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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
Celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the 14th Waffen SS Division in Lviv, Ukraine in summer of 2018.
COMMENT: Since the Maidan coup in 2014, we have detailed the return of the OUN/B fascists to power in Ukraine, noting their dominance of the police and national security establishments–areas of control that yield preeminence over the political and civic affairs of that unfortunate nation.
(Some of the many posts and programs documenting the ascent of the OUN/B successor organizations include: FTR#‘s 1014, 1030, 1071, 1072, 1098 through 1101.)
The Institute of National Memory is executing a government mandate to erase and rewrite the World War II history of Ukraine and the OUN/B, making it a crime to publicly criticize the OUN/B and its auxiliary elements.
Recently, the UN General Assembly voted on a resolution condemning celebrations of Nazism. Only the U.S. and Ukraine voted against it.
The old expression “A picture is worth a thousand words” might be useful to employ, here.
We are aware that veteran listeners have seen many these before, including in recent posts.
It would be refreshing if more of you would take the bit in your mouths and run with it–alerting others to a phenomenon that even the uninitiated can grasp.
Picture #1 is above, right:
Combat helmets of the Azov Battalion.
Picture #2 at right: taken from German TV station ZDF. It shows the combat helmets of the Azov Battalion, which has not only received U.S. and Canadian training and equipment, but which has been a vehicle for the recruitment and deployment of like-minded interests abroad, including the U.S. Note the swastika and SS rune on the helmets.
A key financier of, recruiter and spokesman for, the unit is Roman Zvarych, the administrative assistant for Yaroslav Stetzko, the World War II leader of the Nazi collaborationist state in Ukraine, who oversaw the application of Nazi ethnic cleansing methods in that puppet state. Zvarych was the Minister of Justice (equivalent of our Attorney General) for Ukraine under the Viktor Yuschenko government and both Timoshenko governments.
Oleh Tihanybok, leader of the OUN/B successor organization Svoboda.
Picture#3 is Oleh Tihanybok, the leader of Svoboda, one of the principal organizations in the Maidan coup–seen at right giving an all-too-familiar salute.
Professor Ivan Katchanovski has given us an exhaustive, meticulous study of the ballistic and forensic evidence of the critical sniper shootings in the Maidan coup, demonstrating conclusively that sniper fire striking both pro-Maidan demonstrators and police came from buildings occupied by Svoboda.
Please examine the linked video in this post.
Any questions?
Picture sequence #4: June 30th has been established as a commemorative celebration in Lvov [Lviv]. It was on June 30, 1941, when the OUN‑B announced an independent Ukrainian state in the city of Lviv. That same day marked the start of the Lviv Pograms that led to the death of thousands of Jews.
June 30th is also the birthday of Roman Shukhevych, commander of the Nachtigall Battalion that carried out the mass killings. The city of Lviv is starting “Shukhevychfest” to be held in Lviv on June 30th, commemorating the pogrom and Shukhevych’s birthday. Shukhevych was named a “Hero of the Ukraine” by Viktor Yuschenko. A photographic essay of the pogrom led by Shukhevych and conducted by his Nachtigall Battalion can be found here.
Even MORE Fun With Science: Earthquake Weaponry
Here’s a story that’s notable for how exceedingly rare a story like this is: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy just publicly chastised both the US and UK governments for raising excessive alarm over the prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. “There are no tanks in the streets. But media give the impression, if one is not here, that we have a war, that we have army in the streets... That’s not the case. We don’t need this panic.” That was Zelenskiy’ message to journalist at a news conference for foreign media. Yes, Ukraine’s government is the one taking the ‘everybody calm down...’ role in this.
But part of what makes this public rebuke of Ukraine’s sabre-rattling allies so significant is that it comes less than a day after we got reports that President Biden warned Zelenskiy that there is a “distinct possibility” of a Russian invasion of Ukraine in February. These warnings of course have been ongoing for months. But February is widely seen as the optimal month for an invasion in terms of the ground conditions so it’s kind of ‘now or never’ for this round of alarmism. That’s the context that makes Zelenskiy’s words of caution so remarkable. If there was any truth to the warnings about an impending Russian invasion, that invasion would be just around the corner. And here we have Zelenskiy telling the world its all hype at the same time the US is insisting war is just around the corner:
““President Biden said that there is a distinct possibility that the Russians could invade Ukraine in February,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne said. “He has said this publicly and we have been warning about this for months. ””
A Russian invasion is a “distinct possibility”, as the US has been warning for months. Of course, it was a lot less alarming when February wasn’t just around the corner. But here we are. The warnings of an impending attack have indeed been consistent for months. It’s just a lot more impending now:
And it’s that consistent warning of a looming devastating Russian invasion that makes the public rebuke by President Zelenskiy so much more remarkable. As Zelenskiy put it, We don’t need this panic. Meaning we’ve been hearing months and months of panic:
“Speaking at a news conference for foreign media, Zelenskiy said: “There are no tanks in the streets. But media give the impression, if one is not here, that we have a war, that we have army in the streets... That’s not the case. We don’t need this panic.””
