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“Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
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EVERYTHING MR. EMORY HAS BEEN SAYING ABOUT THE UKRAINE WAR IS ENCAPSULATED IN THIS VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24
ANOTHER REVEALING VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24
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FTR#1244 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Jacques Baud
Introduction: First of a projected four-part discussion of the decisively important work of former Swiss intelligence officer Jacques Baud, this program presents and details fundamentals of the Ukraine war and the history leading up to it. This analysis will be supplemented in the remaining programs in the series.
His CV is presented below, and will be supplemented by more detail in an interview presented with him.
The reading of this article will be continued in our next program. For the convenience and benefit of the audience, the entire article is presented in this description.
Baud points out that the presentation of the war in the West is badly skewed, with politicians and media pursuing ideologized fantasies, rather than substantive analysis coming from intelligence agencies.
The essence of Baud’s war analysis is presentation of compelling documentation that the Ukraine war was begun by the West—the U.S. and NATO in particular—in order to weaken Russia.
Facilitating a murderous program of systematic atrocity committed by Ukraine’s government against the Russian-speaking minority of Ukraine, it is the West and the Biden administration in particular, that bear responsibility for the conflict.
As will be seen, analysis of the actual conflict itself is fundamentally skewed in the U.S. and Europe. Far from being “incompetent,” Russia quickly executed maneuver warfare to cut-off the bulk of the Ukrainian army, which was poised for a lethal offensive against the Russian-speaking East.
Russia’s primary objective—completely misunderstood in the West and systematically misrepresented by political and media interests alike—was largely achieved within a short period.
The Russian forces occupied territory roughly equivalent to the U.K in a matter of days, fixing Ukrainian forces with a diversionary move toward Kiev, eliminating Ukraine’s ability to move large numbers of troops and trapping the primary Ukrainian forces in the East.
This will be more completely discussed, analyzed and presented in the remaining programs featuring Baud’s work.
Key Points of Analysis and Discussion Include: Baud’s first-hand involvement in NATO training of the Ukrainian military; Baud’s former position as chief of Swiss intelligence’s division on Warsaw pact forces during the Cold War; Baud’s extensive UN experience on proliferation of small arms, their distribution to civilian populations and the deleterious effects of that distribution; The fundamental, institutionalized distortion of the conflict—politicians and media ignoring reality (including and especially that presented by intelligence professionals) and inculcating the public (and themselves) with an inflammatory, demonstrably false narrative that engenders a dangerous policy of escalation; The essential misunderstanding of the genesis of the Ukrainian conflict; The central issue of the post-Maidan government’s banning of the Russian language in Ukraine’s Eastern districts; The fundamental misunderstanding of, and misrepresentation of, the civil war in Ukraine’s East as a dynamic involving “Russian Separatists” and “interference” by Putin; Putin’s advice to the Russian-speaking Eastern districts NOT to seek a referendum on autonomy; The Ukrainian government’s launch of an ill-fated military suppression against those districts; The fundamental corruption and ineptitude of the post-Maidan Ukrainian military; The false narrative distributed in the west that Russia was involved in any way with the civil war in Eastern Ukraine; The failure of the civil war against the Eastern districts because of that ineptitude; The defection of large “maneuver” units of the Ukrainian armed forces—armor, artillery and missile formations; The monumental failure to report for duty of the Ukrainian reserve personnel; Ukraine’s pivot to NATO to form the Ukrainian military; Jacques Baud’s role in that attempted formation; NATO’s creation of the fascist “reprisal units,” exemplified by the Azov Regiment; The Azov regiment’s symbolic, and historical nostalgia for the ”Das Reich” Division—2nd Waffen SS; The operational strength of the NATO-created fascist territorial defense units—102,000; The reality behind a 2021” hijacking of a RyanAir flight in Belarus; the fact that the “journalist”—Roman Protassevitch—was a prominent member of the Azov regiment; the fact that the action was in keeping with the rules of force; The war’s genesis with a Ukrainian campaign to conquer and decimate the Russian-speaking regions of the East; the Duma’s advocacy of diplomatic recognition for the Russian-speaking regions; Putin’s initial refusal to recognize the regions; France and the West’s refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements; France and the West’s insistence on direct confrontation between Ukraine and Russia; The Ukraine’s initiation of the conflict by bombarding the Russian-speaking districts and massing their army for an all-out assault; Putin’s granting of the Duma’s request and diplomatic recognition of the independence of the Russian-speaking regions; Those regions’ request for military assistance; Putin’s positive response to that request, initiating the conflict; The Russian strategy of using pressure on Kiev as a diversion, drawing Ukrainian forces around it and permitting the encirclement of the bulk of the Ukrainian army in Eastern Ukraine; The West’s fundamental misunderstanding of Putin’s and Russia’s war aims, due to their own strategic and operational myopia; The “slowdown” of Russian operations, due to the fact that they have already achieved their objective; The “reprisal” units’ deliberate blocking of civilian evacuation corridors, so that the civilians can be used to deliberately impede Russian military progress; The West’s manipulation of Zelensky and Ukraine, in essence bribing him with arms purchases to “bleed Russia;” The distribution of small arms to Ukrainian urban populations, a development that Baud feels will lead to atrocities committed against fellow civilians; The strong probability that the Azov Regiment was using the Mariupol maternity hospital as a strategic vantage point, and that the Russians fired on it as a legitimate military target; The West’s using of that “War Crime” to justify further arms shipments; The West’s systematic distortion and “weaponization” of war coverage; The joint security provided to the Chernobyl nuclear plant by BOTH Ukrainian and Russian soldiers to prevent sabotage.
1. Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight, at NATO, against the proliferation of small arms. He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les fake news, L’affaire Navalny. His latest book is Poutine, maître du jeu? published by Max Milo.
This article appears through the gracious courtesy of Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement, Paris. Translated from the French by N. Dass.
“The Military Situation in Ukraine” by Jacques Baud; The Postil; 4/1/2022.
Part One: The Road To War
For years, from Mali to Afghanistan, I have worked for peace and risked my life for it. It is therefore not a question of justifying war, but of understanding what led us to it. I notice that the “experts” who take turns on television analyze the situation on the basis of dubious information, most often hypotheses erected as facts—and then we no longer manage to understand what is happening. This is how panics are created.
The problem is not so much to know who is right in this conflict, but to question the way our leaders make their decisions.
Let’s try to examine the roots of the conflict. It starts with those who for the last eight years have been talking about “separatists” or “independentists” from Donbass. This is not true. The referendums conducted by the two self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in May 2014, were not referendums of “independence” (независимость), as some unscrupulous journalists have claimed, but referendums of “self-determination” or “autonomy” (самостоятельность). The qualifier “pro-Russian” suggests that Russia was a party to the conflict, which was not the case, and the term “Russian speakers” would have been more honest. Moreover, these referendums were conducted against the advice of Vladimir Putin.
In fact, these Republics were not seeking to separate from Ukraine, but to have a status of autonomy, guaranteeing them the use of the Russian language as an official language. For the first legislative act of the new government resulting from the overthrow of President Yanukovych, was the abolition, on February 23, 2014, of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law of 2012 that made Russian an official language. A bit like if putschists decided that French and Italian would no longer be official languages in Switzerland.
This decision caused a storm in the Russian-speaking population. The result was a fierce repression against the Russian-speaking regions (Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk) which was carried out beginning in February 2014 and led to a militarization of the situation and some massacres (in Odessa and Marioupol, for the most notable). At the end of summer 2014, only the self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk remained.
At this stage, too rigid and engrossed in a doctrinaire approach to the art of operations, the Ukrainian general staff subdued the enemy without managing to prevail. The examination of the course of the fighting in 2014–2016 in the Donbass shows that the Ukrainian general staff systematically and mechanically applied the same operative schemes. However, the war waged by the autonomists was very similar to what we observed in the Sahel: highly mobile operations conducted with light means. With a more flexible and less doctrinaire approach, the rebels were able to exploit the inertia of Ukrainian forces to repeatedly “trap” them.
In 2014, when I was at NATO, I was responsible for the fight against the proliferation of small arms, and we were trying to detect Russian arms deliveries to the rebels, to see if Moscow was involved. The information we received then came almost entirely from Polish intelligence services and did not “fit” with the information coming from the OSCE—despite rather crude allegations, there were no deliveries of weapons and military equipment from Russia.
The rebels were armed thanks to the defection of Russian-speaking Ukrainian units that went over to the rebel side. As Ukrainian failures continued, tank, artillery and anti-aircraft battalions swelled the ranks of the autonomists. This is what pushed the Ukrainians to commit to the Minsk Agreements.
But just after signing the Minsk 1 Agreements, the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko launched a massive anti-terrorist operation (ATO/Антитерористична операція) against the Donbass. Bis repetita placent: poorly advised by NATO officers, the Ukrainians suffered a crushing defeat in Debaltsevo, which forced them to engage in the Minsk 2 Agreements.
It is essential to recall here that Minsk 1 (September 2014) and Minsk 2 (February 2015) Agreements did not provide for the separation or independence of the Republics, but their autonomy within the framework of Ukraine. Those who have read the Agreements (there are very, very, very few of those who actually have) will note that it is written in all letters that the status of the Republics was to be negotiated between Kiev and the representatives of the Republics, for an internal solution to the Ukraine.
That is why since 2014, Russia has systematically demanded their implementation while refusing to be a party to the negotiations, because it was an internal matter of the Ukraine. On the other side, the West—led by France—systematically tried to replace the Minsk Agreements with the “Normandy format,” which put Russians and Ukrainians face-to-face. However, let us remember that 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. For example, the U.S. intelligence map published by the Washington Post on December 3, 2021 does not show Russian troops in the Donbass.
In October 2015, Vasyl Hrytsak, director of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), confessed that only 56 Russian fighters had been observed in the Donbass. This was exactly comparable to the Swiss who went to fight in Bosnia on weekends, in the 1990s, or the French who go to fight in the Ukraine today.
The Ukrainian army was then in a deplorable state. In October 2018, after four years of war, the chief Ukrainian military prosecutor, Anatoly Matios, stated that Ukraine had lost 2,700 men in the Donbass: 891 from illnesses, 318 from road accidents, 177 from other accidents, 175 from poisonings (alcohol, drugs), 172 from careless handling of weapons, 101 from breaches of security regulations, 228 from murders and 615 from suicides.
