FTR#‘s 1259 and 1260 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lies?, Parts 21 & 22

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. . . .”

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. . . .”

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. . . .”

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. . . .”

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.

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. . . .”

Ukrainian Phoenix Program?

The cleans­ing pro­gram being imple­ment­ed by the Zelen­sky gov­ern­ment and the SBU intel­li­gence ser­vice of Ukraine appears to be a Euro­pean man­i­fes­ta­tion of the Phoenix Pro­gram: ” . . . . Dou­glas Valen­tine, author of the sem­i­nal book The Phoenix Pro­gram (1990), in a recent inter­view told me that Phoenix went pub­lic in 1968 under the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that it was ‘pro­tect­ing the peo­ple from terrorism’—like with the SBU pro­grams today. The deten­tions were large­ly designed to encour­age defec­tions while strik­ing fear in the pub­lic. . . .” ” . . . . Valen­tine . . . sees eerie par­al­lels between the orig­i­nal Phoenix pro­gram and Zelensky’s oper­a­tions today. In both cas­es, Valen­tine told CAM in an exclu­sive inter­view, ‘neu­tral­ism wasn’t tol­er­at­ed.’ . . .” Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

Bringin’ It All Back Home? Again?

West­ern intel­li­gence agencies–American in particular–appear to be reca­pit­u­lat­ing “Oper­a­tion Cyclone” in Ukraine. That oper­a­tion involved the train­ing and oper­a­tional inser­tion of Islamists into Afghanistan in that coun­try’s war against the Sovi­et Union. “Cyclone 2” entails the use of Nazi/White Suprema­cist com­bat­ants in a clan­des­tine effort against Rus­sia in Ukraine. An impor­tant arti­cle from “The Gray Zone” reit­er­ates the warn­ing sound­ed here for years agout the “blow­back” this will be hav­ing in the U.S. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

Latest Patreon Talks, 6/10 through 6/12: Analysis of “New York Times” Print Edition for 6/10/2022

In the lat­est Patre­on talks, Mr. Emory goes through the West­ern print edi­tion of “The New York Times,” pre­sent­ing the deep polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal con­text under­ly­ing the arti­cles and op-ed pieces. On Sun­day, 6/12, Dave dis­cuss­es the psy­cho­log­i­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal aspects of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, includ­ing spec­u­la­tion con­cern­ing the “Bio-Psy-Op-Apoc­a­lypse’s effect on the pub­lic reac­tion to the Ukraine War. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top mil­i­tary med­ical offi­cer dis­cussing an order to cas­trate Russ­ian males is an eye-open­er. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

FTR#1247 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lies?, Part 20

This pro­gram fea­tures a read­ing of an inter­view done with Colonel Jacques Baud by The Pos­til.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis: As with the two ana­lyt­i­cal pieces Baud did on the con­duct and progress of the war itself, Colonel Baud stress­es that the pic­ture of the Ukraine War being pre­sent­ed by West­ern politi­cians and media voic­es con­sists of what they want to hap­pen, rather than the infor­ma­tion that would be pro­vid­ed by a good intel­li­gence ser­vice, which would present the sit­u­a­tion as it actu­al­ly exists:

