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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.”
— George Orwell, 1946
EVERYTHING MR. EMORY HAS BEEN SAYING ABOUT THE UKRAINE WAR IS ENCAPSULATED IN THIS VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24
ANOTHER REVEALING VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24
Mr. Emory has launched a new Patreon site.
Visit at: Patreon.com/DaveEmory
FTR#1259 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
FTR#1260 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: Updating coverage of the Ukraine war, the title of this series comes from the late, brilliant political comedian Mort Sahl’s 1976 autobiography Heartland. Mort Sahl was one of Jim Garrison’s investigators in the New Orleans DA’s investigation of the assassination of JFK.
The program begins with discussion of a powerful economic motive for baiting Russia into the Ukraine war–creating a pretext for obliging Europe and Germany to forego use of the Nordstream 2 pipeline and sever the EU from consumption of Russian natural gas.
” . . . . The only way left for U.S. diplomats to block European purchases is to goad Russia into a military response and then claim that avenging this response outweighs any purely national economic interest. As hawkish Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, explained in a State Department press briefing on January 27: ‘If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.’ The problem is to create a suitably offensive incident and depict Russia as the aggressor. . . .”
Lviv, Ukaine, Summer of 2018. Celebration of the 75th anniversary of the 14th Waffen SS Division (Galician). Note the Ukrainian honor guard in the background.
In FTR#1245, we detailed Swiss intelligence officer Jacques Baud’s analysis of Ukraine’s impending assault on the ethnically and linguistically Russian population of Eastern Ukraine and Biden’s signing off on that operation in order to realize American and Western European goals.
Next, we present an oblique, possibly very significant element. A Foreign Policy article discussing a forbearer of EU president Ursula Von Der Leyen’s who was a key Third Reich official in Galicia (Western Ukraine).
It appears that Joachim Freiherr von der Leyen was a member of the prominent silk merchant family into which Ursula married.
Conventional family trees make no mention of him: ” . . . . Joachim Freiherr von der Leyen ( September 28, 1897 in Haus Meer , Büderich (Meerbusch) ; † 1945 in Dresden ) was a German lawyer and administrative official who worked as a district administrator in the occupied countries of Czechoslovakia and Poland during the National Socialist period and as a district captain of the district of Galicia was involved in the organization of the Holocaust. Von der Leyen comes from the von der Leyen family of silk barons in Krefeld. . . .”
Next, we highlight the ongoing lionization of Ukrainian Nazi and fascist elements in the mainstream U.S. press.
A long spread in the Sunday New York Times beatifies the Nazi Azov Regiment, the chief Ukrainian unit defending the Azovstal steel works.
Another NYT piece presents a heroic portrayal of a Ukrainian saboteur from the Nazi/fascist Azov and Right Sector units: ” . . . . Before the war, Svarog occasionally joined weekend training with Right Sector and National Corps, a branch of the Azov movement, both of which are aligned with paramilitary units in Ukraine. . . .”
Combat Helmets of the Azov units.
The elevation of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists by the U.S. is exemplified by a Pentagon-sponsored athletic competition: ” . . . .This August, during the Department of Defense’s annual Warrior Games at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, liberal comedian Jon Stewart awarded a Ukrainian military veteran named Ihor Halushka the ‘Heart of the Team’ award for ‘inspiring his team’ with his ‘personal example.’ Halushka happens to have been a member of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which has been armed by the US and integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard. . . . Perhaps the most famous Ukrainian Warrior Games participant is Yulia Palevska, who the New York Times has dubbed ‘a symbol of Ukrainian bravery and self-sacrifice.’. . . . Yulia Palevska and Ihor Halushka were members of the fascist Right Sector organization and Azov Battalion, respectively. . . .”
The extreme nature of the OUN/B successor Nazis and fascists in the political driver’s seat in Ukraine are illustrated by the names of people on their “kill list”: “ . . . . Why this site is allowed to operate is a good question. But you can access it easily, and even donate money to help the ’cause’ – if you are sympathetic to Nazis and think that assassinating people for their opinions is a wholesome way to support Ukraine. The co-founder of “Pink Floyd” [Roger Waters] is known for his support of imprisoned Wikileaks’ creator Julian Assange, and for his opposition to imperialism and war, as well as for his awesome music, loved by millions around the world. . . . . Even Henry Kissinger’s name is on the list despite his long history of Russophobia. But since he dared to air his concerns about how the US is teetering toward war with Russia and China . . . .”
Next, we further develop Ukraine’s enemies/death list, noting the experience of former Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter.
Joining Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and Henry Kissinger on the list, several of the members of which have been murdered, Ritter notes the presence of OUN/B youth camps in this country, possible breeding grounds for assassins.
Zelensky “normalizes” Stephan Bandera
Furthermore, Ritter correctly locates those OUN/B youth camps in the political continuum stretching from the Third Reich, through the Cold War, up to today—a continuum inextricably linked with the Gehlen organization.
“ . . . . I had to drive past Ellenville, a sleepy little town that is home to a camp belonging to the Ukrainian American Youth Association which, every summer, coordinates with the Organization for the Defense of Four Freedoms of Ukraine to hold a ‘Heroes’ Holiday’ honoring veteran of the Ukrainian People’s Army and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. . . . That a monument to men responsible for genocidal mass murder and who, in the case of two of them (Shukhevych and Bandera) openly collaborated with Nazi Germany, could be erected in the United States is disturbing. [NB—Konovalets cooperated with the Third Reich as well, D.E.] That every year Ukrainian-American adherents of the odious ideology of Stepan Bandera gather to celebrate his legacy at a “children’s camp” where the youth are arrayed in brown uniforms that make them look like what they, in fact, are — ideological storm troopers for a hateful neo-Nazi ideology that promotes the racial superiority of the Ukrainian people, is a national abomination. . . . Bandera has been elevated to the status of a national hero in Ukraine, and his birthday is considered a national holiday. . . . The legacy of Stepan Bandera is at the very heart of what passes for Ukrainian nationalism today. It dominates the political arena inside Ukraine, where all competing political ideology and affiliations have been outlawed by President Volodymyr Zelensky. . . .”
In FTR #907, we noted the profound presence of the Ukrainian fascists in the United States, as well as their operational connections to the Third Reich. In FTR #1072, we noted the Ukrainian youth cadre in the U.S., and its affiliation with the OUN/B milieu in Ukraine.
Our next item out these connections, noting:
1. The CYM organization and its presence in the U.S.
2. The decisive involvement of post-World War II emigres in the growth of that movement.
3. CYM’s close affiliation with the OUN/B.
4. CYM’s uniformed, military orientation: ” . . . . Among the most popular activities are military-style games where campers are divided into two teams that have to dodge or capture their opponents by moving stealthily and organizing ambushes. . . . .”
Further solidifying the continuity between the Third Reich, the Gehlen Org and the GOP, we note that, while it was the BND (the intelligence service of the Federal Republic) the “Org” was financing the Eastern European fascist groups that encompassed the CYM camps in the U.S.
Our programs conclude with excerpts of another interview with Swiss intelligence officer Jacques Baud.
In the program, we note Ukraine’s “mirror imaging” of the political and military aspects of the war, representing Ukrainian atrocities and war crimes as Russian.
In turn, Western media slavishly report the Ukrainian propaganda as fact, a dynamic Mr. Emory has cited as cementing the Nazification of America, begun during the closing stages of World War II.
Baud cites Ukrainian operations behind Russian lines: “ . . . . This is a terrorist campaign targeting pro-Russian Ukrainian personalities and officials. It follows major changes in the leadership of the SBU, in Kiev, and in the regions, including Lvov, Ternopol since July. It is probably in the context of this same campaign that Darya Dugina was assassinated on August 21. The objective of this new campaign could be to convey the illusion that there is an ongoing resistance in the areas taken by the Russians and thus revive Western aid, which is starting to fatigue. These sabotage activities do not really have an operational impact and seem more related to a psychological operation. It may be that these are actions like the one on Snake Island at the beginning of May, intended to demonstrate to the international public that Ukraine is acting. What the incidents in Crimea indirectly show is that the popular resistance claimed by the West in February does not exist. . . .”
Colonel Baud also highlights Ukraine’s shelling of the Zaporihizia Nuclear Power Plant: “ . . . . By bombing the plant, Ukraine could also be trying to pressure the West to intervene in the conflict, under the pretext that Russia is seeking to disconnect the plant from the Ukrainian power grid before the fall. This suicidal behavior—as stated by UN Secretary General António Guterres—would be in line with the war waged by Ukraine since 2014. There is strong evidence that the attacks on Energodar are Ukrainian. The fragments of projectiles fired at the site from the other side of the Dnieper are of Western origin. It seems that they come from British BRIMSTONE missiles, which are precision missiles, whose use is monitored by the British. Apparently, the West is aware of the Ukrainian attacks on the ZNPP. This might explain why Ukraine is not very supportive of an international commission of inquiry and why Western countries are putting unrealistic conditions for sending investigators from the IAEA, an agency that has not shown much integrity so far. . . .”
Colonel Baud sums up the role of terror central to the Nazified Ukrainian regime, parroted by Western MSM: “ . . . . Ukrainian crimes were beginning to be revealed on social networks, and on 27 March Zelensky feared that this would jeopardize Western support. This was followed—rather opportunely—by the Bucha massacre on 3 April, the circumstances of which remain unclear. Britain, which then had the chairmanship of the UN Security Council, refused three times the Russian request to set up an international commission of enquiry into the crimes of Bucha. Ukrainian socialist MP Ilya Kiva revealed on Telegram that the Bucha tragedy was planned by the British MI6 special services and implemented by the SBU. The fundamental problem is that the Ukrainians have replaced the ‘operational art’ with brutality. . . .”
1. The program begins with discussion of a powerful economic motive for baiting Russia into the Ukraine war–creating a pretext for obliging Europe and Germany to forego use of the Nordstream 2 pipeline and sever the EU from consumption of Russian natural gas.
” . . . . The only way left for U.S. diplomats to block European purchases is to goad Russia into a military response and then claim that avenging this response outweighs any purely national economic interest. As hawkish Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, explained in a State Department press briefing on January 27: ‘If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.’ The problem is to create a suitably offensive incident and depict Russia as the aggressor. . . .”
In FTR#1245, we detailed Swiss intelligence officer Jacques Baud’s analysis of Ukraine’s impending assault on the ethnically and linguistically Russian population of Eastern Ukraine and Biden’s signing off on that operation in order to realize American and Western European goals.
“How Europe Was Pushed Towards Economic Suicide;” Moon of Alabama; 5/18/2022.
With the active help from Europe’s ‘leadership’ the U.S. is succeeding in ruining Europe.
As Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, wrote in early February, before Russia’s intervention in Ukraine:
America no longer has the monetary power and seemingly chronic trade and balance-of-payments surplus that enabled it to draw up the world’s trade and investment rules in 1944–45. The threat to U.S. dominance is that China, Russia and Mackinder’s Eurasian World Island heartland are offering better trade and investment opportunities than are available from the United States with its increasingly desperate demand for sacrifices from its NATO and other allies.
The most glaring example is the U.S. drive to block Germany from authorizing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to obtain Russian gas for the coming cold weather. Angela Merkel agreed with Donald Trump to spend $1 billion building a new LNG port to become more dependent on highly priced U.S. LNG. (The plan was cancelled after the U.S. and German elections changed both leaders.) But Germany has no other way of heating many of its houses and office buildings (or supplying its fertilizer companies) than with Russian gas.
The only way left for U.S. diplomats to block European purchases is to goad Russia into a military response and then claim that avenging this response outweighs any purely national economic interest. As hawkish Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, explained in a State Department press briefing on January 27: “If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” The problem is to create a suitably offensive incident and depict Russia as the aggressor.
In mid February OSCE observer noted that the artillery bombardment of Donbas by the Ukrainians increased from a handful to over 2,000 explosions per day. Russia reacted to these attack preparations by recognizing the Donbas republics, signing defense agreements with them and by finally coming to their help.
Shortly after the launch of the Russian military operation Professor Hudson further developed his earlier thoughts:
The recent prodding of Russia by expanding Ukrainian anti-Russian ethnic violence by Ukraine’s neo-Nazi post-2014 Maiden regime aims at forcing a showdown. It comes in response to the fear by U.S. interests that they are losing their economic and political hold on their NATO allies and other Dollar Area satellites as these countries have seen their major opportunities for gain to lie in increasing trade and investment with China and Russia.
...
As President Biden explained, the current military escalation (“Prodding the Bear”) is not really about Ukraine. Biden promised at the outset that no U.S. troops would be involved. But he has been demanding for over a year that Germany prevent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from supplying its industry and housing with low-priced gas and turn to the much higher-priced U.S. suppliers.
...
[T]he most pressing U.S. strategic aim of NATO confrontation with Russia is soaring oil and gas prices. In addition to creating profits and stock-market gains for U.S. companies, higher energy prices will take much of the steam out of the German economy.In early April Professor Hudson took another look at the situation:
It is now clear that the New Cold War was planned over a year ago, with serious strategy associated with America’s perceived to block Nord Stream 2 as part of its aim of barring Western Europe (“NATO”) from seeking prosperity by mutual trade and investment with China and Russia.
...
So the Russian-speaking Donetsk and Luhansk regions were shelled with increasing intensity, and when Russia still refrained from responding, plans reportedly were drawn up for a great showdown last February – a heavy Western Ukrainian attack organized by U.S. advisors and armed by NATO.
...
European trade and investment prior to the War to Create Sanctions had promised a rising mutual prosperity among Germany, France and other NATO countries vis-à-vis Russia and China. Russia was providing abundant energy at a competitive price, and this energy supply was to make a quantum leap with Nord Stream 2. Europe was to earn the foreign exchange to pay for this rising import trade by a combination of exporting more industrial manufactures to Russia and capital investment in rebuilding the Russian economy, e.g. by German auto companies, aircraft and financial investment. This bilateral trade and investment is now stopped – for many, many years, given NATO’s confiscation of Russia’s foreign reserves kept in euros and British sterling.The European response to the U.S. proxy war against Russia was based on media driven hysteric moralizing or maybe moralizing hysteria. It was and is neither rational nor realistic.
The European ‘leadership’ decided that nothing but the economic suicide of Europe was sufficient to show Russia that Brussels was seriously miffed. Dimwit national governments, including the German one, followed that program. Should they stay on their course the result will be a complete de-industrialization of western Europe.
In the words of one serious observer:
Today, we see that for purely political reasons, driven by their own ambitions, and under pressure from their US overlord, the European countries are imposing more sanctions on the oil and gas markets which will lead to more inflation. Instead of admitting their mistakes, they are looking for a guilty party elsewhere.
...
One gets the impression that Western politicians and economists simply forget basic economic laws or just choose to ignore them.
...
[S]aying no to Russian energy means that Europe will systemically and for the long term become the world’s most costly region for energy resources. Yes, prices will rise, and resources will go to counter these price hikes, but this will not change the situation significantly. Some analysts are saying that it will seriously or even irrevocably undermine the competitiveness of a significant portion of European industry, which is already losing ground to companies from other parts of the world. Now, these processes will certainly pick up pace. Clearly, the opportunities for economic activity, with its improvements, will leave Europe for other regions, as will Russia’s energy resources.This economic auto-da-fe… suicide is, of course, the internal affair of the European countries.
...
Now our partners’ erratic actions – this is what they are – have resulted in a de facto growth in revenue in the Russian oil-and-gas sector in addition to the damage to the European economy.
...
Understanding what steps the West will take in the near future, we must reach conclusions in advance and be proactive, turning the thoughtless chaotic steps of some of our partners to our advantage for the benefit of our country. Naturally, we should not hope for their endless mistakes. We should simply, practically proceed from current realities, as I said.Vladimir Putin, Meeting on oil industry development, May 17 2020, Kremlin, Moscow
1b. Next, we present an oblique, possibly very significant element. A Foreign Policy article discussing a forebearer of EU president Ursula Von Der Leyen’s who was a key Third Reich official in Galicia (Western Ukraine).
It appears that Joachim Freiherr von der Leyen was a member of the prominent silk merchant family into which Ursula married.
Conventional family trees make no mention of him: ” . . . . Joachim Freiherr von der Leyen ( September 28, 1897 in Haus Meer , Büderich (Meerbusch) ; † 1945 in Dresden ) was a German lawyer and administrative official who worked as a district administrator in the occupied countries of Czechoslovakia and Poland during the National Socialist period and as a district captain of the district of Galicia was involved in the organization of the Holocaust. Von der Leyen comes from the von der Leyen family of silk barons in Krefeld. . . .”
How the EU president’s family connections explain her rise to power—and failures using it during the pandemic.
. . . . Von der Leyen’s family tree traces a legacy of power and brutality, incorporating not only some of Germany’s most significant Nazis but also some of Britain’s largest slave traders and, through marriage, some of the United States’ largest slave owners. Von der Leyen is descended directly from James Ladson, who owned more than 200 slaves when the Civil War broke out. . . .
1c. “Joachim Freiherr von der Leyen;“Wikipedia.org
Joachim Freiherr von der Leyen ( September 28, 1897 in Haus Meer , Büderich (Meerbusch) ; † 1945 in Dresden ) was a German lawyer and administrative official who worked as a district administrator in the occupied countries of Czechoslovakia and Poland during the National Socialist period and as a district captain of the district of Galicia was involved in the organization of the Holocaust .
Von der Leyen comes from the von der Leyen family of silk barons in Krefeld. [This is the family of Ursula’s in-laws–D.E.] His father , Friedrich Ludwig von der Leyen , was mayor of Büderich and district administrator of the district of Neuß , and lived with his family in Schloss Haus Meer until his death in 1945.
From 1915 to 1918 von der Leyen took part in the First World War and from 1919 to 1920 he was a member of a Freikorps . He was a member of the Young German Order and from 1926 to 1933 of the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten . He joined the NSDAP on February 1, 1940. [1]
He studied law and passed the first state examination in 1926, and then on December 22, 1928 the major state examination in law. In 1933 he was a permanent representative of the chief of police in Uerdingen and from April 1934 at the police headquarters in Wuppertal . After the smashing of the rest of the Czech Republic , he became provisional Oberlandrat in the district of Deutschbrod , based in Deutschbrod in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , and in 1940, after the occupation of France , became head of the administrative department of the military administrative district OFK 591 in Saint-Germain-en-Layeappointed.
At the end of July 1942 he succeeded Otto Bauer as district captain in the district of Lemberg-Land in the district of Galicia, the district governor there was Otto Wächter . Bauer remained head of the district’s internal administration. Berthold Pütter, the district captain of Lemberg-Grodek , had been drafted into the Wehrmacht , and the district administration had been merged with Lemberg-Land.
The fact that von der Leyen was informed about the Jewish actions in advance is documented, as was the case with a number of other district captains. [2]
He is said to have died of gas poisoning after the air raid on Dresden .
Von der Leyen had only been head of his manor for a short time . His widow Huberta von der Leyen managed the business, which his son Friedrich Heinrich von der Leyen II took over in 1970.
Literature [ edit | edit source ]
Markus Roth : Master people. The German district captains in occupied Poland — career paths, rule practice and post-history. Wallstein Verlag: Goettingen 2009. ISBN 978–3‑8353–0477‑2
Dieter Pohl: National Socialist Persecution of the Jews in East Galicia 1941–1944. Organization and implementation of a state mass crime. Oldenbourg, Munich 1997, ISBN 3–486-56313–0 ( full text available digitally ).
2. Next, we highlight the ongoing lionization of Ukrainian Nazi and fascist elements in the mainstream U.S. press.
A long spread in the Sunday New York Times beatifies the Nazi Azov Regiment, the chief Ukrainian unit defending the Azovstal steel works.
3. Another NYT piece presents a heroic portrayal of a Ukrainian saboteur from the Nazi/fascist Azov and Right Sector units: ” . . . . Before the war, Svarog occasionally joined weekend training with Right Sector and National Corps, a branch of the Azov movement, both of which are aligned with paramilitary units in Ukraine. . . .”
. . . . Before the war, Svarog occasionally joined weekend training with Right Sector and National Corps, a branch of the Azov movement, both of which are aligned with paramilitary units in Ukraine. . . .
4. The elevation of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists by the U.S. is exemplified by a Pentagon-sponsored athletic competition: ” . . . .This August, during the Department of Defense’s annual Warrior Games at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, liberal comedian Jon Stewart awarded a Ukrainian military veteran named Ihor Halushka the ‘Heart of the Team’ award for ‘inspiring his team’ with his ‘personal example.’ Halushka happens to have been a member of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which has been armed by the US and integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard. . . . Perhaps the most famous Ukrainian Warrior Games participant is Yulia Palevska, who the New York Times has dubbed ‘a symbol of Ukrainian bravery and self-sacrifice.’. . . . Yulia Palevska and Ihor Halushka were members of the fascist Right Sector organization and Azov Battalion, respectively. . . .”
Defense Department-sponsored “Warrior Games” featured liberal comedian Jon Stewart awarding a member of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion at Disney World. The Pentagon refused to tell The Grayzone whether US taxpayers funded the foreign competitors’ travel.
This August, during the Department of Defense’s annual Warrior Games at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, liberal comedian Jon Stewart awarded a Ukrainian military veteran named Ihor Halushka the “Heart of the Team” award for “inspiring his team” with his “personal example.”
Halushka happens to have been a member of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which has been armed by the US and integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard. The award-winning ultra-nationalist wore a sleeve over his left arm as he accepted the prize, presumably to cover up his tattoo of the Nazi Sonnenrad, or Black Sun.
Because the Warrior Games are sponsored by the Pentagon, American taxpayers likely paid to send Ukrainian Nazis like Halushka to Disney World. Indeed, at least two members of a Ukrainian team of wounded veteran athletes flown to Orlando, Florida are confirmed members of neo-Nazi groups in their country. Yulia Palevska and Ihor Halushka were members of the fascist Right Sector organization and Azov Battalion, respectively.
The pair are part of a team of forty Ukrainian veterans participating in the Warrior Games. They were joined at the ceremony for this year’s competition by Darius Rucker, the former vocalist for the glorified bar band Hootie & the Blowfish, and liberal comedian Jon Stewart.
During the closing ceremony, Stewart awarded the Azov Battalion’s Halushka with the “Heart of the Team” award. The announcer proclaimed that Ihor “inspires his team with his personal example and his unique sense of humor. Sgt. First Class Ihor Halushka embodies the spirit and determination that is the heart of Team Ukraine.”
Stewart triumphantly bellowed “Ihor!” as the Nazi was presented with his trophy.
Jon Stewart awards Ihor Halushka with the “Heart of the Team” award
Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of this year, mainstream outlets from the Daily Beast to Vox to Foreign Policy, and even the US government propaganda outlet Voice of America, have each acknowledged the Azov Battalion’s embrace of Nazism. Right Sector group has been similarly identified as a fascist organization. Since the invasion, however, Western corporate media has downplayed the presence of Nazis in the Ukrainian armed forces as groups like Azov have taken on prominent front-line roles.
Reached by phone, Warrior Games communication director Travis Claytor would not tell The Grayzone who covered the travel expenses of Team Ukraine and other foreign competitors. Claytor merely stated that the Department of Defense is “not responsible” for their costs. However, he noted that “the relationship with each team is different.” Ukraine and Canada are the only foreign teams participating in this year’s competition.
While promising this reporter a more complete response by email, Claytor has so far failed to deliver.
A video on the DoD Warrior Games YouTube channel entitled “Family Night at Magic Kingdom” shows some members of Team Ukraine enjoying a night out at the world-famous theme park.
This year’s Warrior Games are taking place at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort. Competitions include shooting, wheelchair rugby, cycling, powerlifting, indoor rowing, wheelchair basketball, field, golf, track, swimming, sitting volleyball and archery.
This is the first year Team Ukraine has participated in the Warrior Games. Its athletes came away with at least 18 gold medals.
Ukraine’s team is composed of the same veteran-athletes that participated in the Invictus Games, a similar competition of wounded veterans founded by Prince Harry after the English royal attended the Warrior Games. Ukraine’s Invictus Games team and Warrior Games team are both led by Oksana Gorbach, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Veterans Affairs.
“The organizational team of the Warrior Games in Ukraine includes the Ministry of Veterans Affairs of Ukraine, the Center for Strategic Communications ‘StratCom Ukraine,’ the NGO ‘Invictus Ukraine Games,’ the Strongman Federation of Ukraine, the ‘Come Back Alive,’” the Ministry of Veterans Affairs website states. StratCom Ukraine, like the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, is a governmental body, while the others appear to be Ukrainian NGOs.
As the Grayzone reported, the head of Ukraine’s veterans affairs agency attended a 2019 neo-Nazi black metal concert featuring several antisemitic metal bands, and promoted the event on Facebook.
According to a deleted article from 2017 on an Azov Battalion website, at least three members of the notorious ultranationalist fighting force have participated in the Invictus Games. Because Azov identified the competitors by their call signs, and therefore did not disclose their real names, it is not possible to determine whether they also competed in the 2022 Warrior Games.
While the team page on the Invictus Games website merely states that Ihor Halushka was a member of Ukraine’s National Guard, an expanded bio on the website makes it clear he was a member of Azov.
An unlisted YouTube video by the Invictus Games on YouTube offers a close-up of Halushka working out with Nazi Black Sun symbol tattooed on his left elbow clearly visible. Halushka opted to cover the fascist symbol during photo ops at the Warrior Games.
Halushka has never been shy about his ties to the Azov Battalion. During the Invictus Games this April, he whipped out an Azov flag as he accepted a gold medal, which was hosted in The Hague – where war criminals are normally tried, not awarded. Likewise, in Orlando, Haluskha wore an Azov Battalion t‑shirt as he accepted a gold medal for indoor rowing. He was honored days later as the “heart” of his team.
“symbol of Ukrainian bravery” was member of fascist Right Sector
Perhaps the most famous Ukrainian Warrior Games participant is Yulia Palevska, who the New York Times has dubbed “a symbol of Ukrainian bravery and self-sacrifice.”
Palevska gained international recognition this March when she handed off footage she had filmed in Mariupol to a journalist with the Associated Press. The video showed Palevska evacuating Azov Battalion soldiers from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol when she was captured by Russian forces. Three months later, she was released.
Palevska’s release by Russia was such a notable event in Ukraine that President Zelensky personally remarked on the development.
The Associated Press downplayed her links to the Azov Battalion, writing “Russia has portrayed Taira as working for the nationalist Azov Battalion… But the AP found no such evidence, and friends and colleagues said she had no links to Azov.”
However, Palevska was a member of another neo-Nazi formation similarly incorporated into the Ukrainian military – a fact not mentioned by mainstream media outlets that vaulted her to war hero status this March.
A 2019 Bloomberg Businessweek report identified Palevska as “a former member of Right Sector,.” (“There’s no such thing as ex-Right Sector,” she claimed). After leaving the group “amid infighting,” she organized a team of combat medics named after her World of Warcraft character, “Taira’s Angels.”
Bloomberg’s correspondent met with Palevska in Mariupol, which was then controlled by the Azov Battalion. Palevska’s medic group “runs through about $20,000, half of it from abroad, in cash, fuel, and medical supplies every month,” he reported.
“Everyone I talk to describes [Palevska], dappled with Buddhist tattoos and sporting dyed blue hair, as motivated purely by patriotism,” he added.
In a photo posted by the official Facebook page for Ukrainian Warrior Games team, Palevska’s tattoo of the ultranationalist slogan “Glory to Ukraine, Glory to the Heroes” is clearly visible.
Another member of Palevska’s media group was “wearing a T‑shirt from the neo-Nazi apparel company Sva Stone and an Iron Cross ring,” according to Bloomberg.
It is difficult to believe that Palevska and Halushka are the only members of Team Ukraine that have belonged to neo-Nazi groups.
A photo posted on the team’s official Facebook page show five team members performing a fascist salute in front of a Warrior Games banner.
Team Ukraine performs a fascist salute in front of a Department of Defense banner
In other photos, a member of the team wearing a Warrior Games t‑shirt can be seen holding a Right Sector flag; and seven veterans associated with the team bear the flag of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the Schutzstaffel (SS), a WWII-era Nazi military formation made up of Ukrainian nationalists.
American taxpayers have already forked $60 billion over to Ukraine since the war broke out in 2014. They are therefore entitled to know whether the Department of Defense paid Team Ukraine’s travel expenses.
Video from the Department of Defense shows the Ukrainian team deboarding on the tarmac at MacDill Air Force Base. Did they even pass through Customs?
The Pentagon’s Warrior Games has refused to answer these questions and stonewalled The Grayzone ever since.
While the presence of neo-Nazis within Ukraine’s fighting forces may come as little surprise to critical observers of NATO’s conflict with Russia, their invitation to Disney World by the Department of Defense is without a doubt one of the weirdest episodes in the Ukraine proxy war.
5. The extreme nature of the OUN/B successor Nazis and fascists in the political driver’s seat in Ukraine are illustrated by the names of people on their “kill list”: “ . . . . Why this site is allowed to operate is a good question. But you can access it easily, and even donate money to help the “cause” – if you are sympathetic to Nazis and think that assassinating people for their opinions is a wholesome way to support Ukraine. The co-founder of “Pink Floyd” [Roger Waters] is known for his support of imprisoned Wikileaks’ creator Julian Assange, and for his opposition to imperialism and war, as well as for his awesome music, loved by millions around the world. . . . . Even Henry Kissinger’s name is on the list despite his long history of Russophobia. But since he dared to air his concerns about how the US is teetering toward war with Russia and China . . . .”