We don’t need this panic. Huh. You wouldn’t know it from all the panic. It’s a remarkable statement. He even called the bellicose rhetoric warning of impending war a “mistake”. It’s like the dead opposite of the approach the US has been taking:
How are we to interpret this public scuffle over whether or not an full-scale invasion really is on the verge of happening? Was it driven by a fear over the impact all the fearmongering could have on the Ukrainian public’s psyche? Or driven more by a fear that all the rhetoric was actually make war more likely? Who knows. But it is an incredible comment on the situation that it’s the Ukrainian government itself playing the calming role in a war of words over whether or not Ukraine is about to be torn asunder.
What is the current showdown between the West and Russia actually about? It’s the question that looms over the situation that’s been simmering for months now. A question that became much more acute after reports of 3,000 more US troops getting deployed to Eastern Europe following Vladimir Putin’s calls for a return to the NATO borders of 1997. So it’s pretty convenient that a new book was published by Mary Elise Sarotte back in November that explores exactly that question. Because as the following article describes, if we’re going to answer the question of what is behind this Post-Cold War stalemate between Russia and the West, we have to go back and understand what Russia views as a series of ‘original sins’ made by the West in the early years of the post-Cold War era. Notably, the sin of expanding NATO. A sin that could, in theory, be repeated with countries like Ukraine.
It’s those early negotiations — or ‘negotiations — that’s explored in Sarotte’s book, “Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate”. It more or less comes down to two sets of pledges. The first was in early 1990, when the West was still trying to get the USSR to agree to German reunification. It was West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who gave a number of speeches assuring the Soviets that there will be no NATO troops on East Germany should reunification be allowed. AS he put it in one address, “An extension of NATO’s territory to the east, that is, nearer to the borders of the Soviet Union, will not happen.” The problem was that his boss, Chancellor Helmut Kohl, completely disagreed with this policy and believed that the West should lock in as many gains as it could before the political climate shifted.
By Feb 1990, James Baker was making similar pledges. It was Baker’s pledge that formed the basis for Russian complaints about broken promises to this day. As Baker told Gorbachev during a trip to Moscow, “Would you prefer to see a unified Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces, or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position?” As was the case with Genschler and Kohl, Baker’s boss, George H. W. Bush, didn’t actually agree with this policy. But that statement by Baker was reportedly treated by Soviet leaders as essentially a US pledge not to expand NATO as long as German reunification was allowed. As Sarotte write, “leaders in Moscow would point to this exchange as an agreement barring NATO from expanding beyond its eastern Cold War border. Baker and his aides and supporters, in contrast, would point to the hypothetical phrasing and lack of any written agreement afterward as a sign that the secretary had only been test-driving one potential option of many.”
The second major area of the Russian complaints are centered around the actual 1997 agreement signed by Boris Yeltsin that more or less gives Russia’s blessing on the expansion of NATO. The episode starts off with a night in Warsaw, when Polish President Lech Walesa managed to persuade Yeltsin to issue a joint statement that the prospect of Poland joining NATO was “not contrary to the interest of any state, also including Russia.” It’s the kind of story that’s the perfect example of how pliable Yeltsin truly was at this point in his presidency. Yeltsin faced immediate domestic backlash on the statement and tried to backtrack by referring back to the 1990 Agreement on German Reunification, arguing that the language in that agreement precluded the expansion of NATO eastward. Therefore, under this interpretation of the agreement, Yeltsin couldn’t endorse the idea of a NATO expansion because the West already agreed that could never happen.
Of course, as we’ll see, the Clinton administration had already explored the legal implications of that 1990 German reunification agreement and concluded that there were no such restrictions. The Germany government agreed with this assessment, although the German Foreign Ministry did acknowledge that Russian claims contained a “political and psychological substance we had to take seriously.” In the end, the US pursued the approach of just trying to bribe Russia with money. Yeltsin ended up signing an agreement that condoned NATO’s expansion later that year. Clinton reportedly couldn’t believe how one-sided the deal was in the end.