1.–“ . . . . As a result, we tend to por­tray the ene­my as we wished him to be, rather than as he actu­al­ly is. This is the ulti­mate recipe for fail­ure. . . .”
2.–“ . . . . First, most peo­ple, includ­ing politi­cians and jour­nal­ists, still con­fuse Rus­sia and the USSR. For instance, they don’t under­stand why the com­mu­nist par­ty is the main oppo­si­tion par­ty in Rus­sia. . . .”
3.–“ . . . . Most peo­ple, includ­ing the top brass, tend to con­fuse ‘Rus­sia’ and ‘USSR.’ As I was in NATO, I could hard­ly find some­one who could explain what Russia’s vision of the world is or even its polit­i­cal doc­trine. Lot of peo­ple think Vladimir Putin is a com­mu­nist. . . .”
4.–“ . . . . In 2014, dur­ing the Maid­an rev­o­lu­tion in Kiev, I was in NATO in Brus­sels. I noticed that peo­ple didn’t assess the sit­u­a­tion as it was, but as they wished it would be. This is exact­ly what Sun Tzu describes as the first step towards fail­ure. . . .”
5.–“ . . . . We like to call him [Putin] a ‘dic­ta­tor,’ but we have a hard time to explain what we mean by that. As exam­ples, peo­ple come up invari­ably with the assas­si­na­tion of such and such jour­nal­ist or for­mer FSB or GRU agents, although evi­dence is extreme­ly debat­able. . . .”
6.–“ . . . . the Ger­man doc­tors in the Char­ité Hos­pi­tal in Berlin, were not able to iden­ti­fy any nerve agent in Navalny’s body. Sur­pris­ing­ly, they pub­lished their find­ingsin the respect­ed med­ical review The Lancet, show­ing that Naval­ny prob­a­bly expe­ri­enced a bad com­bi­na­tion of med­i­cine and oth­er sub­stances. The Swedish mil­i­tary lab that ana­lyzed Navalny’s blood—redacted the name of the sub­stance they dis­cov­ered, which is odd since every­body expect­ed ‘Novi­chok’ to be men­tioned. . . .”
7.–“ . . . . In fact, it appeared clear to me that nobody in NATO had the slight­est inter­est in Ukraine. The main goal was to desta­bi­lize Rus­sia. . . .”
8.–“ . . . . The prob­lem here is that these far-right fanat­ics threat­ened to kill Zelen­sky were he to try to make peace with Rus­sia. As a result, Zelen­sky found him­self sit­ting between his promis­es and the vio­lent oppo­si­tion of an increas­ing­ly pow­er­ful far-right move­ment. In May 2019, on the Ukrain­ian media Obozre­va­tel, Dmytro Yarosh, head of the ‘Pravy Sek­tor’ mili­tia and advis­er to the Army Com­man­der in Chief, open­ly threat­ened Zelen­sky with death, if he came to an agree­ment with Rus­sia. . . .”
9.–“ . . . . I am not sure about the so-called ‘col­or-rev­o­lu­tions’ aim at spread­ing democ­ra­cy. My take is that it is just a way to weaponize human rights, the rule of law or democ­ra­cy in order to achieve geo-strate­gic objec­tives. . . .”
10.–“ . . . . Ukraine is a case in point. After 2014, despite West­ern influ­ence, it has nev­er been a democ­ra­cy: cor­rup­tion soared between 2014 and 2020; in 2021, it banned oppo­si­tion media and jailed the leader of the main par­lia­men­tary oppo­si­tion par­ty. As some inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions have report­ed, tor­ture is a com­mon prac­tice, and oppo­si­tion lead­ers as well as jour­nal­ists are chased­by the Ukrain­ian Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice. . . .”
11.–“ . . . . But as soon as you come up with west­ern data that do not fit into the main­stream nar­ra­tive, you have extrem­ists claim­ing you ‘love Putin.’ . . .”
12.–“ . . . . Our media are so wor­ried about find­ing ratio­nal­i­ty in Putin’s actions that they turn a blind eye to the crimes com­mit­ted by Ukraine, thus gen­er­at­ing a feel­ing of impuni­ty for which Ukraini­ans are pay­ing the price. This is the case of the attack on civil­ians by a mis­sile in Kramatorsk—we no longer talk about it because the respon­si­bil­i­ty of Ukraine is very like­ly, but this means that the Ukraini­ans could do it again with impuni­ty. . . .”
13.–“ . . . . With the end of the Cold War, Rus­sia expect­ed being able to devel­op clos­er rela­tions with its West­ern neigh­bors. It even con­sid­ered join­ing NATO. But the US resist­ed every attempt of rap­proche­ment. . . .”
14.–“ . . . . The pur­pose of this incred­i­ble polar­iza­tion is to pre­vent any dia­logue or nego­ti­a­tion with Rus­sia. We are back to what hap­pened in 1914, just before the start of WWI. . . .”
15.–“ . . . . Since 2014, I haven’t met any intel­li­gence pro­fes­sion­al who could con­firm any Russ­ian mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Don­bass. In fact, Crimea became the main ‘evi­dence’ of Russ­ian ‘inter­ven­tion.’ Of course, West­ern his­to­ri­ans ignore superbly that Crimea was sep­a­rat­ed from Ukraine by ref­er­en­dum in Jan­u­ary 1990, six months before Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence and under Sovi­et rule. In fact, it’s Ukraine that ille­gal­ly annexed Crimea in 1995. . . .”
16.–“ . . . . Regard­less of what Rus­sia does, US and west­ern strat­e­gy is to weak­en it. From that point on, Rus­sia has no real stake in its rela­tions with us. Again, the US objec­tive is not to have a ‘bet­ter’ Ukraine or a ‘bet­ter’ Rus­sia, but a weak­er Rus­sia. . . .”
17.–“ . . . . As Hen­ry Kissinger said in the Wash­ing­ton Post: ‘For the West, the demo­niza­tion of Vladimir Putin is not a pol­i­cy; it is an ali­bi for the absence of one.’ . . .”
18.–“ . . . . I think the decay of US hege­mo­ny will be the main fea­ture of the next decades. . . . . The loss of con­fi­dence in the US dol­lar may have sig­nif­i­cant impact on the US econ­o­my at large. . . . a sig­nif­i­cant dete­ri­o­ra­tion could lead the Unit­ed States to engage in more con­flicts around the world. This is some­thing that we are see­ing today . . . .”

