West and was under the control of British intelligence.  This is evidenced by the fact that in the spring of 2022, Zelensky annulled the Istanbul Peace Accords on the directive of then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, even though he had a chance to stop the war that would have prevented Ukraine from losing more territory and preserved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.  However, he decided to continue to fight on the promise that billions of dollars would flow endlessly, a prospect that Zelensky could not resist as an opportunity to further enrich himself and those closest to him" [source].

"Less than a week after the Russian assaults began, Zelensky was compelled to dispatch a delegation to Gomel, Belarus, to begin negotiations designed to bring the conflict to an end.  These negotiations eventually moved to Turkey where, in late March, the two sides had hammered out a comprehensive peace agreement, the so-called 'Istanbul Communique', which would have brought the conflict to an end on terms which, in retrospect, were extremely favorable to Ukraine.  But Zelensky's new western production had decided that the pilot of a Russian-Ukraine conflict was too profitable not to be converted into a series, and so Boris Johnson the PM of the UK, flew to Kiev and convinced the actor-turned-president that the show must go on. And go on it did" [source].

The European Union

"European countries can do what they want.  They can send troops.  They can try to have peace talks with Russia.  With their own leverage of course.  The problem the European establishment has is that for decades it has carried itself around the world using the US's military leverage and backing.  That is now over.  Europe, and the Ukraine, have been put on notice that they can no longer act as if the US's power and leverage is theirs.  And of course, that offends them.  And in some cases it makes them cry"  /  "Can see a point where [Trump] will take US out of NATO if EU/UK try to continue supporting and even fighting for Ukraine under the NATO name"  /  "Europe is terrified of being left to its own devices.  And the reaction so far is to act disgusted and superior, using that same admonishing tone that Europe has always had towards the US when [the US] didn't seem to be doing things the way [Europe] likes"  /  "Well, one way or another we are about to find out exactly how much power European countries have without the blank cheque backing of the UK"  /  "I am puzzled how they can 'hold Russia to account' when they have been trying, and abjectly failing, to do that for the last three years.  I don't think anyone thinks that Ukraine is worth a nuclear holocaust for" [readers' comments at source].
 

Switzerland:  "The statements of our Ambassador in Kiev regarding the idea of negotiations to resolve the conflict in Ukraine raise several problems.  The first is that he looks at the conflict like a football game where you have to go into extra time to have better conditions for negotiations.  This could be understood if it were a game, but it means underestimating the human cost of these extensions.  The second is that, as he quite rightly says, the decision to negotiate 'lies with the Ukrainians'.  The problem now is that we have prevented Zelensky from doing so at least three times: In February, March and August (quite apart from failing ever to help him to implement his manifesto of 2019), by pressuring him to drop his proposals ... Of course, our public opinion - already flagging from the sanctions - would reject the kind of succour we are giving to Ukraine if it knew that it was fostering an unnecessary prolongation of the conflict" [source].

Peace Talks: Ukraine / Zelensky

Under Donald Trump

"Ukraine are the 4th most corrupt nation on earth and they'll eat whatever crumbs they're offered"  /  "Gave plenty of scope for Hunter Biden to get his nose in the trough for sure"  /  "Ah, yes, Ukraine, one of the most corrupt countries in the world, aided and abetted by NATO, EU, UK, and no, Zelensky doesn't want the 'war' to stop, he's making far too much money out of it, all included in the WEF's plan"  /  "Like many pimps, [Zelensky] is rich and has many properties over the world including a nice one in Italy.  Would be interesting to know how he became so rich in such a basket-case of a country"  /  "'I can't sell our state.'  I seem to remember you pimping it out to the likes of Blackrock, JP Morgan, etc.  They are not countries but corporations, but fit the definition of state fascism"  /  "Can Zel Boy explain his finances and property portfolio?  Zel Boy could have sold choco-chip ice cream to President Biden for $200b.  Trump had him sussed in 10 minutes" [readers' comments at source].

"[Trump]'s not entirely wrong.  If Ukraine hadn't behaved like a whore, then this wouldn't have happened.  But they took the money and overthrew Janovich, facilitated Biden's crack-adled son, allowed BioLabs to be built across [their] territory, allowed Zelensky who is basically a CIA stooge to be put in power, and allowed NATO to train up their troops.  I wouldn't have done anything different if I was Russia" [readers' comments at source].

"Zelensky needs to realise that he has reached the end of the road.  If he doesn't stop throwing insignificant tantrums and learn to do as he is told he will be in dead men's shoes and literally"  /  "Zelensky is a dictator.  What else do you call someone who can force 30,000 soldiers through the Russian's dragon teeth defenses, to their predictable deaths, just so he can have 'spring offensive' optics and keep NATO happy for their summit?" [readers' comments at source].

"I feel pity for Zelensky.  His mind is weak and debilitated.  I doubt he had any idea what he was getting into when he was tapped for the job of becoming a puppet president ... he's the front face of a large group of warmongers who are in fact responsible for [the] destruction of Ukraine, much of Europe, West Asia, Africa, and have caused great damage to Russia.  Zelensky and his handlers will not end well" [reader's comment at source].

Under Joe Biden

"And Volodymyr Zelensky is completely rejecting the idea of negotiating a peace deal with Vladimir Putin: '...Speaking on Friday, he said he would not negotiate with Putin - even though he was prepared to speak to him before the war started: "It is not the same man. There is nobody to talk to there", he said.'  I think that Zelensky would see things quite differently if he was one of the men that was being forced into the meat grinder in eastern Ukraine.  According to a former U.S. marine that is fighting there, the 'average life expectancy of a front-line soldier in eastern Ukraine is just four hours' ... It is a really, really horrible war.  But those that are far from the front lines can afford to talk about how glorious the war is" [source].

"'All opposition figures previously promoting the peaceful resolution of conflict with Russia have either fled or in prison,' says Kotsaba.  'Any thought about peace talks is perceived as playing for Putin, as the work of enemy agents'" [source].

"In Ukraine, with the blessing of the western countries, those who are in favor of a negotiation have been eliminated.  This is the case of Denis Kireyev, one of the Ukrainian negotiators, assassinated on March 5 [2022] by the Ukrainian secret service (SBU) because he was too favorable to Russia and considered a traitor.  The same fate befell Dmitry Demyanenko, former deputy head of the SBU's main directorate for Kiev and its region, who was assassinated on March 10 because he was too favorable to an agreement with Russia - he was shot by the Mirotvorets ('Peacemaker') militia.  This militia is associated with the Mirotvorets website, which lists the 'enemies of Ukraine', with their personal data, addresses and telephone numbers, so that they can be harassed or even eliminated; a practice that is punishable in many countries, but not in the Ukraine.  The UN and some European countries have demanded the closure of this site - but that demand was refused by the Rada (Ukrainian parliament)" [source].

Peace Talks: Russia

"What the Russians were underestimating was not Ukraine, but the West's willingness to see conflict.  It then dawned on them that the West was not concerned with Ukraine but with the collapse of Russia, and that it would do anything to prevent Ukraine from engaging in negotiations ... The Russians know that one way or another, this conflict is going to end at the negotiating table.  Their strategy to achieve this is hitting the country's energy infrastructure: to create pressure in the country for a negotiation process for one thing, but equally to show the West that prolonging the war - especially by supplying weapons - will cost it unbearably dear in the future" [source].

"On 24 February [2022], Russia's aims were limited and Vladimir Putin probably assumed that his operation would get Ukraine to negotiate and end matters quickly.  His calculation worked out, because as soon as 25 February, Zelensky was calling for talks to commence, which did begin on the border with Belarus.  It was the West that quickly stymied this process.  In late March 2022, it was the same scenario again: the Russians were ready to discuss Zelensky's proposals and had withdrawn their troops from the north of the country as a sign of goodwill.  In early April, however, the West urged Zelensky to withdraw his proposals.  The idea that Russia was pursuing the goal of 'taking over' and 'destroying' Ukraine originated from the West, not from Russia; but it served to short-circuit any Ukrainian attempts to surmount the crisis" [source].
 

"Russia does not want to destroy Ukraine, but to push it towards negotiations - not a negotiation with NATO, but with Ukraine, because its goal is to eliminate the direct threat to the Russian-speaking population in the Donbas.  Vladimir Putin has said this from the start.  Today, however, this aim also embraces the four oblasts in the south of the country that have joined the Russian federation.  Russia can achieve its goals in two ways: diplomatically and through negotiations, or by force, by destroying the Ukrainian military potential.  Russia has taken note that the West has not only been unwilling to implement the negotiated settlement for eight years but is even trying to prevent any negotiations today.  Since the end of February, the West has sabotaged Ukraine's various attempts to negotiate, by keeping it stocked with weapons and urging it to continue fighting.  For the West is not even seeking a Ukrainian victory, but a regime change in Russia.  That, by the way, is also the reason why Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree forbidding to negotiate with Russia as long as Vladimir Putin is in office" [source].

"Many Western commentators were surprised that the Russians continued to seek a negotiated solution while conducting military operations.  The explanation lies in the Russian strategic outlook since the Soviet era.  For the West, war begins when politics ends.  However, the Russian approach follows a Clausewitzian inspiration: war is the continuity of politics and one can move fluidly from one to the other, even during combat.  This allows one to create pressure on the adversary and push him to negotiate" [source].

"Russia doesn't want control of Ukraine.  There was a peace deal on the table three years ago which would have left Ukraine untouched, and no soldiers would have died, but the village idiot Z went for war" [reader's comment at source].

"Russia has repeatedly said it won't agree to NATO forces being based in Ukraine under any guise:  'We explained today that the appearance of armed forces from the same NATO countries, but under a false flag, under the flag of the EU or under national flags, does not change anything in this regard. Of course this is unacceptable to us', Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on February 18 [2025]" [quoted at source].

Peace Talks: The Media

"The U.S. media keep repeating the narrative that Russia will never negotiate in good faith, and it has hidden from the public the fruitful negotiations that began soon after the Russian invasion but were quashed by the U.S. and Britain.  Few outlets reported the recent revelations by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett about the ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey that he helped to mediate in March 2022.  Bennett said explicitly that the West 'blocked' or 'stopped' (depending on the translation) the negotiations ... Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, one of the other mediators, told CNN Turk after a NATO foreign ministers' meeting, 'There are countries within NATO who want the war to continue... They want Russia to become weaker.'  The Western corporate media has generally only weighed in on these early negotiations to cast doubt on this story or smear any who repeat it as Putin apologists, despite multiple-source confirmation by Ukrainian officials, Turkish diplomats and now the former Israeli prime minister" [source].

"It is very striking that the manipulation of public opinion in this country [UK], which we've seen so successfully over Covid, still seems to be working.  The Press is on board, and people are responding.  I think the support for the war though is because it's a very, very strange sort of war: none of our people are dying, we're not seeing the people are who dying, we're not seeing anything; we're just seeing the 'Putin's little Hitler, madman Putin, and Ukraine is going to win, plucky Ukraine is going to win' narratives from the BBC, and that's really all the information most people have to go on.  They're not seeing anything that is remotely realistic; they're not seeing anything that puts the conflict in context, and the BBC and the MSM are quite content that that's going to continue to be the case" [source].

"The UK media are pushing the outrageous lie that just a little more money and a little more weaponry will see the Russian army on the brink of collapse and finally melt away.  The average person in the UK remains as gullible as ever it seems"  /  "I suspect the people who support the European/British stance on the Ukraine have been lulled by the corrupt establishment and their media lackies into believing that a game of chess between Russia and the Ukraine is in progress and so, with the highly suspect overview provided by the MSM, they take more pleasure in discussing the possible moves in the game rather than having any regard for the experience of the soldiers involved ... that ongoing experience of the soldier in the field, and of the suffering, innocent civilians - that barbarism - is what I believe anyone still having any remaining attachment at all to Christianity want to put a stop to, hence my siding with whatever solution President Trump might come up with in that direction" [readers' comments at source].

"NATO became the root cause of the war between Ukraine and Russia.  It's that critically important point that is lost on the U.S. [and UK] mainstream media.  For them [and for their viewers/readers], the war began at the moment that Russia invaded Ukraine.  Nothing that preceded that invasion matters to the mainstream media.  What came before the invasion is simply considered irrelevant.  But it's not irrelevant, especially because it might well prove to be an insurmountable obstacle to a lasting peace between Ukraine and Russia" [source].

MSM Reports of the Oval Office Debacle

"The MSM are careful not to reply towards the end of the meeting where Trump reminds the world what was done to him and Putin. Funny that"  /  "Of course not. Or any of the preceding 30+ minutes of the meeting where Zelensky repeatedly said a ceasefire wasn't possible"  /  "Its Covid propaganda all over again.  Appalling.  Our useless idiots are all for continuing the war, the death and destruction, and piling on the one man who wants to stop it"  /  "It's STILL amazing (and depressing) that people are still swallowing all the BBC tripe without doing any researching, or even reading alternative views"  /  "Did you watch the whole meeting?  How gracious Trump was?  That he said he liked Zelenskyy's costume? The media hasn't shown that bit.  Or how unfriendly Zelenskyy was through the whole meeting, repeatedly saying there'd be no ceasefire, the whole reason for the meeting in the first place"  /  "Zelensky threw the whole negotiated deal back in [Trump's] face" [readers' comments at source].

"What I find most frustrating is the willingness of many quite sensible people (or at last I thought) who feel sorry for Zelensky and Ukraine, believing everything they and the MSM say"  /  "There are many who simply accept what they are fed by the MSM.  Since the MSM is not noted for reporting with unbiased veracity, those who foolishly lap up their propaganda are disadvantaged" [readers' comments at source].

"All the MSM blowhards calling Trump out for talking to Putin and cutting Z down to size so that he can embrace reality is just so much hot air.  The current USA govt wants peace.  The last lot were happy to see foreigners die on the battlefield and sell loads of arms.  Trump and the GOP want an end to it asap.  The BBC and left-wing US, UK, EU media still side with the old regime" [reader's comment at source].

"This is what everybody wants you to think about.  It has flooded the news and social media world like nothing has since the early days of Covid.  And, not since those early Covid days, has the truth/coverage ratio been so low.  Even more so than most news, no reality makes it into the discourse, rather there is simply an endless exchange of one set of myths banging against another ... When the media gets this hysterical, everything is on the table" [source].

Peace Talks Under Joe Biden

"We expect the US will make every effort to prolong the bloodshed and war, to bog down the Russian army and prevent a peaceful settlement.  The US goal is just what Joe Biden said: regime change in Moscow.  Like Afghanistan, Ukraine is just a pawn on the chessboard" [source].

"Sadly, a conflict with Russia is apparently not enough, and so the Biden administration is now relentlessly provoking the Chinese ... Most [Westerners] have absolutely no idea that we are literally on the verge of a war with China ... Why does the Biden administration see the need to endlessly provoke China at a moment like this?  It is madness.  We could easily find ourselves involved in conflicts with both Russia and China at the same time ... Unfortunately, we have a hothead in the White House that is in an advanced stage of mental decline.  And he is surrounded by irrational warmongers such as Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland.  They do not want peace ... This is not a game.  At some point, peace talks may become impossible.  So if we have an opportunity to talk now, we should grab it.  But instead, our leaders have made it abundantly clear that they aren't even interested in considering China's peace plan" [source].

"Objective analyses of the war in Ukraine are hard to come by through the thick fog of war propaganda.  But we should pay attention when a series of senior Western military leaders, active and retired, make urgent calls for diplomacy to reopen peace negotiations, and warn that prolonging and escalating the war is risking a full-scale war between Russia and the U.S. that could escalate into nuclear war ... Gen. Erich Vad, who was German Chancellor Angela Merkel's senior military advisor for seven years ... asked of Biden ... What are the U.S. and NATO's real war aims? 'Do you want to achieve a willingness to negotiate with the deliveries of the tanks? Do you want to reconquer Donbas or Crimea? Or do you want to defeat Russia completely?' asked Vad ... American Chief of Staff Mark Milley (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) ... said that Ukraine's military victory is not to be expected and that negotiations are the only possible way.  Anything else is a senseless waste of human life" [source].

"As Western officials clamor for a long and bloody war against Russia while shirking efforts at negotiation, progressive anti-war voices in Congress like Rep. Ro Khanna, who once railed against the U.S. sponsorship of neo-Nazism in Ukraine, are now cheerleading massive arms transfers to Kiev" [source].

"If Zelensky had been allowed to negotiate at the end of February 2022, a solution similar to the situation obtaining on 24 February would probably have been reached, with guarantees of Ukraine's neutrality and for the security of the Donbas.  This, by the way, was the content of Zelensky's proposal in March, and the Russians were ready to discuss it.  But by preventing these negotiations, Russia was given leeway to reshape its operational and thus its strategic goals.  Moreover, it let Moscow suss out that the decision-making centre is not in Kiev or Brussels, but in Washington.  Thus, Russia had not attacked Ukraine's energy infrastructure up until then, but the West's determination to prolong the conflict prompted it to increase the pressure.  Now this pressure is being directed not only against Ukraine, but also - and above all - against the West, which is committed to getting Ukraine fighting fit again.  This is turning into a colossal burden for Europe.  Today, we can see that the voices calling for negotiations are coming from the military and their intelligence services (especially the American ones).  Unlike our (European) diplomats, they have fully grasped that Ukraine will not succeed in liberating the territories occupied by Russia and that it is necessary to engage in dialogue ... The problem is that while the military is trying to calm the situation, the politicians are trying to escalate it" [source].

"Biden's sour attitude toward the Chinese peace framework hardly comes as a surprise.  After all, even former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett candidly acknowledged in a five-hour interview on YouTube that it was the West that last March [2022] blocked a near-peace deal he had mediated between Ukraine and Russia.  Why did the US block a peace deal?  Why won't President Biden provide a serious response to the Chinese peace plan, let alone engage the Chinese at a negotiating table?  President Biden and his coterie of neo-conservatives, among them Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, have no interest in peace if it means the US concedes hegemonic power to a multi-polar world untethered from the all-mighty dollar" [source].

"China's call for a peaceful solution stands in stark contrast to US warmongering this past year, when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, a former Raytheon board member, said the US aims to weaken Russia, presumably for regime change - a strategy that failed miserably in Afghanistan where a near 20-year US occupation left the country broke and starving" [source].

"The bottom line is that Biden's regime funneled endless taxpayer dollars into Ukraine without a single effort to broker peace - not one.  All he did was sign a blank check for war" [source].

Anti-War Sentiments and Protests

"At the end of the day, most people who aren't profiting from this war or brainwashed by the propaganda media just want peace.  They want a compromise between Russia and Ukrinae, not an endless conflict that drains resources and lives" [source].

Germany

"Activists picket near the Ramstein airbase in Germany, headquarters for the Unites Sates Air Forces in Europe - Air Forces Africa and also for NATO Allied Air Command.  They protest against further arms supplies to Ukraine and demand peace talks"  /  "Public opinion is shifting fast in Germany and recent polls show over half in Germany oppose arming Ukraine further.  The protests are now large enough that they cannot be hidden...  over 50,000 show up at anti-war rally in Berlin..." [source].

Italy

"Anti-NATO protests are hitting Italy,  Protestors in Genoa & Rome have taken to the streets against NATO's WARMONGERING politicians leading Europe into WWIII" [source].

London

"Today is a day full of protests around Europe: Large crowds gather in London to protest for peace and against sending weapons to Ukraine.  Anti-NATO Protests taking place across many Europe cities, with citizens fed up support of Kiev taking a toll on their livelihoods"  /  "Why is Western media ignoring the anti-war protests happening in London (and Berlin) against sending weapons to Ukraine?" [source].

USA

"Thousands of protestors for peace in Ukraine marched through Washington, D.C., over the weekend at the Rage Against the War machine protests" [source].

Democratic Ukraine

"[B]esides being the most corrupt society and government in the western orbit, as it stands now, Ukraine is much, much further from being an independent, sovereign and free 'democracy' than Russia is.  The longer the geniuses at NATO and our media continue fueling their proxy war of attrition, the more territory Kiev is going to lose.  And whatever they lose, they will never get back.  That's for the simple reason that the people in those regions do not want to live in a wildly corrupt and western controlled, Nazi-ridden sectarian basket case of a failed state.  So the next time you hear someone trumpeting, 'I Stand with Ukraine!', just stop and ask them: 'Where would you draw that line on how many dead Ukrainian soldiers until we call it quits? How much territory will Kiev have to lose before we say that's enough?'  And don't let them go until they give you a coherent answer" [source].