Russian political analyst Daria Dugina, who was killed in a car bomb explosion in Moscow on Saturday, now appears as “liquidated” on the Ukrainian online hit list. The site was created under the watch of the Minister of Internal Affairs.
This article was originally published by Deborah L. Armstrong at Medium.com
Editor’s note: The IP address of Mirotvorets has been traced to a server in Brussels, Belgium.
I have written about the Ukrainian hit list known as Mirotvorets, or “Peacekeeper,” twice before. The first time was in this article about internet censorship, and the second time was when a 13-year-old Ukrainian girl, Faina Savenkova, was added to the list for publicly speaking out against Kiev’s bloody war on Russian-speaking civilians in the eastern part of Ukraine, a region known as the Donbass.
Screen shot of Faina Savenkova’s profile on Mirotvorets.
Mirotvorets is a database which lists thousands of journalists, activists, and anyone else who is declared an “Enemy of Ukraine.” Their personal information is published, such as the addresses of their homes, their phone numbers and bank account numbers; anything that can help them be easily located. When the people on this list are murdered, like Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli was, the word ЛИКВИДИРОВАН, “LIQUIDATED,” written in Ukrainian, is stamped across their picture in big red letters.
And, as of August 22, Daria Dugina, who was killed in a car bomb explosion in Moscow on Saturday, appears as “liquidated” on the website, adding more credibility to Russia’s assertion that she was assassinated by a Ukrainian nationalist who rented an apartment in the building where Daria lived in order to surveil her prior to her killing. It is believed that she was killed because her father, Alexander Dugin was referred to as “Putin’s brain” and “Putin’s spiritual guide” in western media, though these claims are really just more speculation.
Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli is listed as “liquidated” on Mirotvorets site.
Daria Dugina, Russian war correspondent, is listed as “liquidated” on Mirotvorets site.
It seems that almost anyone can be added to this kill list. Even Henry Kissinger’s name is on the list despite his long history of Russophobia. But since he dared to air his concerns about how the US is teetering toward war with Russia and China, Kissinger, who once suggested dropping nuclear bombs on Moscow, is now declared an “Enemy of Ukraine.”
Kissinger’s Mirotvorets profile.
Really, so many people have been added to this list that it has now become a badge of honor among those opposed to Ukraine’s regime, when they are included on the Mirotvorets site.
Filmaker Igor Lopatonok is targeted by Mirotvorets because of a film he worked on with Oliver Stone.
Why this site is allowed to operate is a good question. But you can access it easily, and even donate money to help the “cause” – if you are sympathetic to Nazis and think that assassinating people for their opinions is a wholesome way to support Ukraine.
Here is Roger Waters’ profile:
Roger Waters’ profile on Mirotvorets.
The co-founder of “Pink Floyd” is known for his support of imprisoned Wikileaks’ creator Julian Assange, and for his opposition to imperialism and war, as well as for his awesome music, loved by millions around the world.
Waters recently referred to Joe Biden as a “war criminal” on CNN, and said that Biden is “fueling the fire in Ukraine.”
“This war,” the musician stated, “is basically about the action and reaction of NATO pushing right up to the Russian border, which they promised they wouldn’t do when [Mikhail] Gorbachev negotiated the withdrawal of the USSR from the whole of Eastern Europe.”
Waters also said that Crimea belongs to Russia, because the majority of people living on the peninsula are Russian.
The rock star’s views have outraged the pro-NATO crowd and their Nazi friends, as well as the social justice warriors who froth at the mouth in support of whatever the mainstream media declares to be “the current thing.” Waters, who has always been something of a dissident and anti-war, the way all rock stars used to be when rock and roll was still real, is attacked mercilessly by the “woke” crowd, who are intolerant of all who are not in lockstep with their views. . . .
6. Next, we further develop Ukraine’s enemies/death list, noting the experience of former Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter.
Joining Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and Henry Kissinger on the list, several of the members of which have been murdered, Ritter notes the presence of OUN/B youth camps in this country, possible breeding grounds for assassins.
Furthermore, Ritter correctly locates those OUN/B youth camps in the political continuum stretching from the Third Reich, through the Cold War, up to today—a continuum inextricably linked with the Gehlen organization.
“ . . . . I had to drive past Ellenville, a sleepy little town that is home to a camp belonging to the Ukrainian American Youth Association which, every summer, coordinates with the Organization for the Defense of Four Freedoms of Ukraine to hold a ‘Heroes’ Holiday’ honoring veteran of the Ukrainian People’s Army and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. . . . That a monument to men responsible for genocidal mass murder and who, in the case of two of them (Shukhevych and Bandera) openly collaborated with Nazi Germany, could be erected in the United States is disturbing. [NB—Konovalets cooperated with the Third Reich as well, D.E.] That every year Ukrainian-American adherents of the odious ideology of Stepan Bandera gather to celebrate his legacy at a “children’s camp” where the youth are arrayed in brown uniforms that make them look like what they, in fact, are — ideological storm troopers for a hateful neo-Nazi ideology that promotes the racial superiority of the Ukrainian people, is a national abomination. . . . Bandera has been elevated to the status of a national hero in Ukraine, and his birthday is considered a national holiday. . . . The legacy of Stepan Bandera is at the very heart of what passes for Ukrainian nationalism today. It dominates the political arena inside Ukraine, where all competing political ideology and affiliations have been outlawed by President Volodymyr Zelensky. . . .”
“SCOTT RITTER: The Death List” by Scott Ritter; Consortium News; 8/31/2022.
The odious legacy of Stepan Bandera drives the suppression of those who dare challenge the narrative of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict promulgated by the Ukrainian government, its Western allies and a compliant mainstream media.
Stepan Bandera monument in Ternopil, Ukraine, 2017. (Mykola Vasylechko, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
In May 1986 I received orders to attend a counterterrorism awareness course at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School, in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. For the next two weeks I learned about the various terrorist threats facing the United States military, and was taught various skills to overcome them, such as high-speed evasive driving, counter-surveillance methodology and reactive shooting techniques.
Upon my return to Twenty-Nine Palms, where I was stationed as a Marine Corps intelligence officer, I was given the task of putting my newly learned skills to work by carrying out a base-wide counterterrorism exercise. I borrowed a scout-sniper team from the infantry battalion on base, and set them up in an apartment off base, where I turned them into a terrorist cell tasked with collecting intelligence on the senior officers who lived and worked on the base. The only rule was that the terrorists could not engage with civilians — no families were to be impacted by the drill.
Over the course of the next 30 days, my terrorist team was able to “assassinate” every battalion commander, the regimental commander and the base commander, using improvised explosive devices and sniper fire — and had the photographs to prove it.
The takeaway from this exercise was that if someone wanted you dead, you were probably going to die.
Vigilance was your only real defense — to be alert for anything suspicious. In short, to live a life governed by paranoia. In the age of terrorism, if you feel like someone is seeking to do you harm, it is probably because someone is seeking to do you harm.
Using Those Skills
Throughout my professional life, I have had occasion to use the skills I learned at Fort Bragg on several occasions — I was targeted for assassination while working as a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq and I was informed that I was the subject of a “hit” put out by the Russian mafia for my role in breaking up an illicit missile component smuggling ring.
I would conduct a 360-degree inspection of my vehicle before entering it, looking for signs of tampering. And I would conduct counter-surveillance drills while driving, accelerating at odd intervals to see if anyone kept pace, or rapidly exiting a highway to see if anyone followed.
Today, I’m a 61-year-old writer living in the suburbs of Albany, New York. It’s a quiet neighborhood, where everyone knows everyone. And yet, due to recent circumstances, I once again find myself inspecting my vehicle before getting inside, keeping a watchful eye out for strange vehicles driving down my street and conducting counter-surveillance maneuvers while driving.
Why the paranoia? Simply put, my name has been added to a Ukrainian “kill list.” Think I’m getting too wound up? Ask the family of Daria Dugina, the 29-year-old daughter of the Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin. Both she and her father were on the same list. Both were targeted for death by an assassin dispatched by the Ukrainian security services. Only a last-second change of plans, which put Alexander Dugin behind the wheel of a different car, kept him from being killed in the blast that took the life of his daughter.
Daria Dugina. (1RNK, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
I’ve been writing for some time now about the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation and their publication in mid-July of a “blacklist” containing the names of 72 intellectuals, journalists, activists and politicians from several countries who were labeled “Russian propagandists” by the Ukrainian government for having the audacity to speak critically, yet factually, about the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
I took umbrage over this list for several reasons, first and foremost that the salaries of the Ukrainians who compiled this list appeared to be paid by the U.S. taxpayer using funds appropriated by Congress for that very purpose. The idea of Congress passing a law which empowered the Ukrainian government to do something — suppress the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and a free press — that Congress was Constitutionally prohibited from doing angered me.
[Related: SCOTT RITTER: Chuck Schumer’s War on Free Speech]
So, too, did the fact that the Center for Countering Disinformation announced the existence of this “blacklist” at a function organized by a U.S.-funded NGO and attended by State Department officials who sat mute while their Ukrainian colleagues labeled the persons on this list “information terrorists” who deserved to be arrested and prosecuted as “war criminals.”
At the time, I cautioned that the use of such inflammatory language meant that the “blacklist” could be turned into a “kill list” simply by having a fanatic decide to take justice into his or her own hands. Given that the U.S. government funded the creation of this list, organized the meeting where it was presented to the world and gave an implicit stamp of approval to the list and its accompanying labeling through the attendance of U.S. government officials, these fanatics don’t have to be foreign sourced. Plenty of people in the U.S. adhere to the same hate-filled ideology that exists in Ukraine today and which gave birth to the “blacklist.”
Some of them are my neighbors.
In June I drove down to Bethel, New York (the site of the original Woodstock music festival), to participate in a Spartan Obstacle Course Race. To get there, I had to drive past Ellenville, a sleepy little town that is home to a camp belonging to the Ukrainian American Youth Association which, every summer, coordinates with the Organization for the Defense of Four Freedoms of Ukraine to hold a “Heroes’ Holiday” honoring veteran of the Ukrainian People’s Army and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
The camp boasts a “Heroes’ Monument”, consists of a 42-foot-tall structure with a Ukrainian trident at the top flanked by the busts of Yevhen Konovalets, Symon Petliura, Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera —four leading figures in the history of Ukrainian nationalism, all of whom were involved in the murders, collectively, of hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles and Russians.
Bandera has been elevated to the status of a national hero in Ukraine, and his birthday is considered a national holiday.
That a monument to men responsible for genocidal mass murder and who, in the case of two of them (Shukhevych and Bandera) openly collaborated with Nazi Germany, could be erected in the United States is disturbing.
That every year Ukrainian-American adherents of the odious ideology of Stepan Bandera gather to celebrate his legacy at a “children’s camp” where the youth are arrayed in brown uniforms that make them look like what they, in fact, are — ideological storm troopers for a hateful neo-Nazi ideology that promotes the racial superiority of the Ukrainian people, is a national abomination.
From Ellenville to Bethel, I saw evidence of this hateful reality in every blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag fluttering in the wind — and every red-and-black banner of the Bandera-worshipping Ukrainian neo-Nazi fanatics that fluttered next to them.
Stepan Bandera Legacy
The legacy of Stepan Bandera is at the very heart of what passes for Ukrainian nationalism today. It dominates the political arena inside Ukraine, where all competing political ideology and affiliations have been outlawed by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
It is behind the suppression of all dissenting voices — foreign and domestic — that dare challenge the narrative about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict being promulgated by the Ukrainian government, its Western allies, and a compliant mainstream media.
After Consortium News published my letter to my New York congressional delegation (Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Rep. Paul Tonko), in which I called them out for voting for Public Law 117–128 appropriating $40 billion in U.S. taxpayer money to underwrite the Ukrainian government and military, there was concerted action by others impacted by the Ukrainian “blacklist,” which the legislation had funded. This was led by Diane Sare, the LaRouche Party candidate challenging Schumer for his Senate seat.
The publicity about congressionally-funded suppression of free speech appeared to be too much for those who are complicit in a frontal assault on the U.S. Constitution. The Center for Countering Disinformation’s “blacklist” was removed from the internet.
Victory, however, was short lived. Within days of the Center for Countering Disinformation’s “blacklist” being taken down, a list published by the Ukrainian “Myrotvorets” (Peacemaker’s) Center incorporated names that had been on the Center for Countering Disinformation “blacklist.”
Coat of Myrotvorets staff member with field version of their emblem on sleeve. (Shao, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The Myrotvorets list has been in existence since 2014 and has been described as “effectively a death list for politicians, journalists, entrepreneurs and other public figures who have been ‘cleared for firing’” by the list’s creators.
Daria Dugina’s name was on that list.
And now so is mine, along with several other Westerners, such as Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett and British rock musician Roger Waters.
Scott Ritter on the death list. (Click to enlarge).
The Biden administration is silent about this abomination.
So is Congress.
According to 6 USCS § 101, the term terrorism is
“any activity that involves an act that is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources; and is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State or other subdivision of the United States; and appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.”
There is little doubt that the murder of Daria Dugina was an act of terrorism perpetrated on behalf of the Ukrainian government. (Her photo on the list now has the word “liquidated” written diagonally across it in red.)
While the Ukrainians deny any such allegations, Russian authorities have assembled a convincing factual case to the contrary.
The existence of the Myrotvorets “death list” is an instrument of terror and should be taken down at the insistence of the U.S. Government.
The failure of the Ukrainian government to shut down the Myrotvorets Center and condemn its activities would constitute material support of terrorism.
The U.S. should also recognize any organizations which embrace the ideology of Stepan Bandera as terrorist entities — including those responsible for raising a new generation of brown-shirted neo-Nazis in the heartland of America.
The “Hero’s Monument” in Ellenville must be closed, and the statues of Bandera and the other three Ukrainian nationalists removed from public view.
It is a national disgrace that U.S. citizens are subjected to death threats from an erstwhile ally of the United States for simply exercising their Constitutional right of free speech. The adherents to the ideology of Stepan Bandera, in Ukraine and in the United States, must be treated as terrorists, and prosecuted with the same level of intensity and purpose as were the followers of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Until this is done, I will have no choice but to take the appropriate precautions to make sure that neither my family nor I suffer the fate of Daria Dugina.
7. Further solidifying the continuity between the Third Reich, the Gehlen Org and the Ukrainian diaspora in the U.S., we note that, while it was the BND (the intelligence service of the Federal Republic) the “Org” was financing the Eastern European fascist groups that were part of the Ethnic Heritage Outreach Council.
. . . . Gehlen even set up a number of “cells” in the United States. As early as 1963, the Senate Foreign Relations committee discussed the activities of the Julius Klein public relations company, which had established branches in Washington, New York and Los Angeles and also in Canada, employing a fairly numerous staff without apparently engaging on any publicity business. From this firm, the trail led to the Association of American Citizens of German Origin, which was receiving large subsidies from an unspecified Federal German government department—the Bundesnachritendienst, it was later established. This foreign subsidy amounted to the handsome sum of 280,000 dollars in 1964 and was increased in later years. . . .
Not so satisfactory at first were the explanations of Gehlen’s connections with the large organizations of Ukrainians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and other East European immigrants in the United States, which received finance and advice from three “registered” BND agents—Roman Henlinger, alias “Dr. Grau,” Victor Salemann and Alexander Wieber. . . .
8. In FTR #907, we noted the profound presence of the Ukrainian fascists in the United States, as well as their operational connections to the Third Reich. In FTR #1072, we noted the Ukrainian youth cadre in the U.S., and its affiliation with the OUN/B milieu in Ukraine.
Our next item out these connections, noting:
1. The CYM organization and its presence in the U.S.
2. The decisive involvement of post-World War II emigres in the growth of that movement.
3. CYM’s close affiliation with the OUN/B.
4. CYM’s uniformed, military orientation: ” . . . . Among the most popular activities are military-style games where campers are divided into two teams that have to dodge or capture their opponents by moving stealthily and organizing ambushes. . . . .”
The Kyiv Post joined hundreds of people who came to a Ukrainian-American Youth Association camp and resort in New York state for an extended weekend that included celebrating America’s Independence Day and commemorating Ukrainian heroes who fought throughout the ages for their country’s freedom.
The association is known by the Ukrainian acronym CYM – pronounced “SUM” – of its name “Spilka Ukrayinskoyi Molodi.” Along with the Ukrainian Scouting movement, Plast, it is one of the two main youth groups that flowered in the post-World War II diaspora and taught younger generations about their heritage and ensured that the Ukrainian community remained vibrant.
CYM has four camps in various parts of the U.S. The New York one named after the nearest small town of 4,000 residents, Ellenville, is set in picturesque undulating countryside near the Catskill Forest Preserve national park and its territory includes hills, woods and a stream filled with trout and bass. It was bought by the Ukrainian community in the 1960s. . . .
. . . . There are elements of military discipline in CYM, as there are in other youth organizations such as the Scouting movement. They learn drill so that they can march or assemble in formation.
They wear uniforms for Sunday church services and on some other special occasions. Uniforms consist of gray shirts with matching trousers or skirts. Different colored ties denote age groups with green for the youngest, burgundy for teenagers, blue for young adults and brown for the over-thirties. CYM members around the world wear the same uniform except for a shoulder patch saying which country they belong to. . . .. . . . Among the most popular activities are military-style games where campers are divided into two teams that have to dodge or capture their opponents by moving stealthily and organizing ambushes. . . . .
. . . . The topics that featured in talks for the older members this month included the history of Ukraine’s struggles in the 20th century for freedom. Much time was devoted to the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Stepan Bandera, as 2019 sees the 110th anniversary of his birth and 60th anniversary of his assassination by the Soviet KGB. . . .
. . . . After World War II, CYM started to be rebuilt by refugees from Ukraine, tens of thousands of whom lived for several years in displaced persons’ camps in Germany and Austria. Bandera supporters were instrumental in reviving CYM in the West after the war and the association is clearly streaked with their style of impassioned Ukrainian patriotism. . . .
. . . . It also flourished in every country with significant Ukrainian communities including the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Argentina, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand. CYM has some 1,600 members in the U.S. in its 28 branches in 12 of America’s states. . . . .
. . . . The man heading up, for the fourth time, the camp for older CYM members this year is Mykola Hryckowian. His parents came to the U.S. after World War Two and both had staunchly patriotic backgrounds.
On July 7, with CYM members in full uniform, and visitors also taking part, there was a church service at the camp’s own chapel. That was followed by a wreath-laying ceremony at a nearby monument dedicated to all Ukraine’s independence heroes.Dmitri Lenzcuk, as chief instructor, was responsible for working out the schedule of lessons and activities for the camp. He is a second-generation American whose grandparents arrived in the U.S. after the war . . . .
9. Apologists for Bandera and his acolytes in the Zelensky regime have noted the official break between elements of the Third Reich leadership and the OUN/B milieu following Ukraine’s declaration of independence.
This “break” was—in essence—for PR purposes, as the UPA (OUN/B’s military wing) continued to staff Nazi military units such as the 14th Waffen SS division.
Bandera was privileged: “ . . . . Bandera had a two-room suite with paintings and rugs, was allowed to have conjugal visits with his wife, performed no forced labor, wore no uniform, was exempt from roll call, ate with the guards and did not lock his cell door at night. The Nazis released Bandera in 1944 after a meeting with Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s top commando, to carry out a campaign of terrorism against the advancing Red Army. . . .”
. . . . Several months after the declaration of independence, which the Nazis did not accept, tensions would rise to such an extent that the Nazis arrested Bandera, Stetsko and other leaders. After a period of house arrest, they were transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1943.
Bandera’s stay was not typical, however. Bandera had a two-room suite with paintings and rugs, was allowed to have conjugal visits with his wife, performed no forced labor, wore no uniform, was exempt from roll call, ate with the guards and did not lock his cell door at night.
The Nazis released Bandera in 1944 after a meeting with Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s top commando, to carry out a campaign of terrorism against the advancing Red Army. The Nazis could have killed Bandera and Stetsko at any time in the interim, but they did not. Rather, they made a great and successful effort to recruit them. . . .
10. Our programs conclude with excerpts of another interview with Swiss intelligence officer Jacques Baud.
Colonel Baud’s CV: 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.
For the edification of the reader, we present the full text of the interview here.
In the program, we note Ukraine’s “mirror imaging” of the political and military aspects of the war, representing Ukrainian atrocities and war crimes as Russian.
In turn, Western media slavishly report the Ukrainian propaganda as fact, a dynamic Mr. Emory has cited as cementing the Nazification of America, begun during the closing stages of World War II.
Baud cites Ukrainian operations behind Russian lines: “ . . . . This is a terrorist campaign targeting pro-Russian Ukrainian personalities and officials. It follows major changes in the leadership of the SBU, in Kiev, and in the regions, including Lvov, Ternopol since July. It is probably in the context of this same campaign that Darya Dugina was assassinated on August 21. The objective of this new campaign could be to convey the illusion that there is an ongoing resistance in the areas taken by the Russians and thus revive Western aid, which is starting to fatigue. These sabotage activities do not really have an operational impact and seem more related to a psychological operation. It may be that these are actions like the one on Snake Island at the beginning of May, intended to demonstrate to the international public that Ukraine is acting. What the incidents in Crimea indirectly show is that the popular resistance claimed by the West in February does not exist. . . .”
Colonel Baud also highlights Ukraine’s shelling of the Zaporihizia Nuclear Power Plant: “ . . . . By bombing the plant, Ukraine could also be trying to pressure the West to intervene in the conflict, under the pretext that Russia is seeking to disconnect the plant from the Ukrainian power grid before the fall. This suicidal behavior—as stated by UN Secretary General António Guterres—would be in line with the war waged by Ukraine since 2014. There is strong evidence that the attacks on Energodar are Ukrainian. The fragments of projectiles fired at the site from the other side of the Dnieper are of Western origin. It seems that they come from British BRIMSTONE missiles, which are precision missiles, whose use is monitored by the British. Apparently, the West is aware of the Ukrainian attacks on the ZNPP. This might explain why Ukraine is not very supportive of an international commission of inquiry and why Western countries are putting unrealistic conditions for sending investigators from the IAEA, an agency that has not shown much integrity so far. . . .”
Colonel Baud sums up the role of terror central to the Nazified Ukrainian regime, parroted by Western MSM: “ . . . . Ukrainian crimes were beginning to be revealed on social networks, and on 27 March Zelensky feared that this would jeopardize Western support. This was followed—rather opportunely—by the Bucha massacre on 3 April, the circumstances of which remain unclear. Britain, which then had the chairmanship of the UN Security Council, refused three times the Russian request to set up an international commission of enquiry into the crimes of Bucha. Ukrainian socialist MP Ilya Kiva revealed on Telegram that the Bucha tragedy was planned by the British MI6 special services and implemented by the SBU. The fundamental problem is that the Ukrainians have replaced the ‘operational art’ with brutality. . . .”
Our Latest Interview with Jacques Baud
September 1, 2022 Jacques Baud
We are pleased to bring you this fresh interview with Jacques Baud, in which we cover what is now happening in the geopolitical struggle that is the Ukraine-Russia war. As always, Mr. Baud brings deep insight and clear analysis to the conversation.
The Postil (TP): You have just published your latest book on the war in Ukraine—Operation Z, published by Max Milo. Please tell us a little about it—what led you to write this book and what do you wish to convey to readers?
Jacques Baud (JB): The aim of this book is to show how the misinformation propagated by our media has contributed to push Ukraine in the wrong direction. I wrote it under the motto “from the way we understand crises derives the way we solve them.”
By hiding many aspects of this conflict, the Western media has presented us with a caricatural and artificial image of the situation, which has resulted in the polarization of minds. This has led to a widespread mindset that makes any attempt to negotiate virtually impossible.
The one-sided and biased representation provided by mainstream media is not intended to help us solve the problem, but to promote hatred of Russia. Thus, the exclusion of disabled athletes, cats, even Russian trees from competitions, the dismissal of conductors, the de-platforming of Russian artists, such as Dostoyevsky, or even the renaming of paintings aims at excluding the Russian population from society! In France, bank accounts of individuals with Russian-sounding names were even blocked. Social networks Facebook and Twitter have systematically blocked the disclosure of Ukrainian crimes under the pretext of “hate speech” but allow the call for violence against Russians.
None of these actions had any effect on the conflict, except to stimulate hatred and violence against the Russians in our countries. This manipulation is so bad that we would rather see Ukrainians die than to seek a diplomatic solution. As Republican Senator Lindsey Graham recently said, it is a matter of letting the Ukrainians fight to the last man.
It is commonly assumed that journalists work according to standards of quality and ethics to inform us in the most honest way possible. These standards are set by the Munich Charter of 1971. While writing my book I found out that no French-speaking mainstream media in Europe respects this charter as far as Russia and China are concerned. In fact, they shamelessly support an immoral policy towards Ukraine, described by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, president of Mexico, as “We provide the weapons, you provide the corpses!”
To highlight this misinformation, I wanted to show that information allowing to provide a realistic picture of the situation was available as early as February, but that our media did not relay it to the public. My goal was to show this contradiction.
In order to avoid becoming a propagandist myself in favor of one side or the other, I have relied exclusively on Western, Ukrainian (from Kiev) and Russian opposition sources. I have not taken any information from the Russian media.
TP: It is commonly said in the West that this war has “proven” that the Russian army is feeble and that its equipment is useless. Are these assertions true?
JB: No. After more than six months of war, it can be said that the Russian army is effective and efficient, and that the quality of its command & control far exceeds what we see in the West. But our perception is influenced by a reporting that is focused on the Ukrainian side, and by distortions of reality.
Firstly, there is the reality on the ground. It should be remembered that what the media call “Russians” is in fact a Russian-speaking coalition, composed of professional Russian fighters and soldiers of the popular militias of Donbass. The operations in the Donbass are mainly carried out by these militias, who fight on “their” terrain, in towns and villages they know and where they have friends and family. They are therefore advancing cautiously for themselves, but also to avoid civilian casualties. Thus, despite the claims of western propaganda, the coalition enjoys a very good popular support in the areas it occupies.
Then, just looking at a map, you can see that the Donbass is a region with a lot of built-up and inhabited areas, which means an advantage for the defender and a reduced speed of progress for the attacker in all circumstances.
Secondly, there is the way our media portray the evolution of the conflict. Ukraine is a huge country and small-scale maps hardly show the differences from one day to another. Moreover, each side has its own perception of the progress of the enemy. If we take the example of the situation on March 25, 2022, we can see that the map of the French daily newspaper Ouest-France (a) shows almost no advance of Russia, as does the Swiss RTS site (b). The map of the Russian website RIAFAN © may be propaganda, but if we compare it with the map of the French Military Intelligence Directorate (DRM) (d), we see that the Russian media is probably closer to the truth. All these maps were published on the same day, but the French newspaper and the Swiss state media did not choose to use the DRM map and preferred to use a Ukrainian map. This illustrates that our media work like propaganda outlets.
Figure 1 – Comparison of the maps presented in our media on 25 March 2022. It is this way of presenting the Russian offensive that has led to the assertion that the Russian army is weak. It also shows that the information provided by the Russian media seems closer to reality than that given by Ukraine.
Thirdly, our “experts” have themselves determined the objectives of the Russian offensive. By claiming that Russia wanted to take over Ukraine and its resources, to take over Kiev in two days, etc., our experts have literally invented and attributed to the Russians objectives that Putin never mentioned. In May 2022, Claude Wild, the Swiss ambassador in Kiev, declared on RTS that the Russians had “lost the battle for Kiev.” But in reality, there was never a “battle for Kiev.” It is obviously easy to claim that the Russians did not reach their objectives—if they never tried to reach them!
Fourthly, the West and Ukraine have created a misleading picture of their adversary. In France, Switzerland and Belgium, none of the military experts on television have any knowledge of military operations and how the Russians conduct theirs. Their “expertise” comes from the rumours from the war in Afghanistan or Syria, which are often merely Western propaganda. These experts have literally falsified the presentation of Russian operations.
Thus, the objectives announced as early as February 24 by Russia were the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of the threat to the populations of Donbass. These objectives are related to the neutralization of capabilities, not the seizure of land or resources. To put it bluntly, in theory, to achieve their goals the Russians do not need to advance—it would be enough if Ukrainians themselves would come and get killed.
In other words, our politicians and media have pushed Ukraine to defend the terrain like in France during the First World War. They pushed Ukrainian troops to defend every square meter of ground in “last stand” situations. Ironically, the West has only made the Russians’ job easier.
In fact, as with the war on terror, Westerners see the enemy as they would like him to be, not as he is. As Sun Tzu said 2,500 years ago, this is the best recipe for losing a war.