FTR#1246 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lies?, Part 19

In this pro­gram, we present a sec­ond analy­sis of Colonel Jacques Baud’s analy­sis of the mil­i­tary sit­u­a­tion in the Ukraine war.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis: Colonel Baud recaps his analy­sis pre­sent­ed in his first article—that the move on Kiev was a diver­sion and the main “Schw­er­punkt” of the Russ­ian offen­sive is encir­cling the bulk of the Ukrain­ian forces con­cen­trat­ed on the bor­der of the Don­bass; Baud’s con­tention that the West fun­da­men­tal­ly mis­in­ter­pret­ed Russia’s oper­a­tion because its ana­lysts saw Russ­ian intent as being what the West would have done—trying to cap­ture the cap­i­tal in order to effect “regime change;” West­ern polit­i­cal and media pun­dits are see­ing things as they want them to be and not how they are; The West’s divorce from accu­rate intel­li­gence pro­vid­ed by intel­li­gence ser­vices; The West’s reliance on fun­da­men­tal­ly unre­li­able Ukrain­ian bat­tle­field “intel­li­gence;” The West’s sub­ver­sion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a nego­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment by send­ing Ukraine weapons in the hope/belief that Ukraine has a chance of win­ning; Baud sup­ports the view expressed in pre­vi­ous pro­grams that Rus­sia is NOT indis­crim­i­nate­ly bomb­ing civil­ian pop­u­la­tions; Baud points out that Rus­sia empha­sizes action involv­ing ground troops and does not engage in the kind of mas­sive aer­i­al bom­bard­ment that pro­duced mas­sive civil­ian casu­al­ties in West­ern mil­i­tary cam­paigns; Baud points out that Russ­ian mil­i­tary action is pri­mar­i­ly in the eth­nic Russ­ian areas of Ukraine in which the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion is not hos­tile to their forces; Con­verse­ly, the Ukrain­ian “ultra-nation­al­ist” forces are deployed in cities where the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion has no con­nec­tion with the com­bat­ants, max­i­miz­ing civil­ian loss­es; Dis­cus­sion of the Russ­ian offi­cers lead­ing from the rear—leading to high­er casu­al­ties and fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing of this by West­ern com­men­ta­tors; Dis­cus­sion of for­eign “vol­un­teers” fight­ing for Ukraine and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of West­ern weapon­ry falling into the hands of future ter­ror­ists-to-be; Baud’s belief that U.S. and Ger­man intel­li­gence knew of the Ukrain­ian intent to attack the Don­bass, delib­er­ate­ly push­ing Ukraine into the war; “Ukraine was thus instru­men­tal­ized to affect Rus­sia;” Baud reit­er­ates his con­tention that the West and France’s Macron, in par­tic­u­lar, com­plete­ly under­mined diplo­ma­cy and uphold­ing the Min­sk agree­ments; A dis­turb­ing truth con­cern­ing Putin’s plac­ing of Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert; “ . . . . it fol­lowed the thin­ly veiled threat made by Jean-Yves Le Dri­an, three days ear­li­er, that NATO could use nuclear weapons . . .”; The increas­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the West to manip­u­la­tion by “false-flag oper­a­tions;” The fact that Rus­sia destroyed its stock­pile of bio­log­i­cal weapons and the West has not; “ . . . . But in the cur­rent atmos­phere, all the con­di­tions are now met for an inci­dent to hap­pen that would push the West to become more involved, in some form, in the Ukrain­ian con­flict (a “false-flag” inci­dent). . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with pre­sen­ta­tion of an inter­view with Jacques Baud, which will be read in full in our next pro­gram.