"Here's an alternative view of the Ukraine war.  The last time Russians flirted with Western-style democracy, it got them eight years of the drunken stooge, Boris Yeltsin.  Under whom, post-Soviet Russia was comprehensively looted by the men who became the billionaire Russian oligarchs whom the West cheerfully encouraged to launder their criminal proceeds via our property markets and soccer clubs.  Post-Soviet 'democratic' Ukraine went through an identical process of looting by a similar bunch of crooks.  In fact, Ukraine featured the highest number of politicians, 38, of all the countries listed in the 'Pandora Papers' leaks last year detailing suspicious financial dealings.  And its current President, Zelensky, was revealed in that leak as having offshore accounts in the British Virgin and Cayman islands and in Cyprus, and a nice little multi-million-pound London property portfolio" [reader's comment at source].

"It's amazing the number of things we consume that we are now told come from the Ukraine, and are therefore either now in short supply or the prices of which are going through the roof.  Whod'a thunk it?  It's also amazing that despite selling this whole range of essentials to the rest of Europe, the Ukraine before the war was also the poorest nation in Europe, with, in 2020, a per-capita income of $3,727.  In fact $552 less than the next poorest, Georgia, which had a PCI of $4,279.  Ukraine's exports are worth $52 billion pa. Georgia's exports are worth just $3.8 billion pa.  So one wonders just where all the money from all those Ukrainian exports ended up, then?  Obviously not with the sainted Zelensky, of course - his multi-million-pound property portfolio in London came entirely from his Presidential salary of $11.200 pa, naturally.  As do the contents of his bank accounts in Cyprus, the British Virgin islands, and the Caymans" [reader's comment at source].

"Zelensky has banned all media coverage in Ukraine, save one, and alternative views favouring peace are, as I would find out, a death sentence.  War is the only sanctioned opinion allowed.  Peace will get you arrested or shot.  This was shown yesterday April 14 when both Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian politician who was elected as People’s Deputy of Ukraine on 29 August 2019 and Major General Valery Shaytanov from Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), were arrested on very specious charges of 'treason.'  The full breadth of Western media joined in, falsely accusing both men of being 'Putin’s ally.'  This is utter rubbish.  I confirmed this with a recent US inside contact here in Ukraine in a call this morning and who knows both men well.  Their true crime is making the mistake of suggesting that Ukraine settle this war and accept peace.  Both men know the truth: The Ukrainian army is taking staggering loses in men, materiel, and the ability to resupply both.  Zelensky’s on-going purge of peace and 'anti-heroes' was preceded two weeks ago by his firing of both Naumov Andriy Olehovych, former chief of the Main Department of Internal Security of the Security Service of Ukraine, and Kryvoruchko Serhiy Oleksandrovych, former chief of the Office of the Security Service of Ukraine in the Kherson region.  Both of these men, too, are guilty of merely suggesting the new Ukrainian capital crime of 'Peace.'  For Zelensky and Nato their personal treason is allowing this war to be fought right down to the very last Ukrainian" [source].

"The desecrated document on Disinformation in the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict, compiled by the Republic’s Security Information System, attributes the presence of neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine and Russophobia to 'narratives of Russian propaganda', and presents 'attacks on Zelensky’s image' as the fruit of Russian propaganda.  What the real situation is emerges from the reports released by the Ukrainian news agency itself.  These include the banning of the Socialist Party of Ukraine and the confiscation of its assets, measures taken against ten other political parties; Zelensky’s order to destroy 100 million Russian books, including all the classics of Russian literature, because they 'spread Evil'.  While Russian and Belarusian athletes are excluded from 125 international competitions, at an international boxing competition in Hungary a Ukrainian athlete displays the neo-Nazi Azov flag and refuses to remove it" [source].

"Suppression of free speech, freedom of thought and expression might pale in comparison to the horrendous war crimes the Western-backed Neo-Nazi regime is committing in Donbass, however, the sheer hypocrisy of portraying the Kiev regime as a 'beacon of freedom and democracy' makes the political West complicit in all of the crimes committed against not just the people of Donbass, but the people of Ukraine itself as well" [source].

"Since [2014], the Ukrainian government under Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky have tried to demolish all types of political opposition and to hunt down everyone who does not like them.  The CIA, it should be noted, has assisted in these latter operations and helped to produce blacklists that are used to pinpoint dissidents for arrest ... Poroshenko and Zelensky ... have demolished workers’ rights and accelerated Ukraine’s deindustrialization.  Far from being a beacon of democracy as is presented in the U.S. and Western media, Ukraine is a police state where people considered disloyal to the regime are arrested and then vanish - no one knows where they are taken" [source].

"Both antiwar activists like Kotsaba and experts in Ukrainian politics say political repression in the country has become worse since the start of the war.  'Zelensky used the Russian invasion and the war as a pretext to eliminate most of the political opposition and potential rivals for power and to consolidate his largely undemocratic rule', says University of Ottawa political scientist Ivan Katchanovski ... 'Charges of state treason and collaboration are often trumped up and used as a form of political repression without any evidence of actual treason and collaboration,' says Katchanovski ... 'Repression, without a doubt, created an atmosphere of fear in society,' says Chemerys.  'Ukrainians are afraid to express their opinions - probably more than in the time of the USSR, which I, as a dissident at the time, remember'" [source].

"For some Ukrainians, 'collaboration' hasn't meant actual material assistance to invading forces, but simply holding the wrong views, often by expressing pro-Russian sentiment or support for Moscow's invasion ... [an] elderly woman was charged for telling fellow shoppers that Russia was merely invading to 'defeat Nazism' ... a seventy-five-year-old woman in liberated Kherson was referred to the police as a potential collaborator for saying 'it was better when the Russians were here' and that Crimea belongs to Moscow" [source].

"[T]he Western public isn't even aware of the country's authoritarian lurch ... making sure it is aware is the task of the press, whose uncritical portrayal of Zelensky has exasperated Ukrainian human rights campaigners.  'Western media have not been presenting their readers and viewers meaningful accounts of what has been going on', says Baysha.  'Western journalists overwhelmingly take Zelensky's words at face value' " [source].

"In April 2019, the F.B.I. began investigating [Ihor] Kolomoisky [Zelensky's benefactor] for alleged financial crimes in connection with his steel holdings in West Virginia and northern Ohio.  In August 2020 the U.S. Department of Justice filed civil forfeiture complaints against him and a partner:  'The complaints allege that Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Boholiubov, who owned PrivatBank, one of the largest banks in Ukraine, embezzled and defrauded the bank of billions of dollars.  The two obtained fraudulent loans and lines of credit from approximately 2008 through 2016, when the scheme was uncovered, and the bank was nationalized by the National Bank of Ukraine.  The complaints allege that they laundered a portion of the criminal proceeds using an array of shell companies' bank accounts, primarily at PrivatBank's Cyprus branch, before they transferred the funds to the United States.  As alleged in the complaint, the loans were rarely repaid except with more fraudulently obtained loan proceeds' " [source].

"Ukraine began this war as the most corrupt country in Europe (or the second, if you regard Russia as wholly within Europe, which it isn't).  In March 2022, when I walked into Ukraine from Hungary (because my Budapest rental car had had its computer programmed to kill the ignition at the border), you didn't really need a formal frontier post to let you know where the EU ended and the Ukraine began.  The pavement died instantly, crumbling into a minefield of potholes with tiny strips of perfunctory asphalt in between.  This was not some obscure back-road but the principal crossing between Ukraine and a major western neighbour.  Whittaker, my cameraman, said it reminded him of his last visit to Africa.  As the lady who drove us into town said breezily, money had been allocated for the road to the border but siphoned off en route.  So one way to think of Ukraine is whether the war and the western largesse showered on Zelensky is making 'the most corrupt country in Europe' more or less corrupt?  Whatever devastation the Russian meat grinder has inflicted on eastern Ukraine, Zelensky has profoundly weakened the country's already fragile institutions in the west [of Ukraine].  It was clear early on that the war would cover an awful lot of score-settling: A man called Dmytro Shtanko had provided credible evidence of corruption by the brother of Zelensky's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak.  When war began, Mr Shatanko was called up as an infantryman into the 93rd Separate Mechanised Brigade and shipped to the front in Bakhmut (just north of Donetsk), where he was killed in action ... The Yermak brothers were not sent to the front and are still in Kiev, living large.  And there are more roads full of holes" [source].

" do feel sorry for the people of Ukraine and Russia who've lost countless lives through this conflict, and the damage it has caused.  But Zelensky is now somehow very rich yet Ukraine had nothing to fight a war with, but he still went to war on credit or rather the donations of arms and funding from the West" [reader's comment at source].

"In Kiev, the main culprit behind these corruption schemes is Zelensky, who officially has a monthly salary of 28,000 hryvnias, about $664.  Undoubtedly, he has other income because he bought a house for his parents and in-laws, a yacht, and more ... a villa in Italy ... an apartment in London .... real estate in Cyprus and Miami ... An Egyptian journalist who wrote about the purchase of the Italian villa in the name of Zelensky's mother-in-law, worth almost $5 million, was found dead under unclear circumstances ... Friends, godfathers, and relatives of Ukrainian officials are also getting rich quickly because property is being purchased in their names.  Corruption in Ukraine is flourishing at all levels, and Ukrainian officials are issuing directives to journalists not to write about it until the war is over because it is bad for the country, as it may be left without Western aid" [source].

Hunter Biden

"The West continued to support Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky uncritically until Donald Trump raised the issue due to then-US President Joe Biden sending American taxpayers' money to Ukraine.  It was then discovered that the Kiev regime was giving part of that money to Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden.  Hunter Biden, in turn, sent that money to his father, who, at the end of his term, issued a decree on Hunter's preventive pardon.  Trump is now conducting a 'special financial operation', which will include both the Pentagon and Ukraine, to determine where the money went.  For this reason, Trump has suspended the US aid program to Ukraine for 90 days, suggesting that there is evidence of financial mismanagement and theft of US taxpayer money.  Biden's last decrees also indicate corruption related to Ukraine.  Besides Hunter, Joe Biden issued preventive pardons for his brothers and their wives, as well as for his sister and her husband.  It was not clear why and for what reason" [source].

A Rash of Blacklists

"This crackdown has been assisted by the spread of private blacklists of alleged traitors.  One of the most notorious is Myrotvorets, or 'Peacemaker' - founded in 2014 by interior ministry official and former MP Anton Gerashchenko - which the UN high commissioner for human rights recommended Ukrainian law enforcement investigate six years ago.  As far back as 2015, days after the site posted their personal information, a journalist and a former MP who had both taken part in the 'anti-Maidan' movement were gunned down outside their homes, with a nationalist group taken credit" [source].

"Over the years, as the site's list of names ballooned to more than 130,000, it has included everyone from NGO activists, foreign politicians, and pro-Russian separatists, to Orthodox priests, Western celebrities, and even Kremlin critics - anyone who happened to take the 'wrong' position in the eyes of the country's nationalists.  At one point, it featured the more than two hundred people who survived the 2019 crash of a Russian passenger jet headed for illegally annexed Crimea" [source].

"The site may be most notorious for labeling as 'terrorist collaborators' and doxing more than five thousand journalists and others who applied for press accreditation to work in separatist areas in 2016, sparking threats against them and their families.  Despite this, Gerashchenko was later appointed under Zelensky to head journalist safety, of all things, at the interior ministry.  He has since become a prominent Ukrainian voice in the west since the invasion" [source].

Russian Language and Culture

"A new law on language policy was ... passed in April 2019, during the Poroshenko presidency; it clearly discriminated against speakers of Russian and other non-EU languages, for which it was duly criticised by the leading Europe-wide body of constitutional experts, the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe.  The new law in 2019, passed by 278 votes to 38, came into force under the new President, Volodymyr Zelensky.  It made the use of Ukrainian compulsory (totally or within quotas) in more than thirty spheres of public life, including:  (1) public administration;  (2) the electoral process;  (3) education;  (4) science;  (5) culture;  (6) media;  (7) economic and social life;  (8) health and care institutions;  (9) the activities of political parties.  The law did not regulate private communication.  Some exemptions were provided for the official languages of the EU and for minority languages, with the exclusion of Russian, Belarusian and Yiddish" [source].

"Crackdowns on Russian cultural heritage - one of the policies that fueled civil strife in the country where many speak and ethnically identify as Russian - has intensified.  The war has seen numerous regional and local bans on Russian products, and speaking and even learning Russian, so that by November, there were nearly no school left that taught the language.  June saw the Zelensky government create a special council to coordinate 'the country's movement for de-Russification'; parliament passed several laws curtailing Russian books and music.  Fines for speaking Russian, even for the mayor of a Russian-speaking city, aren't out of question, which a leading university outright banned the language from its campus.  This February, the government celebrated purging the country's libraries of nineteen million books, some written in Ukrainian but from the Soviet era, and eleven million written in Russian ... 'What is called "de-Russiication" is in fact Ukraine's war against its own citizens for whom the Russian language is a mother tongue and the Russian Orthodox Church is a religion of their ancestors,' says Baysha ... some of it is also being driven by US and European policy" [source].

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate

"Under Poroshenko's presidency and that of Zelensky, increasing pressure has been put on the UOC-MP.  In November-December 2018, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) carried out raids across Ukraine against UOC-MP churches and priests, and such raids have continued sporadically since then.  In May 2022, Poroshenko said:  'We should introduce sanctions against the Russian Orthodox Church as a terrorist organisation.'  The Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy at the Ukrainian Parliament is currently supporting a ban on religious organisations affiliated with Russia, including the UOC-MP.  President Zelensky said in December 2022 that such a ban may be necessary to secure 'Ukraine's spiritual independence' from Russia, a phrase also used by Poroshenko in 2018.  In 2022, Zelensky said:  'We will never allow anyone to build an empire inside the Ukrainian soul.'  He evidently sees 'the Ukrainian soul' as something collective and monolithic, for which he has to assume responsibility ... Ukrainian parliamentarian Yaroslav Zheleznyak said that a ban 'would help to purge the Russia world from Ukraine.'  This kind of nationalist paranoia was perhaps first seen in the French Revolution, when war and the threat of foreign invasion drove the revolutionaries into ever more extreme emotions and ideology that eventually culminated in genocidal manifestations of terror such as the massacres at Lyon and in the Vendée in 1793-94" [source].

"Suspecting 'pro-Russian' views and even collaboration with Moscow, the SBU has been carrying out raids on hundreds of churches and monasteries belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) ... Dozens of the UOC's clergy have either been sanctioned or are being criminally investigated, even as the church has declared independence from Moscow, condemned the war, and supported Ukrainian forces" [source].

Ukrainian Media

"Zelensky has also centralized nearly all of Ukraine's national TV channels into one government-controlled platform.  Late last year, he further tightened government control of Ukraine's media, signing into law a widely criticized bill that had earlier been considered too extreme by journalists, MPs, and media experts, with one press-freedom activist calling it 'extremely toxic'.  The law gives unprecedented powers to Ukraine's state broadcasting regulator to fine and revoke the license of media outlets, block publications without a court order, and force social media platforms and search engines to remove content ... 'Mass media that could present different points of view were closed in Ukraine and the majority of Western mass media also ignored information about political persecution in Ukraine' says Chemerys ... 'All Ukrainian journalists and bloggers who did not want to promote Zelensky's version of 'truth' had to either shut up (voluntarily or under duress) or, if possible, emigrate' says Baysha" [source].

Ukrainian Human Trafficking

"Ukraine is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked transnationally for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labour.  Ukrainian women are trafficked to Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Austria, Germany, United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, China, the United Arab Emirates, Portugal, Greece, Israel, Spain, Lebanon, Hungary, Slovak republic, Cyprus, Netherlands, Serbia, Argentina, Norway, Iran, and Bahrain.  The majority of Ukrainian labor trafficking victims were men exploited in Russia, the Czech Republic and Poland, primarily forced to work as construction laborers, sailors, and factory and agricultural workers" [source].

"There are indications Ukraine is a destination for people from neighboring countries trafficked for forced labor and sexual exploitation.  In addition, trafficking occurs within Ukraine; men and women are trafficked within the country for the purposes of labor exploitation in the agriculture and service sectors, commercial sexual exploitation, and forced begging.  Ukrainian children are trafficked both internally and transnationally for commercial sexual exploitation, forced begging, and involuntary servitude in the agriculture industry" [source].   

Ukrainian Arms Trafficking

"There are hundreds of thousands of pistols, assault rifles, submachine guns and grenades, and hundreds of millions of cartridges of various calibers exported to Ukraine over the past eight months.  Even NATO-supported Kosovo Albanians have not benefited from such largesse.  Based on multiple western mainstream media reports, it can be argued that all deliveries to Ukraine are controlled by arms barons, be they Ukrainian criminal syndicates linked to Kiev oligarchs and politicians, as well as international crime.  This is in no way Russian contraband.  The operation is completely under Ukrainian control ... These 'warlords' are building fortunes by reselling the various systems on the black market.  The latter is fed thanks to the diversion of all the models of portable arms which happen to be registered on the so-called lists of 'solidarity supplies' for the Ukrainian army.  In some cases, darknet traders boast that the weapons were 'tested in the war against Russia'" [source].

"The arms smuggling corridor from Ukraine to the EU market passes through Moldova and Romania ... Tens of thousands of automatic weapons, hand grenades and bazookas, tons of Semtex and TNT, were shipped to Europe through ... Albanian arms trafficking channels, via Romania.  Interpol and Europol turn a blind eye" [source].

"Vast amounts of western armaments are entering the country but are then being lost in the fog of war ... Much of the aid will presumably find its way to the battlefield forces.  But since Kiev is far and away the most corrupt government in Europe, it's a sad bet that some portion will end up in the hands of third parties involved in the illicit international arms trade.  Once the fighting stops we can expect much of what's left over to find its way to the black market" [source].

"The corruption factor is really important to be analyzed.  Ukraine is home to one of the largest black arms markets on the European continent.  In short, trafficking networks operate freely in the country, without any state interest in capturing and prosecuting such criminals, which is certainly a consequence of the widespread corruption of Ukrainian public agents.  Police officers, politicians, judges and other agents who should uphold the law not only fail to fight arms trafficking, but they also certainly benefit financially from the operation of organized crime due to their corrupt schemes" [source].

The CIA

"Many [Ukrainian Nazis] survived the war, along with their Nazi organisations and Nazi ideology, and went on to become an anti-Soviet resistance force ... the OUN-B would not have survived long without outside assistance, and that help came from Ukrainian Nazis in the US who had been taken there by the United States government after the war.  Rather than hand these war criminals over to the Red Army to be tried and executed for crimes against humanity, the US intelligence services saw in them an ideal weapon against the Soviet Union when it became obvious the Cold War would become the new geopolitical order of the world.  Recently declassified CIA documents reveal how leading OUN members were picked up by the Americans after 1945, granted immunity, shipped across the Atlantic, and given exception from the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act ... What journalists in the western media ... did not realise between 2014 and the Russian invasion [in February 2022] was that these Ukrainian Nazis - both in the United States and in the Nazi battalions of the Ukrainian army - are important assets of the CIA ... These are the people that US government has been working with, funding, and training for almost eight decades" [source].

"The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative.  The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials.  The program has involved 'very specific training on skills that would enhance' the Ukrainians' 'ability to push back against the Russians,'  said the former senior intelligence official.  The training, which has included 'tactical stuff', is 'going to start looking pretty offensive if Russians invade Ukraine', said the former official.  One person familiar with the program put it more bluntly. 'The United States is training an insurgency,' said a former CIA official, adding that the program has taught the Ukrainians how 'to kill Russians'." [January 2022, source].

"Various western state intelligence agencies, including the CIA and Britain's MI6, have been on the ground for decades fomenting Ukrainian nationalist and ultra-nationalist sentiment against Russia, and preparing the most extreme elements of these groups for a dirty war intended to destabilise Russia at the cost of Ukraine ... Ukraine has been weaponised by the West to provoke Russia to step into the bear trap" [source].