In fact, the army was undermined by the corruption of its cadres and no longer enjoyed the support of the population. According to a British Home Office report, in the March/April 2014 recall of reservists, 70 percent did not show up for the first session, 80 percent for the second, 90 percent for the third, and 95 percent for the fourth. In October/November 2017, 70% of conscripts did not show up for the “Fall 2017” recall campaign. This is not counting suicides and desertions (often over to the autonomists), which reached up to 30 percent of the workforce in the ATO [anti-terrorist operational] area. Young Ukrainians refused to go and fight in the Donbass and preferred emigration, which also explains, at least partially, the demographic deficit of the country.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense then turned to NATO to help make its armed forces more “attractive.” Having already worked on similar projects within the framework of the United Nations, I was asked by NATO to participate in a program to restore the image of the Ukrainian armed forces. But this is a long-term process and the Ukrainians wanted to move quickly.
So, to compensate for the lack of soldiers, the Ukrainian government resorted to paramilitary militias. They are essentially composed of foreign mercenaries, often extreme right-wing militants. In 2020, they constituted about 40 percent of the Ukrainian forces and numbered about 102,000 men, according to Reuters. They were armed, financed and trained by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France. There were more than 19 nationalities—including Swiss.
Western countries have thus clearly created and supported Ukrainian far-right militias. In October 2021, the Jerusalem Post sounded the alarm by denouncing the Centuria project. 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. Their anti-Semitism is more cultural than political, which is why the term “Nazi” is not really appropriate. . . .
. . . . These militias, originating from the far-right groups that animated the Euromaidan revolution in 2014, 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.
Among the famous figures of the Azov regiment was the opponent Roman Protassevitch, arrested in 2021 by the Belarusian authorities following the case of RyanAir flight FR4978. On May 23, 2021, the deliberate hijacking of an airliner by a MiG-29—supposedly with Putin’s approval—was mentioned as a reason for arresting Protassevich, although the information available at the time did not confirm this scenario at all.
But then it was necessary to show that President Lukashenko was a thug and Protassevich a “journalist” who loved democracy. However, a rather revealing investigation produced by an American NGO in 2020 highlighted Protassevitch’s far-right militant activities. The Western conspiracy movement then started, and unscrupulous media “air-brushed” his biography. Finally, in January 2022, the ICAO report was published and showed that despite some procedural errors, Belarus acted in accordance with the rules in force and that the MiG-29 took off 15 minutes after the RyanAir pilot decided to land in Minsk. So no Belarusian plot and even less Putin. Ah!… Another detail: Protassevitch, cruelly tortured by the Belarusian police, was now free. Those who would like to correspond with him, can go on his Twitter account.
The characterization of the Ukrainian paramilitaries as “Nazis” or “neo-Nazis” is considered Russian propaganda. Perhaps. But that’s not the view of the Times of Israel, the Simon Wiesenthal Center or the West Point Academy’s Center for Counterterrorism. But that’s still debatable, because in 2014, Newsweek magazine seemed to associate them more with… the Islamic State. Take your pick!
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. But while the Swiss government has been very quick to take sanctions against Russia, it has not adopted any against the Ukraine, which has been massacring its own population since 2014. In fact, those who defend human rights in the Ukraine have long condemned the actions of these groups, but have not been supported by our governments. Because, in reality, we are not trying to help the Ukraine, but to fight Russia.
The integration of these paramilitary forces into the National Guard was not at all accompanied by a “denazification,” as some claim. Among the many examples, that of the Azov Regiment’s insignia is instructive:
In 2022, very schematically, the Ukrainian armed forces fighting the Russian offensive were organized as:
- The Army, subordinated to the Ministry of Defense. It is organized into 3 army corps and composed of maneuver formations (tanks, heavy artillery, missiles, etc.).
- The National Guard, which depends on the Ministry of the Interior and is organized into 5 territorial commands.
The National Guard is therefore a territorial defense force that is not part of the Ukrainian army. It includes paramilitary militias, called “volunteer battalions” (добровольчі батальйоні), also known by the evocative name of “reprisal battalions,” and composed of infantry. Primarily trained for urban combat, they now defend cities such as Kharkov, Mariupol, Odessa, Kiev, etc.
Part Two: The War
As a former head of the Warsaw Pact forces in the Swiss strategic intelligence service, I observe with sadness—but not astonishment—that our services are no longer able to understand the military situation in Ukraine. The self-proclaimed “experts” who parade on our screens tirelessly relay the same information modulated by the claim that Russia—and Vladimir Putin—is irrational. Let’s take a step back.
The Outbreak Of War
Since November 2021, the Americans have been constantly threatening a Russian invasion of the Ukraine. However, the Ukrainians did not seem to agree. Why not?
We have to go back to March 24, 2021. On that day, Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree for the recapture of the Crimea, and began to deploy his forces to the south of the country. At the same time, several NATO exercises were conducted between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, accompanied by a significant increase in reconnaissance flights along the Russian border. Russia then conducted several exercises to test the operational readiness of its troops and to show that it was following the evolution of the situation.