French Medical Technician Breaks the Media Narrative on War Crimes in Ukraine

For­mer com­man­do in the French mil­i­tary, Adrien Boc­quet details his expe­ri­ence in Ukraine as a med­ical tech­ni­cian. In that capac­i­ty, he wit­nessed war crimes per­pe­trat­ed by the Ukraini­ans. Boc­quet: Saw Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ing POWs; wit­nessed civil­ian facil­i­ties being used for weapons stor­age, result­ing in casu­al­ties when Russ­ian mis­siles struck those stor­age areas; Saw Azov Nazis all over Ukraine, not just in Mar­i­upol; Said that the Azov Nazis are active­ly sup­ple­ment­ed and armed by the West; Expressed the view that most of the weapon­ry being con­tributed by the West is going to the Azov units. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

FTR#1245 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lie?, Part 18

The sec­ond of a pro­ject­ed four-part dis­cus­sion of the deci­sive­ly impor­tant work of for­mer Swiss intel­li­gence offi­cer Jacques Baud, this pro­gram presents and details fun­da­men­tals of the Ukraine war and the his­to­ry lead­ing up to it. This analy­sis will be sup­ple­ment­ed in the remain­ing pro­grams in the series.

His CV is pre­sent­ed below, and will be sup­ple­ment­ed by more detail in an inter­view pre­sent­ed with him.

The read­ing of this arti­cle is con­tin­ued from our last pro­gram. 

Baud points out that the pre­sen­ta­tion of the war in the West is bad­ly skewed, with politi­cians and media pur­su­ing ide­ol­o­gized fan­tasies, rather than sub­stan­tive analy­sis com­ing from intel­li­gence agen­cies.

The essence of Baud’s war analy­sis is pre­sen­ta­tion of com­pelling doc­u­men­ta­tion that the Ukraine war was begun by the West—the U.S. and NATO in particular—in order to weak­en Rus­sia.

Facil­i­tat­ing a mur­der­ous pro­gram of sys­tem­at­ic atroc­i­ty com­mit­ted by Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment against the Russ­ian-speak­ing minor­i­ty of Ukraine, it is the West and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion in par­tic­u­lar, that bear respon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­flict.

As will be seen, analy­sis of the actu­al con­flict itself is fun­da­men­tal­ly skewed in the U.S. and Europe. Far from being “incom­pe­tent,” Rus­sia quick­ly exe­cut­ed maneu­ver war­fare to cut-off the bulk of the Ukrain­ian army, which was poised for a lethal offen­sive against the Russ­ian-speak­ing East.

Russia’s pri­ma­ry objective—completely mis­un­der­stood in the West and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed by polit­i­cal and media inter­ests alike—was large­ly achieved with­in a short peri­od.

The Russ­ian forces occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry rough­ly equiv­a­lent to the U.K in a mat­ter of days, fix­ing Ukrain­ian forces with a diver­sion­ary move toward Kiev, elim­i­nat­ing Ukraine’s abil­i­ty to move large num­bers of troops and trap­ping the pri­ma­ry Ukrain­ian forces in the East.

This will be more com­plete­ly dis­cussed, ana­lyzed and pre­sent­ed in the remain­ing pro­grams fea­tur­ing Baud’s work.