"[T]he SBU is a project of the CIA.  Following the 2014 coup, the security service was headed by Valentin Nalyvaichenko, who was recruited by the CIA when he was the Consul General of Ukraine in the United States.  The CIA reportedly has an entire floor in the SBU headquarters" [source].

"Months before Russia launched its operation inside Ukraine, the CIA launched a program to train Ukrainian fighters for an insurgency" [source].

The History of Nazism in Ukraine

"During the Second World War, the theoretician of Nazism Alfred Rosenberg and Minister of the East (Ostminister) entrusted the Latvian Gerhard von Mende to organize the rallying of the peoples of the USSR to the Führer Adolf Hitler.  In doing so, he devised a model for the manipulation of minorities that was taken up by the CIA after the fall of the Third Reich ... Von Mende ... had a Grand Mufti appointed in the Crimea, and enlisted Eastern SS regiments.  He was also the handler of the Ukrainian 'nationalist' Stepan Bandera.  In Washington, Presidents Truman and then Eisenhower decided to focus on psychological warfare against the Soviets.  The CIA created AmComLib (American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of the USSR), which operated Radio Liberty from Munich.  It recycled Gerhard von Mende ... It was also he who settled Stepan Bandera’s problems and recycled him to MI6 and the CIA" [source].

"Since the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine has revived its old demons.  School history textbooks have been changed.  For thirty years, children have been taught in school that their country was only independent thanks to the Nazis and that they have no genes in common with the Russians, that inferior race.  Every year tens of thousands of children and teenagers attend the 'summer camps' of the Banderites, just as the Hitler Youth did.  They chant their slogan: 'Glory to Ukraine'.  These young people, girls and boys, find today asylum in the European Union.  Tomorrow, like their Muslim Brotherhood allies, some of them will commit attacks there.  Already, the Bandéristes are recruiting cadets in Canada, France, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States and now officers in the military academies of these countries.  For this purpose, they have created, in 2019, a secret order, Centuria, which spreads their ideology.  This order is opposed to democratic procedures and universal suffrage.  Its members recite the 'Prayer of the Ukrainian Nationalists', written by Josef Mashchak during the interwar period.  They display the Danish Sun Cross and multiply references to the Thule Order, to which very high Nazi dignitaries belonged.  Western armies did not take this threat seriously" [source].

"The Ukrainian ultra-nationalist far-right is not ‘neo-Nazi’, and this point cannot be stressed enough.  Neo-Nazism, properly understood, is a post-1945 phenomenon and refers to social and political movements which seek to revive the racial ideology of Hitler’s Nationalsozialismus, and, although they are similar, this does not describe the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist far-right.  Ukraine does not have a neo-Nazi problem, it has a Nazi problem.  Where neo-Nazism is a revivalist movement, the Ukrainian far-right is situated on a historical continuum; that is to say that it has an unbroken Nazi pedigree reaching back to the Holocaust and before" [source].

"Antisemitism has a long history in Ukraine, most of which was within the old Pale of Jewish Settlement and so had one of the highest concentrations of Jews in the world before 1941.  The first mass killing of Jews during the Holocaust in Ukraine was the Lwów pogrom, a massacre perpetrated by militiamen of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in order to impress and curry favour with the invading Germans.  These ultra-nationalists were virulently and murderously anti-Semitic, and needed no encouragement from the SS or the SS-Einsatzgruppen to kill Jews.  Many of these men went on to join the Waffen-SS" [source].

"Notwithstanding any valid criticism one may have of the current Russian military operations conducted on Ukrainian soil, the hard truth is that there is today a global wave of russophobia - and it now includes the possible rehabilitation of Nazism in the West.  It is about time real neo-Nazism is described for what it is - and properly denounced" [source].

"It is dangerous for Western propaganda to deny the importance of men like [Dmytro] Iaroch ... With the ongoing special operation, the war is justifying 'these heroes of Ukraine' again.  The cleansing of the reputations of the Ukrainian neo-Nazis by the ... Western media, normalizes their ideology, their political presence and their actions" [source].

"In the West, and it was a phrase uttered by Laurent Fabius, Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2015: 'there are no Nazis in Ukraine but a democratic regime and patriots' " [source].

"Quite recently, a brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was named Edelweiss after a Nazi division whose personnel were involved in deporting Jews, executing prisoners of war and conducting punitive operations against partisans in Yugoslavia, Italy, Czechoslovakia and Greece ... Personnel serving with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Ukrainian National Guard are particularly fond of chevrons formerly worn by soldiers from Dad Reich, Totenkopf (Death's Head) and Galichina divisions and other SS units.  Their hands are also stained with blood.  Ukrainian armoured vehicles feature insignia of the Nazi German Wehrmacht.  Neo-Nazis are open about whose heirs they consider themselves to be.  Surprisingly, none of the powers that be in the West are seeing it.  Why?" [source].

"More than 50 monuments, busts and museums commemorating Bandera have been erected in Ukraine, two-thirds of which have been built since 2005 ...'for millions of Ukrainians Bandera was and remains a Ukrainian Hero' [L'vivs'ka Oblast Council 13 January 2011] ... Torchlit parades behind Bandera's portrait are common in Ukrainian cities, particularly on Jan. 1, his birthday, including this year [2022]" [source].

"The BBC, the NYT, the Daily Telegraph and CNN all reported on Right Sector, C14 and other extremists' role in the overthrow of Yanukovych ... such mainstream reports on Banderism have stopped as the neo-fascist role in Ukraine was suppressed in western media once Putin made 'de-nazification' a goal of the invasion" [source].

"Unlike the proxy wars in Syria and Afghanistan, where western-backed jihadist foreign fighters took up their crusade in hopes of establishing a medieval Islamic caliphate, the champions of the 'holy war' in Ukraine look to the country's more recent history of Nazism as their call to arms" [source].

"The on-going [2014] coup brought nazism to the forefront and institutionalized this hideous ideology of exceptionalism and intolerance in its military, its police, its government and its culture.  Hatred of all things Russian is taught and imbued from an early age.  Today, Ukraine celebrates a national holiday that memorializes nazi-collaborator villains, in particular Stepan Bandera.  Since 2014, nazism and intolerance have manifested themselves widely and were foundational to Kiev's military bombardment of Russian speaking civilian areas in what has accurately been described as a genocide, especially since ethnic cleansing of anything Russian was the observed strategy" [source].

"[Paramilitary] militias had been operating in the Donbass since 2014, with Western support.  Even if one can argue about the term 'Nazi', the fact remains that these militias are violent, convey a nauseating ideology and are virulently anti-Semitic (and) are composed of fanatical and brutal individuals.  The best known of these is the Azov Regiment, whose emblem is reminiscent of the 2nd SS Das Reich Panzer Division, which is revered in the Ukraine for liberating Kharkov from the Soviets in 1943, before carrying out the 1944 Oradour-sur-Glane massacre in France" [source].

"The characterization of the Ukrainian paramilitaries as 'Nazis' or 'neo-Nazis' is considered Russian propaganda.  But that's not the view of the Times of Israel, or the West Point Academy's Center for Counterterrorism.  In 2014, Newsweek magazine seemed to associate them more with the Islamic State ... So, the West supported and continued to arm militias that have been guilty of numerous crimes against civilian populations since 2014: rape, torture, and massacres...  The integration of these paramilitary forces into the Ukrainian National Guard was not at all accompanied by a 'denazification', as some claim" [source].

The Azov Battalion

"For years, the Western press did accurately describe Ukraine's 'greatest weapon', the Azov battalion, as an openly neo-Nazi organization, in contrast to today's trend of covering-up or minimizing this fact - a trend that can only be described as [a] pro-Ukrainian propaganda war ... according to retired US Army Col. Macgregor, military consultant and analyst, while Russians have not been shooting or mistreating surrendering war prisoners the same cannot be said about the Ukrainian forces" [source].

"The Azov Battalion, which arose during the coup [in 2013-14], became a significant force in the war against the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass, who resisted the coup.  Its commander, Andriy Biletsky, infamously said Ukraine's mission is to 'lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival ... against the Semite-led Untermenschen.'  In 2014 the now Azov Regiment was officially incorporated into Ukraine's National Guard under the control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.  It was further integrated into the state by working closely with the SBU intelligence service.  Azov is the only known neo-fascist component in a nation's military anywhere in the world" [source].

"As part of the Ukraine military, Azov members have still sported yellow armbands (until this week [December 2022]) with the Wolfsangel once worn by German SS troops in World War II.  Including the atrocities it has continued to commit, Azov shows the world that integration into the state has not denazified them.  On the contrary, it may have increased its influence on the state" [source].

"The U.S. and NATO have also trained and armed Azov since Barak Obama had denied lethal aid to Ukraine.  One reason Obama declined sending arms to Ukraine was because he was afraid they may fall into these right-wing extremists' hands ... NATO has also trained the Azov Regiment, directly linking the U.S. with far-right Ukrainian extremists" [source].

"NewsGuard's argument against the major influence of neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine rests on neo-fascist political parties faring badly at the polls.  This ignores the stark fact that these groups engage instead in extra-parliamentary extremism" [source].

"Azov's neo-Nazi character has been covered by the NYT, the Guardian, the BBC, the Telegraph and Reuters, among others.  On-the-ground journalists from established Western media outlets have written of witnessing SS runes, swastikas, torchlight marches, and Nazi salutes.  They interviewed Azov soldiers who readily acknowledged being neo-Nazis.  They filed these reports under unambiguous headlines such as 'How many neo-Nazis is the U.S. backing in Ukraine?' and 'Volunteer Ukrainian unit includes Nazis'.  How is this Russian propaganda?" [source].

"The U.N. and Human Rights Watch have accused Azov, as well as other Kiev battalions, of a litany of human rights abuses.  In 2016, the Simon Wiesenthal Center caught Azov trying to recruit neo-Nazis in France; Brazilian authorities have uncovered similar attempts in Brazil.  Azov's official page on VK, a social media site used in Ukraine and Russia, features images of a white power tattoo and the Totenkopf symbol used by SS concentration camp guards and neo-Nazis today.  How is this Russian propaganda?" [source].

"Kiev's rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators - a hallmark of European far right movements - has been condemned by Jewish organizations including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry, Yad Vasham, and the World Jewish Congress.  This is not Russian propaganda" [source].

"[W]eapons furnished by NATO allies have been placed in the hands of the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi former paramilitary organization incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard ... The Governments of Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom have presided over a massive program to train and equip Ukrainian soldiers for a full-scale war with Russia.  Trainees have included top commanders of the Azov Battalion ... The United States has also openly trained Ukrainian forces, including members of the neo-Nazi Battalion, like Sgt. Ivan Kharkiv, who reflected fondly on his battalion's experience with U.S. trainers and U.S. volunteers quite fondly, even mentioning U.S. volunteers engineers and medics that are still currently assisting them" [source].

"'An American military inspection team visited the Azov Battalion on the front lines of the Ukrainian civil war to discuss logistics and deepening cooperation,' The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal wrote in 2018.  'Images of the encounter showed American army officers poring over maps with their Ukrainian counterparts, palling around and ignoring the Nazi-inspired Wolfangel patches emblazoned on their sleeves' " [source].

"On Facebook, the Azov group was considered in the same category as the Islamic State [ISIS] and subject to the platform's 'policy on dangerous individuals and organizations.'  It was therefore forbidden to glorify its activities, and 'posts' that were favourable to it were systematically banned.  But on February 24 [2022], Facebook changed its policy and allowed posts favourable to the militia.  In the same spirit, in March [2022], the platform authorized, in the former Eastern countries, calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders.  So much for the values that inspire our leaders" [source].

Neo-Nazi Ties to Government

"Post-Maidan Ukraine is the world's only nation to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces.  The Azov Battalion was initially formed out of the neo-Nazi gang Patriot of Ukraine.  Andriy Biletsky, the gang's leader who became Azov's commander, once wrote that Ukraine's mission is to 'lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade... against the Semite-led Untermenschen.'  Biletsky is now a deputy in Ukraine's parliament.  In the fall of 2014, Azov - which is accused of human-rights abuses, including torture, by Human Rights Watch and the United Nations - was incorporated into Ukraine's National Guard" [source].

"Speaker of Parliament Andriy Parubiy cofounded and led two neo-Nazi organizations: the Social-National Party of Ukraine (later renamed Svoboda), and Patriot of Ukraine, whose members would eventually form the core of Azov.  Although Parubiy left the far right in the early 2000's, he hasn't rejected his past.  When asked about it in a 2016 interview, Parubiy replied that his 'values' haven't changed.  Pariuby, whose autobiography shows him marching with the neo-Nazi wolfsangel symbol used by Aryan Nations, regularly meets with Washington think tanks and politicians; his neo-Nazi background is ignored or outright denied" [source].

Ukraine's National Police Force

"Ukraine's national police force was led from its formation in 2015 (under Poroshenko) by the Minister of the Interior, Arsen Avakov ... Avakov had well-known ties to the ultranationalist Azov Battalion.  He criticised attempts by the US Congress to designate the group as a terrorist organisation.  As the World Socialist Web Site described the situation in 2020:  'Under Avakov's leadership, Ukraine's far-right groups have been given free rein to carry out a range of targeted political assassinations and attacks on ethnic minorities.  The culprits are rarely arrested or, if arrested, are punished with minimal sentences.  Meanwhile, the groups with which they are affiliated, such as the Azov Battalion and the neo-Nazi C14, are allowed to continue their operations.  They maintain close ties with representatives of the Ukrainian government' " [source].

"Shortly after Maidan, the US equipped and trained the newly founded National Police, in what was intended to be a hallmark program buttressing Ukrainian democracy.  The deputy minister of the Interior - which controls the National Police - is Vadim Troyan, a veteran of Azov and Patriot of Ukraine.  In 2014, when Troyan was being considered for police chief of Kiev, Ukrainian Jewish leaders were appalled by his neo-Nazi background.  Today, he's deputy of the department running US-trained law enforcement in the entire nation" [source].

"Earlier this month, [Radio Free Europe] reported on national Police leadership admiring Stepan Bandera - a Nazi collaborator and Fascist whose troops participated in the Holocaust - on social media.  The fact that Ukraine's police is peppered with far-right supporters explains why neo-Nazis operate with impunity on the streets" [source].

Ukraine's Security/Intelligence Service

"The SBU worked closely with C14, the former youth wing of the ultranationalist political party Svoboda, and other neo-nazi groups in Ukraine.  C14 was notorious for attacks on Romani camps, in participation with other neo-nazi groups ... In addition, the SBU is used to initiate criminal proceedings against political opponents ... including assassination, kidnapping, and torture of political opposition ... the government of Ukraine, its security service, and associated nazi groups and paramilitaries are actively involved in terror attacks and murdering civilians in Russia proper" [source].

"The Ukrainian SBU security services has served as the enforcement arm of the officially authorized campaign of repression.  With training from the CIA and close coordination with Ukraine's state-backed neo-Nazi paramilitaries, the SBU has spent the past weeks (from April 2022) filling its vast archipelago of torture dungeons with political dissidents ... the Russian people are waking up - not to a threat by Putin, but rather that posed by Nazi executioners crossing the border to kill them, as Hitler's Nazis did during Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941, the largest land offensive in human history" [Max Blumenthal, quoted at source].

Anti-Semitism / Roma Pogroms

"Antisemitism has a long history in Ukraine, most of which was within the old Pale of Jewish Settlement and so had one of the highest concentrations of Jews in the world before 1941.  The first mass killing of Jews during the Holocaust in Ukraine was the Lwów pogrom, a massacre perpetrated by militiamen of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in order to impress and curry favour with the invading Germans.  These ultra-nationalists were virulently and murderously anti-Semitic, and needed no encouragement from the SS or the SS-Einsatzgruppen to kill Jews.  Many of these men went on to join the Waffen-SS" [source].

"In 2015, the Ukrainian parliament passed legislation making two WWII paramilitaries - the OUN and the UPA - heroes of Ukraine, and made it a criminal offense to deny their heroism.  The OUN had collaborated with the Nazis and participated in the Holocaust, while the UPA slaughtered thousands of Jews and 70,000-100,000 Poles on their own volition" [source].

"Predictably, the celebration of Nazi collaborators has accompanied a rise in outright anti-Semitism.  'Jews Out!' chanted thousands during a January 2017 march honoring OUN leader [Stepan] Bandera.  (The next day the police denied hearing anything anti-Semitic.)  That summer, a three-day festival celebrating the Nazi collaborator Shukhevych capped off with the firebombing of a synagogue.  In November 2017, Radio Free Europe reported Nazi salutes as 20,000 marched in honor of the UPA.  And last April [2018], hundreds marched in L'viv with coordinated Nazi salutes honoring SS Galichina; the march was promoted by the L'viv regional government" [source].

"The Holocaust revisionism is a multi-pronged effort, ranging from government-funded seminars, brochures, and board games, to the proliferation of plaques, statues, and streets renamed after butchers of Jews, to far-right children's camps, where youth are inculcated with ultranationalist ideology.  Within several years, an entire generation will be indoctrinated to worship Holocaust perpetrators as national heroes" [source].

"Public officials make anti-Semitic threats with no repercussions.  These include:

• a security services general promising to eliminate the zhidi (a slur equivalent to 'kikes');

• a parliament deputy going off on an anti-Semitic rant on television;

• a far-right politician lamenting Hitler didn't finish off the Jews;

• and an ultranationalist leader vowing to cleanse Odessa of zhidi" [source].

"The past three years [2016-2019] saw an explosion of swastikas and SS runes on city streets, death threats, and vandalism of Holocaust memorials, Jewish centers, cemeteries, tombs, and places of worship, all of which led Israel to take the unusual step of publicly urging Kiev to address the epidemic" [source].

"Last Spring [2018], a lethal wave of anti-Roma pogroms swept though Ukraine, with at least six attacks in two months.  Footage from the pogroms evokes the 1930s: Armed thugs attack women and children while razing their camps.  At least one man was killed, while others, including a child, were stabbed ... Appeals from international organizations and the US embassy fell on deaf ears: Months after the UN demanded Kiev end 'systematic persecution' of the Roma, a human-rights group reported C14 were allegedly intimidating Roma in a joint patrol with the Kiev police" 

Zelensky and the Ultranationalists

"During the 2019 presidential election campaign, Zelensky, whose political funder and backer, the billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, also funded the ultranationalist Azov and Aidar battalions, was asked about [Stepan] Bandera.  He replied:  'Many Ukrainians consider Bandera a hero, and that is cool.'  After the Russian incursion and the siege of Mariupol ... Fox News, asked Zelensky about Azov and he replied: 'They are what they are. they were defending our country.'  Zelensky has banned eleven political parties, none of them ultranationalist ... What does it mean when a modern state puts mass murderers on its stamps and when its leaders describe them as 'heroes' and 'cool'?" [source].

"Zelensky has continually compromised with the ultranationalists ... In December 2021, Zelensky ... presented a Hero of Ukraine award to Dmytro Kotsyubaylo, a leader of the Right Sector, in a ceremony on the floor of Ukraine's parliament chamber.  The New York Times noted:  'Known as 'Da Vinci', Kotsyubaylo keeps a pet wolf in his frontline base, and likes to joke to visiting reporters that his fighters "feed it the bones of Russian-speaking children".'" [source].

Zelensky's patron, the Jewish oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, has since 2014 funded ultranationalist brigades such as Azov, Aidar, Dnipro-1, Dnipro-2 and Donbass, many of whose members are no friends to Jews.  Andriy Biletsky, the leader of Azov, is known for having stated in 2010 that Ukraine's national purpose is to 'lead the white races of the world in a final crusade ... against Semite-led Untermenschen (subhumans)' ... A correspondent for the US-based magazine, The Nation, wrote in 2019 that 'Ukraine is the world's only nation to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces'" [source].