Things calmed down until October-November with the end of the ZAPAD 21 exercises, whose troop movements were interpreted as a reinforcement for an offensive against the Ukraine. However, even the Ukrainian authorities refuted the idea of Russian preparations for a war, and Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukrainian Minister of Defense, states that there had been no change on its border since the spring.
In violation of the Minsk Agreements, the 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, events were precipitated. On February 7, during his visit to Moscow, Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed to Vladimir Putin his commitment to the Minsk Agreements, a commitment he would repeat after his meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky the next day. But on February 11, in Berlin, after nine hours of work, the meeting of political advisors of the leaders of the “Normandy format” ended, without any concrete result: the Ukrainians still refused to apply the Minsk Agreements, apparently under pressure from the United States.Vladimir Putin noted that Macron had made empty promises and that the West was not ready to enforce the agreements, as it had been doing for eight years.
Ukrainian preparations in the contact zone continued. The Russian Parliament became alarmed; and on February 15 asked Vladimir Putin to recognize the independence of the Republics, which he refused to do.
On 17 February, President Joe Biden announced that Russia would attack the Ukraine in the next few days. How did he know this? It is a mystery. But since the 16th, the artillery shelling of the population of Donbass increased dramatically, as the daily reports of the OSCE observers show. Naturally, neither the media, nor the European Union, nor NATO, nor any Western government reacts or intervenes. It will be said later that this is Russian disinformation. In fact, it seems that the European Union and some countries have deliberately kept silent about the massacre of the Donbass population, knowing that this would provoke a Russian intervention.
At the same time, there were reports of sabotage in the Donbass. On 18 January, Donbass fighters intercepted saboteurs, who spoke Polish and were equipped with Western equipment and who were seeking to create chemical incidents in Gorlivka. They could have been CIA mercenaries, led or “advised” by Americans and composed of Ukrainian or European fighters, to carry out sabotage actions in the Donbass Republics.
In fact, as early as February 16, Joe Biden knew that the Ukrainians had begun shelling the civilian population of Donbass, putting Vladimir Putin in front of 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” (R2P). But he knew that whatever its nature or scale, the intervention would trigger a storm of sanctions. Therefore, whether Russian intervention were limited to the Donbass or went further to put pressure on the West for the status of the Ukraine, the price to pay would be the same. This is what he explained in his speech on February 21.
On that day, he agreed to the request of the Duma and recognized the independence of the two Donbass Republics and, at the same time, he signed friendship and assistance treaties with them.
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.
In order to make the Russian intervention totally illegal in the eyes of the public we 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. Jurists will judge.
In his speech of February 24, Vladimir Putin stated the two objectives of his operation: “demilitarize” and “denazify” the Ukraine. So, it is not a question of taking over the Ukraine, nor even, presumably, of occupying it; and certainly not of destroying it.
From then on, our visibility on the course of the operation is limited: the Russians have an excellent security of operations (OPSEC) and the details of their planning are not known. But fairly quickly, the course of the operation allows us to understand how the strategic objectives were translated on the operational level.
Demilitarization:
- ground destruction of Ukrainian aviation, air defense systems and reconnaissance assets;
- neutralization of command and intelligence structures (C3I), 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.
2. Demilitarization
The Russian offensive was carried out in a very “classic” manner. Initially—as the Israelis had done in 1967—with the destruction on the ground of the air force in the very first hours. Then, we witnessed a simultaneous progression along several axes according to the principle of “flowing water”: advance everywhere where resistance was weak and leave the cities (very demanding in terms of troops) for later. In the north, the Chernobyl power plant was occupied immediately to prevent acts of sabotage. The images of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers guarding the plant together are of course not shown.
The idea that Russia is trying to take over Kiev, the capital, to eliminate Zelensky, comes typically from the West—that is what they did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and what they wanted to do in Syria with the help of the Islamic State. 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. Up till now, he had refused to implement the Minsk Agreements. But now the Russians want to obtain the neutrality of the Ukraine.
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.
From an operational point of view, the Russian offensive was an example of its kind: in six days, the Russians seized a territory as large as the United Kingdom, with a speed of advance greater than what the Wehrmacht had achieved in 1940.
The bulk of the Ukrainian army was deployed in the south of the country in preparation for a major operation against the Donbass. This is why Russian forces were able to encircle it from the beginning of March in the “cauldron” between Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk, with a thrust from the East through Kharkov and another from the South from Crimea. Troops from the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) Republics are complementing the Russian forces with a push from the East.
At this stage, Russian forces are slowly tightening the noose, but are no longer under time pressure. 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 seem to want to engage in an occupation of the entire Ukrainian territory. In fact, it seems that Russia is trying to limit its advance to the linguistic border of the country.
Our media speak of indiscriminate bombardments against the civilian population, especially in Kharkov, and Dantean images are broadcast in a loop. However, Gonzalo Lira, a Latin American who lives there, presents us with a calm city on March 10 and March 11. It is true that it is a large city and we do not see everything—but this seems to indicate that we are not in the total war that we are served continuously on our screens.
As for the Donbass Republics, they have “liberated” their own territories and are fighting in the city of Mariupol.
3. Denazification
In cities like Kharkov, Mariupol and Odessa, the defense is provided by 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 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 can 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 here.
On Facebook, the Azov group was considered in the same category as the Islamic State and subject to the platform’s “policy on dangerous individuals and organizations.” It was therefore forbidden to glorify it, 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, as we shall see.