 Key Points of Analy­sis and Dis­cus­sion Include: Baud’s first-hand involve­ment in NATO train­ing of the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary; Baud’s for­mer posi­tion as chief of Swiss intelligence’s divi­sion on War­saw pact forces dur­ing the Cold War; Baud’s exten­sive UN expe­ri­ence on pro­lif­er­a­tion of small arms, their dis­tri­b­u­tion to civil­ian pop­u­la­tions and the dele­te­ri­ous effects of that dis­tri­b­u­tion; The fun­da­men­tal, insti­tu­tion­al­ized dis­tor­tion of the conflict—politicians and media ignor­ing real­i­ty (includ­ing and espe­cial­ly that pre­sent­ed by intel­li­gence pro­fes­sion­als) and incul­cat­ing the pub­lic (and them­selves) with an inflam­ma­to­ry, demon­stra­bly false nar­ra­tive that engen­ders a dan­ger­ous pol­i­cy of esca­la­tion; The essen­tial mis­un­der­stand­ing of the gen­e­sis of the Ukrain­ian con­flict; The cen­tral issue of the post-Maid­an government’s ban­ning of the Russ­ian lan­guage in Ukraine’s East­ern dis­tricts; The fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing of, and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of, the civ­il war in Ukraine’s East as a dynam­ic involv­ing “Russ­ian Sep­a­ratists” and “inter­fer­ence” by Putin; Putin’s advice to the Russ­ian-speak­ing East­ern dis­tricts NOT to seek a ref­er­en­dum on auton­o­my; The Ukrain­ian government’s launch of an ill-fat­ed mil­i­tary sup­pres­sion against those dis­tricts; The fun­da­men­tal cor­rup­tion and inep­ti­tude of the post-Maid­an Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary; The false nar­ra­tive dis­trib­uted in the west that Rus­sia was involved in any way with the civ­il war in East­ern Ukraine; The fail­ure of the civ­il war against the East­ern dis­tricts because of that inep­ti­tude; The defec­tion of large “maneu­ver” units of the Ukrain­ian armed forces—armor, artillery and mis­sile for­ma­tions; The mon­u­men­tal fail­ure to report for duty of the Ukrain­ian reserve per­son­nel; Ukraine’s piv­ot to NATO to form the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary; Jacques Baud’s role in that attempt­ed for­ma­tion; NATO’s cre­ation of the fas­cist “reprisal units,” exem­pli­fied by the Azov Reg­i­ment; The Azov regiment’s sym­bol­ic, and his­tor­i­cal nos­tal­gia for the ”Das Reich” Division—2nd Waf­fen SS; The oper­a­tional strength of the NATO-cre­at­ed fas­cist ter­ri­to­r­i­al defense units—102,000; The real­i­ty behind a 2021” hijack­ing of a RyanAir flight in Belarus; the fact that the “journalist”—Roman Protassevitch—was a promi­nent mem­ber of the Azov reg­i­ment; the fact that the action was in keep­ing with the rules of force; The war’s gen­e­sis with a Ukrain­ian cam­paign to con­quer and dec­i­mate the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions of the East; the Duma’s advo­ca­cy of diplo­mat­ic recog­ni­tion for the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions; Putin’s ini­tial refusal to rec­og­nize the regions; France and the West’s refusal to imple­ment the Min­sk Agree­ments; France and the West’s insis­tence on direct con­fronta­tion between Ukraine and Rus­sia; The Ukraine’s ini­ti­a­tion of the con­flict by bom­bard­ing the Russ­ian-speak­ing dis­tricts and mass­ing their army for an all-out assault; Putin’s grant­i­ng of the Duma’s request and diplo­mat­ic recog­ni­tion of the inde­pen­dence of the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions; Those regions’ request for mil­i­tary assis­tance; Putin’s pos­i­tive response to that request, ini­ti­at­ing the con­flict; The Russ­ian strat­e­gy of using pres­sure on Kiev as a diver­sion, draw­ing Ukrain­ian forces around it and per­mit­ting the encir­clement of the bulk of the Ukrain­ian army in East­ern Ukraine; The West’s fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing of Putin’s and Russia’s war aims, due to their own strate­gic and oper­a­tional myopia; The “slow­down” of Russ­ian oper­a­tions, due to the fact that they have already achieved their objec­tive; The “reprisal” units’ delib­er­ate block­ing of civil­ian evac­u­a­tion cor­ri­dors, so that the civil­ians can be used to delib­er­ate­ly impede Russ­ian mil­i­tary progress; The West’s manip­u­la­tion of Zelen­sky and Ukraine, in essence brib­ing him with arms pur­chas­es to “bleed Rus­sia;” The dis­tri­b­u­tion of small arms to Ukrain­ian urban pop­u­la­tions, a devel­op­ment that Baud feels will lead to atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted against fel­low civil­ians; The strong prob­a­bil­i­ty that the Azov Reg­i­ment was using the Mar­i­upol mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal as a strate­gic van­tage point, and that the Rus­sians fired on it as a legit­i­mate mil­i­tary tar­get; The West­’s using of that “War Crime” to jus­ti­fy fur­ther arms ship­ments; The West­’s sys­tem­at­ic dis­tor­tion and “weaponiza­tion” of war cov­er­age; The joint secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed to the Cher­nobyl nuclear plant by BOTH Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian sol­diers to pre­vent sab­o­tage; Baud’s obser­va­tion that the West­’s pro­vid­ing of large amounts of small arms to the pop­u­la­tions of Kiev and Kharkov will lead to trou­ble; Baud’s obser­va­tion that polit­i­cal and media ele­ments in the West are pre­sent­ing infor­ma­tion at vari­ance with what intel­li­gence ser­vices have been able to ver­i­fy; The mur­der of Ukrain­ian diplo­mats and politi­cians who have been will­ing to nego­ti­ate with Rus­sia.