One example is the so-called “hybrid war” that Russia is allegedly waging against the West. In June 2014, as the West tried to explain Russia’s (imaginary) intervention in the Donbass conflict, Russia expert Mark Galeotti “revealed” the existence of a doctrine that would illustrate the Russian concept of hybrid warfare. Known as the “Gerasimov Doctrine,” it has never really been defined by the West as to what it consists of and how it could ensure military success. But it is used to explain how Russia wages war in Donbass without sending troops there and why Ukraine consistently loses its battles against the rebels. In 2018, realizing that he was wrong, Galeotti apologized—courageously and intelligently—in an article titled, “I’m Sorry for Creating the Gerasimov Doctrine” published in Foreign Policy magazine.
Despite this, and without knowing what it meant, our media and politicians continued to pretend that Russia was waging a hybrid war against Ukraine and the West. In other words, we imagined a type of war that does not exist and we prepared Ukraine for it. This is also what explains the challenge for Ukraine to have a coherent strategy to counter Russian operations.
The West does not want to see the situation as it really is. The Russian-speaking coalition has launched its offensive with an overall strength inferior to that of the Ukrainians in a ratio of 1–2:1. To be successful when you are outnumbered, you must create local and temporary superiorities by quickly moving your forces on the battlefield.
This is what the Russians call “operational art” (operativnoe iskoustvo). This notion is poorly understood in the West. The term “operational” used in NATO has two translations in Russian: “operative” (which refers to a command level) and “operational” (which defines a condition). It is the art of maneuvering military formations, much like a chess game, in order to defeat a superior opponent.
For example, the operation around Kiev was not intended to “deceive” the Ukrainians (and the West) about their intentions, but to force the Ukrainian army to keep large forces around the capital and thus “pin them down.” In technical terms, this is what is called a “shaping operation.” Contrary to the analysis of some “experts,” it was not a “deception operation,” which would have been conceived very differently and would have involved much larger forces. The aim was to prevent a reinforcement of the main body of the Ukrainian forces in the Donbass.
The main lesson of this war at this stage confirms what we know since the Second World War: the Russians master the operational art.
TP: Questions about Russia’s military raises the obvious question—how good is Ukraine’s military today? And more importantly, why do we not hear so much about the Ukrainian army?
JB: The Ukrainian servicemen are certainly brave soldiers who perform their duty conscientiously and courageously. But my personal experience shows that in almost every crisis, the problem is at the head. The inability to understand the opponent and his logic and to have a clear picture of the actual situation is the main reason for failures.
Since the beginning of the Russian offensive, we can distinguish two ways of conducting the war. On the Ukrainian side, the war is waged in the political and informational spaces, while on the Russian side the war is waged in the physical and operational space. The two sides are not fighting in the same spaces. This is a situation that I described in 2003 in my book, La guerre asymétrique ou la défaite du vainqueur (Asymmetric War, or the Defeat of the Winner). The trouble is that at the end of the day, the reality of the terrain prevails.
On the Russian side, decisions are made by the military, while on the Ukrainian side, Zelensky is omnipresent and the central element in the conduct of the war. He makes operational decisions, apparently often against the military’s advice. This explains the rising tensions between Zelensky and the military. According to Ukrainian media, Zelensky could dismiss General Valery Zoluzhny by appointing him Minister of Defence.
The Ukrainian army has been extensively trained by American, British and Canadian officers since 2014. The trouble is that for over 20 years, Westerners have been fighting armed groups and scattered adversaries and engaged entire armies against individuals. They fight wars at the tactical level and somehow have lost the ability to fight at the strategic and operative levels. This explains partly why Ukraine is waging its war at this level.
But there is a more conceptual dimension. Zelensky and the West see war as a numerical and technological balance of forces. This is why, since 2014, the Ukrainians have never tried to seduce the rebels and they now think that the solution will come from the weapons supplied by the West. The West provided Ukraine with a few dozen M777 guns and HIMARS and MLRS missile launchers, while Ukraine had several thousand equivalent artillery pieces in February. The Russian concept of “correlation of forces,” takes into account many more factors and is more holistic than the Western approach. That is why the Russians are winning.
To comply with ill-considered policies, our media have constructed a virtual reality that gives Russia the bad role. For those who observe the course of the crisis carefully, we could almost say they presented Russia as a “mirror image” of the situation in Ukraine. Thus, when the talk about Ukrainian losses began, Western communication turned to Russian losses (with figures given by Ukraine).
The so-called “counter-offensives” proclaimed by Ukraine and the West in Kharkov and Kherson in April-May were merely “counter-attacks.” The difference between the two is that counter-offensive is an operational notion, while counter-attack is a tactical notion, which is much more limited in scope. These counterattacks were possible because the density of Russian troops in these sectors was then 1 Battle Group (BTG) per 20 km of front. By comparison, in the Donbass sector, which was the primary focus, the Russian coalition had 1–3 BTG per km. As for the great August offensive on Kherson, which was supposed to take over the south of the country, it seems to have been nothing but a myth to maintain Western support.
Today, we see that the claimed Ukrainian successes were in fact failures. The human and material losses that were attributed to Russia were in fact more in line with those of Ukraine. In mid-June, David Arakhamia, Zelensky’s chief negotiator and close adviser, spoke of 200 to 500 deaths per day, and he mentioned casualties (dead, wounded, captured, deserters) of 1,000 men per day. If we add to this the renewed demands for arms by Zelensky, we can see that the idea of a victory for Ukraine appears quite an illusion.
Because Russia’s economy was thought to be comparable to Italy’s, it was assumed that it would be equally vulnerable. Thus, the West—and the Ukrainians—thought that economic sanctions and political isolation of Russia would quickly cause its collapse, without passing through a military defeat. Indeed, this is what we understand from the interview of Oleksei Arestovich, Zelensky’s advisor and spokesman, in March 2019. This also explains why Zelensky did not sound the alarm in early 2022, as he says in his interview with the Washington Post. I think he knew that Russia would respond to the offensive Ukraine was preparing in the Donbass (which is why the bulk of his troops were in that area) and thought that sanctions would quickly lead to Russia’s collapse and defeat. This is what Bruno Le Maire, the French Minister of the Economy, had “predicted.” Clearly, the Westerners have made decisions without knowing their opponent.
As Arestovich said, the idea was that the defeat of Russia would be Ukraine’s entry ticket to NATO. So, the Ukrainians were pushed to prepare an offensive in the Donbass in order to make Russia react, and thus obtain an easy defeat through devastating sanctions. This is cynical and shows how much the West—led by the Americans—has misused Ukraine for its own objectives.
The result is that the Ukrainians did not seek Ukraine’s victory, but Russia’s defeat. This is very different and explains the Western narrative from the first days of the Russian offensive, which prophesied this defeat.
But the reality is that the sanctions did not work as expected, and Ukraine found itself dragged into combats that it had provoked, but for which it was not prepared to fight for so long.
This is why, from the outset, the Western narrative presented a mismatch between media reported and the reality on the ground. This had a perverse effect: it encouraged Ukraine to repeat its mistakes and prevented it from improving its conduct of operations. Under the pretext of fighting Vladimir Putin, we pushed Ukraine to sacrifice thousands of human lives unnecessarily.
From the beginning, it was obvious that the Ukrainians were consistently repeating their mistakes (and even the same mistakes as in 2014–2015), and soldiers were dying on the battlefield. For his part, Volodymyr Zelensky called for more and more sanctions, including the most absurd ones, because he was led to believe that they were decisive.
I am not the only one to have noticed these mistakes, and Western countries could certainly have stopped this disaster. But their leaders, excited by the (fanciful) reports of Russian losses and thinking they were paving the way for regime change, added sanctions to sanctions, turning down any possibility of negotiation. As the French Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire said, the objective was to provoke the collapse of the Russian economy and make the Russian people suffer. This is a form of state terrorism: the idea is to make the population suffer in order to push it into revolting against its leaders (here, Putin). I am not making this up. This mechanism is detailed by Richard Nephew, head of sanctions at the State Department under Obama and currently Coordinator on Global Anti-Corruption, in his book entitled, The Art of Sanctions. Ironically, this is exactly the same logic that the Islamic State invoked to explain its attacks in France in 2015–2016. France probably does not encourage terrorism—but it does practice it.
The mainstream media do not present the war as it is, but as they would like it to be. This is pure wishful thinking. The apparent public support for the Ukrainian authorities, despite huge losses (some mention 70,000–80,000 fatalities), is achieved by banning the opposition, a ruthless hunt for officials who disagree with the government line, and “mirror” propaganda that attributes to the Russians the same failures as the Ukrainians. All this with the conscious support of the West.
TP: What should we make of the explosion at the Saki airbase in the Crimea?
JB: I do not know the details of the current security situation in Crimea. . We know that before February there were cells of volunteer fighters of Praviy Sektor (a neo-Nazi militia) in Crimea, ready to carry out terrorist-type attacks. Have these cells been neutralized? I don’t know; but one can assume so, since there is apparently very little sabotage activity in Crimea. Having said that, let us not forget that Ukrainians and Russians have lived together for many decades and there are certainly pro-Kiev individuals in the areas taken by the Russians. It is therefore realistic to think that there could be sleeper cells in these areas.
More likely it is a campaign conducted by the Ukrainian security service (SBU) in the territories occupied by the Russian-speaking coalition. This is a terrorist campaign targeting pro-Russian Ukrainian personalities and officials. It follows major changes in the leadership of the SBU, in Kiev, and in the regions, including Lvov, Ternopol since July. It is probably in the context of this same campaign that Darya Dugina was assassinated on August 21. The objective of this new campaign could be to convey the illusion that there is an ongoing resistance in the areas taken by the Russians and thus revive Western aid, which is starting to fatigue.
These sabotage activities do not really have an operational impact and seem more related to a psychological operation. It may be that these are actions like the one on Snake Island at the beginning of May, intended to demonstrate to the international public that Ukraine is acting.
What the incidents in Crimea indirectly show is that the popular resistance claimed by the West in February does not exist. It is most likely the action of Ukrainian and Western (probably British) clandestine operatives. Beyond the tactical actions, this shows the inability of the Ukrainians to activate a significant resistance movement in the areas seized by the Russian-speaking coalition.
TP: Zelensky has famously said, “Crimea is Ukrainian and we will never give it up.” Is this rhetoric, or is there a plan to attack Crimea? Are there Ukrainian operatives inside Crimea?
JB: First of all, Zelensky changes his opinion very often. In March 2022, he made a proposal to Russia, stating that he was ready to discuss a recognition of Russian sovereignty over the peninsula. It was upon the intervention of the European Union and Boris Johnson on 2 April and on 9 April that he withdrew his proposal, despite Russia’s favorable interest.
It is necessary to recall some historical facts. The cession of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 was never formally validated by the parliaments of the USSR, Russia and Ukraine during the communist era. Moreover, the Crimean people agreed to be subject to the authority of Moscow and no longer of Kiev as early as January 1991. In other words, Crimea was independent from Kiev even before Ukraine became independent from Moscow in December 1991.
In July, Aleksei Reznikov, the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, spoke loudly of a major counter-offensive on Kherson involving one million men to restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity. In reality, Ukraine has not managed to gather the troops, armor and air cover needed for this far-fetched offensive. Sabotage actions in Crimea may be a substitute for this “counter-offensive.” They seem to be more of a communication exercise than a real military action. These actions seem to be aimed rather at reassuring Western countries which are questioning the relevance of their unconditional support to Ukraine.
TP: Would you tell us about the situation around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility?
JB: In Energodar, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP), has been the target of several attacks by artillery, which Ukrainians and Russians attribute to the opposing side.
What we know is that the Russian coalition forces have occupied the ZNPP site since the beginning of March. The objective at that time was to secure the ZNPP quickly, in order to prevent it from being caught up in the fighting and thus avoid a nuclear incident. The Ukrainian personnel who were in charge of it have remained on site and continue to work under the supervision of the Ukrainian company Energoatom and the Ukrainian nuclear safety agency (SNRIU). There is therefore no fighting around the plant.
It is hard to see why the Russians would shell a nuclear plant that is under their control. This allegation is even more peculiar since the Ukrainians themselves state that there are Russian troops in the premises of the site. According to a French “expert,” the Russians would attack the power plant they control to cut off the electricity flowing to Ukraine. Not only would there be simpler ways to cut off the electricity to Ukraine (a switch, perhaps?), but Russia has not stopped the electricity supply to the Ukrainians since March. Moreover, I remind you that Russia has not stopped the flow of natural gas to Ukraine and has continued to pay Ukraine the transit fees for gas to Europe. It is Zelensky who decided to shut down the Soyuz pipeline in May.
Moreover, it should be remembered that the Russians are in an area where the population is generally favorable to them and it is hard to understand why they would take the risk of a nuclear contamination of the region.
In reality, the Ukrainians have more credible motives than the Russians that may explain such attacks against the ZNPP. , which are not mutually exclusive: an alternative to the big counter-offensive on Kherson, which they are not able to implement, and to prevent the planned referendums in the region. Further, Zelensky’s calls for demilitarizing the area of the power plant and even returning it to Ukraine would be a political and operational success for him. One might even imagine that they seek to deliberately provoke a nuclear incident in order to create a “no man’s land” and thus render the area unusable for the Russians.
By bombing the plant, Ukraine could also be trying to pressure the West to intervene in the conflict, under the pretext that Russia is seeking to disconnect the plant from the Ukrainian power grid before the fall. This suicidal behavior—as stated by UN Secretary General António Guterres—would be in line with the war waged by Ukraine since 2014.
There is strong evidence that the attacks on Energodar are Ukrainian. The fragments of projectiles fired at the site from the other side of the Dnieper are of Western origin. It seems that they come from British BRIMSTONE missiles, which are precision missiles, whose use is monitored by the British. Apparently, the West is aware of the Ukrainian attacks on the ZNPP. This might explain why Ukraine is not very supportive of an international commission of inquiry and why Western countries are putting unrealistic conditions for sending investigators from the IAEA, an agency that has not shown much integrity so far.
TP: It is reported that Zelensky is freeing criminals to fight in this war? Does this mean that Ukraine’s army is not as strong as commonly assumed?
JB: Zelensky faces the same problem as the authorities that emerged from Euromaidan in 2014. At that time, the military did not want to fight because they did not want to confront their Russian-speaking compatriots. According to a report by the British Home Office, reservists overwhelmingly refuse to attend recruitment sessions . In October-November 2017, 70% of conscripts do not show up for recall . Suicide has become a problem. According to the chief Ukrainian military prosecutor Anatoly Matios, after four years of war in the Donbass, 615 servicemen had committed suicide. Desertions have increased and reached up to 30% of the forces in certain operational areas, often in favor of the rebels.
For this reason, it became necessary to integrate more motivated, highly politicized, ultra-nationalistic and fanatical fighters into the armed forces to fight in the Donbass. Many of them are neo-Nazis. It is to eliminate these fanatical fighters that Vladimir Putin has mentioned the objective of “denazification.”
Today, the problem is slightly different. The Russians have attacked Ukraine and the Ukrainian soldiers are not a priori opposed to fighting them. But they realize that the orders they receive are not consistent with the situation on the battlefield. They understood that the decisions affecting them are not linked to military factors, but to political considerations. Ukrainian units are mutinying en masse and are increasingly refusing to fight. They say they feel abandoned by their commanders and that they are given missions without the necessary resources to execute them.
That’s why it becomes necessary to send men who are ready for anything. Because they are condemned, they can be kept under pressure. This is the same principle as Marshal Konstantin Rokossovki, who was sentenced to death by Stalin, but was released from prison in 1941 to fight against the Germans. His death sentence was lifted only after Stalin’s death in 1956.
In order to overshadow the use of criminals in the armed forces, the Russians are accused of doing the same thing. The Ukrainians and the Westerners consistently use “mirror” propaganda. As in all recent conflicts, Western influence has not led to a moralization of the conflict.
TP: Everyone speaks of how corrupt Putin is? But what about Zelensky? Is he the “heroic saint” that we are all told to admire?
JB: In October 2021, the Pandora Papers showed that Ukraine and Zelensky were the most corrupt in Europe and practiced tax evasion on a large scale. Interestingly, these documents were apparently published with the help of an American intelligence agency, and Vladimir Putin is not mentioned. More precisely, the documents mention individuals” associated” with him, who are said to have links with undisclosed assets, which could belong to a woman, who is believed to have had a child with him.
Yet, when our media are reporting on these documents, they routinely put a picture of Vladimir Putin, but not of Volodymyr Zelensky.
Figure 2 – Although he is not mentioned in the Pandora Papers, Vladimir Putin is consistently associated with them. Whereas Volodymyr Zelensky is never mentioned in our media, even though he is widely implicated.
I am not in a position to assess how corrupt Zelensky is. But there is no doubt that the Ukrainian society and its governance are. I contributed modestly to a NATO “Building Integrity” program in Ukraine and discovered that none of the contributing countries had any illusions about its effectiveness, and all saw the program as a kind of “window dressing” to justify Western support.
It is unlikely that the billions paid by the West to Ukraine will reach the Ukrainian people. A recent CBS News report stated that only 30–40% of the weapons supplied by the West make it to the battlefield. The rest enriches mafias and other corrupt people. Apparently, some high-tech Western weapons have been sold to the Russians, such as the French CAESAR system and presumably the American HIMARS. The CBS News report was censored to avoid undermining Western aid, but the fact remains that the US refused to supply MQ-1C drones to Ukraine for this reason.
Ukraine is a rich country, yet today it is the only country in the former USSR with a lower GDP than it had at the collapse of the Soviet Union. The problem is therefore not Zelensky himself, but the whole system, which is deeply corrupted, and which the West maintains for the sole purpose of fighting Russia.
Zelensky was elected in April 2019 on the program of reaching an agreement with Russia. But nobody let him carry out his program. The Germans and the French deliberately prevented him from implementing the Minsk agreements. The transcript of the telephone conversation of 20 February 2022 between Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin shows that France deliberately kept Ukraine away from the solution. Moreover, in Ukraine, far right and neo-Nazi political forces have publicly threatened him with death. Dmitry Yarosh, commander of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, declared in May 2019 that Zelensky would be hanged if he carried out his program. In other words, Zelensky is trapped between his idea of reaching an agreement with Russia and the demands of the West. Moreover, the West realizes that its strategy of war through sanctions has failed. As the economic and social problems increase, the West will find it harder to back down without losing face. A way out for Britain, the US, the EU, or France would be to remove Zelensky. That is why, with the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, I think Zelensky starts to realize that his life is threatened.
At the end of the day, Zelensky is a poor guy, because his best enemies are those on whom he depends: the Western world.
TP: There are many videos (gruesome ones) on social media of Ukrainian soldiers engaging in serious war crimes? Why is there a “blind spot” in the West for such atrocities?
JB: First of all, we must be clear: in every war, every belligerent commit war crimes. Military personnel who deliberately commit such crimes dishonor their uniform and must be punished.
The problem arises when war crimes are part of a plan or result from orders given by the higher command. This was the case when the Netherlands let its military allow the Srebrenica massacre in 1995; the torture in Afghanistan by Canadian and British troops, not to mention the countless violations of international humanitarian law by the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo and elsewhere with the complicity of Poland, Lithuania or Estonia. If these are Western values, then Ukraine is in the right school.
In Ukraine, political crime has become commonplace, with the complicity of the West. Thus, those who are in favor of a negotiation are eliminated. This is the case of Denis Kireyev, one of the Ukrainian negotiators, assassinated on March 5 by the Ukrainian security service (SBU) because he was considered too favorable to Russia and as a traitor. The same thing happened to Dmitry Demyanenko, an officer of the SBU, who was assassinated on March 10, also because he was too favorable to an agreement with Russia. Remember that this is a country that considers that receiving or giving Russian humanitarian aid is “collaborationism.”
On 16 March 2022, a journalist on TV channel Ukraine 24 referred to the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann and called for the massacre of Russian-speaking children. On 21 March, the military doctor Gennadiy Druzenko declared on the same channel that he had ordered his doctors to castrate Russian prisoners of war. On social networks, these statements quickly became propaganda for the Russians and the two Ukrainians apologized for having said so, but not for the substance. Ukrainian crimes were beginning to be revealed on social networks, and on 27 March Zelensky feared that this would jeopardize Western support. This was followed—rather opportunely—by the Bucha massacre on 3 April, the circumstances of which remain unclear.
Britain, which then had the chairmanship of the UN Security Council, refused three times the Russian request to set up an international commission of enquiry into the crimes of Bucha. Ukrainian socialist MP Ilya Kiva revealed on Telegram that the Bucha tragedy was planned by the British MI6 special services and implemented by the SBU.
The fundamental problem is that the Ukrainians have replaced the “operational art” with brutality. Since 2014, in order to fight the autonomists, the Ukrainian government has never tried to apply strategies based on “hearts & minds,” which the British used in the 1950s-1960s in South-East Asia, which were much less brutal but much more effective and long-lasting. Kiev preferred to conduct an Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) in the Donbass and to use the same strategies as the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fighting terrorists authorizes all kinds of brutality. It is the lack of a holistic approach to the conflict that led to the failure of the West in Afghanistan, Iraq and Mali.
Counter-Insurgency Operation (COIN) requires a more sophisticated and holistic approach. But NATO is incapable of developing such strategies as I have seen first-hand in Afghanistan. The war in Donbass has been brutal for 8 years and has resulted in the death of 10,000 Ukrainian citizens plus 4,000 Ukrainian military personnel. By comparison, in 30 years, the conflict in Northern Ireland resulted in 3,700 deaths. To justify this brutality, the Ukrainians had to invent the myth of a Russian intervention in Donbass.
The problem is that the philosophy of the new Maidan leaders was to have a racially pure Ukraine. In other words, the unity of the Ukrainian people was not to be achieved through the integration of communities, but through the exclusion of communities of “inferior races.” An idea that would no doubt have pleased the grandfathers of Ursula von der Leyen and Chrystia Freeland! This explains why Ukrainians have little empathy for the country’s Russian, Magyar and Romanian-speaking minorities. This in turn explains why Hungary and Romania do not want their territories to be used for the supply of arms to Ukraine.
This is why shooting at their own citizens to intimidate them is not a problem for the Ukrainians. This explains the spraying of thousands of PFM‑1 (“butterfly”) anti-personnel mines, which look like toys, on the Russian-speaking city of Donetsk in July 2022. This type of mine is used by a defender, not an attacker in its main area of operation. Moreover, in this area, the Donbass militias are fighting “at home,” with populations they know personally.
I think that war crimes have been committed on both sides, but that their media coverage has been very different. Our media have reported extensively about crimes (true or false) attributed to Russia. On the other hand, they have been extremely silent about Ukrainian crimes. We do not know the whole truth about the Bucha massacre, but the available evidence supports the hypothesis that Ukraine staged the event to cover up its own crimes. By keeping these crimes quiet, our media have been complicit with them and have created a sense of impunity that has encouraged the Ukrainians to commit further crimes.
TP: Latvia wants the West (America) to designate Russia a “terrorist state.” What do you make of this? Does this mean that the war is actually over, and Russia has won?
JB: The Estonian and Latvian demands are in response to Zelensky’s call to designate Russia as a terrorist state. Interestingly, they come at the same time a Ukrainian terrorist campaign is being unleashed in Crimea, the occupied zone of Ukraine and the rest of Russian territory. It is also interesting that Estonia was apparently complicit in the attack on Darya Dugina in August 2022.
It seems that Ukrainians communicate in a mirror image of the crimes they commit or the problems they have, in order to hide them. For example, in late May 2022, as the Azovstal surrender in Mariupol showed neo-Nazi fighters, they began to allege that there are neo-Nazis in the Russian army. In August 2022, when Kiev was carrying out actions of a terrorist nature against the Energodar power plant in Crimea and on Russian territory, Zelensky called for Russia to be considered a terrorist state.
In fact, Zelensky continues to believe that he can only solve his problem by defeating Russia and that this defeat depends on sanctions against Russia. Declaring Russia a terrorist state would lead to further isolation. That is why he is making this appeal. This shows that the label “terrorist” is more political than operational, and that those who make such proposals do not have a very clear vision of the problem. The problem is that it has implications for international relations. This is why the US State Department is concerned that Zelensky’s request will be implemented by Congress.
TP: One of the sadder outcomes of this Ukraine-Russia conflict is how the West has shown the worst of itself. Where do you think we will go from here? More of the same, or will there be changes that will have to be made in regards to NATO, neutral countries which are no longer neutral, and the way the West seeks to “govern” the world?
JB: This crisis reveals several things. First, that NATO and the European Union are only instruments of US foreign policy. These institutions no longer act in the interests of their members, but in the interests of the US. The sanctions adopted under American pressure are backfiring on Europe, which is the big loser in this whole crisis: it suffers its own sanctions and has to deal with the tensions resulting from its own decisions.
The decisions taken by Western governments reveal a generation of leaders who are young and inexperienced (such as Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin); ignorant, yet thinking they are smart (such as French President Emmanuel Macron); doctrinaire (such as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen); and fanatical (such as the leaders of the Baltic States). They all share some of the same weaknesses, not least of which is their inability to manage a complex crisis.
When the head is unable to understand the complexity of a crisis, we respond with guts and dogmatism. This is what we see happening in Europe. The Eastern European countries, especially the Baltic States and Poland, have shown themselves to be loyal servants of American policy. They have also shown immature, confrontational, and short-sighted governance. These are countries that have never integrated Western values, that continue to celebrate the forces of the Third Reich and discriminate against their own Russian-speaking population.
I am not even mentioning the European Union, which has been vehemently opposed to any diplomatic solution and has only added fuel to the fire.
The more you are involved in a conflict, the more you are involved in its outcome. If you win, all is well. But if the conflict is a failure, you will bear the burden. This is what has happened to the United States in recent conflicts and what is happening in Ukraine. The defeat of Ukraine is becoming the defeat of the West.
Another big loser in this conflict is clearly Switzerland. Its neutral status has suddenly lost all credibility. Early August, Switzerland and Ukraine concluded an agreement that would allow the Swiss embassy in Moscow to offer protection to Ukrainian citizens in Russia. However, in order to enter into force, it has to be recognized by Russia. Quite logically, Russia refused and declared that “Switzerland had unfortunately lost its status as a neutral state and could not act as an intermediary or representative.”
This is a very serious development because neutrality is not simply a unilateral declaration. It must be accepted and recognized by all to be effective. Yet Switzerland not only aligned itself with the Western countries but was even more extreme than them. It can be said that in a few weeks, Switzerland has ruined a policy that has been recognized for almost 170 years. This is a problem for Switzerland, but it may also be a problem for other countries. A neutral state can offer a way out of a crisis. Today, Western countries are looking for a way out that would allow them to get closer to Russia in the perspective of an energy crisis without losing face. Turkey has taken on this role, but it is limited, as it is part of NATO.
Figure 3 – Countries and organizations that applied sanctions to Russia. Although Switzerland is a neutral country, it stands on the first place. According to own sources, this was done under pressure and blackmail from the United States. Nevertheless, this is a severe blow to the very principle of neutrality that will have consequences in other future conflicts.
The West has created an Iron Curtain 2.0 that will affect international relations for years to come. The West’s lack of strategic vision is astonishing. While NATO is aligning itself with US foreign policy and reorienting itself towards China, Western strategy has only strengthened the Moscow-Beijing axis.
TP: What do you think this war ultimately means for Europe, the US and China?
JB: In order to answer this question, we first must answer another question: “Why is this conflict more condemnable and sanctionable than previous conflicts started by the West?”
After the disasters of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Mali, the rest of the world expected the West to help resolve this crisis with common sense. The West responded in exactly the opposite way to these expectations. Not only has no one been able to explain why this conflict was more reprehensible than previous ones, but the difference in treatment between Russia and the United States has shown that more importance is attached to the aggressor than to the victims. Efforts to bring about the collapse of Russia contrast with the total impunity of countries that have lied to the UN Security Council, practiced torture, caused the deaths of over a million people and created 37 million refugees.
This difference in treatment went unnoticed in the West. But the “rest of the world” has understood that we have moved from a “law-based international order” to a “rules-based international order” determined by the West.
On a more material level, the confiscation of Venezuelan gold by the British in 2020, of Afghanistan’s sovereign funds in 2021, and then of Russia’s sovereign funds in 2022 by the US, has raised the mistrust of the West’s allies. This shows that the non-Western world is no longer protected by law and depends on the goodwill of the West.
This conflict is probably the starting point for a new world order. The world is not going to change all at once, but the conflict has raised the attention of the rest of the world. For when we say that the “international community” condemns Russia, we are in fact talking about 18% of the world’s population.
Some actors traditionally close to the West are gradually moving away from it. On 15 July 2022, Joe Biden visited Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) with two objectives: to prevent Saudi Arabia from moving closer to Russia and China, and to ask him to increase its oil production. But four days earlier, MbS made an official request to become a member of the BRICS, and a week later, on 21 July, MbS called Vladimir Putin to confirm that he would stand by the OPEC+ decision. In other words: no oil production increase. It was a slap in the face of the West and of its most powerful representative.
Saudi Arabia has now decided to accept Chinese currency as payment for its oil. This is a major event, which tends to indicate a loss of confidence in the dollar. The consequences are potentially huge. The petrodollar was established by the US in the 1970s to finance its deficit. By forcing other countries to buy dollars, it allows the US to print dollars without being caught in an inflationary loop. Thanks to the petrodollar, the US economy—which is essentially a consumer economy—is supported by the economies of other countries around the world. The demise of the petrodollar could have disastrous consequences for the US economy, as former Republican Senator Ron Paul puts it.