The overall picture that emerges is one where, technically speaking, the expansion of NATO may have been legal based on the agreements made. But from an ethical standpoint, these were agreements made in bad faith at a time when Russia was effectively forced to negotiate under a state of national duress:
“The many arguments, myths, and crises that have arisen from this one utterance led Mary Elise Sarotte, a historian and professor at Johns Hopkins University, to borrow it for the title of the book she published last November, “Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate.” Sarotte has the receipts, as it were: her authoritative tale draws on thousands of memos, letters, briefs, and other once secret documents—including many that have never been published before—which both fill in and complicate settled narratives on both sides.”
This reanalysis by historian Mary Elise Sarotte of the broken promises made at the end of the Cold War published last November couldn’t have had better timing. So what did Sarotte find in her exploration of many documents never published before? Well, the story that emerges appears to boil down to two key events: first, pledges by the West not to expand NATO into Eastern Europe made in 1990 that Russia was later told weren’t official because in writing. And second, a 1997 statement made by Boris Yeltsin that can potentially be interpreted as a condoning NATO’s expansion as not a threat to Russia. And in both cases, the prevailing theme was that these agreements were, if anything, a kind of patronizing courtesy made by the world’s lone super-power towards a weak Russia that were never really necessary because the West didn’t feel it actually needed Russia’s approval for these decisions anyway.
But here’s part of what makes those 1990 pledges NOT to expand NATO into Eastern Europe so interesting: the pledges were made in the context of trying to get Moscow’s agreement to allow for the reunification of Germany. As one of the officially recognized victors in WWII, the USSR retained a political veto over Germany’s reunification. The first pledges to not expand NATO into Eastern Europe were floated by West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who repeatedly gave speeches making the kinds of promises that would gain Moscow’s approval for reunification. And yet Genscher’s boss, Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was completely opposed to these promises. Kohl believed the West should lock in as many gains as possible. At least we’re told Kohl eventually came to arrive at these views. So the question of whether or not Kohl ever backed Genscher’s pledges remains an open question:
Then, in Feb 1990, James Baker more or less made Genscher’s proposal to Moscow, but this time it was the US government making the offer. Except, like Genscher, Baker’s boss didn’t support the offer and it was quickly abandoned for an alternate deal that only German troops could be stationed in Eastern Germany. That was the only limitation on the placement of new NATO forces when Gorbachev signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in Sept 1990:
So as part of the reunification process for Germany, pledges the West never intended to keep were kind of sort of made, but not made in write. But the expansion of NATO hadn’t happened yet. Flash forward to 1997, and we get to the second area of contention: in 1997, Polish President Lech Walesa managed to persuade Boris Yeltsin to issue a joint statement that the prospect of Poland joining NATO was “not contrary to the interest of any state, also including Russia.” Following a domestic backlash over the statement, Yeltsin quick backtracked and arguing that the 1990 agreement on German reunification precluded the expansion of NATO. In effect, Yeltsin was arguing that his joint statement with Walesa was was more an expression of sentiment, not policy. But in the end, the US and Germany determined Russia’s objections had no legal basis, even if the German foreign ministry acknowledged that Russian claims contained a “political and psychological substance we had to take seriously.” Which obviously wasn’t taken seriously. Instead, the US basically bribed Yeltsin into signing an agreement later that year that allowed for the expansion of NATO:
Will any of this long-standing disputes actually get resolved as a result of the current showdown? It’s hard to see that actually happening. And yet that Russian sense of betrayal and alarm over NATO isn’t dissipating at the end of this showdown either. The underlying issues are poised to do nothing other than fester until the next crisis. And that points to what’s so disturbing about this situation: a diplomatic resolution isn’t really viable. NATO isn’t going to kick out all of those new members. But a non-diplomatic resolution isn’t really viable either. It would be WWIII. Diplomacy isn’t a solution, but neither is war. So how does this seemingly irreconcilable conflict get reconciled? We’ll find out, and probably learn quite a few things about new forms of hybrid warfare along the way.
Sorry for the rambling post here, but it’s difficult to capture the scope of this crisis from one angle.
Some questions that come to mind while reading the New Yorker piece are:
Would this perspective on NATO incursion into Russian proximity be a narrow piece of perhaps a larger picture/plan that involves further attempts to increase economic dominance over Russia by western allies? Does the framing of this issue around Russian frustration over NATO incursion hold Russians as overly defensive or sensitive over what many could see as a minor detail?
It seems this issue could have several components beyond Russia’s annoyance at NATO’s broken promises. There should be room to discuss how this move by the US and allies will achieve economic power in the region and choke Russian influence over markets, especially oil and natural resources. Do these actions also represent some kind of vengeance motivation for Russia’s support against US-led efforts in Syria and elsewhere? As well, when do these provocations by Western interests drive a stronger Sino-Russian alliance, with perhaps broader outreach to Iran and then South and Central American countries targeted by American sanctions?