 In the ongo­ing series on the Ukraine war, Mr. Emory has advanced the metaphor of the war and its atten­dant cov­er­age as some­thing akin to the myth­i­cal Philoso­pher’s Stone of the alchemists. Instead of chang­ing lead into gold, it is chang­ing indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions in the West into the same fab­ric as Volodomyr Via­tro­vy­ch’s Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry.

Recent­ly, Yahoo News has begun reg­u­lar­ly post­ing arti­cles from Ukrain­s­ka Prav­da.

This is part of a U.S.-funded media array in Ukraine, designed to com­mu­ni­cate open­ly pro­pa­gan­dized cov­er­age of things Ukrain­ian.

Yahoo’s pre­sen­ta­tion of Ukrayin­s­ka Prav­da exem­pli­fies Mr. Emory’s metaphor.

Part and par­cel to the white­wash­ing of the Nazi affil­i­a­tion of the Azov for­ma­tions in Ukraine, the Ukrain­ian Kalush Orchestra–winner of t he 2022 Euro­vi­sion song quest–capped off their per­for­mance with a call to release the Azov com­bat­ants holed up in the tun­nels beneath the Azovstal steel mill.

The absence of com­men­tary on the Nazi ori­en­ta­tion of the Azov units is rou­tine in the West at this point.

Also exem­pli­fy­ing the ide­o­log­i­cal and jour­nal­is­tic per­ver­sion of West­ern cov­er­age of Azov for­ma­tions is the New York Times piece about Azov wives req­ui­si­tion­ing inter­na­tion­al aid for the Azovstal com­bat­ants.

The arti­cle fea­tured mer­cy pleas from Katery­na Prokopenko–the wife of Azov com­man­der Colonel Denys Prokopenko.

Colonel Prokopenko’s per­spec­tive on the pos­si­ble “false flag” explo­sion on the Mar­i­upol Dra­ma The­ater is inter­est­ing. We can but won­der what he might dis­close to Russ­ian intel­li­gence offi­cers about the inci­dent.

1.–“ . . . . On March 7, an Azov Bat­tal­ion com­man­der named Denis Prokopenko appeared on cam­era from Mar­i­upol with an urgent mes­sage. Pub­lished on Azov’s offi­cial YouTube chan­nel and deliv­ered in Eng­lish over the sound of occa­sion­al artillery launch­es, Prokopenko declared that the Russ­ian mil­i­tary was car­ry­ing out a ‘geno­cide’ against the pop­u­la­tion of Mar­i­upol, which hap­pens to be 40 per­cent eth­nic Russ­ian. . . .”
2.–“ . . . . Prokopenko then demand­ed that West­ern nations ‘cre­ate a no fly zone over Ukraine support[ed] with the mod­ern weapons.’ It was clear from Prokopenko’s plea that Azov’s posi­tion was grow­ing more dire by the day. . . .”

Joe Biden man­i­fest­ed con­sum­mate hypocrisy with his con­dem­na­tion of Pay­ton Gen­dron, the appar­ent Buf­fa­lo shoot­er. Endors­ing the 14 words mint­ed by David Lane and uti­liz­ing the Sun Wheel sym­bol embraced by the Azov Bat­tal­ion, Gen­dron was align­ing him­self with the same forces the U.S. backs in Ukraine.

As dis­cussed in FTR #780, Svo­bo­da main­tains a street-fight­ing cadre called Com­bat 14. ” . . . . the name points to the num­ber ‘14.’ In fas­cist cir­cles this refers to the ‘four­teen word’ slo­gans of com­mit­ment to the ‘white race.’ As the leader of Svoboda’s ally ‘C14’ explained, his orga­ni­za­tion is in a ‘strug­gle’ with ‘eth­nic groups’ that are wield­ing, among oth­er things, ‘eco­nomic and polit­i­cal pow­er.’ The ‘eth­nic groups’ he is refer­ring to are ‘Rus­sians and Jews.’[6] . . . .”

Com­bat 14’s name derives from “the four­teen words” mint­ed by David Lane, a mem­ber of the Order that killed talk show host Alan Berg. (See excerpt below.) The words are: “We must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren.”

Gen­dron’s man­i­festo ref­er­enced Bren­ton Tar­rant, the Christchurch, NZ shoot­er, who had appar­ent­ly vis­it­ed Ukraine and alleged­ly net­worked with the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

Even The New York Times not­ed the pos­si­ble con­tact between Azov and Tar­rant.