"'At the outset of my visit to Munich met with UKR community & laid down flowers on the tomb of our hero Stepan Bandera' [Andrij Melnyk (27:04:15)].  Zelensky has not rebuked his ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, for visiting Bandera's grave in Munich, which provoked this reaction from a German MP:  'Anyone like Melnik who describes the Nazi collaborator Bandera as "our hero" and makes a pilgrimage to his grave or defends the right-wing Azov Battalion as "brave" is actually still benevolently described as a "Nazi Sympathizer"'" [source].

"Zelensky portrayed the conflict as one between a Ukraine that defends Western values, human rights and its political system against 'Russian war criminals'.  This narrative was disseminated to great lengths by Western media, who at the same time scoffed at the idea of a 'de-Nazification' of Ukraine.  Omitted from Western media is the fact that openly neo-Nazi groups like the Mariupol-based Azov Battalion are official units of the Republican Guard, which is under the direct command of Ukraine's Interior Ministry.  It also omits that Stepan Bandera ... is being rehabilitated in Ukraine and even had a major avenue in Kiev named after him" [source].

"Despite his Jewish background, [Volodymyr Zelensky] didn't hesitate in collaborating with Ukraine's infamous Azov Battalion, officially part of the National Guard of Ukraine, that has been widely acknowledged as a neo-Nazi volunteer paramilitary force connected with foreign white supremacist organizations.  Azov Battalion was initially formed as a volunteer group in May 2014 out of the ultra-nationalist Patriot of Ukraine gang, and the neo-Nazi Social National Assembly (SNA) group.  As a battalion, the group fought on the front lines against pro-Russian separatists in Donbas, the eastern region of Ukraine.  A few months after recapturing the strategic port city of Mariupol from the Russia-backed separatists, the unit was officially integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine on November 12, 2014" [source]. 

War Crimes and Atrocities

"For the Western media to cover up the neo-Nazi connection in Ukraine is the biggest lie of this war.  I have recently returned from two months of reporting in and around Ukraine.  Certainly, both sides are guilty of atrocity but I have seen a different kind of barbarity by the AFU that is beyond the pale of war because the AFU and the Azov consider and treat all Ukrainian Russians, Jews and even peace advocates as vermin.  They have given up all morality.  I can bear witness to the killings of the innocent, the torture and killings of prisoners, the firing on civilian targets, the mining of the humanitarian corridors to prevent escape, and the execution of anyone who suggests peace much less negotiation, and I have seen the Swastikas ad pro-Nazi tattoos scrawled in the hands, arms, necks and chests of the AFU killers" [source].

"These militias had been operating in the Donbass since 2014, with Western support.  Even if one can argue about the term 'Nazi', the fact remains that these militias are violent, convey a nauseating ideology and are virulently anti-semitic ... [and] are composed of fanatical and brutal individuals.  The best known of those is the Azov Regiment, whose emblem is reminiscent of the 2nd SS Das Reich Panzer Division, which is revered in the Ukraine for liberating Kharkov from the Soviets in 1943, before carrying out the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre in France.  The characterization of the Ukrainians paramilitaries as 'Nazis' or 'neo-Nazis' is considered Russian propaganda ... the West supported and continued to arm militias that have been guilty of numerous crimes against civilian populations since 2014: rape, torture and massacres.  The integration of these paramilitary forces into the Ukrainian National Guard was not at all accompanied by a 'denazification', as some claim" [source].

"It is important to denounce war crimes, no matter which side they come from.  But when you condemn only one side and systematically conceal the crimes of the other side, you are granting rewards from crimes.  Since 2014, our media have never condemned the attacks on the centre of Donetsk and the civilian population, the use of landmines in populated areas, the torture and the massacres, but on the contrary have without fail tried to deny or play them down.  How often has [the West] protested against or condemned the attacks on civilians in the Donbas?  If our media, diplomats and politicians had reacted at the time, Russia would most likely not have attacked in February 2022.  In any case, their connivance with Ukraine's disregard for international humanitarian law between 2014 and 2022 provided Russia with a legitimate reason to intervene" [source].

"The [Anti-Imperialist] Front is chaired by Dmytro Yarosh ... with Andriy Biletsky, the 'White Fuhrer', he created the Right Sector, which led the EuroMaidan revolution, and later the Azov battalion.  Since November 2, 2021, he has been an advisor to the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi" [source].

"Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy ... has served as Deputy Speaker and Speaker of the Ukrainian parliament from 2014 to 2019, and Secretary of National Security and the Defence Council of Ukraine.  Andriy Parubiy is a Nazi.  He has proudly proclaimed this many times before his parliament, before the Ukrainian military and the public on TV" [source].

"Another far-right Ukrainian politician who has been treated surprisingly warmly by the U.S. is Andriy Parubiy.  In 1991, Parubiy co-founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine with Tyahnybok – which later became Svoboda.  Its official symbol was the Wolfsangel (notoriously used by the Nazi SS) and membership was restricted to ethnic Ukrainians.  Then between 1998 and 2004, Parubiy led the party’s paramilitary organisation, Patriot of Ukraine. He even wrote a book titled View from the Right on whose cover he appears wearing a Nazi-style uniform.  In 2004, Parubiy left both organisations to join the ‘Our Ukraine’ parliamentary block.  Yet ... he 'never publicly renounced his neo-Nazi background'.  In fact, he told a newspaper in 2008 that his 'political orientation and ideological foundations' had not changed since leaving the Social National Party.  After commanding the ‘Maidan Self-defence volunteers’ during the Maidan protests, Parubiy landed a job as secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council in 2014.  Two years later, he was elected Chairman of the Rada – a position he retained until 2019.  During his tenure, Parubiy was granted an invite to Washington, where he met with Senators John McCain and Paul Ryan. The latter said he was 'proud' to join Parubiy for the meeting.  Parubiy has not only expressed unsavoury political views; he is alleged to be among the organisers of the Maidan massacre.  Five Georgian snipers testified that they had received 'weapons, payments, and orders from specific Maidan and Georgian politicians, in particular, Parubiy, to massacre both police and protesters'.  Various sources have claimed these men were actors.  Yet ... 'their identities and presence in Ukraine, and their Georgian military services were corroborated by supporting evidence and personal information that they provided'." [source].

"[Ukraine's far-right is in] a position unique ‘in the whole of Europe [where nowhere else] do radical nationalists control large politically loyal armed units relatively autonomous from the official military and law enforcement structures’.  With few elections to worry about, they do not need to temper their radical views which celebrate the atrocities of Ukraine’s war-time Nazi collaborators, especially given that it is these views that appeal to an increasingly radicalised society, irrespective of whether the president is Jewish or not.  Western media can pretend that there is nothing to see here by normalising Ukraine’s Nazis as ‘ordinary residents’ while ignoring the swastika tattoos on their arms.  But the current conflict will end, after which Ukraine’s emboldened and heroised Nazis-fascists will demand payback for their military exploits.  The goal of these groups ... is not to defend Ukraine as we know it – a multi-ethnic, democratically minded society led by a Jewish president.  Rather, it is to establish a shared vision of an ultranationalist ethno-state and export this model around the world" [source].

"'Many people were suspended in such a way that all the joints were twisted out.  The pain is the wildest.  Dozens of sophisticated murders were invented - eyes were gouged out, women's breasts were cut off, figures were cut out on the body.  The wells were clogged with corpses.  And they did all thee atrocities to their own people.'  [This account] tells about the tragedy that unfolded on the territory of Soviet Ukraine during the Great Patriotic War.  The author, a retired KGB officer of the Ukrainian SSR, Georgy Sannikov, tells about the fanaticism of the fighters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army led by Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera against the civilian population" [source].

"'They also practiced the way when they tied the hands of (prisoners) to the hole of the exhaust pipes of tanks and gassed them.  A few minutes later, instead of hands, there were charred stumps.  One was tied with wire to an armoured personnel carrier by the legs and carried around the villages for the edification of local residents, then his disfigured corpse was simply dumped into a ditch... They do not spare the elderly, women, or children. Unarmed people are brutally beaten, their entrails are beaten off, they are hung by the joints, they are cut with knives, bones are broken and buried alive in the ground.'  [This episode] takes readers to the maelstrom of dramatic events that dragged Ukraine after the 'Euromaidan' in February 2014.  The author of these memoirs of modern Donetsk, Igor Lyamin, who was held captive for several months by Ukrainian servicemen participating in the so-called 'anti-terrorist operation' in the south-east of the country" [source].

"Both excerpts [the two quotes above] accurately convey the details of these inhuman atrocities, repeatedly resorting to which the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and its ideological heirs from among the servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and fighters of volunteer battalions sought to create a 'clean' Ukrainian nation" [source].

"Contrary to the warnings of the Europeans, the Ukrainian ruling elites preferred to rely on people with a criminal past, often notorious murderers and sadists.  At the disposal of the Ukrainian edition of 'Today' was an audio recording of a conversation between Ruslan Onishchenko and one of his deputies in command of the volunteer company 'Tornado' with the speaking call sign 'Mujahid'.  This dialogue clearly demonstrates to the audience how pathologically cruel were the people whose mission, according to the plan of the Ukrainian government, was to restore constitutional order and legality in Donbas.  'Without torture, life would not be life. Nothing raises the tone so much when you have someone's life in your hands' says the Mujahid. 'This is the philosophy. If you are ready to die - you have the right to kill. If you are ready to endure torture - you have the right to torture. This is fair.'  Onishchenko himself echoes him, who took the sonorous call sign 'Friman' ... In addition to video recordings of bullying of prisoners, the 'Mujahid' encouraged torture, giving his subordinates, by their own admission, a 'green light'.  As the fighters themselves told, [the Mujahid] liked to talk about the philosophy of the brutal attitude to people: 'Without torture, life is boring. [It's like] drugs, alcohol.'  'Mujahid', according to his colleagues, was distinguished not only by special rigidity, but also be sadistic tendencies.  During the massacres of civilians in Donbass, [the Mujahid's] favorite entertainment was shooting rapes of men on a mobile phone camera" [source].

"The UN staff stated that the Ukrainian volunteer battalions practiced torture and harsh treatment against civilians ... intimidation, torture, rape and mass murder became common practice for the soldiers of the volunteer battalions ... The soldiers of the regular Ukrainian army also tried to keep up with the fighters of the volunteer battalions ... Former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Alexey Zhuravko published on his Facebook page scans of the report of Major General Igor Kryshtun to ex-Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak on the increase in the number of war crimes against the civilian population of Donbass for 2014-2015" [source].

"In addition to the volunteer battalions and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Ukrainian special services were also distinguished by their cruelty towards the civilian population.  The Security Service of Ukraine has deployed so-called 'secret prisons' in which it illegally detained residents of Donbass suspected of sympathizing with 'separatists', using torture against them.  From the reports of international organizations Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, at least four such prisons are known - in Kharkiv, Mariupol, Kramatorsk and Izyum.  'The Security Service of Ukraine practices violent kidnapping and secret detention.  Most of the detainees are subjected to torture.  The SBU creates an atmosphere of fear and permissiveness for gross violations of human rights', the experts of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in a letter to Anatoly Matios, who at that time held the post of the chief military prosecutor of Ukraine" [source].

"Kiev volunteer Lilia Bolbat, who initially brought food and clothing to Ukrainian fighters and who is difficult to suspect of sympathizing with Russia and the republics of Donbass, was soon horrified by the outrages committed by the 'liberators'." [source].

"Mass unrest broke out in Konstantinovka: local residents were outraged by the permissiveness of the AFU fighters and demanded fair retribution.  The Kiev authorities really reacted immediately, allowing the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to open fire to kill civilians in case of disobedience.  This information was confirmed by former MP Anton Gerashchenko, who now holds the position of Deputy Minister of Internal Affair of Ukraine" [source].

Some of the atrocities committed against the civilians of the Donbass, as recorded in this article:

• '"The prisoners were held in the courtyard of the city school No. 14. When the Ukrainian forces left the city, three people were buried in the courtyard of this school,'  Vitaly Chervonenko, a columnist for BBC News Ukraine, wrote in his article.  Two more local residents were found brutally murdered in their own house;

• 'Can I tell you how a dozen soldiers stole a young girl and raped her for ten days until the child died?  Can I tell you how they slowed down every car on the roads and took tribute from the people? How were people kept in basements and beaten?'  wrote a Kiev volunteer on the Facebook page;

• Columnist of the German Deutsche Welle, Benjamin Bidder, stated cases of mass bullying of people.  'The men held in the basement were stripped naked, placed against a concrete wall and watered with water. Then wires with an electric current were applied to various parts of the body - to the temples, genitals. The prisoners were forced to commit violence on pain of death,' the journalist noted;

• Tatyana Chernovol, a deputy of the pro-government (during the presidency of Petro Poroshenko) 'Popular Front', also told about the atrocities of Ukrainian dobrobats ... 'This is a video of various rapes. And I will even say that there were newborns there. I understand that the mother and this newborn were forced to do this under the threat of the death of her child. There were rapes of underage girls. These are animals, not people';

• In November 2014, a serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine S.Palamarchuk broke into a private house, raped a girl and killed her father who stood up for her;

• In June 2015, Ukrainian servicemen ... broke into a private house and brutally killed two women.

• In August [2015], three soldiers, having entered into an altercation with a taxi driver, shot him with a machine gun, and hid the body..."

Human Trafficking:  "The remains of more than 40 people were found in mass graves in the villages of Nizhnyaya Krynka and Zhdanovka ... many of the victims had no internal organs.  The investigators of the DPR military prosecutor's office, and after them, the OSCE Special Representative for Combating Human Trafficking, Madina Jarbusynova, put forward a well-founded assumption about the deliberate removal of human organs for subsequent sale to 'black transplantologists'.  Similar burials were found near the settlements of Telmanovo, Yenakiyevo and Starobeshevo.  In the Telmanovsky district alone, investigators exhumed more than 30 bodies of civilians.  During 2020, the investigative departments of the LPR witnessed 807 cases of violent deaths of civilians, including 34 children.  Like their Donetsk colleagues, Luhansk investigators found dozens of mass graves of people" [source].

"In order for the world to learn the terrible truth about the atrocities of the Ukrainian military, the Donetsk militia carried out a titanic work to establish the places of mass graves of civilians.  In September 2014, in the area of the village of Kommunar, the DPR servicemen discovered a mass grave in which four people were buried, including a pregnant women.  The villains left an inscription on her body: 'Killed for Putin's lies'." [source].

"The titanic work on the discovery and identification of the remains of the dead and brutally tortured people continues.  Already, special investigative groups have established several dozen new cases of fanatical bullying and barbaric murders of unfortunate civilians of Donbass by Kiev punishers" [source].

"The gruesome massacre by ultranationalists of about 50 anti-Kyiv regime demonstrators in the Trade Union building in Odessa on 2 May 2014, where people were burned alive and fell to their deaths escaping the fire and were bludgeoned to death if they survived the fall, was an important factor in hardening attitudes and in prompting many more in the Donbass to take up arms against the regime and become active separatists, as they realised the uncompromising depth of the hatred of Donbass Russians on the part of Kyiv regime supporters.  This was especially the case in western Ukraine, where hatred of Russians and Russian speakers is especially strong in cities like Lviv - where ultranationalism, repressed during Ukraine's Soviet era, festered under the surface since the years of Bandera and OUN, gradually emerged in the 1990s, and mushroomed in the 2000s" [source].

"There is widespread agreement that the worst violence in the Donbass before 2022 occurred in 2014 and 2015.  The Office of the (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR):  'estimates that between mid-April 2014 and 31 May 2016, at least 9,404 people, of which up to 2,000 are civilians, have been killed as a result of the conflict.  The vast majority of civilian casualties, recorded on the territories controlled by the Government of Ukraine and on those controlled by armed groups, were caused by the indiscriminate shelling of residential areas, in violation of the international humanitarian law principle of distinction' ... the nature of the conflict became ever more vicious and cruel; was crimes and human rights offences were multiplied" [source].

"The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) provided Interim President Turchnyov with the rationale for aggressive actions against the dissidents in the Donbass on 29 April [2014] ... the SBU: 'clearly and unequivocally stressed the readiness and need of killing civilians by the armed forces, irrespective of their gender and age'" [source].

"Many of these paramilitary groups are accused of abusing the citizens they are charged with protecting.  Amnesty International has reported that the Aidar battalion - also partially funded by Kolomoisky - committed war crimes, including illegal abductions, unlawful detention, robbery, extortion and even possible executions.  Other pro-Kiev private battalions have starved civilians as a form of warfare, preventing aid convoys from reaching separatist-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine, according to the Amnesty report" [Reuters report, 2015, quoted at source].

Putin's Objectives

"Russia's main war aim is to stop Ukraine joining NATO.  It's other war aims are to keep Crimea and protect the Russians in eastern Ukraine, probably now by annexation" [source].
 

"In his speech of February 24 [2022], Vladimir Putin stated the two objectives of his operation: 'demilitarize' and 'denazify' the Ukraine.  So, it was not a question of taking over Ukraine, nor even, presumably, of occupying it; and certainly not of destroying it ... The idea that Russia is trying to take over Kiev, the capital, to eliminate Zelensky, comes typically from the West.  But Vladimir Putin never intended to shoot or topple Zelensky.  Instead, Russia seeks to keep him in power by pushing him to negotiate, by surrounding Kiev.  The Russians want to obtain the neutrality of Ukraine" [source].

"This 'slowdown' that our 'experts' attribute to poor logistics is only the consequence of having achieved their objectives.  Russia does not want to engage in an occupation of the entire Ukrainian territory.  In fact, it appears that Russia is trying to limit its advance to the linguistic border of the country ... in the end, the price will be high, but Vladimir Putin will likely achieve the goals he set for himself" [source].

"We were open and sincerely ready for a constructive dialogue with the West; we said and insisted that both Europe and the whole world needed an indivisible security system equal for all countries, and for many years we suggested that our partners discuss this idea together and work on its implementation.  But in response, we received wither an indistinct or hypocritical reaction, as far as words were concerned.  But there were also actions: NATO's expansion to our borders, the creation of new deployment areas for missile defence in Europe and Asia - they decided to take cover from us under an 'umbrella' - deployment of military contingents, and not just near Russia's borders.  I would like to stress - in fact, this is well known - that no other country has so many military bases abroad as the United States.  There are hundreds of them - I want to emphasise this - hundreds of bases all over the world; the planet is covered with them, and one look at the map is enough to see this" [source].

"Finally, in December 2021, we officially submitted draft agreements on security guarantees to the USA and NATO,  In essence, all key, fundamental points were rejected.  After that it finally became clear that the go-ahead for the implementation of aggressive plans had been given and they were not going to stop.  The threat was growing by the day.  Judging by the information we received, there was no doubt that everything would be in place by February 2022 for launching yet another bloody punitive operation in Donbass.  Let me remind you that back in 2014, the Kiev regime sent its artillery, tanks and warplanes to fight in Donbass ... Those who plotted a new attack against Donetsk in the Donbass region, and against Lugansk understood that Crimea and Sevastopol would be the next target" [source].

"We are not at war with the people of Ukraine,  I have made that clear many times.  The people of Ukraine have become hostages of the Kiev regime and its Western handlers, who have in fact occupied that country in the political, military and economic sense and have been destroying Ukrainian industry for decades now as they plundered its natural resources.  This led to social degradation and an immeasurable increase in poverty and inequality.  Recruiting resources for military operations in these circumstances was easy.  Nobody was thinking about people, who were conditioned for slaughter and eventually became expendables.  It is a sad and dreadful things to say, but it is a fact ... The current Ukrainian regime is serving not national interests, but the interests of third countries.  The West is using Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia and a testing range" [source].

"[T]he longer the range of the Western systems that will be supplied to Ukraine, the further we will have to move the threat away from our borders.  This is obvious.  The Western elite make no secret of their goal, which is, I quote, 'Russia's strategic defeat' ... we will respond accordingly, because this represents an existential threat to our country" [source].

"On 24 February 2022, Vladimir Putin stated the reasons for and objectives of the Russian intervention.  Our journalists - and apparently our diplomats - appropriated from it whatever fed their narrative (demilitarisation and de-Nazification) and purged whatever contradicted it.  In fact, in our reading of the problem, we denuded the Russian intervention of the rationality that the Russians apportioned to it, so as to make Putin's decision seem irrational, or disproportionate to the aim which we ascribed to it.  Incidentally, to proclaim that Putin is at death's door or mad is in just the same spirit and frame of mind.  We - that is, our media - have thereby distorted the picture of the situation and have thus created conditions that render dialogue impossible" [source].