Our media propagate a romantic image of popular resistance. It is this image that led the European Union to finance the distribution of arms to the civilian population. This is a criminal act. In my capacity as head of peacekeeping doctrine at the UN, I worked on the issue of civilian protection. We found that violence against civilians occurred in very specific contexts. In particular, when weapons are abundant and there are no command structures.
These command structures are the essence of armies: their function is to channel the use of force towards an objective. By arming citizens in a haphazard manner, as is currently the case, the EU is turning them into combatants, with the consequential effect of making them potential targets. Moreover, without command, without operational goals, the distribution of arms leads inevitably to settling of scores, banditry and actions that are more deadly than effective. War becomes a matter of emotions. Force becomes violence. This is what happened in Tawarga (Libya) from 11 to 13 August 2011, where 30,000 black Africans were massacred with weapons parachuted (illegally) by France. By the way, the British Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (RUSI) does not see any added value in these arms deliveries.
Moreover, by delivering arms to a country at war, one exposes oneself to being considered a belligerent. The Russian strikes of March 13, 2022, against the Mykolayev air base follow Russian warnings that arms shipments would be treated as hostile targets.
The EU is repeating the disastrous experience of the Third Reich in the final hours of the Battle of Berlin. War must be left to the military and when one side has lost, it must be admitted. And if there is to be resistance, it must be led and structured. But we are doing exactly the opposite—we are pushing citizens to go and fight and at the same time, Facebook authorizes calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders. So much for the values that inspire us.
Some intelligence services see this irresponsible decision as a way to use the Ukrainian population as cannon fodder to fight Vladimir Putin’s Russia. This kind of murderous decision should have been left to the colleagues of Ursula von der Leyen’s grandfather. It would have been better to engage in negotiations and thus obtain guarantees for the civilian population than to add fuel to the fire. It is easy to be combative with the blood of others.
4. The Maternity Hospital At Mariupol
It is important to understand beforehand that it is not the Ukrainian army that is defending Marioupol, 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 Marioupol 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 Russian ambassador a few hours earlier.
The hospital in Mariupol occupies a dominant position, perfectly suited for the installation of anti-tank weapons and for observation. 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 may be true, but it may not be true. This does not prevent the leaders of the EU from seeing this as a war crime. And this allows Zelensky to call for a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
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 problem is that the paramilitary militias that defend the cities are encouraged by the international community not to respect the customs of war. It seems that the Ukrainians have replayed the scenario of the Kuwait City maternity hospital in 1990, which was totally staged by the firm Hill & Knowlton for $10.7 million in order to convince the United Nations Security Council to intervene in Iraq for Operation Desert Shield/Storm.
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.
Part Three: Conclusions
As an ex-intelligence professional, the first thing that strikes me is the total absence of Western intelligence services in the representation of the situation over the past year. In Switzerland, the services have been criticized for not having provided a correct picture of the situation. In fact, it seems that throughout the Western world, intelligence services have been overwhelmed by the politicians. The problem is that it is the politicians who decide—the best intelligence service in the world is useless if the decision-maker does not listen. This is what happened during this crisis.
That said, while some intelligence services had a very accurate and rational picture of the situation, others clearly had the same picture as that propagated by our media. In this crisis, the services of the countries of the “new Europe” played an important role. The problem is that, from experience, I have found them to be extremely bad at the analytical level—doctrinaire, they lack the intellectual and political independence necessary to assess a situation with military “quality.” It is better to have them as enemies than as friends.
Second, it seems that in some European countries, politicians have deliberately ignored their services in order to respond ideologically to the situation. That is why this crisis has been irrational from the beginning. It should be noted that all the documents that were presented to the public during this crisis were presented by politicians based on commercial sources.
Some Western politicians obviously wanted there to be a conflict. In the United States, the attack scenarios presented by Anthony Blinken to the Security Council were only the product of the imagination of a Tiger Team working for him—he did exactly as Donald Rumsfeld did in 2002, who had thus “bypassed” the CIA and other intelligence services that were much less assertive about Iraqi chemical weapons.
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 (which we have not dealt with here);
- 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.
In other words, we can naturally deplore and condemn the Russian attack. But WE (that is: the United States, France and the European Union 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.
Civilian casualties caused by active hostilities in 2018–2021, per territory
In territory control- led by the self-pro- claimed “Republics”
In Government- controlled territory
In “no man’s land”
Total
Decrease compared with previous year, per cent
2018
128
27
7
162
41.9
2019
85
18
2
105
35.2
2020
61
9
0
70
33.3
2021
36
8
0
44
37.1
Total
310
62
9
381
Per cent
81.4
16.3
2.3
100.0
As we can see, more than 80% of the victims in Donbass were the result of the Ukrainian army’s shelling. For years, the West remained silent about the massacre of Russian-speaking Ukrainians by the government of Kiev, without ever trying to bring pressure on Kiev. It is this silence that forced the Russian side to act. [Source: “Conflict-related civilian casualties,“ United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.]
Whether the term “genocide” applies to the abuses suffered by the people of Donbass is an open question. The term is generally reserved for cases of greater magnitude (Holocaust, etc.). But the definition given by the Genocide Convention is probably broad enough to apply to this case. Legal scholars will understand this.