” . . . . In the wake of the New Zealand mosque attacks, links have emerged between the shoot­er, Brent Tar­rant, and a Ukrain­ian ultra-nation­al­ist, white suprema­cist para­mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion called the Azov Bat­tal­ion. . . .”

Yahoo and “Ukrainska Pravda”

In the ongo­ing series on the Ukraine war, Mr. Emory has advanced the metaphor of the war and its atten­dant cov­er­age as some­thing akin to the myth­i­cal Philoso­pher’s Stone of the alchemists. “Yahoo News” now fea­tures arti­cles from “Ukrayin­s­ka Prav­da”. ” . . . . the site has an entire sec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism. They wor­ship Ban­dera and the OUN, alter­nate between deny­ing and jus­ti­fy­ing geno­cide, and defend the SS Gali­cia divi­sion, war crim­i­nals respon­si­ble for many atroc­i­ties . . . .” Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

FTR#1244 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lie?, Part 17

First of a pro­ject­ed four-part dis­cus­sion of the deci­sive­ly impor­tant work of for­mer Swiss intel­li­gence offi­cer Jacques Baud, this pro­gram presents and details fun­da­men­tals of the Ukraine war and the his­to­ry lead­ing up to it. This analy­sis will be sup­ple­ment­ed in the remain­ing pro­grams in the series.

His CV is pre­sent­ed below, and will be sup­ple­ment­ed by more detail in an inter­view pre­sent­ed with him.

The read­ing of this arti­cle will be con­tin­ued in our next pro­gram. For the con­ve­nience and ben­e­fit of the audi­ence, the entire arti­cle is pre­sent­ed in this descrip­tion. 

Baud points out that the pre­sen­ta­tion of the war in the West is bad­ly skewed, with politi­cians and media pur­su­ing ide­ol­o­gized fan­tasies, rather than sub­stan­tive analy­sis com­ing from intel­li­gence agen­cies.

The essence of Baud’s war analy­sis is pre­sen­ta­tion of com­pelling doc­u­men­ta­tion that the Ukraine war was begun by the West—the U.S. and NATO in particular—in order to weak­en Rus­sia.

Facil­i­tat­ing a mur­der­ous pro­gram of sys­tem­at­ic atroc­i­ty com­mit­ted by Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment against the Russ­ian-speak­ing minor­i­ty of Ukraine, it is the West and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion in par­tic­u­lar, that bear respon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­flict.

As will be seen, analy­sis of the actu­al con­flict itself is fun­da­men­tal­ly skewed in the U.S. and Europe. Far from being “incom­pe­tent,” Rus­sia quick­ly exe­cut­ed maneu­ver war­fare to cut-off the bulk of the Ukrain­ian army, which was poised for a lethal offen­sive against the Russ­ian-speak­ing East.

Russia’s pri­ma­ry objective—completely mis­un­der­stood in the West and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed by polit­i­cal and media inter­ests alike—was large­ly achieved with­in a short peri­od.

The Russ­ian forces occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry rough­ly equiv­a­lent to the U.K in a mat­ter of days, fix­ing Ukrain­ian forces with a diver­sion­ary move toward Kiev, elim­i­nat­ing Ukraine’s abil­i­ty to move large num­bers of troops and trap­ping the pri­ma­ry Ukrain­ian forces in the East.

This will be more com­plete­ly dis­cussed, ana­lyzed and pre­sent­ed in the remain­ing pro­grams fea­tur­ing Baud’s work.