"Russia initiated a Special Military Operation ostensibly to protect Russian speaking peoples and Russian nationals from Kiev's unceasing bombardment.  But also to ensure that Ukraine remains neutral, that it be denazified and demilitarized.  A country such as Russia that lost as many as 27 million people to the nazi invasion during WW2 is justified in pre-empting a proven aggressive nazi-state on its borders, especially since U.S. Secretary of State James Baker promised Mikail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, with the reunification of Germany, that NATO would not expand 'one inch eastward' " [source].

"The West is incapable of learning from history and systematically underestimates the concern and compassion of Russians from their brethren abroad.  That was the reason for Russia's intervention in favour of Serbia in 1914; that was the reason for its intervention in Georgia in 2008 in favour of the South Ossetians who were being bombed by their own (Georgian) government; that was the reason for its intervention in Ukraine in 2022; and that will be the reason for its intervention in Serbia in 2023, if our diplomacy does not take care" [source].

"Despite all the propaganda there is no evidence that Putin wanted to conquer Ukraine and incorporate it into Russia.  None.  Some point to Putin's comments, taken out of context, that Ukraine is an 'artificial state'.  But that is merely a statement of fact and does not indicate warlike intentions.  Likewise, Putin's statement that Russians and Ukrainians are 'one people with a common history'.  Putin saying that the collapse of the Soviet Union was 'the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century' is frequently quoted.  But he also said, 'Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain' and that 'Of course, we cannot change past events, but we must at least admit them openly and honestly'.  All ignred" [source].

"Putin recognised Ukraine as an independent country in July 2021, telling Ukrainians 'You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome!'  On how Russia should treat Ukraine, he wrote 'There is only one answer: with respect' concluding that 'what Ukraine will be - it is up to its citizens to decide'.  All ignored.  In February 2022 Putin emphasised that Russia accepts 'the new geopolitical reality that took shape after the dissolution of the USSR'.  When announcing Russia's invasion he declared that 'It is not our plan to occupy Ukrainian territory' though qualifying this with 'Russia cannot feel safe, develop and exist while facing a permanent threat from the territory of today's Ukraine'.  That Ukraine is almost certain to lose a substantial amount of land is down entirely to the aggressive response of the US and NATO" [source].

"In his speech of February 24, Vladimir Putin stated the two objectives of his operation: 'demilitarize' and 'denazify' the Ukraine:

Demilitarization:

• Ground destruction of Ukrainian aviation, air defense systems and reconnaissance assets;

• Neutralization of command and intelligence structures (C31), as well as the main logistical routes in the depth of the territory;

• Encirclement of the bulk of the Ukrainian army massed in the southeast of the country.

Denazification:

• Destruction or neutralization of volunteer battalions operating in the cities of Odessa, Kharkov, and Mariupol, as well as in various facilities in the territory" [source].

Demilitarization

"The idea that Russia is trying to take over Kiev, the capital, to eliminate Zelensky, comes typically from the West... But Vladimir Putin never intended to shoot or topple Zelensky.  Instead, Russia seeks to keep him in power by pushing him to negotiate, by surrounding Kiev.  The Russians want to obtain the neutrality of Ukraine" [source].

"Russian forces are slowly tightening the noose, but are no longer under any time pressure of schedule.  Their demilitarization goal is all but achieved and the remaining Ukrainian forces no longer have an operational and strategic command structure.  The 'slowdown' that our 'experts' attribute to poor logistics is only the consequence of having achieved their objectives.  Russia does not want to engage in an occupation of the entire Ukrainian territory.  In fact, it appears that Russia is trying to limit its advance to the linguistic border of the country" [source].

Denazification

"In cities like Kharkov, Mariupol and Odessa, the Ukrainian defense is provided by the paramilitary militias.  They know that the objective of 'denazification' is aimed primarily at them.  For an attacker in an urbanized area, civilians are a problem.  This is why Russia is seeking to create humanitarian corridors to empty cities of civilians and leave only the militias, to fight them more easily.  Conversely, these militias seek to keep civilians in the cities from evacuating in order to dissuade the Russian army from fighting there.  This is why they are reluctant to implement these corridors and do everything to ensure that Russian efforts are unsuccessful - they use the civilian population as 'human shields'.  Videos showing civilians trying to leave Mariupol and beaten up by fighters of the Azov Regiment are of course carefully censored by the Western media" [source].

The Culture of the West

"Look what they are doing to their own people.  It is all about the destruction of the family, of cultural and national identity, perversion and abuse of children, including pedophilia, all of which are declared normal in their life.  They are forcing the priests to bless same-sex marriages.  Bless their hearts, let them do as they please.  Here is what I would like to say in this regard.  Adult people can do as they please.  We in Russia have always seen it that way and always will: no one is going to intrude into other people's private lives, and we are not gong to do it, either.  But here is what I would like to tell them: look at the holy scripture and the main books of other world religions.  They say it all, including that family is the union of a man and a woman. but these sacred texts are now being questioned.  Reportedly, the Anglican Church is planning, just planning, to explore the idea of a gender-neutral god.  What is there to say?  Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.  Millions of people in the West realise that they are being led to a spiritual disaster.  Frankly, the elite appear to have gone crazy, and it looks like there is no cure for that.  But like I said, these are their problems, while we must protect our children, which we will do.  We will protect our children from degradation and degeneration" [source].

"It's a good job nobody's told Putin just how weak and vulnerable the EU/UK really are otherwise he'd attack us now  before we have a chance to build up our world-class (LOL) armies.  And if you're dumb enough to believe he actually would, then give your head a wobble.  As the man himself has said - why should I, the West is doing a pretty good job of destroying itself"  /  "Russia, inter alia, has abundant coal, gas, no Net Zero, plus other minerals, an efficient agricultural sector, smart scientists and technologists, a robust and growing economy despite the war.  Why would Putin spend the resources to invade the rotting, stinking hulk that is the EU/UK who have nothing but recession, technology stuck in the 1970s, and overcrowded with the World's dross from every s****-hole?  It is a measure of the hubris and blindness of the Euro-galoots who imagine their territory is such a valuable prize" [readers' comment at source].

Nuclear War

"'Ukraine' - warns President Putin - 'intends to create its own nuclear weapons, and this is not a mere boast. The acquisition of nuclear weapons will be much easier for Ukraine than for other states conducting such research, especially if Kyiv receives foreign technological support. We cannot rule this out. If Ukraine acquires weapons of mass destruction, the situation in the world and in Europe will change dramatically.'  In which hands would the Ukrainian nuclear weapons be, [is] confirmed by the fact that Zelensky has just conferred on the 10th Ukrainian Assault Brigade 'the Edelweiss title of honour': the same name and symbol of one of the most ferocious Nazi Divisions, the 1st Edelweiss Division, which in 1943 massacred over 5,000 Italian soldiers who had surrendered in Greek Kefalonia" [source].

Sanctions

"Sanctions seem to have become the preferred tool of our foreign policies ... We have pushed [Putin] into the arms of China.  His ties with Beijing have solidified.  China is emerging as a mediator in the conflict.  The Americans have to ask Venezuela and Iran for oil to get out of the energy impasse they have put themselves in - and the United States has to piteously backtrack on the sanctions imposed on its enemies.  Western ministers who seek to collapse the Russian economy and make the Russian people suffer, or even call for the assassination of Putin, show (even if they have partially reversed the form of their words, but not the substance!) that our leaders are no better than those we hate - sanctioning Russian athletes in the Para-Olympic Games or Russian artists has nothing to do with fighting Putin.  What makes the conflict in Ukraine more blameworthy than our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya?  What sanctions have we adopted against those who deliberately lied to the international community in order to wage unjust, unjustified and murderous wars?  Have we adopted a single sanction against the countries, companies or politicians who are supplying weapons to the conflict in Yemen, considered to be the 'worst humanitarian disaster in the world'?" [source].

"Remember Joe Biden's delusional prediction that the U.S. would see that 'the ruble will be reduced to rubble'?  And that 'the most stringent sanctions regime in history' was going to 'weaken' Russia, perhaps even leading to Putin's overthrow?  Most of it backfired, badly.  Last year, the ruble reached its highest exchange rate in history.  Russia's 2022 trade surplus of $227 billion was up 86% from 2021.  The U.S.' trade deficit over the same period rose 12.2%, and is approaching $1 trillion ... the War has betrayed, as nothing else possibly could, the diplomatic isolation of the U.S., with the vast majority of the world's people refusing to implement U.S.-demanded sanctions against Russia" [source].

"[T]he West has opened not only military and informational warfare against us, but is also seeking to fight us on the economic front.  However, they have not succeeded on any of these fronts, and never will.  Moreover, those who initiated the sanctions are punishing themselves: they sent prices soaring in their own countries, destroyed jobs, forced companies to close, and caused an energy crisis, while telling their people that the Russians were to blame for all of this ... Let me reiterate that the sanctions against Russia are merely a means, while the aim as declared by the Western leaders, to quote them, is to make us suffer.  'Make them suffer' - what a humane attitude ... However, their gamble failed to pay off.  The Russian economy, as well as its governance model proved to be much more resilient than the west thought" [source].

"Before Russia's intervention in Ukraine, active duty soldier and former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said 'They actually want Russia to invade Ukraine.  Why would they?  Because it gives the Biden administration a clear excuse to levy draconian sanctions... against Russia and the Russian people and number two, it cements this cold war in place'..." [source].

"Western politicians have accepted civilian strikes in the Donbass for eight years without adopting any sanctions against the Ukrainian government.  We have long since entered a dynamic where Western politicians have agreed to sacrifice international law towards their goal of weakening Russia" [source].

"What makes the conflict in Ukraine more blameworthy than our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya?  What sanctions have we adopted against those who deliberately lied to the international community in order to wage unjust, unjustified and murderous wars?... Have we adopted a single sanction against the countries, companies or politicians who are supplying weapons to the conflict in Yemen, considered to be the 'worst humanitarian disaster in the world?' " [source].                                               

The Kakhovka Dam

"The key to understanding such events is always the same question - and has been since Roman times: Cui Bono? ... Well, it sure ain't Vladimir Putin.  At this point in Zelensky's Tales of the Riverbank performance a little history lesson and a few hard facts need addressing:

• The Kakhova Dam was built by the Russian government in the 1950s. The area where it sits is currently under Russian control;

• The Kakhova hydro-electric power plant supplies water to the Crimea, which has been home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet for the last 240 years;

• Before the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin regularly issued demands to Kiev that irrigation systems supplying water to Crimea remain open - for obvious reasons.  Ukraine's political independence had, of course, been conditional on maintaining amicable relations with Russia.

"CUI BONO?  In other words, Russia would get no benefit whatsoever from the dam's destruction.  Quite the reverse.  Cutting the water supply off from Crimea would be - from a Russian perspective - sheer insanity.  Loss of Crimean water represents an economic and military setback of huge proportions.  Yet we are being asked to believe that - for the second time in this grotesque NATO proxy war - Putin has 'carried out a terrorist attack' on a facility vital to Russia's own strategic infrastructure.  First Nordstream, now Kakhova.  This is BS on stilts.  By this logic, in 1940, Churchill might have sent the RAF to bomb London - and followed up by sinking all Navy warships in the Channel" [source].

Nord Stream Pipeline

"[The U.S.'] destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline is recognized as the greatest act of state-sponsored terrorism in history, easily surpassing 911 in terms of the hundreds of millions of people it will hurt.  And this, to one of its putative allies, Europe.  Imagine what happens to its enemies" [source].

"If the neo-cons in Washington think Russia will abandon the Ukraine conflict they are insane - which is perfectly possible, given the sequence of military clown-shows that made up their suicidal War On Terror.  Human life is not apparently a consideration for these psychopaths, nor do they have the slightest grasp of history.  Russia cannot and will not permit NATO to encircle Moscow with an ever-expanding array of weaponry and missiles.  Russia will always wage war of the only alternative is surrender.  The peoples of the English-speaking countries deserve better than this barbarian folly.  Our so-called leaders are a rabble of power-drunk scum.  We are quickly approaching the brink of a holocaust-scale holocaust" [source].

The Mainstream Media / Disinformation

"Today we find ourselves once again being sold a war by the U.S. government, this time against Russia.  And - as in all U.S. imperialist wars - the corporate media follow along, dutifully reporting and publishing every video and 'news story' they become aware of, with sources unknown at best and dubious at worst.  These hidden parts are the other side of the story, the more truthful side" [source].

"There were 36 articles about this war in the Daily Mail the other day.  Most of them appealed to fear and virtuous emotion.  All the other MSM outlets are the same.  None of them mentioned a single reason why Putin's actions might be a reaction to something.  I detect the hand of the government's Spoonbenders in all of this.  They have effortlessly segued from Covid to Ukraine"  /  "I am not sure whether the majority of the MSM just take us all for fools or really do take everything they are told or presented with at face value without even the most cursory of investigations.  At the end of the day I think it is the former, so desperate are they these days to push the globalist narrative.  I am afraid after years of concentrated lies culminating with covid I have to sprinkle everything with handfuls of salt" [readers' comments at source].

"It really is possible to manufacture a war if the MSM comply ... the MSM have been completely compliant as our own government killed 50,000 old and vulnerable people in order to pretend Covid-19 was a killer disease affecting us all.  I would have said that was pretty unlikely a couple of years ago.  Today though, I believe a genuine evil has arisen and it could not have gained a foothold without a corrupt and complicit press.  I no longer believe a single thing they say, and I no longer believe they are good.  Far from it" [reader's comment at source].

"On Facebook, the Azov group was considered in the same category as the Islamic State [ISIS] and subject to the platform’s 'policy on dangerous individuals and organizations.'  It was therefore forbidden to glorify its activities, and 'posts' that were favorable to it were systematically banned.  But on February 24, Facebook changed its policy and allowed posts favorable to the militia.  In the same spirit, in March, the platform authorized, in the former Eastern countries, calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders.  So much for the values that inspire our leaders" [source].

"Multiple unfiltered stories from Ukrayinska Pravda, New Voice of Ukraine and other Ukrainian media outlets routinely have appeared on Yahoo’s daily news feed, often accounting for a third or more of the site’s top dozen stories.  Press releases from Ukraine’s government also have appeared in the U.S. media, at times without even an acknowledgment that the accuracy of those official accounts could not be confirmed.  Moreover, there are virtually no competing stories from Russian news sources, creating an even greater pro-Ukraine imbalance.  A similar imbalance has been evident on the principal social media platforms" [source].

"[W]estern governments and media working in unison with the Ukrainian government and media have mounted the largest and most sophisticated disinformation campaign ever operated.  Using population control methods developed by the US and British intelligence services in Afghanistan, western state-aligned media have turned the so-called 'battle for hearts and minds' on their own people ... Within Ukraine, there is clear evidence of a disinformation mill churning out outrageous anti-Russian propaganda that is repeated by western Ukrainian journalists in English on their social media pages for western consumption.  Naturally, this is picked up by western media and treated - uncritically - as news from the war" [source].

"So determined are Western mainstream media to peddle the Ukraine-is-winning fantasy that, even when Western officials tell the truth about the war, the media often ignore them ... Recently, the triumphalist tone of the Western discourse about the Ukraine war has become more muted.  The disparity between the reality on the ground and the West's semi-fictional narrative of the war has simply become too obvious.  Accordingly, NATO states and the Western mainstream media have begun to prepare the public for Ukraine's looming defeat" [source].

"Jeremy Vine of the BBC said, 'If you put on a Putin's uniform, you deserve to die.'  This is the way that the dead on one side is being viewed.  They are being dehumanised.  It's very worrying" [source].                     

"In the 1950s, the CIA turned corporate media into its 'Mighty Wurlitzer' of propaganda.  'The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media', admitted William Colby, former CIA Director ... 'Most consumers of the corporate media were - and are - unaware of the effect that the salting of public opinion has on their own beliefs.  A network anchorman in time of national crisis is an instrument of psychological warfare in the MOCKINGBIRD media.  He is a creature from the national security sector's chamber of horrors.  For this reason consumers of the corporate press have reason to examine their basic beliefs about government and life in the parallel universe of these United States [EMcD note: similarly in the UK]' [Alex Constantine].  Lies of omission are a crucial element of the national security state's 'psychological warfare' against rational thought and the desire for peace.  For over a year, the corporate media, long ago twisted into a propaganda tool by the state, have lied repeatedly, in serial fashion, about the nature of the conflict in Ukraine" [source].

"The BBC, the NYT, the Daily Telegraph and CNN all reported on Right Sector, C14 and other extremists' role in the overthrow of Yanukovych ... such mainstream reports on Banderism have stopped as the neo-fascist role in Ukraine was suppressed in western media once Putin made 'de-nazification' a goal of the invasion" [source].

"The hypocrisy of the narrative is shocking indeed.  You need to be an authority in your own right on what is going on, and to stay on top of every single detail of each move, in order not be misled by the concentrated campaign to mislead readers and viewers about what is going on in the world ... the entire world needs a ... war against entire agencies and media outlets whose only mission is to confuse readers and viewers and to mislead to the wrong conclusions" [source].

"It should be noted that our media date the beginning of the 'war' to February 2022.  In truth, this war started back in 2014, and the Russian intervention is only a military operation within the framework of that war ... The reason our media date the start of the war to 24 February (rather than to 2014) and never talk about the casualties in the Donbas (or, if they do, dissociate them from the Russian operation) is because these provide a legitimate reason for intervention.  The Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias that operated in the Donbas region considered Russian speakers Untermenschen.  By their silence on these crimes, our media - and our politicians - show that they harbour a similar attitude.  However, they do not want to be equated with neo-Nazis.  Thus [western media] fails to see neo-Nazis in Ukraine (or attach only marginal importance to them,) and dismisses it all as Kremlin propaganda" [source].

"[I]t should be noted that Russian public opinion remains stably supportive of the military operation in Ukraine.  In September [2022] (after the withdrawal from Kharvov), there was a slight turnaround, which shows that Russian society does absorb Western information but is able to keep exercising discernment.  What we do not see is that Russians have access to Western media that are able to persuade them of (the falsity of) the information (some would say propaganda) in Russia.  Conversely, people in the West do not have access to Russian media, and when Russians do appear on our screens, they are mostly opposition figures.  Our image of the situation is thus deliberately misrepresented so that the public continues to support Ukraine" [source].

"Our governments lead as enabled by what the media say.  This places a considerable responsibility on our media, which they are not fulfilling with diligence ... deliberately spreading 'fake news'.  By sometimes even contradicting the Ukrainian media, our media, our media influence the way we react to the crisis.  Had they but left room for different opinions, they would have made it easier for Ukraine.  But that was not their goal.  Their goal was to cause Russia to collapse, whatever the cost; and the brittleness of their narrative forbids them to let others have their say ... Buoyed up by their hatred of Russia, our media shut out any critical analysis of Ukraine's actions and induced it to repeat its mistakes.  Today, Ukraine is paying the price for the blind and idiotic smugness of our journalists and politicians ... Since March, our media have been proclaiming slava Ukraïni, Russia's defeat, Russia's collapse, its isolation, and the imminent downfall of Vladimir Putin.  None of this has happened.  Our media are engaging in wishful thinking to satisfy their need for hatred" [source].

"Taking advantage of gullible audience's innate predilection for hero worship, the mainstream media is projecting Zelensky as a messiah waging a crusade against a rival power that dared to stand up to NATO's further eastward expansion into Russia's traditional sphere of influence.  The public-relationing rationale of live-broadcasting his hateful and violent speeches to the parliaments of Europe and the United States is as much to give publicity to an expendable stooge as to vilify and internationally isolate an arch-foe on the global stage" [source].

"Let's also remember that Zelensky was [is] a US/UK puppet, full of cocaine, and that the entire media was consolidated by brutal force in a monolith media - fully financed by the CIA.  That CIA-funded (via USAID) media was then endlessly quoted by the US [and UK] state media to indoctrinate the US [and UK] public" [reader's comment at source].                   