In addition, the sanctions have brought China and Russia, both targeted by the West, closer together. This has accelerated the formation of a Eurasian bloc and strengthened the position of both countries in the world. India, which the US has scorned as a “second-class” partner of the “Quad,” has moved closer to Russia and China, despite disputes with the latter.
Today, China is the main provider of infrastructure in the Third World. In particular, its way of interacting with African countries is more in line with the expectations of these countries. Collaboration with former colonial powers such as France and American imperialist paternalism are no longer welcome. For example, the Central African Republic and Mali have asked France to leave their countries and have turned to Russia.
At the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, the US proudly announced a $150 million contribution to “strengthen its position in the broader geopolitical competition with China.” But in November 2021, President Xi Jinping offered $1.5 billion to the same countries to fight the pandemic and promote economic recovery. By using its money to wage war, the US has no money left to forge and consolidate alliances.
The West’s loss of influence stems from the fact that it continues to treat the “rest of the world” like “little children” and neglects the usefulness of good diplomacy.
The war in Ukraine is not the trigger for these phenomena, which started a few years ago, but it is most certainly an eye-opener and accelerator.
TP: The western media has been pushing that Putin may be seriously ill. If Putin suddenly dies, would this make any difference at all to the war?
JB: It seems that Vladimir Putin is a unique medical case in the world: he has stomach cancer, leukemia, an unknown but incurable and terminal phase disease, and is reportedly already dead. Yet in July 2022, at the Aspen Security Forum, CIA Director William Burns said that Putin was “too healthy” and that there was “no information to suggest that he is in poor health.” This shows how those who claim to be journalists work!
This is wishful thinking and, on the higher end of the spectrum, it echoes the calls for terrorism and the physical elimination of Vladimir Putin.
The West has personalized Russian politics through Putin, because he is the one who promoted the reconstruction of Russia after the Yeltsin years. Americans like to be champions when there are no competitors and see others as enemies. This is the case with Germany, Europe, Russia and China.
But our “experts” know little about Russian politics. For in reality, Vladimir Putin is more of a “dove” in the Russian political landscape. Given the climate that we have created with Russia, it would not be impossible that his disappearance would lead to the emergence of more aggressive forces. We should not forget that countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland or Georgia have never developed European democratic values. They still have discriminatory policies towards their ethnic Russians that are far from European values, and they behave like immature agents provocateurs. I think that if Putin were to disappear for some reason, the conflicts with these countries would take on a new dimension.
TP: How unified is Russia presently? Has the war created a more serious opposition than what previously existed within Russia?
JB: No, on the contrary. The American and European leaders have a poor understanding of their enemy: the Russian people are very patriotic and cohesive. Western obsession to “punish” the Russian people has only brought them closer to their leaders. In fact, by seeking to divide Russian society in an effort to overthrow the government, Western sanctions—including the dumbest ones—have confirmed what the Kremlin has been saying for years: that the West has a profound hatred of Russians. What was once said to be a lie is now confirmed in Russian opinion. The consequence is that the people’s trust in the government has grown stronger.
The approval ratings given by the Levada Centre (considered by the Russian authorities as a “foreign agent”) show that public opinion has tightened around Vladimir Putin and the Russian government. In January 2022, Vladimir Putin’s approval rating was 69% and the government’s was 53%. Today, Putin’s approval rating has been stable at around 83% since March, and the government’s is at 71%. In January, 29% did not approve of Vladimir Putin’s decisions, in July it was only 15%.
According to the Levada Centre, even the Russian operation in Ukraine enjoys a majority of favorable opinions. In March, 81% of Russians were in favor of the operation; this figure dropped to 74%, probably due to the impact of sanctions at the end of March, and then it went back up. In July 2022, the operation had 76% popular support.
Figure 4 – Not all Russians support the special operation in Ukraine, but three quarters of the population do. Ukrainian war crimes, Western sanctions and the good management of the economy by the Russian authorities explain this support. [Source]
The problem is that our journalists have neither culture nor journalistic discipline and they replace them with their own beliefs. It is a form of conspiracy that aims to create a false reality based on what one believes and not on the facts. For example, few know (or want to know) that Aleksey Navalny said he would not return Crimea to Ukraine. The West’s actions have completely wiped out the opposition, not because of “Putin’s repression,” but because in Russia, resistance to foreign interference and the West’s deep contempt for Russians is a bipartisan cause. Exactly like the hatred of Russians in the West. This is why personalities like Aleksey Navalny, who never had a very high popularity, have completely disappeared from the popular media landscape.
Moreover, even if the sanctions have had a negative impact on the Russian economy, the way the government has handled things since 2014 shows a great mastery of economic mechanisms and a great realism in assessing the situation. There is a rise in prices in Russia, but it is much lower than in Europe, and while Western economies are raising their key interest rates, Russia is lowering its own.
The Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova has been exemplified as an expression of the opposition in Russia. Her case is interesting because, as usual, we do not say everything.
On 14 March 2022, she provoked international applause by interrupting the Russian First Channel news program with a poster calling for ending the war in Ukraine. She was arrested and fined $280.
In May, the German newspaper Die Welt offered her a job in Germany, but in Berlin, pro-Ukrainian activists demonstrated to get the newspaper to end its collaboration with her. The media outlet Politico even suggested that she might be an agent of the Kremlin!
As a result, in June 2022, she left Germany to live in Odessa, her hometown. But instead of being grateful, the Ukrainians put her on the Mirotvorets blacklist where she is accused of treason, “participation in the Kremlin’s special information and propaganda operations” and “complicity with the invaders.”
The Mirotvorets website is a “hit list” for politicians, journalists or personalities who do not share the opinion of the Ukrainian government. Several of the people on the list have been murdered. In October 2019, the UN requested the closure of the site, but this was refused by the Rada. It should be noted that none of our mainstream media has condemned this practice, which is very far from the values they claim to defend. In other words, our media support these practices that used to be attributed to South American regimes.
Figure 5 – Darya Dugina marked as “Liquidated.”
Ovsyannikova then returned to Russia, where she demonstrated against the war, calling Putin a “killer,” and was arrested by the police and placed under house arrest for three months. At this point, our media protested.
It is worth noting that Russian journalist Darya Dugina, the victim of a bomb attack in Moscow on 21 August 2022, was on the Mirotvorets list and her file was marked “liquidated.” Of course, no Western media mentioned that she was targeted by the Mirotvorets website, which is considered to be linked to the SBU, as this would tend to support Russia’s accusations.
German journalist Alina Lipp, whose revelations about Ukrainian and Western crimes in the Donbass are disturbing, has been placed on the website Mirotvorets. Moreover, Alina Lipp was sentenced in absentia to three years in prison by a German court for claiming that Russian troops had “liberated” areas in Ukraine and thus “glorified criminal activities.” As can be seen, the German authorities are functioning like the neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine. Today’s politicians are a credit to their grandparents!
One can conclude that even if there are some people who oppose the war, Russian public opinion is overwhelmingly behind its government. Western sanctions have only strengthened the credibility of the Russian president.
Ultimately, my point is not to take the same approach as our media and replace the hatred of Russia with that of Ukraine. On the contrary, it is to show that the world is not either black or white and that Western countries have taken the situation too far. Those who are compassionate about Ukraine should have pushed our governments to implement the agreed political solutions in 2014 and 2015. They haven’t done anything and are now pushing Ukraine to fight. But we are no longer in 2021. Today, we have to accept the consequences of our non-decisions and help Ukraine to recover. But this must not be done at the expense of its Russian-speaking population, as we have done until now, but with the Russian-speaking people, in an inclusive manner. If I look at the media in France, Switzerland and Belgium, we are still very far from the goal.
TP: Thank you so very much, Mr. Baud, for this most enlightening discussion.
There’s no shortage of disturbing news categories. But few categories of stories are more fundamentally disturbing than stories that should have been news but wasn’t. Stories that just fell down the memory hole. Or worse, were forced down the memory hole. No news is very bad news in those kinds of situations, because when a story is forced down the memory hole it’s usually a very important story. Important and sensitive.
That brings us to the latest story about Nazis in Ukraine to be shoved down the memory hole. A story that really tells itself because it’s a story about a simple photograph: a PR photo-op made by Ukraine’s President Zelensky in the recently recaptured city of Izyum last week. A photo with a soldier who appears to be part of Zelenksy’s personal guard standing directly behind him, with a Totenkopf ‘Death’s Head’ patch on his backpack. The patch is nearly adjacent to Zelenksy’s head in the photo and not hard to make out. In fact, people on the internet identified it almost immediately. It’s unmistakably the same patch. Right there next to Zelenksy in a PR photo op.
The photo didn’t last long on Twitter. Zelenksy’s Facebook and Telegram accounts quietly took it down. Twitter then proceeded to censors a MintPress tweet of the photo as “sensitive-content”. And that, for the most part, was the end of the story. The whole incident came and went without commentary other than the following Grayzone report. The President of Ukraine was being guarded by overt Nazis for a photo op and it’s such a non-story that it was actively ignored, censored, and shoved down the memory internet hole:
“When the image drew criticism on social media, the Ukrainian president’s official Telegram and Facebook accounts quietly deleted it.”
It was an afterthought. That’s the significance of this story. It’s such a routine occurrence to see soldiers sporting Nazi insignia that no one even bothered to wonder if it was a good idea to have a ‘Death’s Head’ Totenkopf patch adjacent to Zelensky’s head in this photo. Again, this was a photo op. They were posing to take a picture that would be shown across the world. And no one thought this was a problem until it was posted on the internet and a bunch of people immediately pointed out what should have been totally obvious:
And note the seller of this patch: a company called R3ICH. The patch even had a reference to Hitler’s SS bodyguard unit. Subtle:
And as before — when Petro Poroshenko had his own ‘Death’s Head’ moment in 2018 — the mainstream media started off by playing damage control:
This time it was Twitter censoring, which makes this a good time to recall how Twitter has been aggressively hiring senior staff from US national security agencies. Back in 2018 it was Newsweek. But as we’ve seen so many times, part of what makes this phenomena so disturbing is how the Western media has effectively whitewashed its own coverage of these groups as the conflict has deepened and the rules of what’s ‘acceptable’ shifted. And that makes this a great time to take a look back at an important piece by Christopher Miller published in BuzzFeed in January of this year, weeks before the war broke out. As Miller’s report makes clear, when you see a solider with a Totenkopf on their uniform, you’re very likely looking at a member of the Azov Batallion. And as Azov members also make clear, they have big plans for Ukraine. Long-term plans that go well beyond the current conflict. Plans for Ukraine’s future that, in the words of one of the Azov members interviewed for this report, are “something that in your country you can’t say”:
“The US State Department has called Azov a “nationalist hate group,” human rights organizations have accused it of abusing and torturing civilians, and Facebook banned it for violating its hate speech rules. Experts who monitor transnational extremism have warned that Azov has served as inspiration for far-right groups in the US and the EU, and BuzzFeed News has reported on American extremists who went to Ukraine to train with the movement and learn from it in hopes of replicating it back home.”
It was just 2018 when the US State Department called Azov a nationalist hate group. And January of this year, less than a month before this conflict, when we were getting these reports on the dangerous nature of these groups. And then the war broke out and now everyone has to pretend that the president of Ukraine isn’t being personally guarded by Azov Nazis known for their Totenkopf patches:
And note how the Azov member who issues that chilling commen about how their goals are “something that in your country you can’t say,” is himself an aspiring military intelligence officer hailing from a family of military intelligence officers. The Nazification of Ukraine’s military intelligence officers: that’s about as big a red flag as you can get for the future of your country:
And note how, while not everyone associated with Azov, is themselves an extremist, they’re all being trained by extremists. It’s a reminder that when you hear about non-extremists members of Azov, it’s not a sign that the group has somehow moderated itself. Quite the contrary, it’s a sign of the Azov movement’s wild success at mainstreaming itself. These non-extremists are basically extremists-in-training. Propaganda works:
Again, this was just back in January of this year. How many more regular Ukrainians have flooded into arms of Azov of similar groups over the past eight months? How many tens of thousands of Ukrainians are there right now getting trained by figures with a Totenkopf patches? How many millions of Ukrainians are going to end up having gone through this kind of indoctrination by the time this conflict is over? Grim questions. Because it’s grim news. The kind of grim news that presumably won’t be reported on until its too late to do anything about it.
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. It’s an appropriate quote for the disturbing news about the apparent simultaneously bombing of Nord Stream 1 and 2 yesterday. Three simultaneous explosions. That’s not an accident. It’s clear sabotage.
Sadly, it’s also already clear that the West is intent on determining Russia blew up its own pipelines. Kind of like how Russia apparently attacks its nuclear power plants under its control. In other words, we shouldn’t expect a real investigation into what happened.
This is a good time to recall how the US has basically become Europe’s new natural gas supplier of choice as high energy prices lead to record-breaking profits for the petroleum industry. Beyond that, the US is increasingly looking like the new destination for energy-intensive European industries looking to relocate for cheaper, more stable energy supplies. Trends that will presumably accelerate as a result of this attack.
And while it’s hard to know what Russia’s response will be to an attack on a major piece of infrastructure, it’s also pretty clear that this attack has dramatically escalated the range of what’s ‘acceptable’ in this international New Cold War. Attacks on major infrastructure are now ‘fair game’, it seems:
“With three separate leaks almost simultaneously, with some distance between them, it was “difficult to imagine” it was a random accident, Frederiksen said at a short press conference during a visit to Poland, where she was participating in the opening of the Baltic Pipe gas pipeline.”
Not only is that obviously not an accident. It’s an obvious message. Whoever did this wanted the world to know it was sabotage. An escalation of both energy prices and international tensions:
And as we should expect, fingers immediately pointed towards Russia. What is the rational for Russia attack its own major piece of infrastructure? ‘Destabilizing Europe’. Russia was, of course, already restricting exports to Europe in protest of EU sanctions. It’s not like blowing up the pipelines was a necessary excuse fo cutting off Russian gas supplies. The supplies were already cut. All this did was make them a lot more expensive for Russia to start back up again:
And then we get to this intriguing detail: Der Spiegel just reported on anonymous German government officials who were also apparently going on with the narrative about sabotage designed to cause further uncertainty in Europe’s energy markets. So it’s not just Poland and Ukraine pushing the ‘Russia did it’ narrative. Germany is pushing it too:
And that brings us to the other very interesting report in Der Spiegel following this attack: The CIA apparently warned Germany three weeks ago about attacks on these pipelines:
That’s all we get to know at this point. The German government received CIA warnings about exactly this kind of attack three weeks ago. Warnings that will presumably now be used to further the narrative about Russia attacking its own pipelines.
Keep in mind the timing in all this: We’re told the CIA warned Germany three weeks ago. And it was also exactly three weeks when Russia announced it wasn’t going to resume gas transit over Nordstream 1 until the West lifts sanctions against Russia. So the CIA appears to have issued this warning about pipeline sabotage right around the same time Russia made this pledge to keep the gas cut off until the sanctions are lifted
“Nord Stream 1 is the single biggest pipeline for gas from Russia to Europe and has the capacity to deliver 55bn cubic metres (bcm) of gas a year. Continued supplies through the pipeline are seen as crucial to prevent a deepening of the energy crisis.”
The EU can’t really pull itself out of its energy crisis without Nordstream 1. So the question of whether or not Europe’s resolve would hold through a cold, expensive winter has already been answered: there’s not going to be any any Russian gas this winter. It can’t logistically happen regardless of whether sanctions are lifted or not. At least not until the repairs are made. That’s part of the context of this attack. Russia already had the ability to cut off gas. Implicitly. It cut the gas off itself voluntarily. This attack didn’t change that. What it did change was Russia’s ability to ‘turn the gas back on’ easily should the EU ever decide its had enough. It’s not clear how that benefits Russia. But it’s pretty clear there are beneficiaries in this situation.
Dave you’re very ethical with the research. Honestly its helped me understand what is going on today. The For The Record programs are really well done.
Here’s an article about the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that takes on a catastrophic thematic relevance in the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Ian and the high prospects of the US role in those attacks:
The methane released from the Nord Stream bombings was the largest methane release on record, on the scale of roughly a third of Denmark’s annual greenhouse gas emissions and five times worse than the 2015 Aliso Canyon disaster, which set the US record for a terrestrial methane release. The Aliso Canyon disaster also took place over 112 days, while the release from the Nord Stream pipelines were more or less immediate. A giant plume of methane — which is 82.5 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2 — was just put into an atmosphere already the verge of crossing into irreversible runaway climate change. Civilization just got another big push towards the abyss. Or as Rob Jackson, a climate scientist at Stanford University, put it, “Whoever ordered this should be prosecuted for war crimes and go to jail”:
““Whoever ordered this should be prosecuted for war crimes and go to jail,” said Rob Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist. Two scientists looked at the official worst case scenario estimates provided by the Danish government — 778 million cubic meters of gas — for The Associated Press. Jackson and David Hastings, a retired chemical oceanographer in Gainesville, Florida each calculated that would be an equivalent of roughly half a million metric tons of methane. The Aliso Canyon disaster released 90–100,000 metric tons.”
Was the sabotage of those pipelines just a war crime? How about a crime against humanity? It’s not like whoever did this wasn’t well aware of the consequences of this. Consequences that climate researchers describe as simply catastrophic:
And then we get to the finger-pointing. Finger-pointing largely at Russia in lieu of an actual investigation. But an investigation is presumably going to happen at some point. And it’s hard to imagine that sabotage isn’t going to be the conclusion. Who gets blames for that sabotage is more of an open question:
And its not hard to imagine that the culprit simply won’t be identifiable no matter how intense the investigation. Sabotage will be concluded with no culprit named while vague suspicions likely cast towards Russia. So given the high probability that the perpetrator of this act is going to get away with it, it’s worth noting that getting away with it is likely part of ‘the message’ in this action. A message that suggest future ‘accidents’ can be arrange too.
Another factor to keep in mind here is the obvious reciprocal response: Russian retaliatory attacks on Western pipelines and energy facilities. Attacks that will obviously have the potential for more massive greenhouse gas releases. The sabotage of Nord Stream was a clear escalation. And escalations have a tendency of invited further escalations. Major infrastructure, especially infrastructure in international waters, is now fair game. Implicitly. This was a recipe for eco-disaster tit-for-tat scenarios.
This is also a good time to recall how a limited region nuclear war is projected to induce a period of global cooling due to all the dust thrown up into the atmosphere. So if the flirtation with runaway climate change as part of an escalating conflict between nuclear powers sounds utterly insane, keep in mind there could be an utterly insane ‘sane’ end game rationale at work for why we don’t have to worry about runaway global warming.
Are we already in a third world world? Yes, and attempts to negotiate our way out of this third world war are unwise and a capitulation to Vladimir Putin’s barbarism and nuclear bluster. Nuclear bluster designed to force the West into peace negotiations that must be avoided. That’s the stunning ‘logic’ on display in the following piece by Susan Glasser in the New Yorker. The piece is filled with morsels of ‘wisdom’ from DC foreign policy figures like ‘Russia expert’ Fiona Hill and former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Alexander Vershbow.
According to Vershbow, the sabotage of Russia’s own Nord Stream pipelines are all part and parcel of a larger attempt to project a ‘mad man Putin’ image intended to scare Europe to the bargaining table in response to Ukraine’s military gains on the battlefield. As Glasser describes it, any negotiations now wouldn’t just be a “bad deal” but “would be an extraordinary concession in and of itself to Putin’s barbarism and willingness to threaten nuclear conflict.” In other words, the more Putin threatens the use of nuclear weapons, the more the West needs to ignore those threats as fake bluster intended to hide Russia’s weakness.
Instead, if we follow the advice of Fiona Hill, we should just accept that the US and Russia are in WWIII and drop the self-delusions about the possibility of Washington and the West continuing to back Ukraine while avoiding conflict with Putin. So Hill appears to be saying the West should be actively planning now for WWIII and direct conflict with Russia. And as Glasser observes, Hill’s line of reasoning “is one reason that there are increased calls from many Russia watchers not to kowtow to Putin’s demands at a moment when both his weaknesses and those of his system have been so clearly revealed”.
Putin’s nuclear threats are a sign of weakness and signal that Russia is about to crack. Instead of negotiations we need to accept that we’re already in WWIII and ratchet up the pressure. That’s the DC consensus described in this article. Welcome to the new MADness. It’s truly insane this time:
“On Thursday, I spoke with the Russia expert Fiona Hill. She told me she believes there’s an element of self-delusion to much of the current commentary about the possibility of Washington and the West continuing to back Ukraine while avoiding conflict with Putin—who, after all, launched his war against Ukraine not in February but eight years ago when he invaded the country and illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula. As far as Hill is concerned, we are already fighting in the Third World War, whether we acknowledge it or not. “We’ve been in this for a long time, and we’ve failed to recognize it,” she said.”
We’re already in WWIII so we might as well act like it. To do otherwise would be self-deluding. That was the sage advice from ‘Russia expert’ Fiona Hill. And as Glasser hints, Hill’s line of thinking is increasingly the Washington consensus:
And that DC consensus appears to have concluded that the Russian escalation in Ukraine and threats of nuclear war are part of Putin’s attempts to force the West to the bargaining table. To force a win through political means that Putin can’t extract on the battlefield. That’s the consensus view “of many of America’s smartest Kremlin watchers.” And as Glasser describes it, agreeing to negotiations in the face of nuclear threats would be “an extraordinary concession in and of itself to Putin’s barbarism and willingness to threaten nuclear conflict.”
This is where we are: negotiations in the face of nuclear threats is now deemed to be an extraordinary concession to brutality and barbarism. It’s like the Cold War never happened. This is the new MADness.
Beyond that, the DC consensus view on the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines i that Putin did it as part of his ‘mad man’ posturing. It’s a consensus view that ignores the basic reality that the bombing of those pipeline undermined Russia’s current leverage over exactly the European countries that would be most inclined to call for negotiations in the hopes of renewing cheap Russian gas. But, again, that’s where we are. The new MADness is truly utterly mad. Madness masquerading as cold logic:
Finally, in this piece that lays out the ‘logic’ for why any any negotiations would be an unwise capitulation to Putin’s threats and bluster designed to scare the West to the bargaining table, Glasser notes how Putin has a history of militarily doubling down to extract victories and expresses doubt that Putin will shy from further escalations:
So what should the West do when Putin doubles and triples down on the escalations as predicted? Further escalate the situation. At least that’s what the West should do if we following the ‘logic’ laid out in this article.
Stay tuned for future pieces about how limited nuclear war will remain limited and won’t actually be all that bad.
The Russian use of nukes will mandate an unprecedented response by NATO and the US. A strategic response of overwhelming conventional weapons that destroy all Russian forces inside Ukraine.Even if that response ends up escalating the situation. In principle. That appears to be the strategic thought at work in Western policy-making circles in response to the growing threats from Vladimir Putin about the possible use of nuclear weapons in the defense of Russia’s newly annexed territories.
At least that’s the response suggested by two figures in a position to have a sense of how the US might response to the Russian use of nukes: national security analyst and leading expert on nuclear warfare Joseph Cirincione and retired general/former director of the CIA David Petraeus. Both figures gave interviews in recent days describing their recommended response to the Russian use of tactical nukes and both gave strikingly similar advice: the US and NATO would have destroy Russia’s forces in Ukraine should nukes get used. Petraeus added that Russian’s entire Black Sea fleet would have to be sunk too. And while the language of ‘inside Ukraine’ raises the question of whether or not that includes the four newly annexed territories, Petraeus was explicit that Crimea should get hit too. Petraeus also hinted at the possibility that radiation moving into NATO-member space could be seen as an Article 5 trigger.
Petraeus and Cirincione were also both candid about how such a response could end up escalating the situation. But both insisted that such a response would nonetheless be necessary on principle even if Article 5 wasn’t formally triggered. As Petraeus put it, “You don’t want to, again, get into a nuclear escalation here. But you have to show that this cannot be accepted in any way.” And that more or less captures the underlying peril in this situation: there are no good moves with nuclear standoffs. It’s a matter of choosing the least worst move, which is obviously a matter of priorities. Is it the ‘least worst’ option to not escalate the situation in response to the use of tactical nukes — setting the precedent of the use of such weapons in modern combat — or is an overwhelming conventional response that risks WWIII the ‘least worst’ option? That will be up to policymakers to decide in the event of the use of nuke, and based on these articles it sounds like they’ve already made that decision:
“The U.S. and NATO “could destroy the Russian forces in Ukraine in a matter of days,” said Cirincione, author of the book “Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late,” in an interview on the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast. “That would be the end of the Russian army in this.””
The destruction of all Russian forces ‘in Ukraine’ in a matter of days. That’s the kind of response from the US and NATO that policymakers are probably considering according to nuclear warfare analyst Joseph Cirincione. Would this include the Russian forces inside the four newly annexed regions? Let’s hope we don’t ever have to get clarity on that detail.
But Cirincione wasn’t predicting that the destruction of Russian forces would somehow deescalate the situation. Quite the opposite. Cirincione readily acknowledges that such a response to spiral out of control, in part because large conventional attacks can be a trigger for the use of nuclear weapons under Russian military doctrine. There are no good options:
And if it seems like this might just be the views of a single nuclear warfare analyst, here’s a recent piece about an interview of retired army general and former CIA director David Petraeus about how the US and NATO should respond to the use of tactical nukes. And as we can see, Petraeus is more or less predicting the same response as Cirincione, albeit a more expanded version that includes sinking all of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. And also explicitly mentions strikes in Crimea. Petraeus didn’t envision this response as being part of a triggered Article 5 NATO response but instead being the response that just has to happen ‘on principle’, although he did also hint at the possibility that radiation from nuclear weapons moving into NATO countries could be seen as an Article 5 trigger. As Petraeus puts it, “You don’t want to, again, get into a nuclear escalation here. But you have to show that this cannot be accepted in any way.” And that more or less captures the psychological dynamic at work here: A response is required even at the risk of escalating the situation. It’s just part of the nature of nuclear warfare and why ‘strategic’ nuclear arsenals are effectively a recipe for no one situations. They can’t be used responsibly, whether we’re talking about irresponsible first-strike scenarios or irresponsible counter-strike response scenarios. It’s apparently a lesson we’re going to have to learn the hard way.
But the following article also hints at another grim scenario was should keep an eye out for: Senator Marco Rubio is apparently very concerned about Russia deciding to strike logistical hubs and transportation depots on the border of Ukraine in NATO countries like Poland. While Rubio acknowledged the nuclear threat, he said he most worries about “a Russian attack inside Nato territory, for example, aiming at the airport in Poland or some other distribution point”. He added that, “He may strike one of these logistical points. And that logistical point may not be inside … Ukraine. To me, that is the area that I focus on the most, because it has a tactical aspect to it. And I think he probably views it as less escalatory. Nato may not.” So Rubio is putting out the idea that Putin might strike Poland or another NATO member under the assumption that it wouldn’t be an escalatory act. Do we have to be worry about Russian attacks on the NATO member bordering Ukraine? That seems like a massive escalation should Putin decide to do it. But when we’re being told that Putin may not view such attacks as triggering Article 5, we have to ask: Do we also have to worry about Article 5‑triggering false flag attacks? It’s a dark scenario to contemplate. But given the relatively casual approach we’re seeing across the West to the risk of a nuclear exchange, such dark scenarios seem like the kinds of scenarios we have to keep in mind. Because a lot of people seem to be very open to scenarios that turn this proxy conflict into a full blown Russia vs NATO war
“He told ABC News: “Just to give you a hypothetical, we would respond by leading a Nato – a collective – effort that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea.””
David Petraeus sure sounds a lot like Joseph Cirincione in his predictions of a US/NATO response: taking out all of Russia’s conventional forces in Ukraine, including in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea. This wouldn’t be part of an NATO Article 5 trigger. It would just be part of a response on the principle that the Russian use of a tactical nuke “cannot go unanswered”. It points to a big part of what makes this situation so wildly dangerous: the response is going to be driven largely based on the principle of “this cannot go answered”, which might feel good at the moment but isn’t a great recipe for avoiding WWIII:
And then there’s the ominous warnings Senator Marco Rubio seems to be fixated on: Russia attacking a logistical point in a NATO member like Poland. Russia might view such an attack as less escalatory, according to Rubio, despite the fact that it would presumably trigger Article 5. Is Russia actually thinking about attacking sites in Poland or are we being prepped for some sort of false flag? A false flag that would obviously trigger Article 5. It’s part of what makes the relatively non-alarmed Western response to Russian’s nuclear threats so disturbing: there’s probably a lot of policy-makers who would love to see a full scale war between Russia and NATO in part because they don’t see the risk of a full scale nuclear exchange as being all that serious:
Finally, note the inversion of reality encapsulated in Petraeus’s calls for “some kind of beginning of negotiations, as [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy has said, will be the ultimate end.” As we’ve seen throughout this conflict, Zelenskiy has insisted that there be no negotiations or even ceasefires until Russia withdrawals from all territories. It’s a stance Zelenskiy has repeatedly reiterated. But Petraeus is correct: negotiations are the only real way of deescalating the situation. Too bad that’s never going to be allowed to happen:
It’s an ironic grim reminder of one of the things we aren’t hearing about at all in this conflict: serious negotiations. Sure, we’ve heard call for negotiations. But no actual negotiations. But don’t forget what Cirincione pointed out: Russia already has an “escalate to deescalate” nuclear doctrine in the face of overwhelming conventional forces. Ukraine’s demand of no negotiations before Russia is expelled from its territory is its own kind of “escalate to deescalate” doctrine. Let’s hope we don’t have to experience a ‘escalate to deescalate’ kind of prelude to negotiations. But it’s sure looking like that’s the plan. Well, negotiations aren’t necessarily part of the plan. Escalation is definitely a big part of plan at this point.