Clearly, this conflict has led us into hysteria. Sanctions seem to have become the preferred tool of our foreign policies. If we had insisted that Ukraine abide by the Minsk Agreements, which we had negotiated and endorsed, none of this would have happened. Vladimir Putin’s condemnation is also ours. There is no point in whining afterwards—we should have acted earlier. However, neither Emmanuel Macron (as guarantor and member of the UN Security Council), nor Olaf Scholz, nor Volodymyr Zelensky have respected their commitments. In the end, the real defeat is that of those who have no voice.
The European Union 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. On February 27, the Ukrainian government agreed to enter into negotiations with Russia. But a few hours later, the European Union voted a budget of 450 million euros to supply arms to the Ukraine, adding fuel to the fire. From then on, the Ukrainians felt that they did not need to reach an agreement. The resistance of the Azov militia in Mariupol even led to a boost of 500 million euros for weapons.
In the 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 by the Ukrainian secret service (SBU) because he was too favorable to Russia and was 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—refused by the Rada.
In the end, the price will be high, but Vladimir Putin will likely achieve the goals he set for himself. His ties with Beijing have solidified. China is emerging as a mediator in the conflict, while Switzerland is joining the list of Russia’s enemies. The Americans have to ask Venezuela and Iran for oil to get out of the energy impasse they have put themselves in—Juan Guaido is leaving the scene for good 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—for sanctioning Russian athletes in the Para-Olympic Games or Russian artists has nothing to do with fighting Putin.
Thus, we recognize that Russia is a democracy since we consider that the Russian people are responsible for the war. If this is not the case, then why do we seek to punish a whole population for the fault of one? Let us remember that collective punishment is forbidden by the Geneva Conventions.
The lesson to be learned from this conflict is our sense of variable geometric humanity. If we cared so much about peace and the Ukraine, why didn’t we encourage the Ukraine to respect the agreements it had signed and that the members of the Security Council had approved?
The integrity of the media is measured by their willingness to work within the terms of the Munich Charter. They succeeded in propagating hatred of the Chinese during the Covid crisis and their polarized message leads to the same effects against the Russians. Journalism is becoming more and more unprofessional and militant.
As Goethe said: “The greater the light, the darker the shadow.” The more the sanctions against Russia are disproportionate, the more the cases where we have done nothing highlight our racism and servility. Why have no Western politicians reacted to the strikes against the civilian population of Donbass for eight years?
Because finally, what makes the conflict in the Ukraine more blameworthy than the war 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 sought to “make the American people suffer” for lying to us (because they are a democracy!) before the war in Iraq? 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?” Have we sanctioned the countries of the European Union that practice the most abject torture on their territory for the benefit of the United States?
To ask the question is to answer it… and the answer is not pretty.
Fascism and the Dangers of Economic Concentration
What’s actually happening on the battlefield in Ukraine? It’s been one of the meta questions looming over the conflict for nearly three months now. A fueled not just by the obvious propagandistic nature of a lot of western coverage of the conflict but also the undeniable fact that we’ve received almost no actual report on Ukrainian military casualty.
But while the casualty numbers have been largely non-existent throughout the conflict, we did get a rather significant update in following NY Times report from a few days ago on a closely related war metric: Russia’s territorial gains following the pull back from Kiev and focus on the Donbas region. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, its forces in eastern Ukraine had advanced to the border between Donetsk and Luhansk, putting Russian and the separatist forces nearly in control of the entire Donbas region, contrasted with only around 1/3 control at the start of this conflict. But what is most remarkable about the update by the Russian Defense Ministry is that was backed up by the Ukrainian authorities which confirmed that Russian forces are indeed in control of around 80% of the Donbas.
Now, we still haven’t received an casualty updates. But it stands to reason that if Russian forces have been steadily gaining ground in the Donbas there’s probably been quite a few casualties sustained by both sides.
Adding to the mystery over what’s actually happening on the ground in Eastern Ukraine is the fact that this NY Times piece decided to quote Col. Oleg Goncharuk, the commander of the 128th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade on the status of fighting. As Goncharuk put it, the Russian military has not committed enough forces to move the battle lines significantly or threaten Zaporizhzhia, the largest city near the frontline. But as the article notes, that interview was conduct last month. This article was published on May 10. So this optimistic sounding prediction from this Ukrainian commander was taken from an interview conducted weeks earlier. What does that say about the real state of that conflict
So while the fog of war continues to linger over the fighting in Ukraine, it does appear that Russia really has managed to not just blunt what appeared to be a Ukrainian offensive to take back territory in the east but actually push the front line back west towards the edge of the Donbas. How many casualties both sides are retaining largely remains a mystery.
But let’s also keep in mind another somewhat unusual factor in this conflict that could be driving the desire to minimize the reporting on casualties: the growing number of foreign fighters fighting on behalf of Ukraine. How might reports of Ukrainian casualties impact the flow of foreign fighters into this conflict? Would up to date reports on dead foreign fighters end up dampening the inflow of volunteers?
At the same time, keep in mind that the fighting in the eastern part of country is going to be taking place on territory where we can most expect the civilian populace to hold pro-Russian sympathies. And that means the war in eastern Ukraine right now is exactly the kind of conflict where we should expect the Nazi battalions fighting for Ukraine to engage in civilian atrocities. Might that have something to do with the lack of battlefield reporting?