The Propaganda War

Please note that none of this kind of propaganda is new; we have been seeing precisely such fauxtography, smoke and mirrors, selective reporting, and outright lying, for many decades now in mainstream media reporting on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians - see here

"Righteous victims do not need to tell lies.  As the innocent victims of foreign aggression, they have innocence on their side.  In war, only the bad guys need to hide their deeds behind a veil of propaganda and lies.  Yet, Kyiv has been caught in an entire web of lies and deceit, and it has been spinning this web from the start of the war.  In fact, the evidence would suggest many of these fantastic dramas were written and rehearsed months before the Russian invasion began.  With the help of the CIA and Britain’s MI6, the Ukrainian government put together an entire compendium of propagandistic fables ready for dissemination as soon as they were required.  Hundreds of thousands of NATO dollars have been spent in Ukraine on public relations; on PR firms connected to western intelligence agencies which have constructed a ready-made narrative for the western media - the purpose of which has been to present the Ukrainians as whiter-than-white victims fighting for freedom, democracy, and the American way, and the Russians as subhuman ‘orcs’ and ‘marauders’ raping and murdering their way across a wholly innocent and defenceless ‘western’ nation" [source].

"This theatre of the information war was from the very beginning put in place to serve the purposes of western anti-Russian propaganda.  It would function as a smokescreen to hide the ugliest inconvenient facts - the 2014 right-wing coup, the Nazi regiments in the Ukrainian army, Kyiv’s ethnic cleansing of Russians in Donbas, and the state-sanctioned terror campaign of the national-socialist Azov and Tornado battalions - and afford the US-NATO narrative a headstart in the West to reinforce the righteousness of a war against Russia.  A good lie, as the saying goes, is halfway around the world before the truth has its boots on ... One such outrageous and unsupported tale may be true, perhaps two or three.  But this is a war of many fabulous and propagandistic stories.  Audiences can only suspend their disbelief for so long before the basic requirements of reason insist on evidence, and this is one things the Kyiv regime is not offering.  Time and again, this regime has been caught in lies and fabrications intended to win western support for a NATO war with Russia" [source].

"[T]he Ukrainian Security Service (SBU)'s 'biblical' focus in their recommendation to - in their words - 'introduce in the Ukrainian propaganda an image of Russia as a threat to the whole civilised world and present the Ukrainian resistance as a holy war against the world's evil and the kingdom of Armageddon (it is desirable to attract the most influential figures of the church to bring this thesis to public awareness).'  Presidents Poroshenko and Zelensky have certainly done this in many of their statements" [source].

"The propaganda frame that western establishment politicians and media use to explain the war in Ukraine to their own public is a classic 'white hats versus black hats' narrative, in which Russia's guilt for the invasion doubles as proof of the West's innocence and righteousness.  The growing mountain of evidence that the U.S. and its allies share responsibility for many aspects of this crisis is swept under the proverbial carpet, which looks more and more like the Little Prince's drawing of a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant"    [source].

"Ukraine's Mighty Wurlitzer has been dutifully amplified by the Western media: the ghost of Kiev, Snake Island, the insinuations that Russia bombed itself at both the Zaporzhizhia nuclear plant and the Nord Stream pipelines and specific claims that Russia [engaged] in human wave tactics to horrifying losses.  We also see hoary old fables like Russia having primitive everything - equipment, technology, training, leadership - predisposing broad swathes of the public to accept derivative spin like the neverending, nevertrue claims that Russia was running out of artillery and missiles.  And we've seen an unrelenting deluge of Big Lies, like Putin's incredible roster of health problems, his supposed weak hold in power and resulting paranoia, that feeds another oft-told tale, that Putin's ouster is just in sight by implication would lead to him being replaced by someone more tractable.  And as a corollary 'Russia is generally bad at everything' comes the claims that Russia's 'conscript' army is suffering from terrible morale and desertions because they are losing so many men compared to the highly motivated, well-trained and equipped, and more blond Ukrainians" [source].

"In March 2019, Volodymyr Zelenksy was elected with the idea of making peace with the Russians.  It was the neo-Nazis who then immediately threatened him with death if he did so.  Strangely, none of our media sought to support Zelensky by standing up against these threats.  On the contrary, they systematically kept pushing in the same direction as these neo-Nazis" [source].

Patrick Heningsen:  "Where's the anti-war lobby in the West?  Where is it?  It's just disappeared ... so what should be the anti-war lobby - on the Left - unfortunately they gradually got groomed into supporting overseas conflicts, like the proxy war against Syria, and ignoring things like the war in Yemen and all these other conflicts which we've been sponsoring, and of course Libya.  So they've managed to gaslight, I think, the Left and so it's not even there; it's not existing now.  And then they've got sucked into the Church of the Branch Covidians for the last three years, and as soon as the Covid crisis subsided, Boom! came the Ukrainian crisis.  But the support for the Ukraine is really built on the back of a 'Russiagate' hoax that's been going on now for 6 years, but really started with the election of Donald Trump, and so all that animus, all that energy and hate for Russia and support for Ukraine is really built off of that lie.  So I think we have a deep psychological condition in the West - I think it's a crisis of morality; it's a crisis of intellect; and ethics.  And I think Western Civilization is at its lowest ebb, maybe, in modern history - if you consider what people talk about and say; everyone has 'their truth', and 'this is my truth', 'this is my opinion'.  No-one really wants to look at the objective facts of the situation.  Mike Robinson:  "Russiagate... the highlight ... partly driven from the UK though Richard Dearlove and Christopher Steele and so on... coming off the back of an entire decade of propaganda and gaslighting with the Integrity Initiative and the Russia Report ... absolutely sourced in the UK..." [source].

Russian Intervention is Aimed at Restoring the Tsarist Empire or the Soviet Union (take your pick which)

"This narrative is bandied about by neo-Nazis (or similar groups) in the Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine.  It is a form of conspiracy theory based on the writings of Alexander Dugin, who is described the the British tabloid press and Swiss media as a 'confidant of Vladmir Putin'.  This is simply a lie, because Dugin sees Putin as a 'liberal' and openly criticises him.  It even appears that the two men have never met, and [Dugin] was reportedly even expelled from Moscow University in 2014 for his extremist statements, according to the Ukrainian Euromaidan Press.  It is probably this rhetoric that encouraged Ukrainians to carry out a terrorist attack on Dugin in August 2022, and this would explain our media's failure to condemn the act.  For example, Vladmir Putin (ex-KGB, hint, hint) is accused of having been lamenting the fall of the Soviet Union when he declared that 'the destruction of the USSR was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe in the history of the twentieth century.'  This utterance regularly appears in the Francophone media ... to illustrate Putin's notional ambition of restoring the 'greatness' of the USSR.  In reality, the sentence comes from a speech delivered in 25 April 2005 where Putin was deploring the chaotic way in which Russian society had transitioned to democracy, not the end of the Soviet regime.  Unlike Belarusian President Lukashenko, Vladimir Putin is by no means a nostalgic figure hankering back to a communist world.  On the contrary, he has promoted a very 'Western' economic policy.  Incidentally, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Alexander Dugin - described as Putin's sources of inspiration - were also trenchant opponents of the Soviet system" [source].

Russian Intervention is an Expression of Hatred for the Ukrainian People

"This argument comes from Ukrainian neo-Nazis and has been widely taken up the Western 'like-minded' media.  It says that Vladimir Putin denies the existence of the Ukrainian people and considers them to be a part of the Russian people, which supposedly justifies his intention to 'reconquer' Ukraine.  This argument comes from an interpretation of an article signed by Vladimir Putin himself and published on 12 July 2021, entitled 'On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians'.  The response to this by the ultra-right Ukrainian media is further disseminated by our journalists, who claim that Vladimir Putin considers Ukraine 'a non-existent country' and that he 'does not recognise the existence of Ukraine as a country'.  Of course, they contrive to see in this a conspiracy by Vladimir Putin to unite the two countries by force.  This is wrong: at no point does Putin speak of an annexation, or even of a reunification of Ukraine and Russia.  What the ultra-nationalist/neo-Nazi media are actually concealing is that this article is a response to the Law on Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine, adopted on 1 July 2021.  This law, somewhat redolent of the Nuremberg Race Laws of the 1930s, grants Ukrainian citizens differing constitutional rights depending on their ethnic origin ... Vladimir Putin's article not only unequivocally recognises the existence of Ukraine by defining it as a 'free state' but also clearly speaks of the 'sovereignty of Ukraine'.  His intention is thus clearly not to suggest a reunification of Russia and Ukraine, but to make it clear to Ukraine that it has no reason to discriminate against its citizens of Russian ethnicity vis-à-vis its citizens of Ukrainian ethnicity" [source].

The Humanitarian Crisis in the Donbass

"[T]his year, on February 18, Kiev started a vicious bombing campaign on the Donbas region, targeting both the Donestk (DPR) and Luganks People’s Republics (LPR).  That day alone, the Ukrainian government had attacked at least 47 points along the conflict zone, targeting its own population (from Kiev’s perspective), that is, the population living in the territories it claims as its own.  A kindergarten in the Stanytsia Luganska town was targeted, causing the deaths of civilians.  On February 22, an El Pais piece detailed the humanitarian crisis in Donbas.  On February 24, CNN reported that Ukrainian forces 'destroyed' a large part of the region.  This caused lots of Donbas residents to seek refuge in the Rostov Oblast (Russian Federation).  Orphanages and schools were evacuated due to the Ukrainian military campaign.  These refugees arriving in Rostov-on-Don City (Russia) received medical care, food and financial aid, and the reception of the families was urgently organized.  At the time, LPR authorities denounced that Ukraine’s military regularly broke the cease-fire and shelled Donbas in a series of provocations so as to instigate its People’s Militia into responding, thus creating a pretext for further Ukrainian aggression while NATO kept supplying arms and mercenaries to Kiev thereby further fueling tensions.  The week before that, Moscow had withdrawn troops from the region near the border, which should have de-escalated tensions.  Amid the overwhelming flood of news about the crisis, one will have a hard time finding these aforementioned pieces of news in the English-language press, and thus these events become non-events, as if they had never taken place" [source].

The Death of 4-year-old Artiom Bobryshev

"Let's take one of the many photos distributed a few weeks ago on the Western Internet as evidence of the allegedly unprecedented criminal nature of Russian aggression.  The photograph shows the body of a little boy in rompers lying in a coffin.  Icons are placed next to his calm face and in the background a crying woman holds an older man in the deepest despair.  Commentaries explained that this [is] a funeral of four-year-old Artiom, killed in a Russian artillery fire in the suburbs of Donetsk.  It is this last detail - the location - that should make viewers cautious.  Why would Russians attack the Donetsk suburbs, when this area has been under the control of pro-Russian People's Republic of Donetsk for eight years, and the front line is now many kilometres west of the capital of the independent Donbass?  However, the observers' attention was focused on a boundless tragedy of the entire scene, so instead of geographical deliberations, below this photo we could only find hundreds of insults against the Russian aggressors allegedly killing innocent children.  Well, it is hardly surprising, isn't it?  Not at all.  Although the truth is different in a hard to imagine manner.  Artiom Bobryshev is really dead.  And he was really only 4 years and 4 months old at the time of his death.  And he lived with his family in the Kirov region of Donetsk.  The point is that he was killed on the 15th January 2015.  SEVEN YEARS AGO.  During one of the hundreds of Ukrainian firings on Donetsk.  KILLED FROM UKRAINIAN MISSILES fired by the Kiev junta on the civilian city districts of the Donbass People's Republics.  Because this war has been going on for eight years.  Donetsk children were really murdered there.  And the truth is still murdered" [emphasis in original] [source].

A Mother and Her Baby

"Inna Sovsun, a Ukrainian parliamentarian, posted to Twitter on 1 May the harrowing details of a Russian war crime:  'Russians killed a woman. Then they tied her live child to her corpse… and put a bomb between them. When rescue workers tried to save the child, the mine detonated' (Inna Sovsun, Twitter, 1 May 2022).  What an awful story!  What a truly unbelievable story!  Russian soldiers, the soldiers of a professional army with a chain of command, murdered a woman (possible) and strapped her still-living child to her before risking their lives to place an explosive between the mother and child (possible, but not very likely)?  And the bomb was good enough not to detonate with the struggling of the helpless babe, but wait patiently for rescue workers ... But Ms Sovsun is sure of this because the fable was ‘confirmed by the Ukrainian Minister of Defence’ - the same Minister of Defence, Oleksiy Reznikov, who confirmed the Ghost of Kyiv, the martyrdom of the heroic servicemen of Snake Island, and the Russian crimes at Irpin and Bucha!  On the list of things that did not happen in this conflict, ugly as it is, following Ockham’s razor, is this utterly fictional atrocity.  Of course, it was a story reported to Sovsun.  She did not see it with her own eyes, she did not see a picture, she was not given any evidence - and neither did she offer any.  Someone somewhere said it happened, it involved a mother ... and an innocent little Ukrainian baby, and so without any evidence whatsoever it is reported as news ... What is true, however, is that Inna Sovsun gained her seat in the Kyiv parliament immediately after the 2014 CIA-backed right-wing coup.  She had no political experience and yet was awarded - after the violation of the Constitution and the removal of a democratically elected government - with a ministerial brief" [source].

An 11 Year Old Boy

"Lesia Vasylenko, a parliamentarian from the same party with the same political credentials, shared the traumatic scribble of a child in a tweet in which she wrote:  'This is how an 11 year old boy sees the world after having been raped by [a] Russia soldier in front of his mother.  I find it hard to read reports like this, even harder to tweet about them, and absolutely impossible to remain silent. The world must know the truth' (Lesia Vasylenko, Twitter,1 May 2022).  The world must know the truth!  Indeed.  Quite coincidentally, this story of horror was posted on 1 May too, hinting at some level of coordination between the two deputies.  Yes, a child may have been raped by a soldier.  Horrible and disgusting things happen in war.  This story is possibly true.  But it was done - for added effect (on the reader) - in front of his mother.  The Russians are just this beastly.  Apparently.  Again, all we have is a dark scribble in black crayon.  No name, no place, no photo, no nothing - just an assertion; a fabulous tale the reader is meant to accept because it comes from political neophytes who benefited from a CIA-backed right-wing coup in the context of a geopolitical power struggle that led to a NATO-Russia proxy war under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust ... Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence" [source].

The Bucha Massacre: Many Questions Need Answering...

"The weakness of the Bucha street massacre video is the time it lasts.  As soon as the first shots were heard, everyone would run for cover.  Yet a dozen or more people were shot in the roadside over an extent of several hundred metres, and all military aged men.  Try and imagine how the scene played out in real time.  You can't.  So the bodies were placed there to be filmed.  By whom?"  /  "Examination of the bodies would possibly tell if [captive Russians being killed for the propaganda is] correct, which is why they're likely to be burnt"  /    "I see forensics as being very important.  What was the level of decomposition/time of death of the victims?  Were the bullets lodged in victims Russian-made, or do both sides use the same type of ammo, make, brand?" [readers' comments at source].

"The two pertinent facts already stated that need to be kept in mind are: (1) The mayor never uttered a peep about civilian dead when interviewed after the Russian army left; and (2) It is recorded fact that Azov troops were heard clearly stating they were to kill people with 'white' arm-bands, in other words Russian collaborators/supporters among the local community of Bucha"  /  "Very odd that on the official website of the Ukrainian national police, there is no mention on April 2 of the dead bodies everywhere and instead they show photos of just wrecked vehicles and interviewing citizens.  And note they mention 'clearing the area of saboteurs and accomplices of Russian troops.'  So where did these 'cleared' accomplices end up exactly?"  /  "[I]t's quite an incredible coincidence that at the same time that the police and press are mentioning clearing Bucha of Russian accomplices, the brutal nazi Azovs are in town" [readers' comments at source].

"There are two other important points: (1) the presumed ages of the victims - all of military age - but all such males were kidnapped during the impressment drive and thus aren't Ukrainian; (2) an examination of the available video and pics should focus on the victims' shoes, which will most likely be Russian issue combat boots of my hypothesis is correct"  /  "For some reason Ukrainian sources were holding back the information that Russia had left Bucha and Gostamel.  Was it because they were preparing the ground for a false-flag massacre?  Or was it because the massacre had already happened and they were in damage control mode?"  /  "Interesting: 'You can see from multiple angles that these civilians in Bucha were carrying emergency food rations distributed by Russian forces before the troops withdrew.  These victims were almost certainly killed by Ukrainian nationalists for being 'saboteurs' who 'collaborated' with Russia'." [readers' comments at source].

"Option (a) Russians decided to withdraw from Bucha and thought it would be entertaining (and completely indifferent to the negative press they would get) to slaughter civilians, including ones collaborating with them having white armbands, on their way out of town; or Option (b) The Nazi Azovs took revenge on anyone collaborating with the Russians and killed a bunch of people upon retaking the city starting on April 01, and with press help, set this up as the Russian's fault.  Ask who stands to gain and who stands to lose from all this, and you know who did it" [reader's comment at source].

"Russian troops left Bucha on March 30, after the talks between Russian and Ukrainian sides in Istanbul, where the Russian side announced their willingness to diffuse the situation near the Ukrainian capital.  In the four days since the Russian military left Bucha, there has not been a single sign of atrocities, not a single mention of them in the media.  On March 31 Bucha Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk shot a video about the Russian military leaving the city.  He said nothing about the streets being strewn with corpses.  Photographer Konstantin Liberov was in the city of Bucha on April 1 and 2.  While shooting a video and talking about the city, he does not mention anything about the corpses of local residents.  [He] was there as a volunteer.  In his story, [he] never once mentioned the corpses in Bucha.  He also did not see any bodies in his numerous videos [despite having] toured the entire city" [source].

"Western corporate media was awash with images of dead civilians, some with their hands tied behind their backs, strewn over the streets and heaped up in alleyways.  This was a hellish scene, but it certainly didn't stand up to much scrutiny.  The Russian army had left seventy-two hours before the atrocity was 'discovered' - and this after the mayor had returned to the town and proclaimed its liberation and the Ukrainian security services had conducted a sweep of the area looking for 'saboteurs' and collaborators.  It did not help that many of the dead were wearing white armbands and were found with Russian army humanitarian boxes.  There had indeed been a massacre, but the question of who had perpetrated it led to some troubling conclusions" [source].


"On the footage from 03 April we see people killed with the white armbands.  It was a distinguishing mark of Russian armed forces (as blue armbands were for the Ukrainians). The civilians in the territories controlled by the Russians also were wearing them.  You can put two and two together and draw a conclusion that some people shown may have been killed (intentionally or unintentionally) by Ukrainian forces during the clean-up operation.  Also it's clear from the blood and not stiff bodies in many footages that they weren't murdered on March 30 but later.  No footage clearly shows who actually killed the people ... maybe we are seeing here victims of shelling, whose corpses were used for provocation, maybe the people were killed during the clean-up operation, maybe they are people who had supported Russia and after the town was lost were killed by the Ukrainian nationalists.  We know that there is a real witch hunt in Ukrainian-controlled cities, where alleged 'saboteurs' and 'looters' are arrested, beaten, and tied to poles in the streets.  The Ukrainian military themselves distribute videos of them killing Russian prisoners, including those tied up ... There is no compelling evidence that a war crime was committed (and not staged with the use of corpses of the people incidentally killed before) and if it was really committed that Russia is responsible" [source].

Human Shields

Please note that the use of their own civilians as human shields is also a very common tactic of the Palestinians - see here


"If Moscow didn't care about civilians, it would have bombed the Ukraine in a carpet-bombing fashion and the military operation would have been over long ago.  As the DPR and Chechen soldiers in Mariupol told us, it is the use of civilians as human shields that is slowing sown their progress ... the DPR has called on the civilians of Slaviansk and Kramtorsk to evacuate before the encirclement is complete in order to avoid being used as human shields by Ukrainian soldiers ...  [who are] trying to prevent the evacuation of the inhabitants of Kramatorsk by scaring them.  Because the fewer human shields there are in Kramatorsk, the sooner the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be defeated" [source].