 Key Points of Analy­sis and Dis­cus­sion Include: Baud’s first-hand involve­ment in NATO train­ing of the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary; Baud’s for­mer posi­tion as chief of Swiss intelligence’s divi­sion on War­saw pact forces dur­ing the Cold War; Baud’s exten­sive UN expe­ri­ence on pro­lif­er­a­tion of small arms, their dis­tri­b­u­tion to civil­ian pop­u­la­tions and the dele­te­ri­ous effects of that dis­tri­b­u­tion; The fun­da­men­tal, insti­tu­tion­al­ized dis­tor­tion of the conflict—politicians and media ignor­ing real­i­ty (includ­ing and espe­cial­ly that pre­sent­ed by intel­li­gence pro­fes­sion­als) and incul­cat­ing the pub­lic (and them­selves) with an inflam­ma­to­ry, demon­stra­bly false nar­ra­tive that engen­ders a dan­ger­ous pol­i­cy of esca­la­tion; The essen­tial mis­un­der­stand­ing of the gen­e­sis of the Ukrain­ian con­flict; The cen­tral issue of the post-Maid­an government’s ban­ning of the Russ­ian lan­guage in Ukraine’s East­ern dis­tricts; The fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing of, and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of, the civ­il war in Ukraine’s East as a dynam­ic involv­ing “Russ­ian Sep­a­ratists” and “inter­fer­ence” by Putin; Putin’s advice to the Russ­ian-speak­ing East­ern dis­tricts NOT to seek a ref­er­en­dum on auton­o­my; The Ukrain­ian government’s launch of an ill-fat­ed mil­i­tary sup­pres­sion against those dis­tricts; The fun­da­men­tal cor­rup­tion and inep­ti­tude of the post-Maid­an Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary; The false nar­ra­tive dis­trib­uted in the west that Rus­sia was involved in any way with the civ­il war in East­ern Ukraine; The fail­ure of the civ­il war against the East­ern dis­tricts because of that inep­ti­tude; The defec­tion of large “maneu­ver” units of the Ukrain­ian armed forces—armor, artillery and mis­sile for­ma­tions; The mon­u­men­tal fail­ure to report for duty of the Ukrain­ian reserve per­son­nel; Ukraine’s piv­ot to NATO to form the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary; Jacques Baud’s role in that attempt­ed for­ma­tion; NATO’s cre­ation of the fas­cist “reprisal units,” exem­pli­fied by the Azov Reg­i­ment; The Azov regiment’s sym­bol­ic, and his­tor­i­cal nos­tal­gia for the ”Das Reich” Division—2nd Waf­fen SS; The oper­a­tional strength of the NATO-cre­at­ed fas­cist ter­ri­to­r­i­al defense units—102,000; The real­i­ty behind a 2021” hijack­ing of a RyanAir flight in Belarus; the fact that the “journalist”—Roman Protassevitch—was a promi­nent mem­ber of the Azov reg­i­ment; the fact that the action was in keep­ing with the rules of force; The war’s gen­e­sis with a Ukrain­ian cam­paign to con­quer and dec­i­mate the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions of the East; the Duma’s advo­ca­cy of diplo­mat­ic recog­ni­tion for the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions; Putin’s ini­tial refusal to rec­og­nize the regions; France and the West’s refusal to imple­ment the Min­sk Agree­ments; France and the West’s insis­tence on direct con­fronta­tion between Ukraine and Rus­sia; The Ukraine’s ini­ti­a­tion of the con­flict by bom­bard­ing the Russ­ian-speak­ing dis­tricts and mass­ing their army for an all-out assault; Putin’s grant­i­ng of the Duma’s request and diplo­mat­ic recog­ni­tion of the inde­pen­dence of the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions; Those regions’ request for mil­i­tary assis­tance; Putin’s pos­i­tive response to that request, ini­ti­at­ing the con­flict; The Russ­ian strat­e­gy of using pres­sure on Kiev as a diver­sion, draw­ing Ukrain­ian forces around it and per­mit­ting the encir­clement of the bulk of the Ukrain­ian army in East­ern Ukraine; The West’s fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing of Putin’s and Russia’s war aims, due to their own strate­gic and oper­a­tional myopia; The “slow­down” of Russ­ian oper­a­tions, due to the fact that they have already achieved their objec­tive; The “reprisal” units’ delib­er­ate block­ing of civil­ian evac­u­a­tion cor­ri­dors, so that the civil­ians can be used to delib­er­ate­ly impede Russ­ian mil­i­tary progress; The West’s manip­u­la­tion of Zelen­sky and Ukraine, in essence brib­ing him with arms pur­chas­es to “bleed Rus­sia;” The dis­tri­b­u­tion of small arms to Ukrain­ian urban pop­u­la­tions, a devel­op­ment that Baud feels will lead to atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted against fel­low civil­ians; The strong prob­a­bil­i­ty that the Azov Reg­i­ment was using the Mar­i­upol mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal as a strate­gic van­tage point, and that the Rus­sians fired on it as a legit­i­mate mil­i­tary tar­get; The West­’s using of that “War Crime” to jus­ti­fy fur­ther arms ship­ments; The West­’s sys­tem­at­ic dis­tor­tion and “weaponiza­tion” of war cov­er­age; The joint secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed to the Cher­nobyl nuclear plant by BOTH Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian sol­diers to pre­vent sab­o­tage.