“Now, All of You Are Azov.” Those were some of the more disturbing words uttered at a ‘charity event’ in Detroit recently where three Azov wolfsangel patches were auctioned off. Another ‘charity’ event held in Chicago featured the auctioning of an Azov battle flag. Both events were organized by OUN‑B affiliated charities and part of the Azov movement’s celebrity tour of the US. A tour that included a visit to DC and numerous visits with members of Congress. At least 50 members, according to one of the members of the delegation.
And with that celebration of congressional contacts came an ominous prediction from one of these Azov members during the event in Detroit: the congressional ban on US funding for the arming and training of the Azov battalion is going to be lifted this year. Recall how Congressman Ro Khanna managed to get than ban pushed through congress in 2018, only to get slammed in the US press for being a Russian dupe. That ban is set to expire in 2025, but it’s going to be lifted later this year according to this Azov delegation.
So is Azov going to see its congressional ban lifted in the coming months? We’ll see. But as the article makes clear, any lifting at this point is largely a formality. Because when it comes to the question of whether or not Azov is viewed as a dangerous extremist group or a valuable ally, the decision has already been made: Azov is a valuable ally. So valuable that anything that threatens that alliance needs to be eliminated, include knowledge of its Nazi nature. Because we’re all Azov now. The transformation is complete:
“According to Kuparashvili, a cofounder and instructor of the Azov Regiment, his delegation met over fifty members of Congress, far more than anyone has realized. Among those who showed up to greet Azov on Capitol Hill was Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who spent the Trump era leading Russiagate theatrics and clamored for shipments of offensive US weapons to Ukraine.”
Over 50 members of Congress apparently decided it was a good idea to celebrate the Azov movement. But it wasn’t just a trio of Azov veterans engaged in this public relations stunt. Their wives came along too, like Yulia Fedosyuk, the “Silver of the Rose” anti-feminists who stated that “feminism is ready to mutilate and sell women” in recent interview. It’s quite a guest of honor for a newly post-Roe America.
But note who else decided to meeting with this Azov delegation earlier this year: Pope Francis. This is a good time to recall how, whenever people point out all the Nazi symbols used by the group, Azov members almost always dismiss those Nazi symbols as merely be “Nordic runes”. Which raises the question: how many ‘Nordic Runes’ were there on display during their meeting with the Pope?
But the meetings with Congress were just one part of this public relations effort. It appears that multiple Ukrainian-American charities also held events for the delegation. And as we should expect, it turns out these charities are basically extensions of the OUN‑B. Both the events in Michigan and Chicago were organized by charities led by OUN‑B coordinators. And at the Chicago event we find that the Consul Generals of both Germany and Poland spoke. It’s a chilling example of how the Ukrainian fascist networks from WWII didn’t just survive in the post-war period but have thrived as self-appointed representatives of ‘Ukrainians’ at home and abroad:
And at the Chicago charity event, where an Azov battle flag was auctioned off, we get this ominous warning from one of the Azov speakers: a prediction that the congressional ban on directly arming and training the Azov regiment will be lifted. The ban is already set to expire in 2025, but they’re predicting it’s going to be lifted later this year. He then went on to slam Congressman Ro Khanna and former Congressman Max Rose who were behind that ban. Recall how Khanna succeeded in getting that ban passed in 2018, only to experience a wave of negative press coverage suggesting he was duped by Russian propaganda and acting as “Putin’s man in Congress”. Flash forward to 2022 and we find Azov members publicly calling Khanna out during a US celebrity tour. It’s the kind of behavior that suggests an immense degree of confidence on the part of Azov. Understandably so given the circumstances:
But the Azov battle flag wasn’t the only ‘piece of history’ being auctioned at this charity. Three Azov patches with the Nazi runic wolfsangel symbol were also auctioned, but not before the audience got a talk about how these were Nazi symbols at all. No, the wolfsangel was actually an “N” and “I” overlapping to represent the phrase “national idea”. All of the national is simply rallying around the “national idea” of Ukraine. That’s all. And to hell with anyone who doesn’t agree with this idea. As the article reminds us, this is basically the Ukrainian Nationalist concept of a Natiocracy. And as journalist Leonid Ragozin has pointed out, Azov spokesperson Olena Semenyaka — who has openly welcomed European neo-Nazis into the Azov movement and a trackrecord of soft-pedaling the group’s Nazi ideology — direct attributes the concept of a “Natiocracy” to German and Austrian nationalist origins. Also recall how we’ve seen this farcical ‘National Idea’ meme promoted in the Western media this year. For example, there was that Reuters article from back in May that not only promoted the “National idea” meme went so far as to whitewashing the overtly Nazi ideas of Azov found Andriy Biletskiy. Biletskiy was allowed to claim in the article that he wasn’t a racist at all and merely believes in values-based nationalism. This is the kind of word games at work here. Word games being amplified by the US government at this point:
And then there was the appearance at Stanford University. As the article points out, it was Stanford’s CISAC that put out a report on Azov’s extremism earlier this year. That report cites info from August of 2022, suggesting it was put out in August or at least updated in August. And the very next month we not only find Azov invited to Stanford, but Michael McFaul — who directs an institute that operates under the CICAC — was there to welcome the university’s Nazi guests:
It’s doublethink in action. Under the best case scenario. Doublethink at least implies someone is unwittingly falling for some sort of intellectual bind. And while it’s not hard to imagine that a lot of people who fall for this kind of propaganda are doing so in an unwitting manner, that’s a much harder assumption to arrive at when it comes to members of Congress or the people who made that invitation at Stanford. These are choices made wittingly. Witting choices to pull the wool over our own eyes about our new Nazi friends. Or new for some. They’re rather old Nazi friends for others.
How much escalation is too much escalation? That’s the disturbing question raised by the following Grayzone about the attack on the Kerch Bridge in Crimea. The piece is based on anonymously leaked documents of an April 2022 presentation created by a UK military officer, Hugh Ward, at the request of a senior British Army intelligence operative and veteran high ranking NATO advisor, Chris Donnelly. The presentation describes a plan to blow up the Kerch Bridge. And while the plot described in the presentation wasn’t the actual plot that ended up getting used to destroy the bridge, it was indeed reportedly shared with the highest levels of Ukrainian government.
But this wasn’t just a plot shared between the UK and Ukraine. The former Lithuanian Minister of Defense Audrius Butkevicius also received a copy of the plot. Butkevicius is reportedly involved with a company that’s been moving weapons into Ukraine through Bulgaria. But he’s also a “senior fellow” as the “Institute for Statecraft”, a shady ‘charity’ set up by Donnelly that appears to be involved with managing various intelligence operations including the Integrity Initiative. Recall Jacques Baud’s observation how, in France, some of the most influential ‘Russia experts’ also work for the Integrity Initiative. Also recall how the Integrity Initiative has been involved with the dissemination of allegations about Uighur genocide in China in coordination with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). And don’t forget how Facebook, Twitter, and Faceboook-owned Instagram ended up purging thousands left-wing accounts in the days before last November’s elections in Nicaragua. The decision was predicated on the charge that these were fake accounts despite the fact that these were very real people who came forward to prove their existence. The author of the report from Facebook’s “Threat Intelligence Team” that carried out this purge was ex-NATO press officer Ben Nimmo, a former consultant for the Integrity Initiative. So this plot to blow of the Kerch Bridge appears to be a product from the same network being that Integrity Initiative.
As we’re also going to see, when the civil war first broke out in Ukraine, Donnelly has a number of remarkable recommendations for what the West should do in response to a Russian annexation of Crimea. Donnelly’s advice included not just shifting Europe away from Russian oil and gas — which finally happened following the outbreak of war this year — but potential attacks on Russia’s space infrastructure like satellites. Don’t forget how SpaceX’s Starlink has been playing a critical role in Ukraine’s military strategy, providing internet connectivity to the battlefield and making Starlink a potential military target. The kind of military target that could trigger a “Kessler’s Syndrome” cascade of low orbit space junk that could end up destroying much of the world’s satellites. So the main UK intelligence figure behind this Kerch Bridge attack plot that was shared withe Ukrainian government is someone who previously recommended actions that could have triggered WWIII back in 2014. Because of course:
“Yet it appears Donnelly and those around him would be content to see World War III erupt over Crimea. In fact, as the leaked documents obtained by The Grayzone will continue to demonstrate, provoking conflict between the West and Russia has long-been one of his ultimate objectives.”
The goal is clear. It’s insane, but it’s clear: A dramatic escalation of the conflict between Russia and the West. That’s been the goal of the network figures behind the leaked plans to attack the Kerch bridge. A plan with distinct UK origins, devised by UK military veteran Hugh Ward at the request of Chris Donnelly, a senior British Army intelligence operative and veteran high ranking NATO advisor:
And while the attack ultimately executed on the Kerch Bridge wasn’t the same attack described in Donnelly’s proposal, the fact that this proposal was indeed shared with the highest levels of the Ukrainian government at a minimum signifies that the attack was endorsed and desired by the UK and points towards likely coordination in planning the truck bombing.
But then there’s the fact that the plans were forwarded to Audrius Butkevicius, the former Lithuanian Minister of Defense. Beyond Butkevicius’s apparent ties to MI6 officer Guy Spindler — someone with a history of involvement with the 1991 failed coup against Mihail Gorbachev — Butkevicius also appears to be directly involved in the funneling of weapons into Ukraine. So while UK intelligence clearly put its stamp of approval on the Kerch Bridge attack, when you have former NATO officers Donnelly and foreign officials like Butkevicius involved, you can’t just call this an MI6 scheme. It’s part of what makes this such a dangerous situation in terms of escalating the conflict:
And note Butkevicius’s work as a “senior fellow” for Donnelly’s “Institute for Statecraft” which manages, among other things, the MI‑6 “Integrity Initiative”. Recall Jacques Baud’s observation how, in France, some of the most influential ‘Russia experts’ also work for the Integrity Initiative. Also recall how the Integrity Initiative has been involved with the dissemination of allegations about Uighur genocide in China in coordination with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). And don’t forget how Facebook, Twitter, and Faceboook-owned Instagram ended up purging thousands left-wing accounts in the days before last November’s elections in Nicaragua. The decision was predicated on the charge that these were fake accounts despite the fact that these were very real people who came forward to prove their existence. The author of the report from Facebook’s “Threat Intelligence Team” that carried out this purge was Ben Nimmo, a former consultant for the Integrity Initiative. So as we can see, MI-6’s Integrity Initiative has had extensive help for foreign assets, which is part of why we shouldn’t at all be surprised to find Butkevicius’s involvement with the ‘charity’ that’s managing the initiative. He fits the profile:
That’s all part of the what makes the attack on this bridge such a potentially dangerous escalation in this conflict: this wasn’t just a Ukrainian attack on a major piece of Russian infrastructure. It was an attack that clearly took place with the blessing and possible coordination of Ukraine’s allies and it happened not long after the Nordstream attack that was likely carried out by Ukraine and/or its allies. These are two major attacks on major pieces of Russian infrastructure. Both carried with no one accepting responsibility but all signs pointing towards Ukraine and its backers as the culprits. And both carried out despite Russia’s promises of major reprisals in response to these kinds of attacks. This wasn’t just an escalation of the conflict between Ukraine and Russian. It was the kind of escalation that increasingly makes this an overt conflict between Russia and NATO, implausible denials notwithstanding:
And that’s also what makes this network of figures beyond the MI6 Kerch Bridge plot so ominous: escalation of the conflict to the point where it’s an open conflict between Russia and NATO is the goal and has been the goal since 2014. That’s apparent when we see Donnelly’s 2014 private recommendations that included turning to the West for oil and gas supplies — a direct consequence of the war — and even taking down Russian space installations. Don’t forget how SpaceX’s Starlink has been playing a critical role in Ukraine’s military strategy, providing internet connectivity to the battlefield and making Starlink a potential military target. The kind of military target that could trigger a “Kessler’s Syndrome” cascade of low orbit space junk that could end up destroying much of the world’s satellites. So Chris Donnelly, the high ranking UK intelligence officer and NATO advisor who order the creation of the Kerch Bridge attack plot, appears to be of a mindset where NATO attacks on Russian satellites is fair game. At least that was his stance in 2014. You have to wonder if he’s modified his ‘satellite attack’ rules of engagement now that Ukraine is reliant on a highly vulnerable low orbit satellite cluster:
You also have to wonder if all the stories and denials about Elon Musk having talked with Putin before he sent out a tweet calling for peace have any truth behind them. Because it’s not like Putin doesn’t have immense leverage in any conversations with Musk. All Russia would potentially need to do is cause a couple of those Starlink satellites to lose control and crash into each other to potentially get the “Kessler’s Syndrome” cascade started. And it’s not like you can entirely blame Russia if we do end up with Kessler’s Syndrome as a result. No one forced SpaceX to build Starlink and create this enormous orbital time bomb. And as the repeated trollish response to both the the Kerch Bridge attack and the Nordstream attack make clear, it’s not like the attacker needs to claim responsibility. Anonymous attacks are possible. Although, as this story also reminds us, they aren’t actually anonymous. But that’s the game being played according to the rules of engagement laid out by people who clearly want a much greater escalation of this conflict.
Yikes! What kind of nightmare situation did Sweden stumble into?! We don’t know and we may never know. All we know at this point is that Sweden just announced a refusal to share the results of its investigation into the Nordstream pipeline attacks with anyone. Including Germany and Denmark, who had previously been tapped to be partners with Sweden on this investigation. Sweden is keep it all secret, citing undisclosed “security concerns”. Again, yikes:
“The Nordic country does not want to share results of its own investigations with other countries, according to the report. The exact security concerns that have resulted in Sweden dropping out of the joint investigation are unclear.”
Yes, Sweden is refusing to share its probe results due to mysterious security concerned. Security concerns that are apparently so concerning that they can’t even be shared with anyone. Even allies. It’s more than a little suspicious. Because of course it is. Everything about this story is more than a little suspicious. Including all the ominous statements made by Joe Biden back in February about how the US was going to “bring an end to” Nord Stream in the event of an invasion and Antony Blinken’s crowing about how the attacks created a great “opportunity” for the EU to transition away from Russian gas. Or the NATO exercises back in June involving UUVs and a ‘demining’ exercise in the immediate vicinity of the attacks. Or the US Naval helicopters capable of operating UUVs spotted in that same area in September. This kind of circumstantial evidence pointing towards some sort of NATO-backed act is just irrefutably sitting out there, whether its ignored or not.
And while ignoring all this circumstantial evidence has worked for the West so far, you have to wonder how long that’s going to be a viable strategy now that Sweden has adopted the highly suspicious posture of refusing to share its results with anyone. What did Sweden find? We don’t know, but it obviously didn’t find evidence of a Russian attack because that would have been released immediately. It’s obvious that something scandalous was discovered and its pretty obvious as to the nature of this scandal.
And that’s why we also need to start asking what kind of damage all these blatantly fake denials are going to end up doing to the collective reputation of ‘the West’ in the eyes of the broader global public. Because this isn’t just the US or a handful of countries engaged in a coverup. This is a blatant open coverup being carried out on the world stage under the banner of ‘democracy’ as part of what is being framed to the world as a ‘democracy vs authoritarianism’ existential conflict. Which doesn’t bode well for the fate of ‘democracy’ when this is all over:
“There is no doubt in any thinking person’s brain as to who is responsible for the attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. The circumstantial case is overwhelming and fully capable of winning a conviction in any U.S. court of law.”
Now, in fairness, there should a reasonable doubt in terms of who actually executed the attacks on these pipelines. Sure, the US or UK are obvious suspects given the circumstances, but so is Ukraine and Poland. What is obvious beyond a reasonable doubt is that this attack was not in Russia’s interests but very much in the interests of all of those obvious suspects. That’s why they’re the obvious suspects. That and all the highly incriminating statements made before and the attacks. Statements like Joe Biden’s ominous threat that “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it” made on Feb 7. It sounded ominous at the time. Now it just sounds incriminating. Even more incriminating after Antony Blinken’s October 3 comments about what a great opportunity the attacks created. It just looks guilty:
And then there’s the mysterious September operation involving specialized US Navy Helicopters capable of deploy UUV’s observed hovering directly over one of the sites of the attack weeks later. That September operation followed an early June NATO exercise in the area as part of UUV mine-hunting operation. These are irrefutable facts. And while they aren’t direct evidence of a US or NATO plot to sabotage the pipelines, there’s also no denying now suspicious these details are in light of what happened. Any real investigation would hone in on these events:
On top of all it all is the timing: this happened right as a cold expensive winter was approaching and Germans were settling into a mood to protest the ongoing sanctions. Protests that became utterly futile with those sabotage attacks:
And yet, despite this damning circumstantial evidence that, at minimum, should have neutral observers strongly suspecting some sort of Western-sanctioned attack, we’ve seen a virtual Iron Curtain of bad takes across the Western press. Either everyone played dumb or, more like, Russia got the blame. It’s like The Onion goes mainstream:
It’s not like Russia and ‘the West’ were the only parties involved with this attack. The whole world got to witness it. Just as the whole world is getting to witness this farce of a coverup. What kind of damage does this do to the credibility of ‘the West’ and democracy in general? Because that’s how this conflict is being presented to the world: as an existential conflict between a totalitarian Russia and a democratic West. That’s the framing at work here. ‘Democracy’ vs Russia. And ‘Democracy’ just pulled some sort of gangster stunt with a trollish coverup.
So what kind of damage is being done to the credibility of the democracy with dangerous stunts like this? One member of this coalition of democracies after another has embraced this big obvious lie, with virtually all of the media dutifully upholding that big obvious lie. This is cancerous stuff. The world is watching. Open obvious lies like this don’t just get swept under the rug. They linger and fester. This is the kind of stuff that fuels figures like Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson. Blatant lies are free powerful propaganda available to anyone who doesn’t go along with the obvious lies that only the highly motivated or highly gullible would buy.
And how many more ‘Russia did it to itself!’ events like this are we going to experience before this conflict is over? It’s hard to imagine this was a one-off. Whoever did this must be feeling emboldened. So we’ll see when the next ‘Russia sabotaged itself’ act takes place. But try not to be super shocked if the narrative in the West for how WWIII started goes something like, “First Russia blew up a bunch of its own stuff. Then, after many such attacks against itself, Russia decided to launched preemptive strikes against the West for no reason. It’s all such a mystery.” That’s assuming the investigations into the cause of WWIII don’t get classified due to unspecified security concerns.
That’s not good: the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the recently annexed Zaporizhzhia territory was forced to operate off of emergency backup power for the past couple of days. External power supplies have now been restored, according to the IAEA, but it was a legitimate scare. One more bad event and the largest nuclear plant in Europe could have experienced a meltdown.
Both sides are accusing each other of causing the power cut. The actual damage to power lines and an electrical substation that caused the power loss took place in Ukrainian-controlled territory. Ukraine is blaming it on Russian shelling. So was it actually Russian shelling? Or did Ukraine stage some sort of provocation? That’s the question covered in the following article excerpts. Because as we’re going to see, this mysterious power cutoff to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is made all the more mysterious by its timing. Specifically, this happened two weeks into a flurry of mutual accusations between Russia and Ukraine of ‘dirty-bomb’ plots in the works. As we’re going to see, the accusations started in the last week of October with Russian alarms over intelligence it received about a Ukrainian dirty-bomb being possibly constructed at nuclear sites in Ukraine. Russia’s defense minister reportedly made a flurry of calls to his counterparts in the US, UK, France, and Turkey, followed up with the calling of a UN Security Council meeting where Russia’s ambassador leveled the charges — including charges that Ukraine had the backing of its Western partners in this plot — and called for IAEA investigations of three nuclear sites.
Ukraine responded to the accusations with counter-accusations of its own: that Russia’s dirty-bomb claims were just a cover for its own dirty-bomb plot. According to Ukraine, Russia is planning on flowing up a large number of spent fuel rods at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, contaminating hundreds of kilometers of the surrounding area. That’s part of the context of the cutoff of the Zaporizhzhia power supply.
But then there’s the response from Western governments: a narrative is emerging about Russian plans for using tactical nukes, based on reports sourcing US government officials. That tactical nuke story is now getting effectively merged with the ‘dirty-bomb’ accusations into a narrative about Russia planning a dirty-bomb false flag event in order to justify the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
That’s the horrific context of this Zaporizhzhia nuclear scare that just transpired. Mutual accusations of nuclear dirty-bomb false flags and loose talk of tactical nukes. Followed up with mysterious attacks on the Zaporizhzhia power supply. A nuclear false flag escalation has been playing out over the last two week and it appears to have already resulted in a very real nuclear scare. How does this escalate from here?
Oh, and Russia is continuing to press for a UN investigation of Ukrainian biolabs. It sounds like only China supported its proposal at the most recent UN Security Council meeting where this nuclear scare was being discussed.
Ok, first, here’s a VOA piece on the power loss at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant due to physical damage in Ukrainian-controlled territory in two different locations:
“Nuclear operator Energoatom blamed Russia for shelling in the area that damaged power lines and electrical substations. Russia put the blame on Ukraine.”
Russia is at it again. When it’s not blowing up its own strategic natural gas pipelines it’s risking a nuclear meltdown at the largest nuclear plant in Europe now in newly annexed Russian territory. That’s the now-predictable narrative we got from Ukraine nuclear operator Energoatom.
Now, given that the cause for the power loss was physical damage to power lines and substations in Ukrainian-controlled territory, it’s possible that Russian shelling did inadvertently cause that damage. But that’s assuming some extremely careless shelling. If there’s one thing Russia’s precision-strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure over the last month have demonstrated it’s that Russia has the capacity to avoid hitting key infrastructure when it desires. That’s why the recent strikes on Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure in response to the bombing of the Kerch Bridge was so impactful. Russia hadn’t really been hitting Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure until that point. So if Russian shelling into Ukrainian-controlled territory was indeed the cause of damaged electrical infrastructure it probably wasn’t an accident. Which is why Russian probably wasn’t actually the culprit unless it actively wanted to force the Zaporizhzhia plant onto emergency backup power, putting the whole area at risk for a nuclear accident. Don’t forget that a melt-down at that plant would be one hell of a ‘dirty-bomb’. And one directly impacting territory Russia now claims:
Also note how a UN investigation of the US-backed Ukrainian biolabs is also being pursued by Russia at the UN Security Council meeting but only China is support it so far:
And as the following NY Times article also from Thursday describes, the cutting off of power at the Zaporizhzhia plant came on the same day the IAEA gave its ‘all clear’ on three Ukrainian nuclear sites Russian alleged might be the locations of secret work by Ukraine on a dirty-bomb plot. A plot to stage a false flag dirty bomb attack that will be used to further isolate Russia. Russia’s allegations didn’t start as public allegations. Instead, it sounds like Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called his counterparts in the US, UK, France, and Turkey. Russia then took this up at the UN Security Council and called for IAEA inspections at the three sites, citing intelligence about the plot. Those are the three sites just given the ‘all clear’ by the IAEA. On the same day of the ‘Russian shelling’ of the power to the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia plant. This is what a nuclear escalation looks like:
“Russia’s claim came amid heightened fears in the West that Moscow could be seeking a pretext to escalate the war following a recent series of battlefield losses in Ukraine’s northeast and a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the southern, strategically important Kherson region.”
The cutting off of power to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was far from the only nuclear scare over the last week. Mutual accusations of “dirty bomb” plans have been leveled over the past week. It started with the Kremlin’s claims last week that it received intelligence Ukraine was working on a “dirty bomb” false flag incident at one of its nuclear site, resulting in a rare joint diplomatic statement by the US, France, and the UK rejecting the allegations. But note how that rejection didn’t just dismiss Moscow’s concern as Russian disinformation. It warned that Moscow might be planning on using the claim as a Russian excuse to escalate the situation. As we’re going to see, the particular escalating the US has been suggestion Russia has in mind is the use of tactical nuclear weapons. In other words, Russian claims of a Ukrainian nuclear false flag plot is, itself, as false plot intended to justify the use of tactical nukes. That dramatic escalation of nuclear tensions — mutual accusations of false-flag nuclear plots — is part of the chilling context of the cutoff of power to Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant:
But there’s another important context in all of this: Ukraine’s own counter-allegations that it’s Russia who is in fact planning a dirty bomb false flag at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Yes, this attack on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant’s power supply was a week after Ukraine made its dirty bomb claims and the US, UK, and France started suggesting that Russian’s dirty bomb plot claims are part of its own false flag plot to carry out its own nuclear escalation. A plot that involves blowing up spent fuel rods at the Zaporizhzhia plant itself in an attempt to contaminated the adjacent territory:
“Ukraine also dismissed Moscow’s claim as an attempt to distract attention from the Kremlin’s own alleged plans to detonate a dirty bomb, which uses explosives to scatter radioactive waste in an effort to sow terror.”
“I know you are but what am?” That was more or less Ukraine’s response to the Russian dirty bomb allegations. Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator, Energoatom, “assumes” that Russia is “are preparing a terrorist act using nuclear materials and radioactive waste stored at” the plant. Preparations that involved secret construction work at the plant. And it’s not like Ukraine was accusing Russia of building a dirty-bomb that will be exploded in Ukrainian-controlled territory. On the contrary, Ukraine appears to be predicting that Russia is going to build a dirty-bomb out of the spent-fuel rods at the plot and blow them up in a manner that “lead to a radiation accident and radiation contamination of several hundred square kilometers (miles) of the adjacent territory.” So Ukraine is predicting that Russia is going to dirty-bomb itself. Those were the allegations we were getting from Ukraine one week before the allegations that Russia shelled the power supply to the plant:
It’s worth noting the kind of diplomatic measures that were reportedly taken by Moscow in issuing its warnings about the plot: Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called his counterparts in the UK, US, France, and Turkey and then Moscow held U.N. Security Council held closed-door consultations at Russia’s request. If that’s just theater on Russia’s part that’s theater that goes well above and beyond what typically passes for propaganda designed for public consumption.
But also note the additional allegations Russia’s UN ambassador made beyond the Ukrainian plot: that it “may be carried out with the support of the Western countries” and the authorities in Kyiv and their Western backers “will bear full responsibility for all the consequences”. Keep in mind that Grayzone report from last month showing how UK spies were actively developing plans to blow up the Kerch Bridge. An act that was undoubtedly an escalation, whether it was an escalation conducted primarily by Ukraine alone or with NATO help. It’s more of the grim context of this situation. Both sides are accusing each other of escalatory acts amidst a series of major escalatory acts. And now each side is accusing the other side of creating a pretext for the use of nuclear weapons. It’s hard to imagine how this continues escalating at this rate without leading to actual nukes:
Also note how Russia’s ambassador to the UN is the one who called for the IAEA inspectors to investigation the three Ukrainian nuclear sites. Now, as we now know, the IAEA is saying it didn’t find anything any any of the three sites. But Russia sure seemed spooked. Why would Russia make up baseless allegations and then go to the UN Security Council and call for IAEA investigations when those investigations were obviously going to happen and reveal no plot? In other words, the way this played out suggests Russia thought it had real intelligence on a bomb plot, whether that was correct or not:
And, again, note how the US isn’t just dismissing Russia’s allegations about a dirty-bomb plot. The dismissal of those allegations are intertwined with a narrative about how Russia is developing a pretext for the use of tactical nuclear weapons, with threats of a grave response should Russia do so. The rhetoric at an official level is about as escalatory as it gets right now:
When asked if Russia’s allegations amounted to a false-flag operation, Biden warned about the Russian use of tactical nukes. And as the following Moon of Alabama blog post points out, the ‘dirty-bomb false-flag for tactical nukes’ narrative Biden is echoing is coming at the same time there’s reports based on anonymous US official sources that Russian generals were talking about using tactical nukes. There’s a full court press coming from the US government about a Russian tactical nuke plot in response to Russians allegations. It’s been highly esclatory so far. And as the blog post asks at the end, what kind of escalation can we expect should the predictions of a Russia winter campaign after the mobilized reserves arrive comes to fruition and Ukraine starts looking like a country out of options? It’s one of the many very grim ‘what’s next?’ questions raised by this nuclear hall-of-mirrors false-flag situation:
“What the stories really show is that the neocons in the Biden administration have no real instruments left and no abilities to influence the execution of further Russian plans in Ukraine. In a month or two, when Russian troops will throw the Ukrainian army out of Donetsk and other regions, there will be nothing left for them to say.”