"While the battles of the military operation were raging, and there seemed to be only the avoidance of casualties for Russian forces to consider, the West and Zelenskyy decided to demand that the people in the Azovstal steel plant be left to go into Ukrainian hands.  The civilians there could have always been allowed to go into Russian territory, but the militants in the plant, overseen by the regime in Kyiv, decided not to let the civilians leave, turning them into effective human shields.  The Russian forces there could have simply killed everyone therein, especially since they are the sworn militant enemies of Russia, but they exercised restraint in pursuit of higher goals ... According to reports on the ground, the reality was that Ukrainian fighters used the same buildings as civilians used, and there are many videos available online to show that Ukrainian fighters used anything from schools to hospitals as shelters and fortifications.  Thus the ones who were ‘killing for Odin’ managed to lead to the deaths of their own kinfolk" [source].

"The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHOHR) issued a report in which it:  'accused Azov in 2016 of violating international humanitarian law.  The report detailed incidents over a period from November 2015- February 2016 where Azov had embedded their weapons and forces in used civilian buildings, and displaced residents after looting civilian properties.  The report also accused the battalion of raping and torturing detainees in the Donbas region'" [source].

Humanitarian Corridors

"Ukrainian soldiers ... [claimed] there would be a thousand civilians with them in the underground, and that humanitarian corridors are needed to evacuate them ... why didn't they leave the plant when Russia opened safe corridors for the soldiers to surrender?  If they prevented these civilians from leaving, it means that they are holding them hostage to use them as human shields ... to make sure that it cannot be accused of crimes against civilians, Russia today organised the new secure corridors and a ceasefire, so that those inside the Azovstal factory (civilians or military) can evacuate or surrender.  While no civilians (or soldiers for that matter) came out of the basement of the factory itself, this humanitarian corridor allowed more than 120 civilians trapped in the basements of houses right in front of the main Azovstal checkpoint to come out, and finally be evacuated" [source].

"In cities like Kharkov, Mariupol and Odessa, the Ukrainian defense is provided by the paramilitary militias.  They know that the objective of 'denazification' is aimed primarily at them.  For an attacker in an urbanized area, civilians are a problem.  That is why Russia is seeking to create humanitarian corridors to empty cities of civilians and leave only the militias, to fight them more easily.  Conversely, these militias seek to keep civilians in the cities from evacuating in order to dissuade the Russian army from fighting there.  This is why they are reluctant to implement these corridors and do everything to ensure that Russian efforts are unsuccessful - they use the civilian population as 'human shields'.  Videos showing civilians trying to leave Mariupol and beaten up by fighters of the Azov regiment are of course carefully censored by the Western media" [source].

"Defense Spokesman of the Donetsk People's Republic Eduard Basurin is claiming that the Azov battallion and other units of the Ukrainian National Guard are blocking local civilians from leaving Mariupol...  This footage purports to show Azov fighters preventing civilians from fleeing Mariupol...  Asked if [he] planned to leave Mariupol, [this] Greek man exclaimed, 'How can I leave? When you try to leave you run the risk of running into a patrol of the Ukrainian fascists, the Azov battalion'." [source].

"In cities like Kharkov, Mariupol and Odessa, the Ukrainian defense is provided by the paramilitary militias.  They know that the objective of 'denazification' is aimed primarily at them.  For an attacker in an urbanized area, civilians are a problem.  This is why Russia is seeking to create humanitarian corridors to empty cities of civilians and leave only the militias, to fight them more easily.  Conversely, these militias seek to keep civilians in the cities from evacuating in order to dissuade the Russian army from fighting there.  This is why they are reluctant to implement these corridors and do everything to ensure that Russian efforts are unsuccessful - they use the civilian population as 'human shields'.  Videos showing civilians trying to leave Mariupol and beaten up by fighters of the Azov Regiment are of course carefully censored by the Western media" [source].

"Abram’s wife had been killed in the indiscriminate artillery shelling by the AFU when a round in the early morning hit the shop where she worked as a clerk and when she was opening for the day.  He asked me if I knew what terror was, but answered his own question, 'It is to never know, any time when death will come.'  He said the Banderists would go days, weeks, months without firing a shot at his village and then suddenly open fire from many miles away and at no target in particular.  'For many years we could not know when who would be the next to die. And…' he added, 'for seven years we beg Putin for help.'  It was three weeks before he finally left Marikiva but that was when the Russian army had forced the AFU out.  According to Abram the AFU held them in the basement the whole time; a horror of its own.  Little food, no toilet - buckets - far too many seeking refuge there after the AFU had commandeered his building for their safety, using it for the vantage points and firing opportunities provided by the tall buildings.  When the AFU was forced out by the Russians they fired at it with RPGs while he and the more than forty in the basement screamed in terror.  He had escaped Markivka and moved west via Belarus, but his younger brother was killed as he tried to use the humanitarian corridor created not by the AFU but by the Russians ... Abram told of seeing from his windows AFU soldiers digging mines into the roads to stop people from leaving his town.  'Only we walk on concrete. No mines under concrete,' he said. 'But you walk on concrete and they shoot you.'  His brother died when he and two family men, two women and their children stepped through a tripwire planted by the AFU as they walked through the roadside brush off the road to Prosian.  A neighbour friend and others were with another group far enough behind to live.  It was the Russian army that responded, not the AFU.  The men, leading, died instantly.  The others died at the scene ... as [Abram] reached into his pocket, his face and his hands were trembling.  I knew what was coming.  Shaking, he held out an old, worn but lovely golden wind-up watch, the gold wrist band mostly gone, the lens fractured in uneven quadrants, but I could still make out the exact time of this horror: 5:39.  Am.  Pm.  It just didn’t matter… anymore.  'This is what is left of my brother…' [source].

Mariupol: Maternity Hospital and Theatre

"I ask [Nikolay] if he knows by any chance what really happened in the Mariupol maternity hospital and theatre ... Nikolay knows what happened there, he saw with his own eyes, how the maternity hospital was transformed into a military position and a firing position by the fighters of the Azov regiment ... he confirms that the hospital had been evacuated to another area and was therefore no longer in working order.  He also explains that the dramatic theatre in Mariupol was not destroyed at all by a bombing by the Russian army, but that the fighters of the Azov regiment blew it up" [source].

Mariupol Maternity Hospital:  "There's no dust.  Everyone coming out should be covered in white and yet their clothes look in good condition.  How could that happen when the damage is so vast?  Also, it looks that the building didn't catch fire.  The cars are burnt out, but not a whiff of smoke from the building.  My guess is that [it] is an abandoned building being used as a film set"  /  "I must agree that there's something odd about the photos.  I looked at them expecting to be shocked, and before long I was thinking, 'Will I be reading in the future how things were set up to propel us into this war?'  Well, I don't know.  I cannot be sure.  But we do live in an age of propaganda and manipulation"  [readers' comments at source].

"It is important to understand beforehand that it is not the Ukrainian army that is defending Mariupol, but the Azov militia, composed of foreign mercenaries.  In its March 7, 2022 summary of the situation, the Russian UN mission in New York stated that 'Residents report that Ukrainian armed forces expelled staff from the Mariupol city birth hospital No. 1 and set up a firing post inside the facility.'  On March 8, the independent Russian media Lenta.ru, published the testimony of civilians from Mariupol who told that the maternity hospital was taken over by the militia of the Azov regiment, and who drove out the civilian occupants by threatening them with their weapons.  They confirmed the statements of the Russia ambassador a few hours earlier" [source].

"On 9 March, Russian forces struck the building.  According to CNN, 17 people were wounded, but the images do not show any casualties in the building and there is no evidence that the victims mentioned are related to this strike.  There is talk of children, but in reality, there is nothing.  This does not prevent the leaders of the EU from seeing this as a war crime ... In reality, we do not know exactly what happened.  But the sequence of events tends to confirm that Russian forces struck a position of the Azov regiment and that the maternity ward was then free of civilians ... the paramilitary militias that defend the cities are encouraged by the international community not to respect the rules of war" [source].    

Mariupol: Mass Graves

"Since the media is essentially copy-pasting from the same source - the former mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boichenko (who seems to be far from the city now) - I'll cite from the Washington Post's article.  Boichenko, the article notes, 'called the site the "new Babyn Yar", referring to one [of] the largest mass graves in Europe located in the outskirts of Kyiv, where 33,000 Jews were killed by Nazis in 1941 during World War II.'  This is ironic on several levels.  A mayor who is whitewashing the neo-Nazis who run amok in his city - notably those from the Azov Battalion, who have used civilians as human shields, occupied and militarized civilian infrastructure, point-blank executed civilians - is comparing an alleged (non-existent) mass grave to a Nazi massacre of WW2" [source].

"Boichenko's other alarming claim was that the alleged 'mass grave' was 'the biggest war crime of the 21st century.'  We are only 22 years into it, but we've already seen the US-led invasion of Iraq, the levelling of Syria's Raqqa, Saudi Arabia's ongoing war in Yemen - all of which are much stronger contenders than the nowhere-to-be-found 'mass graves' of Mangush" [source]. 

Crimea

"[A]s the Organization of World Peace reported in 2021, 'according to Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council Decree no. 117/2021, Ukraine has committed to putting all options on the table to taking back control over the Russian annexed Crimea region. Signed on March 24th, President Zelensky has committed the country to pursue strategies that... "will prepare and implement measures to ensure the de-occupation and reintegration of the peninsula".'  Given that the residents of Crimea, most of whom are ethnic Russians, are quite happy with the current state of affairs under Russian governance ... Zelensky's threat in this regard was not only a threat against Russia itself but was also a threat of potentially massive bloodshed against a people who do not want to go back to Ukraine" [source].

"This war is all about Crimea, home to Sevastopol and the Russian Black Sea Fleet.  Nato dangled a membership carrot before Ukraine in 2008 and 2021 which if carried out would mean the U.S. 7th Fleet moored in Sevastopol rather than Russia's navy.  No Russian leader would find this acceptable.  No Russian leader would view this as anything other than a declaration of war.  Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 for precisely this reason, but Ukraine made life difficult for them - interfering with the water supply etc.  Putin quite logically concluded the best way to ensure normal life in Crimea was to establish a land corridor connecting it to Russia via eastern Ukraine.  Which he is currently doing.  Meanwhile we are repeatedly told Putin wants to reinstate the territory of the Soviet Union and anyone resisting this propaganda is deemed a Russian collaborator.  Many in the West seem prepared to sacrifice the world to nuclear war in order to push this false narrative.  The blame lies entirely with America, Nato and any number of witless politicians and cretinous journalists.  Crimea, incidentally, was part of Russia since time immemorial.  Khrushchev handed it over to Ukraine in 1954, which geo-politically meant little as Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.  It means a lot now though, even if our ruling class seem unable to accept this gargantuan geo-political reality" [source].

The North Crimea Canal:  "A further attack in 2014 by the Kyiv regime on the livelihoods and the 'conditions of life' (the term used in the UN Genocide Convention criterion) not only of Russian speakers, but also of other minorities (Crimean Tatars, Armenians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Karaites and Jews) came when, soon after Russia's annexation of Crimea in February-March 2014, Ukraine damned the North Crimean Canal, which had provided the inhabitants of the Crimean Peninsula with 85% of their water, 72% of which went to agriculture, 10% to industry, and the remaining 18% for drinking and other public uses.  While pretending to care for the interest of all the Crimean population, the Ukrainian Presdent [Zelensky]'s permanent representative in Crimea, Anton Korynevych, said in 2020:  'The resumption of water supply to the peninsula is possible only after the de-occupation of Crimea, and this is a significant lever of pressure on the occupier country.'  This grossly irresponsible action by the Kyiv regime threatened the most fundamental of all conditions of life - water - of all the people of Crimea.  Russia's construction and opening of the Kerch Bridge in 2018 ameliorated the situation somewhat, but not enough.  In March 2022, Russian forces were able to blow up the dam and render the canal useable again, restoring its water to the people of Crimea" [source].

Foreign Mercenaries

UK, February 2022:  "If people want to support that struggle [Ukraine against Russian troops], I would support them in doing that" [Liz Truss, UK Foreign Secretary, (2012 - present), speaking in February 2022].

UK, June 2022:  "The UK is not supporting British nationals going to Ukraine to fight in the conflict.  If you travel to Ukraine to fight, or to assist others engaged in the conflict, your activities may amount to offences against UK legislation and you could be prosecuted on your return to the UK" [UK Govt., Correspondence Team in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Letter to L**** L*********, 15th June 2022].

"[B]y portraying the war in Ukraine as a struggle of liberalism against authoritarianism, Western liberals are whitewashing the Far Right and other foreign fighters from a myriad of illiberal ideologies as they descend on Ukraine to fight the Russians.  According to Kiev, by March 6 [2022] at least 20,000 foreign fighters from 55 countries had entered Ukraine to fight against Russians.  The volunteers are a mix of neo-Nazis, radical Islamists, naïve liberals, pan-Turkists and a variety of Russophobes.  Although Western media are lionising the foreign fighters, the accounts they give of their time in Ukraine are truly horrifying - from being tortured by Ukrainian soldiers, to being used as cannon fodder, and facing devastating missile strikes from Russian forces" [source]. 

Bio Labs

"The desecreted document [Disinformation in the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict] also attributes to Russian propaganda reports that there are 30 bio-laboratories in Ukraine linked to the Pentagon and a network of U.S. and European companies.  There is plenty of evidence, however, from a U.S. investigative journalism agency and other sources, not only of their existence but of their activities consisting of developing and testing pathogenic viruses for biological warfare.  The Russian government asked the United Nations to send a commission of inquiry to Ukraine, but received a sharp refusal.  What the dangers posed by the bio-laboratories in Ukraine are to the whole of Europe and the world is also denounced by Tultsi Gabbard, a U.S. politician from the Democratic Party" [source].
 

"I have a horrible feeling that the US-biolabs in Ukraine might just release something far nastier than Covid-19 in the near future..."  /  "[I]f the labs do release something nasty, you can be 100% sure it was the Russians.  The Senate committee on foreign affairs said so.  Right after admitting that the labs exist, and that was right after denying for weeks that they did" [readers' comments at source].

"SEN. MARCO RUBIO: Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons? 

VICTORIA NULAND: Ukraine has a biological research facilities, which, In fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of. So, we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.  Under oath in an open committee hearing, Toria Nuland just confirmed that the Russian disinformation they've been telling us for days is a lie and a conspiracy theory and crazy and immoral to believe is, in fact, totally and completely true ... What exactly are they doing in these secret Ukrainian bio labs?  Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe.  It's hardly a hotbed of biomedical research.  We're assuming these weren't pharmaceutical labs, probably not developing new Leukemia drugs.  From your answer, Toria Nuland, we would assume because you all but said it, that there's a military application to this research, that they were working on bioweapons.  Again, your answer suggests that.  Why would we fund something like that in Ukraine, and why didn't you secure the contents of these bio labs before the Russians arrived as you knew they would?  And then why did you go out of your way to lie to the American public about all of this?  If the 'research materials' in these labs were to escape somehow and you seem very concerned about that, what would be the effect on Ukraine and then on the rest of the world?  How can we prepare for the consequences of that, this thing that you're worried about?  Shouldn't we be preparing?  Because as it turns out, we've just spent the last two years living with the pathogen that began in another foreign bio lab funded by the United States government secretly" [source].

"SEN. MARCO RUBIO: If there is a biological or chemical weapon incident or... attack inside of Ukraine, is there any doubt in your mind that 100%, it would be the Russians that would be behind it?

VICTORIA NULAND: There is no doubt in my mind, senator, and it is classic Russian technique to blame on the other guy what they're planning to do themselves.  It's a classic Russian technique to blame on the other guy, what they are planning to do themselves.  That's what Toria Nuland said.  We almost laughed out loud.  So, what you're saying, Toria Nuland, if, for example, you were funding secret bio labs in Ukraine, but wanted to hide that fact from the people who are paying for it, in whose name you were doing it, then you might lie about it by claiming the Russians were lying about it.  In other words, you might mount a disinformation campaign by claiming the other guy was mounting a disinformation campaign.  Is that what you're saying, Toria Nuland?  It's pretty funny.  What's not funny is that this is all entirely real" [source].

"Numbers of those biolabs keep increasing, in Ukraine.  Seems absurd.  Were each one focused on only one thing?…  A particular racial or ethnic characteristic of the many forms of humanity around the world?  Why would the DOD admit such a large number?  Is this the number claimed by the Russian proof presented to to the UN General Assembly?  Are the labs cover for something more insidious?  What about the other Biolabs in Eastern European countries?  Some of those have been exposed in years past.  When will the perp walks begin for violations of international treaties… and mass murder?" [reader's comment at source].

The China Factor

"Even before the U.S. and its NATO puppets undertook the War, the rest of the word - and that means most of the world - was congealing itself into an anti-Western economic and security block.  Led by China and its strategic ally, Russia, that bloc includes more than a dozen trade and security operations.  Those include the BRICS confederation of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, working explicitly to devise multi-polar institutions to stand  up to the U.S.' unipolar hegemonic model.  It includes the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security compact made up of leading nations from east, central, and south Asia, including China, Russia, India, and soon, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.  It is explicitly working to devise measures to prevent the kind of predatory military assaults the U.S. carried out against Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Afghanistan.  The organizing economic engine behind these efforts is China's Belt and Road Initiative.  BRI is a dizzingly ambitious plan to connect Asia and more than 100 nations with 21st Century economic infrastructure, everything from highways and high-speed rail lines, to power generation, energy pipelines, communication systems, cities, ports, and more.  It is critical to understand why BRI poses such daunting challenges to U.S. supremacy in the world" [source].

"U.S. actions in Ukraine have driven together its two greatest adversaries, Russia and China.  They, joined by India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and dozens of other countries, are carrying our a Mackinder-feared Eurasian integration that will leave the U.S. outside of the world's largest and most dynamic trading bloc.  The U.S.' military failure has advertised, once again (after Iraq and Afghanistan), the relative impotence of U.S. military solutions.  Yes, it can still destroy small, defenseless countries like Serbia, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq.  But against a peer competitor that has chosen to stand up to it, the U.S. has, frankly, been handed its ass.  All the world can see it" [source].

"For the past 20 years, Russia and China have been building an alliance dedicated to ending US hegemony and beginning a new era in international relations.  This may be why the US aggressively provoked the crisis in Ukraine.  The list of provocations is clear:

• moral and material support for Maidan protests;

• rejection of the EU agreement ('F*** the EU');

• the sniper murders and violent 2014 coup;

• ignoring the Minsk Agreement approved by the UN Security Council;

• NATO advisors and training for ultra-nationalists;

• lethal weaponry to Ukraine;

• refusal to accept Ukrainian non-membership in NATO;

• threats to invade Donbass and Crimea" [source].

"A wave of speculation started in western media about China's next move with respect to the war in the Ukraine and whether it might be about to support Russia with arms ... Zelensky expressed his worry that if China were to support Russia, a third World War would erupt.  Josep Borrell, the EU's foreign secretary, announced that for China to offer armaments to [Russia] would be a red line for the EU.  All of this was being said, announced and published at a time when President Biden was in Kiev announcing that the U.S. and NATO are committed to  supporting Ukraine with money and armaments and that they will never waver from doing so, calling the conflict a war of 'democracies' against 'autocracies', and profiling himself as a 'democratic' President fighting against Russian tyranny.  'There should be no doubt', Biden said, 'that our support to the Ukraine will not recede and NATO will jot get tired.'  Biden added that 'the EU offered an unprecedented support to Ukraine.'  Who gave Biden this divine right to feed the war in the Ukraine and prohibit China from doing so?  NATO and the EU are not 'supporting Ukraine', but leading a war of attrition against Russia in Ukraine - and, by and large, against any country who dares challenge Western hegemony" [source].

"Who said that China and Russia cannot share the same vision, take the same stand or make the same move in an international issue?  Who gave the West the right to decide who supports whom, and who should and should not be in alliance with whom?  If this is not tyranny, I do not know what tyranny is ... The Chinese Foreign Minster said in Moscow that the relations between Russia and China are not directed against any country, but that these states will not be subject to pressure from third parties, adding that 'we both support a multipolar world and democracy in international relations.'  This is precisely what the West is desperately trying to prevent.  The dawn of a multipolar wolrd would certainly mean the end of Western hegemony" [source].