These are the kinds of questions we’re forced to speculate about given the lack of up to date and accurate coverage. But despite the extreme control being placed over the information we’re getting on the fighting, it’s looking like Russia’s forces have managed to consolidate the Donbas. And that’s the kind of update that suggests this war could continue for a very long time. And the longer this war gets, the thicker the fog of war seems to be getting too. So given that the conflict in the eastern front looks like it’s going to be sustained battle with no end in sight, keep in mind that the near complete lack of accurate information about what’s actually happening in Ukraine isn’t going to be ending any time soon either:
“Russian forces now control about 80 percent of Donbas, according to Ukrainian officials, and have concentrated their efforts on a pocket of Ukrainian-held territory with Kramatorsk at its center.”
Russian forces no control roughly 80 percent of the Donbas. That’s according to Ukrainian officials. So when Russian Defense Ministry announced a few days ago that its forces had reached the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk, we don’t really need to wait for confirmation. The Ukrainians have basically already confirmed this. Which also means the land bridge connecting the Russian mainland to Crimea has been secured:
So we got an update on Russia’s territorial gains. But still no real updates on the actual casualties each side is enduring. That’s part of what makes the reference to comments made by a Ukrainian commander, Col. Oleg Goncharuk, during an interview last month so noteworthy. Even if that interview was conducted at the very end of April, that commander’s assessment would still be a week and a half old. Has there been no updates at all in the interim?
Finally, given that this is looking like it could be a drawn out “prolonged conflict”, as Avril Haines put it, note the incredible damage being done to the Ukrainian economy. Damage that’s presumably only going to deep as this prolonged conflict plays out:
Given that we’re already seeing what appears to be a kind of information blockade on the casualties being sustained by the Ukrainian military, what does that say about the likelihood of getting meaningful updates on the impact this economic devastation is having on the populace. Don’t forget that harsh austerity was the price Ukraine was going to have to pay just to join the EU trade association agreement joining the EU. It’s why we probably shouldn’t expect extensive coverage of the economic hardships endured by the Ukrainian populace as a result of this conflict. Sustained austerity imposed on the Ukrainian populace has been the plan for Ukraine all along, long before this war broke out.
So that’s as close to an update as we’re going to get on what’s going on with the fighting raging in eastern Ukraine over the last few weeks. We still don’t have any numbers on casualties and probably shouldn’t expect those numbers any time soon. But territorial gains or losses are a lot harder to obscure. And based on what we’re hearing it really does sound like Russian forces are on the verge of seizing control of the entire Donbas. Whether or not Russia plans on keeping that territory or using it as leverage in negotiations is an open question.
But perhaps a bigger open question is what will Ukraine’s allies in the West do should we end up seeing a long-term occupation of the Donbas, including possible annexations. Ukraine is already seeing a flood of western arms. How much more intense is that military aid going to get? Is Ukraine going to be flooded with enough military hardware capable of expelling consolidated Russian forces? And how about foreign fighters? How many more extremists are going to flood Ukraine by the time this is over? We’ll find out. Maybe. Or maybe this conflict will just continue to an information black hole that we can only speculate about.
With the collapse of the resistance in Mariupol and surrender of the Ukrainian forces led by the Azov Battalion, it appears that Russia is on the cusp of achieving one of its major strategic objectives: wiping out the Azov Battalion’s home base in Mariupol. But as the following article reminds us, there’s still a number of open questions regarding to the fate of those surrendering forces, including whether or not they’ll eventually be handed back to Ukrainian authorities in a prisoner swap.
As we’re going to see, while there’s been a lot of talk about potential prisoner swaps, there’s no public details available yet and voices in Russia’s government are already calling for no exchange for the Azov Nazis. It points towards what could be an epic round of Azov Nazi whitewashing by the international community to ‘save the brave Azov defenders’. And ws we’re going to see in the second and third article excerpts below, that whitewashing that kicked into high gear with the start of this conflict is still going strong. Whitewashing that routinely veers into blatant gaslighting.
But as we’re also going to see, in the Haaretz interview from last week of the deputy commander of Azov’s forces, Svyatoslav Palamar, there’s another factor in this whitewashing campaign: the refugees from Mariupol who are now finally free to share with the world their experiences. And according to this Haaretz reporter, every Mariupol refugee they spoke with in Zaporizhzhia told them about being shot at not just by Russian forces but also Ukrainian forces which were shooting houses “indiscriminately”. Palamar dismisses these allegations by asserting that Russia’s practice of forcing civilians to wear white arm bands was causing these accidental civilian deaths. Recall the videos released out of the area near Bucha where Azov leader Sergey “Boatsman” Korotkikh appeared to give his troops permission to shoot anyone not wearing a blue arm band. Also recall how a number of the civilian bodies found dead on that major street on Bucha, Yablunska Street, were found with their hands bound behind their backs by a white cloth. So we have to ask: have Azov units been using white armbands as an excuse to kill civilians in these occupied cities? It sounds like it. Which would be all the more need for another round of Azov Nazi whitewashing now that Russia has a large number of Azov POWs:
“While both sides spoke of a deal under which all Ukrainian troops would abandon the steelworks, many details were not yet public, including how many fighters still remained inside, and whether any form of prisoner swap had been agreed.”