What kind of escalatory provocation can we expect months from now should the predictions of a Russian winter offensive prove correct? How much more escalatory can the situation get without actually be pushed to the nuclear brink? Or some sort of genuine nuclear accident? That plant is on emergency backup power as a result of this brinksmanship. How many gambles that risk a nuclear meltdown can we expect over the coming months? And if Putin’s answer at a recent Valdai Club appearance was correct, the alarming answer to the question of “how many more gambles” appears to be “as many as it takes to completely economically isolate Russia.” Some sort of event that is so awful that no country, barring maybe North Korea, is willing to do business with Russia. That’s the scenario that has Moscow operating like its hair is on fire over the past couple of weeks:
Russia is making its fears clear to the world: “It’s a nuclear set up and we are the target”. That’s been Russia’s message to the world. A message first delivered between defense ministers and at the UN Security Council. Some sort of nuclear event was being predicted weeks before a mysterious interruption to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. That was followed by Ukraine predicting Russia is going to dirty-bomb itself at the Zaporizhzhia plant. And now here we are hoping there isn’t an interruption to that backup emergency power.
Let’s also not forget about some of the obvious consequences should such a plot succeed: for starters, if you think global inflation is bad now just wait until after the West actually succeeds in blocking Russian commodities from the global economy. Western oil producers will be generating further record profits, no doubt, but how about the rest of the world? We could easily be looking at a global depression from a shock like that. And then there’s the fact that, while the story of what happened in the ‘nuclear event’ might ultimately be fake, the radiation will be very real.
Where will the predicted ‘nuclear event’ transpire? Will there be some sort or apparent Russian radiological attack on Ukrainian-controlled territory? That’s what Russian was predicting. But then we got Ukraine’s counter-accusations of Russian plans to dirty-bomb the Zaporizhzhia plant. We’ll see, but don’t be surprised if there’s reports about some sort of radiological event in coming weeks. Followed up with reports of a dramatic breakdown in diplomatic relations and a doomsday escalation of nuclear tensions. And, eventually, no more reports. There won’t be a lot of reports after doomsday.
With the US mid-term elections currently underway, poised to deliver the US with a renewed form of sociopolitical meltdown, here’s a reminder that the very real meltdown risk at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine continues to grow. And if the latest accusations from the Kremlin are true, Ukraine is using US-provided HIMARs to trigger that meltdown. Recall how the past two weeks have involved a series of back-and-forth accusations between Ukraine and Russia about ‘false-flag’ dirty-bomb plots, with Ukraine accusing Russian or building a dirty-bomb at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant near Kherson. Those accusations formed the rhetorical backdrop for the very real threat to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant over the weekend when the plant was forced to fall back to emergency backup power following the loss of external power supplies caused by physical damage to electrical substations and powerlines at two different locations inside Ukrainian-controlled territory.
And that brings us to the new scare: Russia is accusing Ukraine of using US-provided HIMARs to attack the Kakhovka dam. Ukrainian President Zelenskiy has of course already accused Russia of planning to blow up the dam and blame it one Russia. It’s the new mutual false-flag accusation.
As we’re going to see, that dam is “inextricably tied” to the proper functioning of the nuclear power plant. It’s not a surprise. Power plants require literal tons of water. And that’s where this story connects to the ‘dirty-bomb’ false-flag accusations already made by Ukraine about the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Because those Ukrainian claims appeared to be claims that Russia was going to stage some sort of radiological “dirty-bomb” event at the plant as a pretext for using tactical nukes. Well, inducing a meltdown via cutting the plant’s water supply by blowing up the dam sounds like another way create a radiological event at the plant. And sure enough, that’s the scenario Ukraine appears to be warning against.
Beyond the direct risk to the nuclear plan, the destruction of the dam threatens to flood a vast region of Ukraine currently under both Ukrainian and Russian control. That’s the apparent direct military benefit to Russia in blowing up the dam: it will bog down Ukrainian troops and buy Russia a few weeks to retreat from Kherson. That’s one of the narratives we’re hearing. At the same time, we’re also hear a narrative about how Russia’s apparent withdrawal from Kherson might be a trick intended to lure Ukrainians into deadly urban combat. Yep, Russia is planning to blow up the dam to slow Ukraine’s advances at the same time Russia is planning on luring Ukrainian troops into Kherson where they will face brutal urban combat. At least that’s the narrative that has now emerged.
Ok, first, here’s a look at the new mutual false-flag accusations about attacks on the dam. Attacks that, according to Russia, were carried out using US-provided HIMARs:
“RIA Novosti and other state media said Ukrainian troops in the purported attack used six high-mobility artillery rocket systems, a key system the U.S. has supplied to Kyiv as they fight against Russia’s invasion, including one rocket that damaged the dam lock.”
Were US-provided HIMARs used to attack the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station, risking a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe? That’s what Russia is alleging in the latest round of ‘false-flag’ finger-pointing, coming after Ukrainian president Zelensky claimed that it was the Kremlin that was planning on blowing up the dam and then blaming it on Ukraine:
But also note the parallel claims we’re getting from the Ukrainian side: that Russia might be setting a trap in Kherson by creating the illusion of retreat in the hopes of drawing Ukraine into a costly urban battle:
So which is it? Is Russia planning on blowing up the dam and flooding Kherson? Or is Russia planning a fake retreat designed to draw Ukrainians into Kherson? Because we’re hearing predictions of both scenarios.
But also note how all of these accusations directly tie into the mutual ‘dirty-bomb false-flag’ accusations: as Major General Kyrylo Budanov, the Ukrainian chief of defense intelligence, points out in the following interview, you can’t separate the proper functioning of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to that dam. In other words, blowing up that dam is asking for a nuclear meltdown
““And the most interesting thing,” Budanov said of the prospect of the Russian military exploding the Kakhovka dam, “is that they would destroy the very possibility of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant’s existence, since it’s inextricably connected with that dam.” “Of course, they’re complicating our advancement for a certain period of time,” Budanov acknowledged, “but they will have to retreat all the way to the Crimea.””
You can’t run the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant without that dam. They are inextricably connected. Blow up that damn and you’re asking for a meltdown. That’s the situation. And in case it’s not clear just how dire a threat that dam break would be to the plan, here’s a Union of Concerned Scientists piece from back in August looking at the risks facing that plant. Major risks like a total blackout that force the plant to rely solely on its diesel backup generators, which is of course exactly what happened over the weekend. And as the article notes, it’s this period when the plant is dependent on diesel backup generators that a dam break could turn into a meltdown. A one-two punch:
“The first line of defense is the set of 20 emergency diesel generators at the site—three at each reactor unit and two common units in a separate building supporting reactors 5 and 6. Scenarios in which all diesel generators fail are improbable, but they do exist. For example, the tsunami at Fukushima Daiichi flooded and disabled all but one of the plant’s emergency diesel generators, as well as the electrical distribution systems—what is called a common-cause failure. Other common-cause failures could affect Zaporizhzhia’s diesel generators, such as the failure of the dam at a nearby hydroelectric plant. That could lead to loss of the cooling ponds, which are needed to cool the plant’s diesel generators, enabling them to function.”
Those 20 diesel generators that had to get switched on over the weekend are the first line of defense against a blackout-induced meltdown. A line of defense that can get flooded out of commission by a dam break. How close did we get to that exact scenario? First we had the mysterious blackout, and then an apparent attack on that dam. It’s one meltdown risk after another involving events each side is blaming on the other.
So did Ukraine really use US-provided HIMARs to attack that dam, risking a downstream meltdown? It will be interesting to see what additional evidence Russia produces. At the same time, it’s not at all clear why Russia would want to ‘Fukushima’ its newly annexed territory. Or blow up its own dam. But that’s the accusations that are being leveled by the Ukrainians and it’s pretty clear that the West is more than happy to go along with that narrative. Which is basically a green light for Ukraine to induce that meltdown. It’s an incredibly terrifying new development in this war. Someone appears to really, really, really want a meltdown at that plant, and they have all the ingredients to make that happen, including a cover story.
@Pterrafractyl–
” . . . . it’s not at all clear why Russia would want to ‘Fukushima’ its newly annexed territory. Or blow up its own dam. . . .”
Actually, it couldn’t be clearer: U.S./Ukraine/West is setting up a major provocation and disaster to interdict not only an imminent Russia victory but to pollute the newly-annexed territories, thereby negating their profound economic value.
The situation is as crystal clear as it is ominous.
More lies, and with increasing severity.
Best,
Dave
@Dave: It’s worth noting one of the other narratives getting pushed right now that appears to be part of the overarching goal of getting global sanctions imposed on Russia and not just Western sanctions: The US has been accusing Russia of buying weapons from North Korea. Specifically, the US alleged that Russia and North Korea were carrying out clandestine arms transactions in the Middle East and North Africa. Now, as the following Moon of Alabama post reminds us, Russia and North Korea share a border that is connected via railway. So if Russia wanted to buy a bunch of North Korean arms, it seems like a pretty straightforward transaction. The kind of transaction that shouldn’t require secret transfers in parts of the world where neither North Korea or Russia have operational control.
Now, according to Western intelligence, Russia and North Korea took these steps because they didn’t want to get caught. And as we’re reminded of in the second article excerpt below, North Korea is under UN sanctions. So there is a hypothetical reason for Russian and North Korea to keep and such transactions a secret. But that still doesn’t explain why secret transactions in the Middle East or North Africa are a better way to carrying out this trade in secret, as opposed to just doing it via railway.
Now, as we’re also going to see, there was a twist to this story days after the reports on those US intelligence claims: The DC-based 38 North Project think-tank issued a report of its own citing satellite images showing a train traveling from Russia to North Korea. This was the first such observed train travel between the two countries since North Korea shut that border in February 2020 in response to the pandemic. So that story about secret Middle East and North African weapons trades happened days before the post-pandemic reopening of the Russian/North Korean border. It’s the kind of coincidence in timing that raises the question: did US intelligence of prior knowledge of this border reopening? In other words, was the reopening of that border done in response to Washington’s allegations? Or were those allegations made in anticipation of the reopening of that border? Either way, a major wrinkle in the ‘secret Middle East and North African weapons transfers’ narrative just transpired.
So what was actually transfer in those railcars? We don’t know because the satellite images couldn’t determine that. Russian claims it was thoroughbred horses, which the North Korean leadership does have a history of purchasing from Russia. But it’s the fact that no one can really determine what was on those trains that underscore the absurdity of the ‘secret Middle East and North African weapons transfers’ narrative. It was a narrative that only potentially made sense if we assume no trade was possible between Russia and North Korea’s shared border. Which demonstrably wasn’t the case.
Finally, as the last article excerpt below points out, when it comes to the full impacts of the existing Western sanctions on Russian gas, it’s not actually Europe that’s paying the biggest price. It’s the developing world that is finding itself frozen out of the liquid natural gas (LNG) markets. That’s because Europe has responded to its own gas crisis by turning to the global spot markets to buy virtually all of the short-term supplies on the globe, pricing out developing countries that are reliant on these short-term supplies. Beyond that, LNG exporters have become so enticed by the surging prices on the spot markets that they are making the decision to break long-term supply contracts with developing countries and just pay the fines for breaking those contracts. That’s why it’s not actually Europe paying the highest price. Yes, Europe is paying high prices. But it’s the countries that are literally being priced out of the markets that are ultimately going to pay the highest prices in the forms of factory shutdowns and social instability.
And let’s not forget that it’s the developing world that largely still has yet to sign on to the West’s sanctions against Russia. It points toward the ominous challenge Western governments have in creating events that effectively force a global sanctions regime against Russia: the parts of the world that have yet to sign onto those sanctions are the parts of the world that will be most devastated should a global sanctions regime actually come to fruition. Which means Russia is going to have to have to ultimately take the blame for something so horrific that the the poorest countries in the world are willing to commit economic suicide in response to that horrific act:
“Now tell me: Why would North Korea or Russia put any deliveries between them in jeopardy by transferring them via a third party far away from their areas of influence and operation?”
Russia isn’t just buying North Korean arms, but doing so in risking clandestine swaps in the Middle East, instead of just transporting whatever they want via direct railways. That’s the nonsense charge coming from the US:
Nor was this the first time we’ve heard this charge from the US. Pyongyang was denying charges of clandestine weapons sales to Russia back in September. And as the following WaPo piece reminds us, a big part of the propaganda value of these claims comes from the fact that North Korea is currently under UN-imposed sanctions over its nuclear weapons program. That’s part of the context of the nonsense claims of Middle Eastern weapons sales:
“Any weapons trade with North Korea would be in violation of U.N. sanctions imposed on the regime to curb its nuclear and missile activities. In defiance of the sanctions, the Kim regime has continued its military pursuits, including an unprecedented flurry of ballistic missile tests this year. Officials in Seoul and Washington said earlier this year that North Korea was preparing for its first nuclear test in five years.”
It wasn’t just an allegation of Russian buy North Korean arms. It was a charge of Russia violating UN-imposed sanctions on North Korea. Which, of course, makes the accusations of clandestine transfers in the Middle East all the more absurd. Why not just stick the arms in a train and roll it across the Russian-North Korea border with no one the wiser?
And that brings us to the following report that came just days after the US released its claims about secret weapons transfers in the Middle East and North Africa: satellite images show a train crossed the border from Russia into North Korea. That was the report from the DC-based 38 North Project think-tank.
So what was that train carrying? Well, according to Russia and North Korea, it was carrying horses. As the article notes, North Korea’s leadership has a history of purchasing Russian thoroughbreds. But, notably, this was the first train travel between Russian and North Korea since that border was closed in February 2020 with the outbreak of the pandemic.
But as the article also notes, the think-tank can’t actually determine what the train was carrying based on the satellite images. So while that think-tank can make all the allegations about weapons shipments that it wants, this story just underscores the lunacy of suggesting Russian and North Korea needed to use the Middle East and North Africa to carry out weapons shipments. It was a narrative that only potentially made sense if, for some reason, Russia and North Korea couldn’t open back up that railway border crossing or just use trucks instead. Which obviously wasn’t the case:
“The 38 North project, which monitors North Korean developments, said it was the first time such a train movement had been observed on the route in several years, although Russia’s veterinary service reported on Wednesday that a train had crossed the border into North Korea carrying horses.”
Yes, just a day or so after the White House accuses Russia and North Korea of engaging in clandestine arms transfers in the Middle East and North Africa, we get reports of a train traveling from directly from Russia into North Korea. And sure enough, there was no way to assess the contents of the cargo. Easy peasy:
And if the timing of the first train travel in years between the two countries sounds somehow suspicious, note the reason for the lack of travel: COVID. So with COVID looking increasingly like a virus that no long threatens the North Korean regimes stability, we had to expect those COVID-era restrictions to be lifted at some point. It raises the intriguing question: given that we got that bizarre story about clandestine arms shipments between Russia and North Korea in the Middle East and North Africa just days before the first train travel between North Korea and Russia since the pandemic, did Western intelligence know that train trip was planned? If so, that might explain the strange ‘clandestine arms transfers’ narrative as a story intended to frame the upcoming train trip as evidence of secret weapons deals:
Are we in store for a series of allegations about weapons transfers with everyone instance of train travel between the countries? Time will tell.
But as the following Bloomberg piece describes, if the underlying goal of economically isolating Russia globally, and not just from the West, should eventually come to fruition, the consequences are going to be felt for years. At least that what global oil and natural gas markets are signaling. And as the article describes, we shouldn’t assume that means years of socioeconomic turmoil for just Europe. Wealthy Europe will be relatively fine. It’s the developing world that’s going to be supremely harmed by a multi-year round of global sanctions on Russian:
“Much deeper costs will be borne by the world’s poorest countries, which have been shut out of the natural gas market by Europe’s suddenly ravenous demand. It’s left emerging market countries unable to meet today’s needs or tomorrow’s, and the most likely consequences — factory shutdowns, more frequent and longer-lasting power shortages, the foment of social unrest — could stretch into the next decade.”
Factory shutdowns, longer-lasting power shortages and moments of social unrest are expected into the next decade across the developing world as a result of these sanctions on Russian gas. Recall how EU companies are reportedly considering relocating factories to the US in anticipation that these sanctions are going to be in place for years to come. Sanctions that are still largely limited to the West. What kind of global turmoil can we expect should some sort of catastrophic event transpire that effectively forces the rest of the world to join in on those sanctions? Europe is already “sucking gas away from other countries whatever the cost.” And LNG suppliers are already making the decision to simply pay the fines of breaking their long-term supply contracts with developing nations. How much worse can this get?
And at the same time Europe is sucking up whatever gas it can on the spot markets, it’s continuing to make new investments in LNG terminals to ensure that this can all continue at an even faster pace in coming years:
Then there’s the role of the rising US dollar in all this. Developing countries with vulnerable currencies are actively being shunned by LNG suppliers over fears over the ability of poorer clients to actually meet their contract obligations years into the future when the dollar might have appreciated even more. It’s the kind of dynamic that only fuels the tendency of LNG suppliers to just break their long-term contracts in the pursuit of high profits on the short-term spot markets:
Finally, let’s not forget that this whole development is a giant disaster for the environment. Civilization isn’t simply going to respond to the sudden disruption of Russian gas supplies by investing in renewables or conserving. The poorest countries of the world are going to be forced to fall back in the dirtiest sources of energy. It will be that or let their economies grind to a halt:
Time to fire up those coal plants. And not only is this going to remain ‘coal time’ for years to come if current trends continue as expected, but this whole process could get kicked into overdrive should the global sanctions on Russia end up getting imposed.
And as this article makes clear, it’s the developing world — the part of the world that largely has yet to get on board with the West’s desired Russian sanctions — that is going to be bearing the brunt of the sanctions’ impact. In other words, if the West is going to convince the developing world to join those Russian sanctions, something unspeakably horrific is going to have to be blamed on Russia. Something so awful that even countries facing factory shutdowns and social unrest refuse to buy Russian exports. Exports that go beyond fossil fuels. Russia is the largest exporter of grain, after all. What will the impact on the developing world’s food supplies be when all that grain is banned from the markets? More social unrest, presumably. But what else? What’s the plan for the years of global social unrest that these sanctions are going to produce hitting the poorest and most vulnerable countries in the world? It’s ominous. On the one hand, it’s terrifying to imagine there’s no plan. On the other hand, having a plan to send the developing world into years of socioeconomic turmoil is arguably a lot more terrifying.
Oh look, the Pentagon just failed another audit. This time, the auditors were unable to account for 61 percent of the Pentagon’s $3.5 trillion in assets. It’s not great, but more or less what to expect.
It’s those appallingly low expectations that are part of the context of the following story about the growing interest in auditing the Pentagon’s flood of aid to Ukraine. As the article describes, accountability for that aid is expected to be a focus of the House GOP after the Republicans take control in January. And while better oversight of that aid is expected, we’re also getting warnings that there’s a limit to the kind of inspections the US can conduct. Specifically, there’s a deep hesitancy over sending inspectors anywhere close to the front lines where they might be expose to hostile forces. As a result of those limits, the inspections that are even happening are only taking place at the point where the weapons are being handed over to the Ukrainians. Only the Ukrainians know what happens to the weapons at that point. A total of two in-person inspections have taken place at all between the start of the conflict in February and early November. And in what is probably the most disturbing detail in this story, we are also being assured that there isn’t anything to worry about because the Ukrainians have been readily reporting back to the US how the weapons have been used and are facing such an existential threat that they can’t afford to allow weapons to be siphoned off to the black market.
But also keep in mind some of the other relevant context here: Ukraine is increasingly becoming a battlefield for beta-testing next-generation NATO weapons systems, including a growing number of weaponized drones. What’s being done to keep those technologies out of the black market? Not much, apparently.
And then there’s the story about the Italian “Order of Hagal” alleged terror cell with close ties to Ukrainian fascist groups like Azov and Right Sector. How much of the delivered aid is ended up in the hands of groups like that? We don’t know and haven’t really checked it seems.
So to summarize, we’re being told that the US has limited options for tracking how the military aid to Ukraine — a country flooded with both cutting-edge weapons and Nazi fellow travelers — but not to worry anyway because they’re pretty sure Ukraine is being honest. Which seems like a very big reason to worry:
“The administration, anticipating such demands as the commitment of military aid under President Biden fast approaches $20 billion, has worked in recent weeks to publicize its efforts to track weapons shipments. Both the State Department and the Pentagon have outlined plans, including more inspections and training for the Ukrainians, meant to prevent U.S. arms from falling into the wrong hands — initiatives that have failed thus far to quell Republican skeptics calling for audits and other accountability measures.”
Some sort of accounting for the billions of dollars in lethal aid is inevitable with the GOP taking control of the House, hence the preemptive steps we’re seeing to publicize the existing efforts to track weapons shipments:
At the same time, we’re hearing all these warnings about the limits to what the US can do to actually track where and how weapons are used. Limitations that include a resistance against sending inspectors anywhere close to the front lines. As a result, it sounds like the only inspections are happening solely at the point where weapons are transferred to Ukrainian custody. And it doesn’t sound like many of those inspections are even happening. As of early November, just two in-person inspections had taken place since the start of the conflict in February:
And here we get to what is perhaps the most alarming detail in this story: the assurances that we shouldn’t really be too concerned about how these weapons are being used or whose hands they are falling into because the Ukrainians are being very proactive about reporting how the weapons are used. It’s the kind of assurance that shouldn’t actually be all that assuring if you take a moment to think about it:
We are told that “Lawmakers, Pentagon officials and experts all note” how there are few tangible reasons for concern. That appears to be a widely shared attitude. The kind of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude that’s presumably going to ensure Ukraine remains a place where Nazi fellow travelers can get their hands on next-generation NATO weapons systems for years to come.
Move over Azov and Right Sector. There’s a new Ukrainian Nazi battalion to lionize. Well, not new. We’ve been hearing about the Bratstvo (“Brotherhood”) Battalion and its affiliates for years. For starters, there was the “Saint Mary Battalion” was featured in a Reuters report back in 2015 highlighting the growing concern inside Ukraine about the security threat these groups posed to the stability of the country. The battalion was up front about how it viewed itself as a kind of “Christian Taliban”. The Saint Mary Battalion was founded by Dmytro Korchynsky, who also founded Bratstvo as a party in 2004. As the following article notes, Korchynsky previously led the far-right Ukrainian National Assembly–Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO). Recall the key role the UNA-UNSO played in connecting the WWII-era Nazi collaborationist networks with the post-Cold War Ukrainian fascist groups like Azov and Right Sector today. Also recall the decades of history of cooperation with the CIA. And then there’s the reports about the role Bratstvo members played in the sniper attacks during the 2014 Maidan revolution. The Bratstvo battalion isn’t new, nor is its ideology and background a mystery. But you could be forgiven for assuming that was the case after reading a recent NY Times piece hailing the unit as brave and pious freedom fighters and makes no mention of the unit’s far right ideology or self-declared “Christian Taliban” aspirations.
But there is one hint at the group’s true nature found in the photos in the piece. It turns out the Totenkopfverbande SS skull patch can be spotted in two of the article’s photos, albeit with no mention of the symbols or their significance. Recall how Azov soldiers with the same patches were photographed protecting President Zelenskiy in a photo posted on social media by Zelenskiy’s own office, before it was taken down. SS patches are simply normal in Ukraine these days. So normal the president’s bodyguards have them.
And as the NY Times once again demonstrated, that mainstreaming of Ukraine’s Nazis has taken the paradoxical approach of showcasing these Nazis while simultaneously denying they exist. As a result, groups like Bratstvo in keep getting introduced and reintroduced to Western audiences as just normal Ukrainian patriots. Extremely pious patriots, in this case. Just don’t call them the “Christian Taliban”, even though that’s what they call themselves:
“Anti-war outlets, including FAIR (1/28/22, 3/22/22), have repeatedly highlighted this dynamic—particularly regarding corporate media’s lionization of the Azov battalion, once widely recognized by Western media as a fascist militia, now sold to the public as a reformed far-right group that gallantly defends the sovereignty of a democratic Ukraine (New York Times, 10/4/22; FAIR.org, 10/6/22).”
We’ve heard this story before. It’s the same whitewashed story we’ve been hearing about Ukraine’s more prominent Nazi battalions like Azov, but this time it’s one of the lesser-known Nazi battalions getting the kid-glove journalistic treatment. No mention of the group’s Holocaust denialism or its self-proclaimed “Christian Taliban” aspiration. Nothing about that appeared in the article. Instead, we get depictions of the soldiers piously praying:
But the white washing goes beyond just neglecting to inform readers about the real nature of this group. The classic Nazi Totenkopf symbol actually shows up twice in photos in the piece on the patches on their uniforms. The significance is never mentioned, of course. But there they are, getting mainstreamed by the ‘paper of record’. Just these kinds of patches were getting mainstreamed by the Ukrainian government when President Zelenskiy tweeted out a photo showing him surrounded by body guards sporting the same Nazi symbols back in September. It’s a reminder that the passive mainstreaming of Ukraine’s Nazi battalions by the Western press is largely following the aggressive open mainstreaming of these groups by the Ukrainian government:
Readers also got another whitewashed glimpse at the group’s extremist nature via the quote from Serediuk musing about how “We all dream about going to Chechnya, and the Kremlin, and as far as the Ural Mountains.” As Reuters reported back in 2015 in a piece describing the growing threat these Nazi battalions posed to the stability of Ukraine, the founder of Bratstvo battalion, Dmytro Korchynsky, expressed his desire for Ukraine to “lead the crusades” and make Moscow burn in revenge. So it’s worth keeping in mind that it’s these kinds of ambitions that the Kremlin can readily cite as examples of how the very real Nazification of Ukraine posed a growing long-term threat to Russia’s security, which was the pretext for Russian’s ‘special military operation’ launched this year:
In a saner world, the cultivation of Ukrainian Nazi movements that openly dream of burning down Moscow would be seen as an obvious provocation and a recipe for a larger, longer conflict between Russia and the West. But we don’t live in that saner world. We live in the world where the ‘paper of record’ runs cover for self-described “Christian Taliban” Nazis and almost no one blinks. It’s hard to get much more mainstream than that. Hard, but we’ll find a way to do, one whitewashing at a time.f
It’s a tragically great time to be a Nazi. Has been for a while now. One of the best times in decades, arguably. Especially if you’re a Ukrainian Nazi. As we’ve seen, while the whitewashing of Ukrainian Nazis is nothing new, 2022 really has been the year of the great Nazi Whitewash. For example:
* There was the NY Times’s recent whitewashing of the “Christian Taliban” Bratstvo battalion.
* This year’s Warrior Games — taking place at the ESPN Wide Word of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort — included a Ukrainian team for the first time ever. And as we should expect at this point, that Ukrainian team had multiple Nazi members, including Azov member Ihor Halushka, who not only has a large Nazi Sonnenrad tattoo but ended up winning the “Heart of the Team” award.
* Facebook relaxed its rules against calling for violence to allow for calls for violence against Russian soldiers, but also relaxed the previous bans on praising the Azov battalion.
And that’s just a sampling of the concerted international efforts to elevate Ukraine’s Nazis to international celebrities. And as the following Naked Capitalism post describes, those normalization efforts appear to have been largely successful at this point. At least in the US. That’s the conclusion that’s hard to avoid when looking at the remarkable celebrity tour undertaken by Azov battalion photographer Dmytro Kozatsky, whose photos of the siege of the Azovstal steel plant in Marioupol are now being showcased at various exhibits as part of Ukraine’s ongoing international public relations efforts. In other words, Kozatsky is effectively operating as a public relations ambassador for Ukraine. Another Ukrainian Nazi ambassador.
Interestingly, as we’re going to see, one complication for Kozatsky’s celebrity tour has been the fact that he’s got an extensive history of making pro-Nazi social media postings, something that’s been pointed out by Ukrainian dissident Anatoly Shariy. Recall how Shariy formed banned Party of Shariy, which was one of the political parties banned in Ukraine this year. Shariy was also placed on the Myrotvorets blacklist and claims to have been the target of an SBU assassination attempt. Back in May, Ukraine attempted to get Spain to extradite Shariy back Ukraine on treason charges on the basis that, “SBU investigators consider that Shariy carried out unlawful activity detrimental to Ukraine’s national security in the information sphere.” Spain eventually refused Ukraine’s request in October after multiple deadlines were missed without Ukraine filing the necessary paperwork. It was last month when Shariy posted a series of Kozasky’s pro-Nazi social media postings. Later that day, the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) — which had been showcasing his photos since mid-October — announced it was prematurely ending the show, claiming that it “wasn’t aware of the artist’s ideology.” Kozatsky was scheduled to be a guest speaker later that day at NYC’s premiere of the film Freedom on Fire (2022) at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) Theater in Manhattan. The SVA then quietly removed any mention of Kozatsky’s planned appearance from its website that morning. But he still appeared as a guest speaker. Audience members who raised concerned about his Nazi ideology were forcibly removed from the event.