"In the end, the price will be high, but Vladimir Putin will likely achieve the goals he set for himself.  We have pushed him into the arms of China.  His ties with Beijing have solidified.  China is emerging as a mediator in the conflict" [source].

Schwab's Great Reset

"Huge global events are being manufactured and manipulated whilst we are concomitantly herded and mentally conditioned ... I suspect the short term reason (the long term reason being utterly ownerless and ecstatically happy circa 2030) is that we are being conditioned to uncomplainingly accept a severe reduction (deliberately engineered of course) in living standards.  'I might not be able to drive my car, take a holiday, eat meat or heat my house, but it is far worse for the poor wee bairns in Ukraine - and I stand with Ukraine!  Glory to Ukraine!'" [readers' comments at source].

"Step back from the 'nightmare horror in Ukraine' narrative for a moment.  The war in eastern Europe need not [affect] your heating bills.  They've been fighting with big guns there since 2015 (but you were not invited to care).  This week, however, the government is organising a 'response' that will kick a debt-size hole in your finances.  A Russian takeover of Ukraine would not make food more expensive in Britain - without your government's 'response', which is guaranteed to make prices skyrocket.  Forget the silly speechifying about 'supporting Ukraine' - your government could not care less for them.  This is about crushing your life down to the level of the eastern Europeans.  It's about crushing the remaining fragments of Britain's economy till we are as desperate as the Ukraine or Poland" [source].

"Globalism demands that every modern government must grow fast and furious until it controls everything in the country.  Once this happens, groups of total-control governments can join their communities together under a single, much larger, government.  The EU was created to be one such mega-government.  In the globalist endgame, inevitably, an all-powerful world government will be formed.  Therefore, all the individual nation states must be destroyed.  Observing that destruction - realising it is being done to your country right now - is the key to understanding the seemingly endless state of crisis forced upon us by our governments ... the consequences of every 'major crisis' is a sharp increase in elite wealth, paid for by economic hell for those at the bottom" [source].

Standing with Yemen Ukraine

"There's another war going on at the moment - in Yemen, and between 2014 to the beginning of this year, some quarter of a million children have been killed as a direct or indirect consequence of fighting there.  And the Saudi-led coalition bombs civilian areas, and Britain and America and Canada train and supply the Saudi war machine.  Yet you will find no Yemeni flags on people's Twitter bios, no saint-like Yemeni politicians beamed into UN assemblies or Grammy Awards night, and no virtue-signalling celebrities stating they 'Stand with Yemen'.  Why not?  Why not?  How can such a glaring double-standard exist?  Especially when our own governments are complicit in the murder of Yemeni children?  And the answer is because people have not been told what to think or how to think about the war in Yemen.  They have about Ukraine.  Everyone needs to bear this in mind, because we are clearly being told what to think and how to think about Ukraine, Putin, Zelensky.  A huge global drive is underway to ensure we think correctly" [source, extract at 5:20-6:46].

"Let's face it, no one currently emoting about Ukraine has the faintest idea about Donbas, nor the two breakaway regions, nor the mass casualties there since 2014"  /  "The war in Yemen has so far killed an estimated 370,000 people.  Almost zero coverage in the MSM.  You might not even know there was a war there if you rely entirely on the MSM"  /  "Yes, a terrible ongoing crime - but few folks - even here - seem to have any conscience about the genocide in our own system - abortion - 10 million in the UK.  Start with that crime" [readers' comments at source].

"[T]hanks to the continual background propaganda of western civilisation, the average person stands no chance of seeing through what is happening.  The average western media consumer is waving a Ukrainian flag, not in solidarity with the Ukrainian people or for peace, but to support the gathering momentum of a war that will reduce his or her city to the current state of Mariupol" [source].

Ukraine and Russia: One Year On

"What is most illuminating under present circumstances is that the West is stating - in what we are supposed to believe is in unison - that it will do 'whatever it takes for as long as it takes' for Ukraine to prevail.  There is neither hint nor nuance towards de-escalation of any kind whatsoever.  In fact such talk is openly discouraged.  Anyone suggesting a ceasefire or peace initiative is seen as a potential 'Putin apologist'.  It is as if the West is completely at home and comfortable with this proxy war.  Which I suppose it must be as all the body bags - normally associated with the pendulum of public opinion - are ending up in those two countries currently doing the dirty work of the globalist corporate NATO machine.  Aims (in no particular order):

• to maintain business for the US military industrial complex;

• regime change in Russia as Putin's Russo-centric ethos is seen as a negative;

• to maintain the money (tax) laundering machine through Ukraine;

• to maintain radio silence about the bioweapons labs to protect the Biden crime family and associates of govt at numerous levels from any possible investigation which might 'jeopardize' the war effort;

• to defeat Russia militarily and to divide the spoils of her vast natural resources;

• the ultimate de-industrialization of Germany and to a lesser extent the other European nations (N.B. UK already de-industrialized since WW2);

• to sabotage any chances that Europe would continue looking East due to flourishing and mutually-advantageous trade between European countries and Russia stimulated by cheap energy supply, thereby eliminating the bogeyman threat of Russia as neighboring enemy vital for the maintenance of US influence and hegemony in Europe, and lucrative market for military industrial complex;

• to act as a distraction from all the negative news of excess death in numerous developed nations which - by chance - happen to be those with the highest percentage vaccinated;

• ultimately the incorporation of Ukraine into NATO & EU;

• eventual rebuilding of Ukraine as the the prototype fully digital surveillance society as per the WEF plan for the 4th industrial revolution, whilst enriching any and all partners involved.

"When all the above are taken into account, this might explain the 'whatever it takes for as long as it takes' ethos.  What it does not take into account is that Putin's patience might have limits.  However, if any escalation outside Ukraine can be kept on the European continent, Uncle Sam and its deep state will probably consider this to be a 'price worth paying'" [reader's comment at source].

The Conflict in Context

"Ukraine was - until recently - a little-visited but strategically important country on the border of Russia.  For decades, Ukraine has been in conflict with many of its own people in the Donbass region ... In 2019 a popular actor/celebrity won a landslide victory in Ukraine's Presidential election.  The new President promised to resolve Ukraine's internal ethnic conflict and defuse the ongoing tensions with Russia.  But what he actually did was something rather different ... the politician [whom] Zelensky replaced had - to NATO's annoyance - been negotiating with Russia, who wanted a diplomatic resolution to the conflict - a process called the 'Minsk Protocol'.  Zelensky, however, was instructed to reject Russia's 'compromise'.  For three years Zelensky stalled and bluffed, refusing all and any offers from Moscow.  American cash and weapons were regularly airlifted into the country.  In return, America's new puppet President made repeated speeches expressing his wish to join NATO, with broad hints that Ukraine would love to have its own 'independent' nuclear weapons.

"To understand how this looked to Vladimir Putin, picture it the other way around.  Imagine that Mexico announced it had done a deal with Russia, and would be getting its own nuclear missiles as soon as possible.  This would put Russian missiles on the border of Texas, with the ability to hit New York and Washington from close range.  What do you think America would do in such a situation?  The Pentagon war-lords would hardly sit back and say, 'Well, Mexico's a democracy.  Gee, I guess we'll just have to let them get those pesky Russian missiles.'

"So Zelensky's refusal to negotiate with Russia, plus his loudly-stated nuclear ambitions, was daring Russia to either back down or accept NATO missiles right on their own border pointing straight at Moscow.  Flaunting its presence and influence, American military chemical-weapons laboratories were opening up all across Ukraine.  Russia was naturally furious at this development and complained to the United Nations Security Council.  In a final provocation, Zelensky moved 60,000 troops up to the edge of the disputed Donbass region.  From this position, the army could fire (American-supplied) shells at the Russian/Ukrainians right on the Russian border - and they did.

"This wasn't deep, complex geopolitics.  This was bread-and-butter aggression, paid for by Russia's sworn enemy.  Enough was enough.  Russian troops and heavy weapons advanced into Eastern Ukraine and the war began.  But the conflict itself was eclipsed by an immediate mainstream-media Blitzreig, in which 'plucky little Ukraine' had been attacked by the 'evil merciless' Vladimir Putin" [source].

NATO

"With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its divestiture of its many satellite countries in 1990, NATO had promised not to expand into these countries.  However, almost without exception NATO expanded and began to ring Russia with US weapons and NATO influence.  With Ukraine being the launching point for past wars against Russia, the Kremlin had made it clear to the US that Ukraine joining NATO was a red line.

"For the UK media to suggest that Russia was not incrementally provoked into defending both eastern Ukraine and its own national interests is to turn the truth on its head.  With Spring being historically the best time to begin a war, during February Zelensky ordered the Azov Battalion and the AFU to begin amassing 100,000 troops and munitions towards the east in preparation for a massive attack designed to take back the autonomous eastern regions.  The DPR, LPR and Donbas militias again begged Russia for intervention but Putin still refused.  Instead, the Russians tried diplomacy and repeatedly contacted Washington and Kyiv in an effort not to militarily intervene.  The demands were simple and rational: Abide by Minsk I & II; not attack the East; de-Nazify the AFU and not join NATO.

"The US and Kyiv did not so much as respond.  In an effort to get a negotiated response, and with the AFU continuing to amass forces eastward, Russia began to prepare its army on the Russian/Ukraine border.  Instead of negotiating with Russia for peace, Ukraine and the western media falsely screamed 'Russian aggression.'  Then on the last week of February Zelensky did the unthinkable.  He informed the US that he was now willing to allow US nuclear weapons into Ukraine.  The next day, February 24th, the Russian army crossed into eastern Ukraine.  Thus began the Russian/Ukrainian war and the incredible barbarity of the AFU.  For the western media to cover up the neo-Nazi connection in Ukraine is the biggest lie of this war" [source].

An Alert and Knowledgeable Citizenry

"[W]hat should an alert and knowledgeable [Western] citizenry know about the role our [governments have] played in fomenting the crisis in Ukraine, a role that the corporate media has swept under the rug? ...

• The U.S. broke its promises not to expand NATO into Eastern Europe.  In 1997, before Americans had ever heard of Vladimir Putin, 50 former senators, retired military officers, diplomats and academics wrote to President Bill Clinton to oppose NATO expansion, calling it an error of  'historic proportions'.  Elder statesman George Kennan condemned it as 'the beginning of a new cold war';

• NATO provoked Russia by its open-ended promise to Ukraine in 2008 that it would become a member of NATO.  William Burns, who was then the U.S. ambassador to Moscow and is now the CIA director, warned in a State Department memo, 'Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red-lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin)';

• The U.S. backed a coup in Ukraine in 2014 that installed a government that only half its people recognized as legitimate, causing the disintegration of Ukraine and a civil war that killed 14,000 people;

• The 2015 Minsk II peace accord achieved a stable ceasefire line and steady reductions in casualties, but Ukraine failed to grant autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk as agreed.  Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President François Hollande now admit that western leaders only supported Minsk II to buy time for NATO to arm and train Ukraine's military to recover Donbas by force;

• During the week before the invasion, OSCE monitors in Donbas documented a huge escalation in explosions around the ceasefire line.  Most of the 4,093 explosions in four days were in rebel-held territory, indicating incoming shell-fire by Ukrainian government forces.  U.S. and British officials claimed these were 'false flag' attacks, as if Donetsk and Luhansk's forces were shelling themselves, just as they later suggested that Russia blew up its own pipelines;

• After the invasion, instead of supporting Ukraine's efforts to make peace, the U.S. and U.K. blocked or stopped them in their tracks.  Boris Johnson said they saw a chance to 'press' Russia and wanted to make the most of it, and defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said their goals was to 'weaken' Russia.

"What would an alert and knowledgeable citizenry make of all this?  We would clearly condemn Russia for invading Ukraine  But then what?  Surely we would also demand that U.S. political and military leaders tell us the truth about this horrific war and [the West's] role in it, and demand that the media transmit the truth to the public.  An alert and knowledgeable citizenry would surely then demand that our government[s] stop fueling this war and instead support immediate peace negotiations" [source].

Bombing the Donbas

"[O]n February 18, Kiev started a vicious bombing campaign on the Donbas region, targeting both the Donestk (DPR) and Luganks People’s Republics (LPR).  That day alone, the Ukrainian government had attacked at least 47 points along the conflict zone, targeting its own population (from Kiev’s perspective), that is, the population living in the territories it claims as its own.  A kindergarten in the Stanytsia Luganska town was targeted, causing the deaths of civilians.  On February 22, an El Pais piece detailed the humanitarian crisis in Donbas.  On February 24, CNN reported that Ukrainian forces 'destroyed' a large part of the region.  This caused lots of Donbas residents to seek refuge in the Rostov Oblast (Russian Federation).  Orphanages and schools were evacuated due to the Ukrainian military campaign.

"These refugees arriving in Rostov-on-Don City (Russia) received medical care, food and financial aid, and the reception of the families was urgently organized.  At the time, LPR authorities denounced that Ukraine’s military regularly broke the cease-fire and shelled Donbas in a series of provocations so as to instigate its People’s Militia into responding, thus creating a pretext for further Ukrainian aggression while NATO kept supplying arms and mercenaries to Kiev thereby further fueling tensions.  The week before that, Moscow had withdrawn troops from the region near the border, which should have de-escalated tensions.

"Amid the overwhelming flood of news about the crisis, one will have a hard time finding these aforementioned pieces of news in the English-language press, and thus these events become non-events, as if they had never taken place ... Ukrainian attacks on language and culture and its violence against civilians in Donbas since 2014 have been denounced as genocidal for a while" [source].

Russia's Intervention in Ukraine

"[F]or the US to complain about Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a violation of international law is, at best, the pot calling the kettle black.  Still, the fact that the US is so obviously hypocritical in this regard does not necessarily mean Washington is automatically wrong.  In the end, we must analyze Russia's conduct on its own merits.  One must begin this discussion by accepting the fact that there was already a war happening in Ukraine for the eight years preceding the Russian military incursion in February 2022.  And, this war by the government in Kiev against the Russian-speaking peoples of the Donbass - a war which claimed the lives of around 14,000 people, many of them children, and displaced around 1.5 million more even before Russian's military operation - has been arguably genocidal.  That is, the government in Kiev, and especially its neo-Nazi battalions, carried out attacks against these peoples with the intention of destroying, at least, in part, the ethnic Russians precisely because of their ethnicity.

"While the US government and media are trying hard to obscure these facts, they are undeniable, and were indeed reported by the mainstream Western press before it became inconvenient to do so ... the neo-Nazis battalions have been integrated into the official Ukrainian military and police forces, and are thus state, or at least quasi-state, actors for which the Ukrainian government bears legal responsibility ... not only are there radical groups on its border attacking ethnic Russians, including Russian citizens, but also, these groups have reportedly been funded and trained by the United States with the very intention of destabilizing and undermining the territorial integrity of Russia itself ...

"There is no doubt that Russia has been threatened, and in a quite profound way, with concrete destabilizing efforts by the US, NATO and their extremist surrogates in Ukraine.  Russia has been threatened for a full eight years.  And Russia has witnessed what such destabilizing efforts have meant for other countries, form Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria to Libya - that is, nearly a total annihilation of the country as a functioning nation-state.  It is hard to conceive of a more pressing case for the need to act in defense of the nation ... Russia had a right to act in its own self-defense by intervening in Ukraine, which had become a proxy of the US and NATO for an assault - not only on Russian ethnics within Ukraine - but also upon Russia itself.  A contrary conclusion would simply ignore the dire realities facing Russia" [source].

The Act of Restoration of the Ukrainian State

"Adopted in Lvov (Lviv) on June 30, 1941...

"1.  By the will of the Ukrainian people, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists under the direction of Stepan BANDERA proclaims the formation of the Ukrainian State for which have laid down their heads whole generations of the finest sons of Ukraine.  The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which under the direction of its founder and leader Yevhen KONOVALETS has undertaken in the past ten years a bloody battle with the Moscovite-Bolshevik enslavers in an energetic battle for freedom, calls all the Ukrainian people not to put down its weapons until all Ukrainian lands are united in a Sovereign Ukrainian Government.  The Sovereign Ukrainian Government will guarantee Ukrainian people order, multilateral development of all its energies and all its needs.

"2.  In the western lands of Ukraine a Ukrainian Government is formed, which is subordinate to the Ukrainian National Government that will be formed in the capital of Ukraine – KIEV.

"3.  The newly formed Ukrainian state will work closely with the National-Socialist Greater Germany, under the leadership of its Fuhrer Adolf HITLER which is establishing a new order in Europe and the world and is helping the Ukrainian People to free itself from Moscovite occupation.  The Ukrainian People’s Revolutionary Army which has been formed on the Ukrainian lands, will continue to fight with the ALLIED GERMAN ARMY against Moscovite occupation for a sovereign and united State and a new order in the whole world.

"Long live the Ukrainian Sovereign United Ukraine!  Long live the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists!  Long live the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian people – STEPAN BANDERA.  GLORY TO UKRAINE!"  [source].

Nazism in Ukraine: The Unholy Trinity

Stepan Bandera (01:01:1909 - 15:10:1959)

"Our Father is Bandera, Ukraine is our Mother" (Ukrainian song, sung at a recent Ukrainian gathering for a Ukrainian soldier - see video).

"Ukrainian political activist, theorist of the Ukrainian nationalist movement and the notorious OUN.  OUN is an organisation responsible for ethnic cleansings and the massacres of Jews, Poles and Russians in collaboration with the Nazis.  In modern Ukraine, Stepan Bandera has become a venerated symbol of the 'struggle for Ukrainian independence' despite the atrocities committed by OUN during WWII.  Dozens of monuments have been erected in Ukraine with a myriad of streets renamed in honour of Bandera.  Notably, a major Kiev boulevard was renamed after him; this particular street leads to Babi Yar - one of the largest mass-murder sites in the history of the holocaust (estimated 100,000 - 150,000 people murdered by the Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators)"

Roman Shukhevich (30:06:1907 - 05:03:1950)

"Another notable figure in the OUN movement who was a leader in the Nazi Germany's Nachtigall Battalion (later transformed into the 201st Schtuzmannschaft auxiliary police unit).  Shukhevich later commanded the brutal Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), responsible for butchering thousands of Jews and 70,000 - 100,000 Poles.  Monuments to Shukhevich were erected in several Ukrainian cities.  One of the stations of the Kiev light rail was also renamed in his honour.  The UPA was responsible for the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Easter Galicia - ethnic cleansing which resulted in [the] deaths of between 50,000 and 100,000 civilians (mostly women and children).  A large number of victims were brutally tortured.  The proclaimed goal of these inhumane crimes was to 'purge all non-Ukrainians from the future Ukraine state.'  In 2016, the Parliament of Poland recognised the massacres as genocide"

Yaroslav Stetsko (19:01:1912 - 05:07:1986)

"The leader of Stepan Bandera's OUN movement.  During operation Barbarossa (the Nazi invasion of USSR in 1941), he was [the] self-proclaimed temporary head of Ukraine under the Act of Restoration of the Ukrainian State announced by the OUN on 30 June 1941: 'The newly formed Ukrainian state will work closely with the National-Socialist Greater Germany, under the leadership of its leader Adolf Hitler which is forming a new order in Europe and the world and is helping the Ukrainian People to free itself from Moscovite occupation' (Excerpt from The Act of Proclamation of Ukrainian Statehood, signed by Yaroslav Stetsko).  Described as [a] 'rabid antisemite', Yaroslav Stetsko once said, 'I insist on the extermination of the Jews and the need to adopt German methods of exterminating Jews in Ukraine' (Yaroslav Stetsko, The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and Its Attitude Toward Germans and Jews, 1941).  Flyers distributed by OUN in Lviv in the first days of the German invasion of 1941 instructed the population: 'Don't throw away your weapons yet. Take them up. Destroy the enemy ... Moscow, the Hungarians, the Jews - these are your enemies. Destroy them.'  The first Lviv pogroms of 1st July 1941 resulted in [the] deaths of at least 4,000 civilians.  After the war, the man who pledged his allegiance to Hitler moved to the US where he was praised as a leader of fighters for freedom by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush" [source].

© Elizabeth McDonald     https://www.bayith.org     bayith@blueyonder.co.uk