Is a prisoner swap going to happen now that Russian forces are poised to take a large number of Azov battalion prisoners? Maybe, but we don’t even know if such negotiations are underway. But a far biggest question is whether or not Russia has any interest in returning the soldiers from the Nazi battalion that formed the basis for Russia’s pretext for invasion:
And that question of whether or not captured Azov soldiers are going to be exchanged in a prisoner swap brings us to the following two articles filled with Azov revisionism. Exactly the kind of ‘Nazis? What Nazis? We’re patriots!’ kind of revisionism that we should expect at this point.
First, here’s an interview in Haaretz from last week of the deputy commander of Azov’s forces, Svyatoslav Palamar, who repeatedly asserts that there’s no Nazis in Azov. And what about the swastikas? Those are just pagan runes. Also, the wolfsangle just stands for the ‘the idea of the nation’. Palamar goes on to brag about how people from all different nationalities are serving in Azov. Two sentences later he asserts that only Ukrainian citizens are allowed to serve in the unit. The whole thing just feels like the kind of gas lighting we should expect at this point.
But this interview isn’t just a bunch of revisionism stenography. Palamar is asked some rather pointed questions. Questions about brutalities experience by civilians in Mariupol by Azov. According to this reporter, all of the refugees they spoke with in Zaporizhzhia made the same claim: it wasn’t just Russians who were targeting civilians. Ukrainian soldiers were indiscriminately shooting at houses:
So how to Palamar respond to these allegations? By basically acknowledging that Ukrainian soldiers have attack civilians but blaming it on Russian soldiers forcing Ukrainian civilians to wear white arm bands:
In other words, Palamar was basically acknowledging that his units were shooting civilians with white ribbons. This is notable in the context of other reports we’ve gotten about Azov units shooting anyone who wasn’t wearing a blue arm band. Recall the videos released out of the area near Bucha where Sergey “Boatsman” Korotkikh appeared to give his troops permission to shoot anyone not wearing a blue arm band. It’s also worth recalling that a number of the civilian bodies found dead on that major street on Bucha, Yablunska Street, were found with their hands bound behind their backs by a white cloth. So with Mariupol refugees all telling reporters that Azov was shooting at them and this Azov deputy commander explains it away as white cloth confusion, we have to ask: has Azov been systematically treating civilians with white cloths as traitors? It sure sounds like it. Which is a reminder that any whitewashing of Azov’s reputation is going to have to involved a whitewashing of any civilian massacres that are poised to finally be revealed with the surrender of Mariupol:
““What is Nazism? When someone thinks that one nation is superior to another nation, when someone thinks he has a right to invade another country and destroy its inhabitants – this is terror, this is violence, these are crematoria and filtration camps. This is clinging to one religion or one idea. What is happening here? We believe in our country’s territorial integrity. We have never attacked anyone, and we have not wanted to do that.”
What is Nazism? That’s blatant dodge was the the response Azov deputy commander Svyatoslav Palamar had in response to a direct question about the Azov’s overt Nazi ideology. And as if his gaslighting wasn’t blatant enough, Palamar goes on to point out that people from different nationalities serving in the unit while simultaneously asserting that only citizens of Ukraine can serve in it:
Palamar goes on to assert that anyone who thinks they’ve spotted Nazi symbols like swastikas on Azov uniforms is mistaken. They merely saw pagan runes. And the Azov symbol, the Wolfsangle, isn’t a Nazi symbol. No, no, it merely stands for ‘the idea of the nation’:
Finally, we get Palamar’s response to a direct question regarding all of the refugees who are telling reporters that Azov was terrorizing them too during the siege. Palamar basically acknowledges that, yes, his troops were shooting at civilians, but they were tricked into doing so by the white ribbons Russian forces were requiring the civilians to wear:
Next, here’s a Reuters “Factbox” piece from a couple of days ago introducing readers to Azov in the context of the surrender at Mariupol. It’s more or less what we should expect: the Wolfsangle is dismissed as merely an overlapping “N” and “I” standing for “National Idea”. And while Azov may have been founded by an extremist, Andriy Biletsky, it’s no longer affiliated with him and has no political ideology after joining the Ukrainian national guard. Also, Biletksy himself isn’t actually a Nazi. He’s merely a misunderstood patriotic nationalist. Yep:
“Its logo resembles a black “wolfsangel”, a symbol that was used by some Nazi units and is seen by critics as neo-Nazi. The Azov say the logo represents the letters N and I of “national idea” and deny it is neo-Nazi.”
It’s not a Nazi Wolsfangle. No, not, it’s an “N” and an “I”, standing for “National idea”. Yeah...that’s the ticket!. Also, Azov no long has anything to do with its founder, Andriy Biletsky. Oh, and Biletsky isn’t a Nazi and never was:
Azov knows nothing about politics. It’s purely just a military entity and nothing else. Any ties to its Nazi past have been severed, and that Nazi past never existed in the first place. That’s the narrative getting pushed. In one report after another. As Joseph Goebbels famously said: “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”. Welcome to the Azov’s new truth. At least for now. New new truths can be rolled out as needed.