But beyond this concerted effort to ignore Kozatsky’s Nazism is the apparent effort to ignore some remarkable claims Kozatsky made while he was a Russian POW after the fall of the Azovstal plant: In an interview posted on Telgram, Kozatsky alleged to have heard about orders from Zelenski advisor Oleksii Arestovich for the killing of Russian soldiers who had been taken prisoners and the creation of shock videos showing that POW mistreatment. The interview of Kozatsky making these claims were posted on Telegram. It doesn’t appear that those claims were ever seriously investigated, but it’s still fascinating that a high-profile member of Azov can make these kinds of widely publicized claims about war crimes and go on to do an international celebrity tour. That’s all part of the grizzly context of the ongoing international whitewashing of Ukraine’s Nazis. The longer this conflict goes, the more atrocities and war crimes we learn about which requires even more whitewashing:
“I’m afraid I don’t have an earth-quake of a conclusion here; what stuns me is the ease with which Kozatsky is penetrating our cultural institutions. Booking agents, facilities managers, press agents, board members who organize such things, fashion editors, network anchors: All combining their efforts to service a Nazi professionally, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, which at this point perhaps it is. It would also be nice to know if how many other Ukrainian efforts like this are going on, and if they are… facilitated by anyone “in government.””
Yep, it’s the mainstreaming of an Azov international celebrity. Another Azov international celebrity. In this case, it’s Azov’s photographer, Dmytro Kozatsky, who has been going from one media appearance after another in the US to talk about his experiences defending the Azovstal industrial plant in Marioupol before getting captures and eventually released. On one level, it’s not hard to see why Kozatsky’s story was chosen for this kind of work of maintaining international support for Ukraine in the war. At least, it’s not hard to see why Kozatsky was chosen for this kind of PR work given the international embrace of Ukraine’s Nazis.
But as the piece notes, part of what makes the celebrity tour of Dmytro Kozatsky so curious is the fact that he apparently made stunning allegations while detained about Zelenski advisor Oleksii Arestovich ordering the killing of Russian soldiers who had been taken prisoners and the creation of shock videos. The interview of Kozatsky making these claims were posted on Telegram. It doesn’t appear that those claims were ever seriously investigated, but it’s still fascinating that a high-profile member of Azov can make these kinds of widely publicized claims about war crimes and go on to do an international celebrity tour:
Kozatsky’s international celebrity tour wasn’t just in the US. It was in Catalonia, Spain, where several of his photos was on display at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) since mid-October, until Ukrainian-dissident-in-exile Anatoly Shariy — who is residing in Spain — published evidence of Kozatsky’s numerous instances of promoting Nazi symbols on social media. Recall how Anatoly Shariy started a Ukrainian political party that was one of the parties recently banned by Zelenskiy. Shariy claims he was the target of a recent SBU assassination attempt and has also placed on the Myrotvorets blacklist. Back in May, Ukraine attempted to get Spain to extradite Shariy back Ukraine on treason charges on the basis that, “SBU investigators consider that Shariy carried out unlawful activity detrimental to Ukraine’s national security in the information sphere.” Spain eventually refused Ukraine’s request in October after multiple deadlines were missed without Ukraine filing the necessary paperwork. So it was a Ukrainian dissident-in-exile from a now-banned political party, and who the SBU is still trying to silence, who was ultimately able to draw enough attention to Kozatsky’s Nazi ideology to temporarily disrupt this PR exercise:
And note the very different treatment given to protestors at the School Of Visual Arts in New York City, which hosted Kozatsky as a guest speaker scheduled on the same day Shariy made those damning Telegram posts. The theater forcibly removed audience members who brought up Kozatsky’s Nazi ideology, while at the same time it removed all mention of Kozatsky’s name from its event description after Shariy’s Telegram messages posted earlier that morning. In other words, the people running that event were actively trying to hide the fact that they were hosting a Nazi guest speaker and when they forcibly removed those audience members:
Also note the remarkable source for the important 2018 observation about the “red herring” nature of pointing to the relatively poor electoral showing for Ukraine’s Nazis as a reason to dismiss the threat these movements pose to Ukraine’s future: none other than the Atlantic Council. Although note it was Josh Cohen, a former USAID project officer for the former Soviet Union, who wrote that piece. Cohen has long been a voice of relative sanity when it comes to Ukraine’s Nazis. So while it was surprising to see that kind of acknowledgement showing up in an Atlantic Council blog, it’s not surprising that it was Cohen who actually wrote it:
Now, regarding the CNN piece from back in March where Ukraine’s then-minister of internal affairs, Arsen Avakov, proclaimed that claims about Azov’s Nazi ideology were part of a “deliberate attempt to discredit the ‘Azov’ unit and the National Guard of Ukraine,” recall how Azov itself attempted to distance itself from the overt Nazi ideology of its founder, Andriy Biletsky while simultaneously downplaying Biletsky’s open Nazi status. First, the group told CNN it “appreciates and respects Andriy Biletsky as the regiment’s founder and first commander, but we have nothing to do with his political activities and the National Corps party”, and then added that Biletsky never actually stated that his goal was to “lead the White races of the world in a final crusade.” It was emblematic of the layers of systematic deception at work in this Nazi reputation rehabilitation project:
Finally, recall the reports from back in September about how President Zelenskiy removed from social media photos showing him surrounded by bodyguards wearing Totenkopf patches. That Kozatsky is also sporting these kinds of symbols is to be expected at this point. This is now normalized and apparently unremarkable:
Where will we see Kozatsky pop up next in his celebrity tour? We’ll find out, presumably in the form of another whitewashed puff piece designed to misinformed readers about the fascist undercurrents driving this conflict.
It’s one thing to deny that a Nazi is a Nazi. That’s awful enough. But it’s another level of whitewashing to literally deny your own prior denouncements against Nazis and pretend like you never said that. It’s like whitewashing doublethink. So, of course, that’s exactly what we’ve seen in the latest round of high profile Nazi whitewashing by Western institutions. And this time that whitewashed doublethink was brought to us by none other than the ADL, an organization that ostensibly exists for the purpose of condemning Nazism.
Yes, it was just back in March of this year that the ADL was warning about how white nationalists viewed the Azov Battalion as a path to bringing National Socialism to Ukraine following the outbreak of full scale war. Flash forward eight months and all of sudden the ADL see Azov as a post-Nazi entity that was divorced from its Nazi past all the way back in 2014. Yep. The ADL was parroting Azov’s own laughable claims about its divorced itself from its Nazi roots. That was the direct response the ADL gave to the Gray Zone in response to a “hate incident” filed by the Gray Zone to the ADL following the to the Pentagon’s decision to invite an Azov-led team of Ukrainian military athletes to the Warrior Games held at Disney World. An event where the Azov member of the team with a large Nazi tattoo on his elbow won the “spirit of the team” award. It was when the ADL was asked for a response to that event that the ADL suddenly decided to forget its own reports on the very real dangers posed by the Azov Battalion and whitewashed away not just Azov’s Nazi roots but the ADL’s own history of criticizing those Nazi roots. Pro-Nazi whitewashed doublethink from an organized dedicated to exposing Nazism. This is how far gone the West’s embrace of Ukraine’s Nazis has gotten, just months into a war with no end in sight:
“The Azov Battalion is a neo-Nazi unit formally integrated into the US government-backed Ukrainian military. Founded by Andriy Biletsky, who has infamously vowed to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led untermenschen,” Azov was once widely condemned by Western corporate media and the human rights industry for its association with Nazism. Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.”
The Azov Battalion’s open Nazi status was a secret. Until the conflict broke in February, at which point Azov suddenly became a post-Nazi organization worthy of international celebration and accolades. Everyone apparently got the memo. Including organizations like the ADL ostensibly dedicated to shining a public light on Nazis and other anti-Semitic extremists. All of a sudden, the ADL’s 2019 report highlighting Azov’s ongoing status as a Nazi organization was forgotten and replaced with the same whitewashed narrative adopted across the West. The ADL even conveniently forgot its report from March of this year highlighting how white nationalists see Azov “as a pathway to the creation of a National Socialist state in Ukraine.” Poof. All forgotten:
Fittingly, the event that triggered the ADL’s embrace of Azov was getting asked for a response to the Pentagon’s decision to invite an Azov-led team of Ukrainian military athletes to the Warrior Games held at Disney World. An event where the Azov member of the team with a large Nazi tattoo on his elbow won the “spirit of the team” award. It’s a reminder that we aren’t seeing the ADL unilaterally run cover for Nazis. Instead, this is part of a much larger group effort. Which is arguably actually worse. It would be one thing if the ADL was the only entity out there engaged in this whitewashing. But this is an across-the-board behavior. That’s what the ADL is endorsing here: that across-the-board large scale Nazi whitewashing that’s taking place across the West. A whitewashing that will presumably continue indefinitely into the future:
It’s also worth noting some of the Azov/Nazi-related stories that have broken since the ADL’s November 9 whitewashing email to the Gray Zone: First, there was the reports on the Italian arrests of the “Order of Hagal” terror cell that had close ties to Azov a week later. Then there was last week’s story about the Azov photographer, Dmytro Kozatsky, who was given a hero’s welcome across the US despite the abundant evidence of his Nazi ideology posted on his own social media accounts. These kinds of stories just keep piling up:
Finally, there was the November 12 interview of Azov Nazi Kent “Boneface” McLellan where he openly came out mocking the people across the West who claim there are no Nazis in Azov. This is how broken the situation is: the Boneface Nazi gets to validly mock people for claiming there are no Nazis:
Yep, the “Boneface” Nazi has a valid point to make in his mockery. This is where we are. It points towards what is so perverse about this situation: It’s not just that groups like the ADL are doing permanent damage to their own reputations and credibility with this systematic Nazi whitewashing, but they’re elevating people like “Boneface” McLellan into truth tellers. Which is also a reminder that we’re probably going to need some new groups with the credibility to call out Nazis going forward. And soon. Because there’s presumably going to be a much larger Nazi problem by the time the West is done with its Ukrainian Nazi historical rehabilitation agenda. Assuming that Nazi rehabilitation agenda actually has an end.
Following up on that disturbing report about the ADL’s whitewashing of the Azov Battalion, here’s an article about another threat facing Ukraine’s Jewish community in the recently recaptured city of Kherson. As the NY Times piece below describes, the hunt for collaborators began in earnest after Ukrainian forces retook control of the city, with one of the leading members of Kherson’s Jewish community facing such accusations. And as we’ll see, those accusation of collaboration are not only absurd but appear to be a violation of the Geneva Convention. Beyond that, it appears that the figure facing these charges, Illia Karamalikov, was himself arrested, drugged and tortured by Ukraine’s intelligence services as part their investigation. It’s a chilling snapshot of the kind of justice system operating during this conflict.
So what exactly was Karamalikov accused of? Well, as a respected member of Kherson’s Jewish community, Karamalikov took the initiative in organizing civilian street patrols to maintain order and a curfew following Russia taking control of the city after it became clear that the Russian forces had on interest in engaging in street patrols. So when a lost Russian pilot fleeing an attacked airbase ended up wandering into the city and stumbled across a group of these civilian patrols — mistaking them for fellow Russian soldiers — it was up to Karamalikov to decide how of handle the situation. With no Ukrainian forces within miles there was no way to hand the soldier over to Ukraine. The only options were to hand him over to the Russians or kill him. So that they chose to hand the soldier over. Karamalikov contacted “Alpha”, the Russian commander in the area, and arranged for a handoff the next day. The only problem is that Ukrainian intelligence was wiretapping Alpha’s phone and overhead the conversation.
Flash forward to mid-April, and Karamalikov decided it was time to flee the city with his family. But upon reaching Ukrainian territory, his car was stopped by intelligence agents. He was then taken to an interrogation center where he was drugged and tortured, according to his family. Officials in Kherson declined to comment on the torture claims, but acknowledged that at least two of the agents involved in the treatment of Karamalikov have been placed under investigation. So that’s basically an admission that, yeah, he was drugged and tortured.
And yet Karamalikov is still facing a possible life sentence for simply handing over a capture Russian soldier at a time when the only other option was to kill him. As his lawyer put it, “to this day we have asked a question that no one can answer: What else, in those circumstances, in that city, at that time, was he supposed to do?” The Kherson prosecutor’s office declined to respond to that question. And there we have it: citizens are getting arrested and tortured for not engaging in war crimes. And this is so obviously wrong that even the prosecutors are refusing to talk about what they’re doing. But they’re still doing it:
“In the areas of Ukraine that Russia has seized — more than a fifth of the country — millions of civilians have had to coexist with an occupying army that wields all the power. The Ukrainians have recently clawed back chunks of their territory, like Kherson, which was liberated in mid-November, and almost immediately the hunt was on for collaborators. People are now being judged by the choices they made during very stressful occupied times.”
The hunt for collaborators was almost immediate after recapturing Kherson. And as this report describes, those suspicions ended up falling on Illia Karamalikov, one of the leading figures in the city’s Jewish community and the person who ended up organizing the citizen patrols to maintain some semblance of order during the Russian occupation following the sudden withdrawal of the Ukrainian forces. Even local leaders who aren’t fans of Karamalikov say he was only doing the right thing and operating in the public’s interest:
So when a lost Russian soldier ended up stumbling into one of those civilian street patrol, there were no Ukraine authorities left to hand the soldier over to. Their options were to either kill the soldier or hand him over to the Russian occupying authorities. And they chose the latter option, in accord with the Geneva Convention, with Karamalikov arranging a swap to hand the soldier over. It was those negotiations to turn over the soldier, overheard by Ukrainian intelligence, that appears to have doomed Karamalikov. After fleeing the city on April 14, Karamalikov was stopped by Ukrainian intelligence agents, pulled out of his car, brought to an interrogation center and reportedly drugged and tortured. That’s what happened apparently because he didn’t break the Geneva Conventions and kill that soldier:
And notice how even the Kherson prosecutor’s office declined to say what exactly Karamalikov was supposed to do. The 12-page indictment accuses Karamalikov of helping an enemy soldier escape and resume aggression against Ukraine, but the only way for this indictment to make sense is if Karamalikov was expected to kill that soldier. That’s the obvious answer that the prosecutors won’t directly admit:
Finally, note the Karamalikov isn’t the only prominent member of Kherson’s Jewish community to face charges of collaboration: Rabbi Wolff attests to being suspected of collaboration for allowing armed Russian officers to join prayers at his temple. Again, what was he expected to do? It was an impossible situation, at least impossible under the apparent rules the Ukrainian authorities are trying to enforce:
Will Rabbi Wolfe be the next Jewish leader of Kherson to be arrested and tortured for the crime of ‘collaboration’? Presumably not since he managed to flee to Berlin and remains unsure when or even if he’ll ever return to Ukraine. Take that in: the head of the last synagogue in Kherson isn’t sure if it’s safe to ever return to Ukraine. For the crime of allowing armed Russian soldiers to pray at his synagogue in an occupied city. It’s the kind of story that raises the question of how many members of of Ukraine’s Jewish community aren’t ultimately going to end up getting accused of collaboration on trumped up charges. We’ll find out. Presumably in the form of a growing terrified Ukrainian Jewish diaspora and/or more stories of targeted abduction and torture.
We got an update on the various investigations into the Nordstream pipeline attack. Sort of. The updates come in the form a WaPo article filled with admissions from anonymous officials familiar with the investigations admitting that the proof of Russia’s guilt may not be there. And may never be found. That’s the update. A shift from “It was definitely Russia” to “It was probably Russia even if we can’t ever prove it.” We’re still hearing plenty of desperate reasons for why Russia would have been tempted to blow up its own pipeline — like how doing so would demonstrate the general vulnerability of other pipelines and somehow therefore scare Ukraine’s allies into giving up their support — but at least now there appear to be more and more government officials who are publicly questioning that line of reasoning. Anonymously:
“Some went so far as to say they didn’t think Russia was responsible. Others who still consider Russia a prime suspect said positively attributing the attack — to any country — may be impossible.”
“Some went so far as to say they didn’t think Russia was responsible.” The outrageousness of it all. Some officials are just going off the ranch here and suggesting that Russia as wasn’t responsible for blowing up its own pipeline. Anonymously suggesting it. No one appears to want to put their name the record. Even then, the phrasing of this shift in blame is limited to describing those with detailed knowledge of the forensic details of the investigation as saying they can’t conclusively tie Russia to the attack. So it’s really been a shift from “It’s definitely Russia” to “It’s still probably Russia but we can’t necessarily prove it based on the evidence”. Based on what logic? Well, by destroying its own pipeline, Russia was demonstrating the potential vulnerabilities of other countries’ pipelines. That was the rationale we’re still for why we should still assume Russia blew up its own pipeline despite the lack of evidence:
At the same time, we’re hearing more acknowledgements of the range possible actors who had the capabilities to pull off the attack, including terrorists and extremist groups. But still no mention of the range of obvious suspects with obvious motives and plenty of capability to pull it off:
And when we hear Sweden’s Foreign Minister caution that his government was waiting for the country’s independent prosecutor’s office to complete its investigation before reaching a conclusion, let’s not forget how Sweden declared back in October that it wasn’t going to share its investigative conclusions with any other countries. In other words, don’t hold your breath for a public summary of that independent investigation:
We’ll see what the ultimate ‘official’ conclusion is on this investigation, but it appears that we are seeing an ‘unofficial’ anonymous push to shift the public expectations in advance of whatever that official conclusion ends up being. And it’s pretty clear the expectations they’re trying to set are that of no conclusive determination of the culprit is possible. Along with the strong intimation that we should just assume it was Russia anyway. It’s turning into quite the meta story.
Just how many Azov Nazi battalions are there operating inside the Ukrainian armed forced today? That’s one of the disturbing questions raised in the following pair of articles about the ongoing international pro-Azov public relations push. A public relations campaign that, as we’ve seen, included an Azov unit that actually traveled to Israel in an effort to demonstrate the group’s non-extremist nature.
As we’re going to see, this public relations campaign is filled with public assurances that the Azov Regiment has been completely purged of any extremists and is just like any other Ukrainian military unit. They even replaced the Black Sun/Wolfsangel patch with a traditional trident in May of this year. And there’s no ties whatsoever between the Azov Regiment in the military and the broader Azov movement and its National Corps political wing. No ties at all. That’s the pitch.
Now, as Michael Colborne — a journalist and researcher for Bellingcat — points out in and following article, this is a highly problematic narrative for a variety a reasons, referring to public statements “of senior members of Azov units and of the Movement make clear that the National Corps was basically used as the organizational ‘spine’ to build up and create new Azov units, which they treat as part of the same Azov family.”
Colborne also points out that, while the black sun symbol was indeed official retired early this year, Azov’s black sun symbol “was still being used as part of the official Telegram channel’s profile pic until earlier this year, and it’s not hard to find individual pictures of fighters in newer Azov units — in other words, not the Regiment — wearing that patch.”
So Colborne is finding evidence of a new of new “Azov units”, filled with troops still sporting the Nazi patches. Which raises the obvious question of how many new Azov units are there being created right now?
As we’re going to see in the second article excerpt below published last month in Forbes, there’s at least one new Azov military unit that’s been stood up since the start of the war back in February: the 98th Azov Battalion. The unit was first stood up in the Spring of 2022 and is a completely separate unit from the Azov Regiment based in Marioupol. The Forbes piece goes to great lengths to assure us that the Azov Regiment was completely purged of extremism years ago, as is the 98th Azov Battalion and other newly formed Azov units.
Keep in mind that we really should expect that the Ukrainian military would be more wary more allowing these newer Azov units to become overrun with open Nazi given the international sensitivities involved. And yet, Michael Colborne reports that it’s not hard to find photos of Nazi patches from that these new units.
So who should we believe? All of the people assuring us that Azov has been ideologically cleansed of its extremists? Or our ‘lying’ eyes and ears showing us Nazi patches and Azov leaders talking about how they’re all in one big ‘Azov family’?:
” Now, less than three months later, Samoilenko is in Israel as part of a publicity blitz organized by the local activist group, Israeli Friends of Ukraine. Samoilenko has been giving interviews to local Russian, Hebrew and English-language media and attending screenings of a documentary about Russian filtration camps — a network of facilities which the U.S. State Department says have been used to “facilitate the forced relocation of Ukraine’s citizens to Russia.””
An Azov publicity blitz in Israel. That’s the Orwellian public relations campaign that just transpired last month, led by Lt. Illia Samoilenko and sponsored by the “Israeli Friends of Ukraine” group, co-founded by Anna Zharova, a Global Ukrainian Network board member. And as we should expect, both Samoilenko and Zharova are adamant that the Azov regiment is free of extremism and anything you hear to the contrary is Russian propaganda:
And as we should also expect, Samoilenko is repeating the same narrative we’ve been hearing for Azov’s defenders since 2014: sure, Azov was founded by Nazis, but that was then and this is now. The group was purged of all the extremists after getting formally incorporated into Ukraine’s military. End of story.
And note the somewhat confusing detail in this report: the article seems to indicate that the Black Sun patches were replaced with Wolfsangel patches. As we’ve seen, Azov uniforms have long as a patch with the Blacksun with a Wolfsangel overlaid on top of it. That was the symbol that was dropped from Azov’s uniforms and replaced with the same trident used by the rest of Ukraine’s military back in May of last year. So yeah, Azov did indeed drop its Nazi patches...in May of 2022 as part of and Azov regiments international public relations campaign:
Beyond that, we’re being led to believe that the Azov Regiment has absolutely no ties at all to the broader Azov movement, including the National Corps. It was one of the many “problematic” claims being made on this PR tour as Bellingcat research Michael Colborne points out. Notably, Colborne differentiates between the formal Azov Regiment in the military and “newer Azov units” not in the regiment. That’s part of the story here: there are apparently newer Azov units outside the Azov Regiment also in operation in Ukraine:
And while it doesn’t appear that Illia Samoilenko has a personal history of voicing far right views, we can’t say the same for the other Azov ‘ambassador’ on this tour: Yulia Fedosiuk, the wife another Azov member, doesn’t appear to be a very big fan of the ‘one man, one vote’ principle underlying democracy. Sure, she didn’t come out overtly in favor or some sort of fascist regime, but she sure hinted at it:
Finally, note the other group backing this PR tour: Leonic Nevzlin’s Nadav Foundation. Keep in mind that Nevlin was a close associate if Mikhail Khodorkovsky and eventually became the biggest owner of the defunct Yukos oil giant. In other words, Nevzlin has a huge financial incentive to see some sort of Russian regime change:
Now, regarding that disturbing reference to “newer Azov units” sporting Black Sun and Wolfsangel patches, we have to ask how many new Azov units are there at this point? That’s not entirely clear, but if the following Forbes piece from last month about the newly formed 98th Azov Battalion — which was stood up in the Spring of 2022 — is any indication of what to expect, we should expect a lot more articles in the Western press pieces assuring us that all these new Azov spinoff units aren’t actually Nazi battalions:
“By the time the Azov Regiment began spinning off successor units, the ideological poison mostly was gone. The 98th Azov Battalion stood up this spring, around the same time the original regiment was fighting nearly to the last man and woman in Mariupol, an historic city on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast that Russian forces surrounded and besieged early in the wider war.”
Ideologically purified Azov spinoffs. That’s part of this nightmare situation. It isn’t just the Azov Regiment operating inside the confines of the official Ukrainian military. There’s now spinoff groups like the 98th Azov Battalion that were just formed this Spring. How many more Azov spinoffs are there at this point? And how many more are going to be formed by the end of the war? It’s one more ominous question raised by Ukraine’s Azov embrace.
But we are assured that the 98th Azov Battalion and all the other spinoffs have been ideologically purged of the Nazis. Beyond that, we’re also assured that this purged happened all the way back in 2014 when the Azov Regiment was first formed...and just ignore the fact that the unit’s Nazi patches weren’t replaced until May of 2022:
Also note how these Azov spinoffs aren’t just lightly armed infantry units. They have tanks and bomb-dropping drones. It’s a reminder that Ukraine’s Nazis are going to have tanks and other heavy weapons at their disposal when they inevitably decide to following through on the sentiments expressed above by Yulia Fedosiuk and turn on Ukraine’s democracy:
And let’s not forget what journalist Michael Colborne warned in the above article: that despite being retired, Azov’s black sun symbol “was still being used as part of the official Telegram channel’s profile pic until earlier this year, and it’s not hard to find individual pictures of fighters in newer Azov units — in other words, not the Regiment — wearing that patch.”
That’s really the underlying story here: We are experiment an international pro-Azov public relations push to convince the international public that the Azov Regiment is a truly de-Nazified entity at the same time we are getting reports about the ongoing Nazification of new Azov military spinoffs. This isn’t just the coverup of an ongoing scandal. It’s the coverup of a deepening scandal. Tanks for Nazi units. That’s a scandal. Or at least used to be.
Following up on the reports about an Azov delegation traveling to Israel last month as part of the ongoing international Azov public relations campaign, it’s worth taking a look at a report out of Haaretz published back in June headlined, “The Truth About Ukrainian Nationalism and Claims It’s Tainted by Nazism.” It’s an interesting piece that does do a decent job of laying out many of the key historical facts related to groups like the OUN and OUN‑B and how their history is tied to contemporary groups like Azov. But as we’re going to see, the piece also illustrates one of the phenomena that’s become increasingly common over the last year as Western governments and media have bent over backwards to whitewash the extremist nature of these groups: using historical nuance as a kind of rhetorical shield that warps our understanding of the contemporary situation.
Not that we don’t want historical nuance in our analysis. Nuance is vital. But not when that nuance is used as a unnuanced cudgel that imposes on kind of ‘both-sidesism’ distortion of reality. Nuance like:
* the fact that not ALL members of the Azov Regiments are Nazis.
* The fact that not ALL members of the OUN or OUN‑B engaged in the Holocaust.
* The fact that the OUN‑B eventually turned on the German occupiers
* Many of the people in Ukraine today who publicly endorse groups like Azov do so out of a blind sense of nationalism in response to the war, not out of a fealty to extremist ideologies
* Azov has made a conscious effort to minimize its public embrace of antisemitism or white supremacy. Even founder Andriy Biletsky now denies antisemitism or white supremacy.
* That Azov Regiment was formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military in 2014 and is no longer officially part of the broader Azov movement.
These are all real facts and part of any nuanced understanding of the situation in Ukraine. But they aren’t some sort of counterpoint to the charges that groups like Azov are dominated by Nazi ideologies and systematically coddled by the Ukrainian state. Coddling that is pointed out in the article too. But when we look at one whitewashing piece after another over the past year, that’s how this nuance is used. As a kind of historic ‘both-sidesism’ shield. That’s part of what makes this Haaretz piece so interesting in light of the Azov delegation’s successful Israeli PR tour: that Haaretz piece published in June lays out the damning historical evidence of these groups while also being filled with these kinds of ‘both-sidesisms’ nuances. Both-sidesisms that amount to little more than playing dumb about the situation.
It’s also rather noteworthy that one of the historians who was making pains to argue that Azov has effectively purged itself of antisemitism in recent years is none other that Bellingcat’s Michael Colborne. As we saw in the Haaretz piece about the Azov delegation’s Israeli visit last month, Colborne refutethe idea that the Azov Regiment has somehow been separated from the National Corps and the broader Azov movement. Colborne also pointed out that, while the Azov Regiment dropped the Black Sun/Wolfsangel batches from its uniforms back in May of last year, it’s still not hard to find examples of Azov soldiers with Nazi patches online, especially in the newer Azov units that are being formed in the military. And yet, in this Haaretz article from back in June, he was more or less going along with the ‘denazified Azov’ memes. Two Harretz pieces just six months apart with two very different Azov takes by Colborne. It’s a disturbingly illustrative contrast:
“Canadian journalist Michael Colborne, who monitors the far right in Ukraine and around the world, recently wrote a book on the Azov movement: “From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right.” He says that people who are active in the Ukrainian public sphere often promote the controversial figures, organizations and symbols linked to them. “They do so not because they are right wing-extremists or radical nationalists. They see the positive side of national liberation, but unfortunately don’t want to recognize or deal with the more complex sides of these movements and the horrors they took part in.””
As Michael Colborne describes, the promotion of Ukrainian nationalist figures and organizations by the Ukrainian public sphere isn’t necessarily done by people who are themselves Ukrainian nationalists but have instead embraced a kind of blind fervor induced by the war. At least that’s presumably part of the dynamic at work here. But, of course, there’s a fine line between genuine blind fervor vs people consciously ‘playing dumb’ about the nature of these groups and just playing along with the dominant narratives.
And then, further down in the article, we find Colborne asserting that, not just the Azov Battalion, but the entire Azov movement is almost completely untainted by antisemitism or white supremacy now. Even its overt neo-Nazi founder, Andriy Biletsky, has been avoiding these kind of public endorsements of white supremacy in the past few years.
Now, keep in mind that Colborne was refuting the notion that the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian military was truly ‘de-Nazified’ after dropping the Black Sun and Wolfsangel patches from its uniforms in May of last year, pointing out that it’s not hard to find photos of members of new Azov units — like the 98th Azov battalion — still wearing Nazi patches. That was from a December 2022 Haaretz article a few weeks ago. But here we find Colborne in a Haaretz article six months earlier where he’s more or less voicing the sentiments he just refuted last month.