Additionally, there seems to be a Wag the Dog component to this story, as it diverts attention away from domestic policy failures and overall misery to a country and land that most registered voters can’t locate on any map. Whichever PR firm was tabbed many years ago to perform this anti-Russia/Putin campaign has absolutely succeeded as that sentiment is evident throughout the American political spectrum.
And now, thanks to the main post by Mr. Emory here it’s plain to see how the US exports fascism and provides support via money and weapons to fascist interests to obtain regional dominance. If I’m not mistaken, this initiation of turmoil was prescribed for Eurasia in Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard (and likely other works).
How close did the world just get to full blown war in Ukraine? That’s just one of the many dark questions raised by what appears to be some sort of gross provocation that just transpired in Ukraine: a kindergarten was shelled in the village of Stanytsia Luhanska in the separatist region of Luhansk near the border of the conflict. No children were injured in the attack, but Ukrainian news reports that the school was full of 37 kids at the time. The main play area of the building was destroyed and two teachers were injured.
The Ukrainian government and US immediately labeled it a false flag provocation carried out by Russia. Importantly, there are no reports yet of anyone being able to determine where the attack actually originated. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken framed the attack as an example of the kind of false flag attack the US had been warning about for weeks now. And that’s part of what makes this story so disturbing. First we have weeks of warnings about Russian false flag attacks. Warnings that double as cover for Ukraine’s far right militia should they decide to create a provocation of their own. And now we have exactly the kind of provocation play out that all these vocal warnings were supposed to help ward off in the first place and they’re immediately labeled a false flag. It’s like a recipe as been created for encouraging false flag attacks pretending to be the other side’s false flag attacks. WWIII could be triggered by a false flag false flag:
““We have reason to believe they are engaged in a false flag operation to have an excuse to go in. Every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine and attack Ukraine,” Biden told reporters at the White House.”
It’s explicit: the US is accusing Russia of planning false flag operations that look like war crimes committed by the Ukrainian side of the conflict. Secretary of State Blinken even described various possible scenarios, including strikes against civilians and events that could be characterized as ethnic cleansing or a genocide. The kind of event we can reasonably expect Ukraine’s neo-Nazi battalions would indeed absolutely love to commit against civilians. So we’re seeing a situation unfold where Ukraine’s far right militias have basically been given preemptive cover to carry out a massacre and have it blamed on Russia.
But the most alarming part of this story these statements roughly coincided with what appears to be a real attempted massacre, with the shelling of a kindergarten in the village of Stanytsia Luhanska, located in the separatist Luhansk region. A kindergarten that had people inside at the time. Both sides are accusing each other of the attack while Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is already calling the event a “big provocation”, which is kind of an understatement. You almost couldn’t come up with a more provocative target than a kindergarten with people inside:
Really, what are the odds that the building one hit in this attack was a kindergarten with people inside. And not just people. Children. That’s according to the following Daily Beast article that cites Ukrainian news reports of 37 children inside at the time of the attack. None of the children where injured but the two injured adults were indeed teachers at the school. The part of the school that was directly hit was described as the main play area of the school. So we almost had one of the worst provocations imaginable play out, raising the grim question of what’s next:
“The kindergarten in the town of Stanytsya Luhanska—one of the most dangerous places along the battle-scarred frontline—was reportedly full of children at the time of the attack, but they were not said to have been injured. Two teachers were hurt, according to Ukrainskaya Pravda, which cited Ukrainian volunteers. The Ukrainian military’s Joint Forces Operation said civilians in the area had been evacuated in light of the shelling, which it said demonstrated “particular cynicism” by Russian proxies.”
A kindergarten full of children, 37 of them. We’re just lucky none of them were injured and they weren’t all playing in the main play area. Nearly 10 years after the Sandy Hook massacre it’s like someone was planning a Sandy Hook-inspired trigger for WWIII:
Keep in mind that whoever carried out this attack either had very poor aim, very bad luck, or was willing to kill a large number of young children. It’s not like there was a large number of buildings hit. It’s as if it was targeted. So if this really was a false flag attack carried out by the separatists themselves, they would have had to be willing to basically slaughter their own kids. That’s the story we’re being asked to buy here.
And, again, this is just the latest event taking place in an environment that itself is like one giant provocation for WWIII. It’s like a showdown that won’t accept no for an answer. And whoever carried out that attack is still out there. There’s still plenty of opportunities for another Sandy Hook-inspired trigger for WWIII.