It’s a great example of how nuance and complexity, while necessary for truly understanding complex phenomena, can also be used as a kind of fog-of-war shield to obscure unpleasant realities. Yes, pointing out how the Azov movement has been taking pains to whitewash its extremist nature by downplaying its antisemitism and white supremacy at the same time the Ukrainian government was taking steps to reduce overt Nazism of the Azov Regiment after incorporating it into the military is indeed helpful nuance for understanding the situation. But not if you end the nuance there. That would just be playing dumb. There’s a lot more nuance to the situation, like the fact that figures like Biletsky are blatantly engaged in a whitewashing public relations campaign for the purpose of deflecting international criticism that people should have the capacity to recognize. It’s that simultaneous embrace of ‘nuance’ coupled with people systematically playing dumb that is driving much of what we’re seeing here and even Colborne, who clearly knows better, was indulging in it:
This is a good time to recall that disturbing May 2022 Reuters piece that allowed Biletsky to completely deny holding any racist or white supremacist views at the same time the Azov movement denied any ongoing ties to Biletsky. It’s like everyone decided to just play dumb.
And a big part of what makes this apparent widespread public blindness to the extremist nature of the Ukrainian nationalist figures like Stepan Bandera or Roman Shukhevych a form of collectively playing dumb is the fact that this embrace of Ukrainian nationalism has been a highly controversial area of public dispute of years, well before the events of 2014. It’s not like Ukrainian society is genuinely oblivious about it’s own history. Ukrainian nationalism has long been a major area of debate, with polls in 2021 by the Razumkov Center found that only 46 percent of Ukrainians supported recognition of the soldiers of the Ukrainian rebel army as having fought for Ukraine’s independence and only thirty-two percent of respondents felt Stepan Bandera’s activities had a positive effect on Ukraine. This is at the same time streets and roads are being renamed for these Nazi-collaborating nationalists. In a saner world, polls like this would be seen as symptomatic of the underlying divisions that are fueling Ukraine’s civil war. Instead, they’re just ignored while all of Ukraine’s ‘allies’ systematically pretend that any criticisms of the way Ukrainian nationalism has been imposed on the public is ‘Russian propaganda’:
Then we get to the ‘nuance’ about the role the Ukrainian nationalist groups like the OUN played in Holocaust. Again, we are finding nuance being used as a kind of historical fog-of-war shield. In this case, Andriy Usach, a historian at Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv and head of the After the Silence organization which is focused on expanding the Ukrainian public’s acknowledgement of the Holocaust, arrives at a kind of ‘well on the one hand...but on the other hand...’ kind of response to questions about the role the OUN and OUN‑B played in the Holocaust with statements like, “Most Ukrainian nationalists, for their part, were not collaborators and did not serve in the police.” Usach then acknowledges that, sure, some nationalists did serve in the police and took part in the Holocaust, but that doesn’t mean they necessarily directly killed people with their own hands, but instead played roles like guarding mass murder sites. And sure, while these historic details might be accurate — not all nationalists were members of the police and not all members of the police directly killed people in the Holocaust — it’s the kind of nuance that nonetheless whitewashes the extensive evidence of the very director roles played by these groups in the Holocaust. A role Usach himself describes further down in the article, when he talks about members of the OUN and UPA killed Jews without orders from the Nazis, mostly out of the belief that the Jews were active or potential collaborators with the Soviets:
And then, we get to the historical nuances regarding the antisemitism of these Ukraine nationalists groups during WWII. As historian Yuri Radchenko describes, the OUN followed “a totalitarian-authoritarian ideology, with a significant antisemitic component and an affinity for Nazi Germany,” with its leader, Andriy Melnyk, considered an even bigger antisemite than Stepan Bandera. Members of Melnyk’s OUN also contributed to the formation of local police auxilary units and served as translators and the SS Einsatzgruppen. So when we hear cautioned nuance about how not all Ukrainian nationalists served in the police or played a role in the Holocaust, it’s important to keep in mind that these are the kinds of details that are being obscured:
Finally, we get to the to crucial observations from Ukrainian political sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko, based in Berlin, who points out what is perhaps the most important observation we can make about the role Ukraine’s far right plays today: its political power isn’t derived from democratic support, which is rather tepid. But they are wildly powerful nonetheless, with a repeated ability to block peace initiatives and prevent the implementation of the Minsk accords with threats of violence. We don’t have to ask whether or not groups like Azov pose a threat to Ukraine’s democracy. They’ve already subverted that democracy multiple times when it comes to the most pressing issue of the day:
This is a good time to recall how an Azov delegation marched to President Zelenskiy presidential office back in Kyiv in August of 2021 to protest what they feared was a peace treaty Zelenskiy was planning on signing. When police demanded that the group submit to a weapons search, the Azov delegation refused and were given the command to attack the police instead. That’s the reality of the kind of power these groups wield in Ukraine. The power to attack the president’s office and get away with it.
But hey, not everyone involved with Azov is a Nazi. So there’s nothing to see here. That’s the nuanced take we’re apparently supposed to have. Because there can be a lot of nuance in playing dumb. Especially when it’s a big collective act of playing dumb together.
@Pterrafractyl–
Never lose sight of the fact that Colborne works for Bellingcat, a propaganda vehicle for Western intel/propaganda.
The notion that the OUN/B “turned” on the Nazis is dubious.
Their most important units either collaborated with, or were absorbed into, the SS.
This is tantamount to equating U.S. troops’ “fragging” of officers late in the war with U.S. troops, in effect, “joining” with the Vietcong/NVA.
Best,
Dave
The West’s plan for ending the war in Ukraine has long been clear: flood Ukraine with so many weapons that it eventually wins. Whether or not that’s a viable plan is far less clear, but that’s the plan. This is a conflict intended to be won militarily.
But as the following blog post by Mark Sleboda reminds us, there’s another path to peace that’s always been sitting there: ridding Ukraine’s leadership of the virulently anti-Russian nationalists who are the original source of the whole conflict to begin with. Now, in fairness, an anti-Ukrainian nationalist platform for peace was, more or less, the platform Volodymyr Zelenskiy ran on and won overwhelmingly with back in 2019. But as we’ve also seen, Zelenskiy was never actually allowed to pursue that peace process and was instead faced with the direct threat of a coup by groups like Azov. It’s a key dynamic here: not only were the virulently anti-Russian Nazi-affiliated groups like Azov and Right Sector the key factors that drove Ukraine’s civil war in the first place back in 2014, but they’ve also been the main groups forcing the continuation of the conflict. Peace negotiations are not allowed as long as Ukraine’s nationalists hold the whip hand.
So with the role that Ukrainian nationalism is playing — both in starting this conflict of keeping it going — in mind, it’s also worth noting that Ukraine’s top general is an open super fan of both Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych. Yes, General Valery Zaluzhny doesn’t hide his deep admiration for the two deeply divisive figures. His desk is adorned with busts of the two, along with the red and black Banderite flag hanging prominently on the wall. And he’s more than happy to show it all to interviewers.
Beyond that, Zaluzhny doesn’t mince words about the goals of the military campaign he’s wage: kill Russians. Or as Zaluzhny put it in an interview last month:
Russians must just be killed. And, most importantly, do not hesitate to do it. Those are the words from a super-fan of the guys who led Ukraine’s holocaust. Just kill Russians. Don’t be afraid. Don’t hesitate. Do you think maybe this kind of thinking has from Ukraine’s top military leadership anything to do with the perpetuation of the conflict? What does this tell the populations of the Donbass about their futures should Ukraine retake those territories? Don’t forget that 20% of Ukraine (pre-2014) was ethnic Russian with a much larger percent who primarily spoke Russian. This is huge chunk of the populace implicitly threatened by the ideology of the leader of Ukraine’s armed forces.
And as we’re going to see in the second article excerpt below, there’s another reason we should be deeply disturbing by the gross anti-Russian sentiments that have gripped Ukraine with no end in sight: it’s spreading. Latvia, in particular, appears to have adopted such an intensely anti-Russian official attitude that people are fearing the country is being torn apart. As we should expect in a country that has a 30% ethnic Russian minority. Yep, Latvia’s nationalists got so empowered over the last year that they basically banned all Russian-language media. And, surprise!, the Russian-speaking Latvian’s aren’t enthusiastic about it.
Even some Latvian politicians who supported the Russian-language bans admit now it went too far. But they aren’t blaming the Latvian nationalists. No. It’s all Vladimir Putin’s fault. At least that’s sentiment expressed.
So we have a situation were anti-Russian nationalism has already reached a “kill Russians, do not hesitate, do not be afraid” fervor at the same time blame for nationalist excesses is being blamed on Putin. Whatever they do to the Russian-speaking populations is ultimately Putin’s fault. It doesn’t bode well:
“This is hardly the first such revelation. Zaluzhnyi is infamously known as open ideological supporter of Stepan Bandera, now officially glorified by the West-backed Kiev Putsch regime as a hero and “founding father” of the new Ukraine under their rule and vision..”
It would be a lot easier to casually dismiss the Kremline’s talking points about the Nazification of Ukraine by a gang of Banderite fascists if the top general of Ukraine’s armed forces wasn’t an open admirer and Stepan Bandera. Because there’s no denying General Zalushny is a Banderite. He makes that abundantly on a regular basis. So it’s really just a question of whether or not Stepan Bandera was a Nazi collaborator fascist. Which of course he was. But that’s the sad state of the current international ‘debate’ over the Nazification of Ukraine: a debate over whether or not Stepan Bandera was actually a Nazi collaborating fascist. Or at least that should be the debate because there’s no debating whether or not Ukraine’s top military leaders are Banderites. But, of course, that’s not a real debate. Bandera was an unambiguous Nazi sympathizer, along with other nationalist heroes from that era like Roman Shukhevych. The top general of Ukraine’s armed forces is a fervent follower of two of Ukraine’s leading Nazi collaborating nationalist heroes. He even made Dmitro Yarosh — founder of the neo-Nazi Right Sector — a senior military advisor. There is no honest debate on this matter:
Zaluzhny isn’t hiding his ideology at all. It’s all right there for interviewers. Including his open desire to “kill Russian.” A desire that he describes as “like a religion”. As he puts it, “Russians and any other enemies must be killed, just killed, and most importantly, we should not be afraid, not hesitate, to do it.” That sure sounds like someone leading what is effectively an ethnic sectarian war against ethnic Russians. And people wonder why the predominantly ethnic-Russia states of Donetsk the Luhansk declared their independence in the first place:
And let’s not forget that there has been almost no meaningful discussion by the leadership in Kyiv or its Western sponsors about what is to be done about the ‘superfluous’ ethnic Russian populations in the separatist territories. What place would they have in a newly reunified Ukraine run by a Banderite Ukrainian national government that views Russians as an enemy that should just be killed without hesitation? The fact that these question effectively aren’t ever asked, at least not in public, is a big clue about the underlying social dynamics at work fueling this conflict. The same underlying social dynamics that fueled the separatism back in 2014. The simple fact of the matter is that minority populations don’t take kindly to fascist nationalists movements that view them as an ‘other’.
And that brings us to the following highly disturbing article from last week about the same virulently anti-Russian dynamics tearing apart another society: Latvia. Yes, with roughly 30 percent of Latvia’s population self-identified as Russia-speaking, the Latvian nationalists have decided to effectively ban Russian language media from the country. And, surprise!, the results are a significant increase in ethnic tensions. Even some folks who supported the language bans are admitting that they were a step too far. And yet, as we’ll see, there’s one person who can be ultimately blamed for the Latvian nationalism threatening Latvia’s social glue: Vladimir Putin. It’s Putin’s fault the Latvian nationalists are running out of control. Those are the sentiments expressed in the article: a growing sense of angst over the recognition the the virulently anti-Russian Latvian nationalism that has swept the country is threatening to tear it apart, coupled with a conviction that the destructive impact of this nationalism-gone-wild is all Putin’s fault:
” But what also worries Nils, a former minister of integration of Latvia, are the ethnic tensions being fanned by the conflict in Ukraine. This little Baltic nation of three million has struggled for decades to avoid conflict with its Russian-speaking minority, which accounts for a third of the population. Now, everything is fragile.”
A third of Latvia’s population is getting systematically labeled as a kind of internal enemy thanks to the turbocharging of Latvian nationalism. It’s happening again. And note how even the figures who now acknowledge that this has gone too far in alienating Latvia’s Russian speaking population choose to blame Putin for the unfolding ethnic tensions. As Martin Bondars, one of the lawmakers who voted for the Russia-language media bans, asserts, “Putin killed minority rights for Russian speakers by manipulating the issue for expansion purpose.” It’s Putin’s fault Latvian nationalists are persecuting the Russian-speaking population and driving the nation into a state of social fragility. You all most couldn’t come up with a better example of the deeply warped collective psychology at work here. The kind of deeply warped collective psychology that guided by a deep sense of historical fealty for the groups that carried out the Holocaust. It’s a warning sign:
Even the Russian citizens who fled to Latvia are forced to feel like they are living on an ejection seat. We’re looking at raw ethnic hatred at work. And it’s being directed at 30% of the population.
It’s hard to see how this ends well, but never forget: whatever happens, it’s all Putin’s fault. Especially the excesses of the nationalists. Everything they do is Putin’s fault. It’s the narrative at work today. And presumably the narrative that will be deployed for decades to come to excuse the madness yet to unfold.
Lies! An complete and total fabrication! That was the Biden White House’s response to a bomb shell report by Seymour Hersh telling the story of how the US planned and executed the Nord Stream pipeline attacks back in September. Plans that apparently started back in December 2021, months before the invasion.
At least that’s the story relayed by Hersh from an anonymous source who appears to have direct knowledge of the planning process, making this the second story in recent weeks involving anonymous sources making remarkable claims about the increasingly non-proxy nature of the US’s proxy-war with Russia published on an investigative journalist’s personal blog. Recall that story published by investigative journalist Jack Murphy about the CIA’s remarkably aggressive sabotage program targeting Russian infrastructure, which was also based entirely on anonymous US intelligence sources. So in just a few weeks, we’ve seen two explosive stories about actions that, if publicly proven, could be interpreted as acts of war against Russia, both based on anonymous sources and published on the personal blogs of investigative journalists. What’s going on here?
It also sounds like keeping the operation hidden from congress was another ‘feature’ of the plot. Because it turns out congressional leads — the “Gang of Eight” — only need to be informed about military operations that involve the Special Operations Command. This plot, however, didn’t involve special operations units. Instead, it relied on deep sea Navy divers alone, who reportedly planted C4 explosives on the pipelines during the June 2022 planned BALTOPS22 Baltic Sea military exercises. That C4 was set up to be triggered by a special sonar-based signal. That signal was apparently triggered by the US’s secret partner in the plot: Norway. On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane dropped a sonar buoy, with the explosions happening a few hours later.
At least that’s the story coming from Hersh’s anonymous source with direct knowledge of the operational planning. And that brings us to what is perhaps the most remarkable detail in this story: the source claims that the CIA and State Department were rather cool on the plan over concerns that it could end up being a diplomatic nightmare if evidence of the US’s involvement became public. Yes, the CIA and State Department are depicted as relative Doves compared to the other agencies involved with this planning. It’s not exactly what one expects when hearing about the behind-the-scenes inter-agency wrestling going on with this proxy war. Which, again, raises the general question of what exactly is going on with this anonymously sourced story. Is this intended to reign the conflict in? Or blow it up even more:
“Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible.”
Nine months of highly secret deliberations, starting well before the Feb 2022 initial invasion. That’s the scenario described by Seymour Hersh’s anonymous source for this story. It was in December of 2021, as Russian troops were building up along the borders, when an interagency group under the direction of Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan. It was during those meetings when the plans of rely on deep sea Navy divers to plant explosives apparently came about. Plans that, as the CIA warned at the time, constituted an act of war if publicly revealed. It’s part of the fascinating context of Hersh’s report: an anonymous source with direct knowledge of these talks planning what amounts to a covert act of war decided to go to Hersh with this story:
And then there’s the grimly fascinating implications of the decision to rely on Navy divers: by using Navy-only personnel — avoiding the using of the US Special Operations Command — the operation could be kept hidden from congressional leaders. It’s the kind of detail that again raises the question of who is Hersh’s anonymous source for this story and what is their motive for this leak?
And that brings us to what appears to have been some serious disagreement over this plan, with the CIA and State Department apparently acting as the voices of caution. It’s remarkable if true given the seeming willingness on the part of the CIA and State Department to ratchet up tensions with Russia at every opportunity over the last decade. It raises the question about who the biggest cheerleaders were for the plan. And, more generally, just how hawkish has the US national security state become when it comes to Russia? Because hearing that the CIA and State Department acting as the voices of relative reason on this plan should be a source of major concern:
Also note this interesting detail on who precisely triggered the explosions: While it sounds like US Navy divers planted the sonar-triggered explosives on pipelines during the BALTOPS22 navy exercises last June, it was a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane that actually dropped the sonar buoy on September 26, 2022. Given the legal disclosure gamesmanship at work here — like using Navy-only divers to avoid disclosure demands with congress — you have to wonder if having Norway ultimately trigger the explosives offered some additional intra-governmental secrecy:
Now, regarding that concerns about Denmark and Sweden finding out about the plot, recall that amazing declaration made by Sweden back in October: the country was refusing to share the conclusions of its investigation with anyone due to undisclosed security concerns. And now we’re told that both Denmark of Sweden were briefed in advance about possible diving activity in the area:
Finally, it’s worth asking what exactly the blowing up of Nord Stream did to the profit margins of the European energy giants. Because it sounds like the outbreak of war, in general, was great for their profits thanks to the elevated prices resulting from the conflict. What happened to those profit margins after the pipeline blew up and prices went even higher? Sure, we can expect Gazprom’s profits to decline as a result of the attack, but what about the companies that were making massive profits simply reselling Gazprom’s gas?
This is a good time to note that BP, TotalEnergies, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Equinor (Norway’s state-backed oil company) all reported record profits for 2022.
So we’ll see if this story gets fleshed out any more or if it’s ultimately just dropped and forgotten. At least forgotten by western audiences. Russia presumably isn’t forgetting about the latest evidence that it’s locked in a secret direct war with the West any time soon.
It’s a Bird...It’s a Plane!
It’s Superman!Oh F#ck, it’s a balloon! Close the skies!That was one of the response zany balloon-related stories from the past 24 hours. A “balloon-like object in the sky” managed to prompt the closing of an entire nation’s airspace for over an hour on Tuesday. But that story didn’t come from the US. Or Canada. Surprisingly, all things considered. No, that story came out of Moldova, the small European nation that happens to share a border with Ukraine.
As we’re going to see, there’s another shared interest that appears to be driving this story: Moldova as EU ambitions too. Ambitions that have so angered Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin that Moldova now facing a national destabilization plot. At least those were the claims made by Moldovan President Maia Sandu on Monday, one day before the balloon scare. A plot had been discovered and Moldova was an alert.
So that’s part of the context of the balloon scare: it followed an ominous press conference where Moldova’s president warned the public of a looming national Russian-led destabilization plot. A plot with the ultimate goal of using Moldova against Ukraine in the conflict.
But there’s another key piece of context to keep in mind here: the plot wasn’t first public revealed by President Sandu. Nope, that role fell to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who warned EU leaders about a plot against Ukraine last week in Brussels. A warning from Zelenskiy that came one day before the surprising resignation announcement by Moldovan Prime minister Natalia Gavrilita. Moldova has had quite a week. Hence the jittery nerves, presumably.
So given that this whole ‘Russia plot’ story started with Ukraine, but now appears to have been embraced by the Moldovan government, we have to ask: what is the evidence for the plot? Has anyone other than Ukraine — who claims to have intercepted Russia communications revealing the plot — confirmed the allegations? Nope, it appears that the evidence for the plot is coming entirely from Ukraine’s intelligence services, which passed the evidence on to Moldova. That’s the larger context of the Moldovan balloon scare: it came days after a national security crisis seemingly generated from a Ukraine intelligence report about the looming Russian plot against the country:
“Moldova’s civil aviation authority said it acted after receiving a defence ministry report that a small object resembling a weather balloon had been seen over the north of the country, close to the border with Ukraine.”
It’s a balloon! Shut down the skies! That happened.
But as the following article reminds us, this kind of balloon hysterics didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened the day after Moldova’s President public announced the determination by Moldova’s security forces about a Russian destabilization plot. A plot first publicly revealed by none other than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky:
“Sandu said the alleged Russian plot’s purpose is “to overthrow the constitutional order, to change the legitimate power from (Moldova’s capital) Chisinau to an illegitimate one,” which she said “which would put our country at the disposal of Russia, in order to stop the European integration process.””
A plot to block Moldova’s EU integration process. By overthrowing the Moldovan government and replacing it with a pro-Kremlin government. And then use Moldova against Ukraine. That’s the plot President Maia Sandu public revealed on Monday, along with calls to adopt draft laws to equip its Intelligence and Security Service, and the prosecutor’s office, “with the necessary tools to combat more effectively the risks to the country’s security.” It’s a giant emergency requiring an emergency response:
But this public announcement didn’t just suddenly happen. It was preceded by Ukrainian president Zelensky’s own public declaration about the discovery of the plot. Yep, it was Volodymyr Zelensky who made this a public issue. Sandu had to either deny the story, or act on it:
So with Moldova’s president publicly making these claims following the Ukrainian president making the same claims, we have to ask: did Moldova actually confirm these claims themselves? Or is this all based entirely on the Ukrainian government’s allegations? Take a guess. A very cynical guess:
“The Moldovan Intelligence and Security Service (SIS) confirmed on February 9 that it had received information about the alleged plan from its Ukrainian counterpart, but said it could not give any more details “because there’s the risk of jeopardizing different ongoing operational activities.””
This wasn’t a case of two different intelligence services triangulating towards the same conclusion. The ‘evidence’ is coming all coming from one source: Ukrainian intelligence:
And there we have it: either Ukraine detected a real Russia plot to destabilize Moldova. Or this is a Ukrainian plot to whip up propaganda in a neighbor. Either way, there’s a plot afoot.
It was a well-timed surprise: President Biden’s trip to Ukraine was indeed an unscheduled surprise when he suddenly arrived in Kiev one day before the 1 year anniversary of the start of Russia’s ‘Special Military Operation’ in Ukraine. At least, it was an unscheduled surprise for most of the world. Some people and governments obviously had to know in advance.
And while the timing was obviously intended to be a kind of prebuttal to Vladimir Putin’s speech to the Russian people, it’s worth noting another story bubbling beneath the surface that could be shaping Biden’s surprising European tour in interesting ways behind the scenes: Sy Hersh’s explosive report alleging the US and Norway carried out the Nord Stream bombings, published just a couple of weeks ago. Sure, that report has receive minimal coverage in the US media, but it’s hard to imagine that this is a story that’s just going to go away. Especially in the countries most heavily impacted like Germany.
And that brings us to a fascinating new interview of Hersh in Jacobin where Hersh addresses some of the criticisms he’s received for his initial report while also giving some incredible new details on the story. Including one particular detail that could go a long way in explaining why it is that the CIA — the agency that apparently came up with the bombing plan in first place — has seemingly soured on the whole operation and blame it on Biden: as Hersh tells it, while eight C4 bombs were planted on the four pipelines (two bombs apiece), only six of those bombs exploded! Whoops. Keep in mind that only three of the four pipelines (Nord Stream 1 and 2 both have two pipelines) were actually hit. So this new detail is consistent with that fact.
This is a good point to recall what Hersh described as one of the points of tension between Biden and the intelligence community when this plot was being executed: initially, the plan was to place the bombs on the pipeline in June of 2022 during the BALTOPS Naval war games, and then blow them up soon afterwards. But Biden got cold feet and wanted to instead put them on a timer that could be set off at a later date. This was done, but with concerns that the longer they waited the higher the odds of the sonar triggering mechanism not working. And, sure enough, it sounds like that’s what happened. Two bombs didn’t go off. And were presumably just left there, as massive evidence to a massive crime.
This is also a good time to recall how Sweden declared back in October that it wasn’t going to share its investigative conclusions with any other countries. It immediately raised the question of what Sweden had already found. Well, how about two unexploded C4 bombs?
Another new detail in the interview is that Hersh insists that, while the people who build pipelines weren’t formally told what was planned, they knew. In other words, this is an open secret inside the industry. Which presumably means it’s an open secret in governments across the world.
Interestingly, Hersh also suggests that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also knew what was coming. If so, that would be quite a scandal for the German government too.
Hersh also provides some pushback on one of the main criticisms he’s received since putting out the initial report: no open source records show any flights by Norwegian planes in the area in the days leading up to the September 26 explosions. As Hersh puts it, any serious intelligence operation takes into account open source data. Someone took care of it. It’s the kind of detail that isn’t just relevant in this story but all sort of reports. Open source intelligence isn’t somehow perfect. It can be spoofed too.
So that’s the huge update to this story: the mission was a success...and also a wildly scandalous potential failure that potentially left two of the eight C4 bombs still attached. And this is all an open secret.:
“What I’ve done is simply explain the obvious. It was just a story that was begging to be told. In late September of 2022, eight bombs were supposed to go off; six went off under the water near the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, in the area where it is rather shallow. They destroyed three of the four major pipelines in the Nord Stream 1 and 2.”
Eight bombs were planted, but only six went off, incapacitating only three of the four pipelines. That’s the ironically explosive detail in this Hersh interview that potentially adds a whole new layer to this story. Because if two bombs didn’t go off, that implies some potentially powerful evidence was still left attached to the crime scene. Oops.
So is that the key detail that explains why at least one person in the US intelligence community with direct knowledge of the planning and execution of the plot is going to Sy Hersh with a narrative about an outraged intelligence community that only belated soured on the whole plot? Because one of the mysteries lingering over Hersh’s report is the basic motive. Who came to him with this story and why? Because as Hersh describes, the CIA seemed to be fully on board with the plot from the outset. It was their idea in the first place. But, we are told, they came to view the whole thing as a giant mistake with potentially very negative repercussions. So, again, is the fact that two of the eight C4 bombs apparently didn’t go off part of the motive here?
Let’s also recall another detail from Hersh’s initial report: the bombs were planted during the BALTOPS Naval war games in June of 2022, in initial plans of blowing the pipelines shortly afterwards. But Biden got cold feet and made a last-minute decision to modify the operation and set the bombs up to be detonated at a later date using a sonar buoy. But, as we were also told, there were concerns that the triggering devices wouldn’t work over time. And, sure enough, we’re now learning that two of the bombs didn’t go off, potentially leaving some this highly inflammatory evidence (literally) just sitting there, waiting to create an international scandal. So, again, is that the reason for the intelligence community’s apparently sudden souring on the plot? In other words, are we looking at preemptive ass covering? And is the CIA trying to throw Biden under the bus for a plan that went awry? These are just some of the huge questions raised by the revelation that only 6 and the 8 bombs went off:
But then we get this other revelation: the people who own companies that build pipelines know the real story. That’s a lot of people. Well connected influential people. In other words, this is an open secret:
And yet, despite that ‘open secret’ status, we are also told that this operation was so secret even institutions that should have known were not informed. It’s a scandalous open secret:
And that ‘open secret’ status brings us to this other new detail Hersh brings up in response to a number of criticism his initial report got over the claims that open source data showed no Norwegian plane activity in the area where the sonar buoy was allegedly dropped on the days leading up to the September 26 explosions. As Hersh put it, “there were people on the mission who took care of this issue.” That points to another area where this operation could have achieved ‘open secret’ status:
And note how Hersh is hinting at what appears to be a more widespread anger inside the CIA at Biden for running this operation, despite his report apparently relying on a single anonymous source. We are told that at least part of the anger inside the CIA was over the perception that Biden did the operation as a kind of deliberate punishment against Germany. And yet, Hersh also suggests that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz may have been informed by Biden in advance of the operation. It points towards another massive ‘open secret’ angle to this story: if the Germany knew, that’s a pretty massive scandal for that government too. That fear of international scandal is at least part of the motive Hersh’s anonymous source is saying is behind this CIA anger directed at Biden, along with an apparent disgust with how Germany is being treated. Again, outrage and disgust over a plot the CIA apparently hatched in the first place:
Again, this was an operation that the CIA came up with in the first place! So are they really concerned about the impact on Germany? Or the fact that the incriminating evidence was left at the scene of the crime? Time will tell. Possibly in in form of some sort of big international scandal accusations involving all sorts of fingerpointing and denials. Let’s just hope the next phase of this story doesn’t include a slew of new mysterious explosions. But we’ll see. There’s unfortunately a variety of ways to respond to unofficial open secrets.
He’s ruffling feathers again. Professor Jeffrey Sachs said the things one isn’t supposed to say in polite company, this time at the UN. Sachs ended up getting invited to make a presentation before the UN Security Council during a session when Russia accused the countries carrying out their Nord Stream investigations — Sweden, Denmark, and Germany — a refusing to give Russia any information. As a result, Russia is calling on the UN to conduct an independent investigation. Calls echoed by Sachs, who made the case of US culpability while cited the new reporting by Sy Hersh.
This isn’t the for first time Sachs made these allegations. In fact, he had a Bloomberg TV cut short back in October for making the same suggestion. But it’s the first time he made these allegations before the UN Security Council. So we’ll see if these calls for a UN investigation gets any traction. But as Sachs notes, at this point Hersh’s report represents the only publicly available accounting of what happened.
So while it’s hard to imagine the UN actually agreeing to an independent investigation, it’s not hard to imagine that these calls for an independent investigation are going to prompt some sort of release to the public of the investigative findings. At least the findings the investigators are comfortable releasing at this point. Which presumably will just be more reiterations of ‘we have no idea who did this’, but with a few more details: