BRYCE GREENE
Roll Call: Lawmakers united in outrage over Putin’s ‘unprovoked’ invasion of Ukraine
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can fairly be called many things, but “unprovoked” (Roll Call, 2/24/22) is not one of them.[/quote]
Many governments and media figures are rightly condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine as an act of aggression and a violation of international law. But in his first speech about the invasion, on February 24, US President Joe Biden also called the invasion “unprovoked.”
It’s a word that has been echoed repeatedly across the media ecosystem. “Putin’s forces entered Ukraine’s second-largest city on the fourth day of the unprovoked invasion,” Axios (2/27/22) reported; “Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine entered its second week Friday,” said CNBC (3/4/22). Vox (3/1/22) wrote of “Putin’s decision to launch an unprovoked and unnecessary war with the second-largest country in Europe.”
The “unprovoked” descriptor obscures a long history of provocative behavior from the United States in regards to Ukraine. This history is important to understanding how we got here, and what degree of responsibility the US bears for the current attack on Ukraine.
Ignoring expert advice
The story starts at the end of the Cold War, when the US was the only global hegemon. As part of the deal that finalized the reunification of Germany, the US promised Russia that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.” Despite this, it wasn’t long before talk of expansion began to circulate among policy makers.
In 1997, dozens of foreign policy veterans (including former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and former CIA Director Stansfield Turner) sent a joint letter to then-President Bill Clinton calling “the current US-led effort to expand NATO…a policy error of historic proportions.” They predicted:
In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition, undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West [and] bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement.
NYT: And Now a Word From X
Diplomat George Kennan (New York Times, 5/2/98) said NATO expansion would be “a tragic mistake.”
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (5/2/98) in 1998 asked famed diplomat George Kennan—architect of the US Cold War strategy of containment—about NATO expansion. Kennan’s response:
I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.
Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are—but this is just wrong.
Despite these warnings, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were added to NATO in 1999, with Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia following in 2004.
US planners were warned again in 2008 by US Ambassador to Moscow William Burns (now director of the CIA under Joe Biden). WikiLeaks leaked a cable from Burns titled “Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines” that included another prophetic warning worth quoting in full (emphasis added):
Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests.
Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.
A de facto NATO ally
But the US has pushed Russia to make such a decision. Though European countries are divided about whether or not Ukraine should join, many in the NATO camp have been adamant about maintaining the alliance’s “open door policy.” Even as US planners were warning of a Russian invasion, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated NATO’s 2008 plans to integrate Ukraine into the alliance (New York Times, 12/16/21). The Biden administration has taken a more roundabout approach, supporting in the abstract “Kyiv’s right to choose its own security arrangements and alliances.” But the implication is obvious.NYT: NATO Signals Support for Ukraine in Face of Threat From Russia
As Russia threatened to invade Ukraine over the threat of NATO expansion, NATO’s response was to emphasize that Ukraine would some day join the alliance (New York Times, 12/16/21).
Even without officially being in NATO, Ukraine has become a de facto NATO ally—and Russia has paid close attention to these developments. In a December 2021 speech to his top military officials, Putin expressed his concerns:
Over the past few years, military contingents of NATO countries have been almost constantly present on Ukrainian territory under the pretext of exercises. The Ukrainian troop control system has already been integrated into NATO. This means that NATO headquarters can issue direct commands to the Ukrainian armed forces, even to their separate units and squads….
Kiev has long proclaimed a strategic course on joining NATO. Indeed, each country is entitled to pick its own security system and enter into military alliances. There would be no problem with that, if it were not for one “but.” International documents expressly stipulate the principle of equal and indivisible security, which includes obligations not to strengthen one’s own security at the expense of the security of other states….
In other words, the choice of pathways towards ensuring security should not pose a threat to other states, whereas Ukraine joining NATO is a direct threat to Russia’s security.
In an explainer piece, the New York Times (2/24/22) centered NATO expansion as a root cause of the war. Unfortunately, the Times omitted the critical context of NATO’s pledge not to expand, and the subsequent abandonment of that promise. This is an important context to understand the Russian view of US policies, especially so given the ample warnings from US diplomats and foreign policy experts.
The Maidan Coup of 2014
A major turning point in the US/Ukraine/Russia relationship was the 2014 violent and unconstitutional ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, elected in 2010 in a vote heavily split between eastern and western Ukraine. His ouster came after months of protests led in part by far-right extremists (FAIR.org, 3/7/14). Weeks before his ouster, an unknown party leaked a phone call between US officials discussing who should and shouldn’t be part of the new government, and finding ways to “seal the deal.” After the ouster, a politician the officials designated as “the guy” even became prime minister.
The US involvement was part of a campaign aimed at exploiting the divisions in Ukrainian society to push the country into the US sphere of influence, pulling it out of the Russian sphere (FAIR.org, 1/28/22). In the aftermath of the overthrow, Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine, in part to secure a major naval base from the new Ukrainian government.
The New York Times (2/24/22) and Washington Post (2/28/22) both omitted the role the US played in these events. In US media, this critical moment in history is completely cleansed of US influence, erasing a critical step on the road to the current war.
Keeping civil war alive
In another response to the overthrow, an uprising in Ukraine’s Donbas region grew into a rebel movement that declared independence from Ukraine and announced the formation of their own republics. The resulting civil war claimed thousands of lives, but was largely paused in 2015 with a ceasefire agreement known as the Minsk II accords.
The deal, agreed to by Ukraine, Russia and other European countries, was designed to grant some form of autonomy to the breakaway regions in exchange for reintegrating them into the Ukrainian state. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian government refused to implement the autonomy provision of the accords. Anatol Lieven, a researcher with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in The Nation (11/15/21):Nation: Ukraine: The Most Dangerous Problem in the World
Anatol Lieven (The Nation, 11/15/21): “US administrations, the political establishment, and the mainstream media have quietly buried…the refusal of Ukrainian governments to implement the solution and the refusal of the United States to put pressure on them to do so.”
The main reason for this refusal, apart from a general commitment to retain centralized power in Kiev, has been the belief that permanent autonomy for the Donbas would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and the European Union, as the region could use its constitutional position within Ukraine to block membership.
Ukraine opted instead to prolong the Donbas conflict, and there was never significant pressure from the West to alter course. Though there were brief reports of the accords’ revival as recently as late January, Ukrainian security chief Oleksiy Danilov warned the West not to pressure Ukraine to implement the peace deal. “The fulfillment of the Minsk agreement means the country’s destruction,” he said (AP, 1/31/22). Danilov claimed that even when the agreement was signed eight years ago, “it was already clear for all rational people that it’s impossible to implement.”
Lieven notes that the depth of Russian commitment has yet to be fully tested, but Putin has supported the Minsk accords, refraining from officially recognizing the Donbas republics until last week.
The New York Times (2/8/22) explainer on the Minsk accords blamed their failure on a disagreement between Ukraine and Russia over their implementation. This is inadequate to explain the failure of the agreements, however, given that Russia cannot affect Ukrainian parliamentary procedure. The Times quietly acknowledged that the law meant to define special status in the Donbas had been “shelved” by the Ukranians, indicating that the country had stopped trying to solve the issue in favor of a stalemate.
There was no mention of the comments from a top Ukrainian official openly denouncing the peace accords. Nor was it acknowledged that the US could have used its influence to push Ukraine to solve the issue, but refrained from doing so.
Ukrainian missile crisis
One under-discussed aspect of this crisis is the role of US missiles stationed in NATO countries. Many media outlets have claimed that Putin is Hitler-like (Washington Post, 2/24/22; Boston Globe, 2/24/22), hellbent on reconquering old Soviet states to “recreat[e] the Russian empire with himself as the Tsar,” as Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbot told Politico (2/25/22).WaPo: Putin’s attack on Ukraine echoes Hitler’s takeover of Czechoslovakia
The Washington Post‘s Hitler analogy (2/24/22) is a bit much, considering that the Ukrainian government provides veterans benefits to militias that actually participated in the Holocaust (Kyiv Post, 12/24/18).
Pundits try to psychoanalyze Putin, asking “What is motivating him?” and answering by citing his televised speech on February 21 that recounted the history of Ukraine’s relationship with Russia.
This speech has been widely characterized as a call to reestablish the Soviet empire and a challenge to Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign nation. Corporate media ignore other public statements Putin has made in recent months. For example, at an expanded meeting of the Defense Ministry Board, Putin elaborated on what he considered to be the main military threat from US/NATO expansion to Ukraine:
It is extremely alarming that elements of the US global defense system are being deployed near Russia. The Mk 41 launchers, which are located in Romania and are to be deployed in Poland, are adapted for launching the Tomahawk strike missiles. If this infrastructure continues to move forward, and if US and NATO missile systems are deployed in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be only 7–10 minutes, or even five minutes for hypersonic systems. This is a huge challenge for us, for our security.
The United States does not possess hypersonic weapons yet, but we know when they will have it…. They will supply hypersonic weapons to Ukraine and then use them as cover…to arm extremists from a neighbouring state and incite them against certain regions of the Russian Federation, such as Crimea, when they think circumstances are favorable.
Do they really think we do not see these threats? Or do they think that we will just stand idly watching threats to Russia emerge? This is the problem: We simply have no room to retreat.
Having these missiles so close to Russia—weapons that Russia (and China) see as part of a plan to give the United States the capacity to launch a nuclear first-strike without retaliation—seriously challenges the cold war deterrent of Mutually Assured Destruction, and more closely resembles a gun pointed at the Russian head for the remainder of the nuclear age. Would this be acceptable to any country?
Media refuse to present this crucial question to their audiences, instead couching Putin’s motives in purely aggressive terms.
Refusal to de-escalate
By December 2021, US intelligence agencies were sounding the alarm that Russia was amassing troops at the Ukrainian border and planning to attack. Yet Putin was very clear about a path to deescalation: He called on the West to halt NATO expansion, negotiate Ukrainian neutrality in the East/West rivalry, remove US nuclear weapons from non proliferating countries, and remove missiles, troops and bases near Russia. These are demands the US would surely have made were it in Russia’s position.Twitter: United with Ukraine
As the threat of war loomed, Secretary of State Antony Blinken (Twitter, 1/27/22) framed the issue of NATO expansion as “Kyiv’s right to choose its own security arrangements and alliances”—as though NATO were a public accommodation open to anyone who wanted to join.
Unfortunately, the US refused to negotiate on Russia’s core concerns. The US offered some serious steps towards a larger arms control arrangement (Antiwar.com, 2/2/22)—something the Russians acknowledged and appreciated—but ignored issues of NATO’s military activity in Ukraine, and the deployment of nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe (Antiwar.com, 2/17/22).
On NATO expansion, the State Department continued to insist that they would not compromise NATO’s open door policy—in other words, it asserted the right to expand NATO and to ignore Russia’s red line.
While the US has signaled that it would approve of an informal agreement to keep Ukraine from joining the alliance for a period of time, this clearly was not going to be enough for Russia, which still remembers the last broken agreement.
Instead of addressing Russian concerns about Ukraine’s NATO relationship, the US instead chose to pour hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine, exacerbating Putin’s expressed concerns. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t help matters by suggesting that Ukraine might begin a nuclear weapons program at the height of the tensions.
After Putin announced his recognition of the breakaway republics, Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled talks with Putin, and began the process of implementing sanctions on Russia—all before Russian soldiers had set foot into Ukraine.
Had the US been genuinely interested in avoiding war, it would have taken every opportunity to de-escalate the situation. Instead, it did the opposite nearly every step of the way.
In its explainer piece, the Washington Post (2/28/22) downplayed the significance of the US’s rejection of Russia’s core concerns, writing: “Russia has said that it wants guarantees Ukraine will be barred from joining NATO—a non-starter for the Western alliance, which maintains an open-door policy.” NATO’s open door policy is simply accepted as an immutable policy that Putin just needs to deal with. This very assumption, so key to the Ukraine crisis, goes unchallenged in the US media ecosystem.
It’s impossible to say for sure why the Biden administration took an approach that increased the likelihood of war, but one Wall Street Journal piece from last month may offer some insight.‘The strategic case for risking war’.
WSJ: The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine
John Deni (Wall Street Journal, 12/22/21): “There are good strategic reasons for the West to stake out a hard-line approach, giving little ground to Moscow.”
The Journal (12/22/21) published an op-ed from John Deni, a researcher at the Atlantic Council, a think tank funded by the US and allied governments that serves as NATO’s de facto brain trust. The piece was provocatively headlined “The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine.” Deni’s argument was that the West should refuse to negotiate with Russia, because either potential outcome would be beneficial to US interests.
If Putin backed down without a deal, it would be a major embarrassment. He would lose face and stature, domestically and on the world stage.
But Putin going to war would also be good for the US, the Journal op-ed argued. Firstly, it would give NATO more legitimacy by “forg[ing] an even stronger anti-Russian consensus across Europe.” Secondly, a major attack would trigger “another round of more debilitating economic sanctions,” weakening the Russian economy and its ability to compete with the US for global influence. Thirdly, an invasion is “likely to spawn a guerrilla war” that would “sap the strength and morale of Russia’s military while undercutting Mr. Putin’s domestic popularity and reducing Russia’s soft power globally.”
In short, we have part of the NATO brain trust advocating risking Ukrainian civilians as pawns in the US’s quest to strengthen its position around the world.
What would be worse than thousands of Ukrainians dying? According to this New York Times op-ed (2/3/22), “a new European security architecture that recognizes Russia’s sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space.”‘Something even worse than war’
NYT: Europe Thinks Putin Is Planning Something Even Worse Than War
A New York Times op-ed (2/3/22) by Ivan Krastev of Vienna’s Institute of Human Sciences likewise suggested that a Russian invasion of Ukraine wouldn’t be the worst outcome:
A Russian incursion into Ukraine could, in a perverse way, save the current European order. NATO would have no choice but to respond assertively, bringing in stiff sanctions and acting in decisive unity. By hardening the conflict, Mr. Putin could cohere his opponents.
The op-ed was headlined “Europe Thinks Putin Is Planning Something Even Worse Than War”—that something being “a new European security architecture that recognizes Russia’s sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space.”
It is impossible to know for sure whether the Biden administration shared this sense that there would be an upside to a Russian invasion, but the incentives are clear, and much of what these op-eds predicted is coming to pass.
None of this is to say that Putin’s invasion is justified—FAIR resolutely condemns the invasion as illegal and ruinous—but calling it “unprovoked” distracts attention from the US’s own contribution to this disastrous outcome. The US ignored warnings from both Russian and US officials that a major conflagration could erupt if the US continued its path, and it shouldn’t be surprising that one eventually did.
Now, as the world once again inches toward the brink of nuclear omnicide, it is more important than ever for Western audiences to understand and challenge their own government’s role in dragging us all to this point.
Featured image: NPR map (9/3/14) from 2014 showing NATO/EU expansion.
https://fair.org/home/calling-russias-a ... -the-hook/
*********************************
Andrey Kosyak is free!
colonelcassad
March 5, 17:40
Andrey Kosyak, an observer of the JCCC of the LNR, captured last year by the Ukrainian Nazis, is at large.
He spent several months in captivity and was released after Russian troops liberated Starobilsk from Ukrainian Nazis.
Andrey Kosyak was kept in a local pre-trial detention center. Today he gave his first interview in freedom https://t.me/boris_rozhin/28052
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7477604.html
Google Translator
************************************
‘Cut through wall of imperialist propaganda’ on Ukraine
March 4, 2022 Greg Butterfield
In 2014, SLL’s Greg Butterfield met with exiled Ukrainians in Crimea, including these activists. Since then, they have continued to fight for Ukraine’s liberation from U.S. domination. SLL photo
From a presentation by Struggle-La Lucha co-editor Greg Butterfield at a Feb. 27 film showing of Oliver Stone’s film “Ukraine on Fire,” hosted by Youth Against War and Racism.
At the beginning of a war crisis, the most urgent task is to cut through the wall of imperialist lies and propaganda. So it’s vital to state clearly that the situation in Eastern Europe today was created by the U.S. and NATO, which bear full responsibility for the military conflict unfolding in Ukraine.
Ukraine and its Western sponsors spent the last seven years sabotaging the 2015 Minsk II agreements meant to end Kiev’s attacks on the people of the Donbass region. Washington and Kiev spent the last three months preparing an invasion of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic as a means to draw Russia into a war.
President Joe Biden, Congress and NATO were more than willing to sacrifice the lives of Donbass civilians as well as Ukrainian troops to achieve their goal.
The situation changed drastically Feb. 21, when the Russian government formally recognized the DPR and LPR and signed treaties of friendship and mutual defense with them – eight years after the people of the Donbass declared independence from Ukraine.
It was the last warning to Ukrainian President Voldomyr Zelensky to back off from the attacks. But Ukraine, prodded by its masters in Washington, continued to bomb, shoot and carry out terrorist acts against the people of Donetsk and Lugansk.
On Feb. 24, the Donbass republics and Russia launched a joint military operation against the Ukrainian government. Its goals are to stop the constant threats and attacks on Donetsk and Lugansk; to retake areas on Donbass occupied by the Ukrainian military; and to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.
The point is to make the Ukrainian regime unable to continue acting as a de facto NATO military base and existential threat to its neighbors.
The Socialist Unity Party and Struggle-La Lucha call for the victory of the Donbass Republics and their Russian allies in this operation. U.S.-NATO imperialism and Ukrainian Nazism can only be stopped by forceful action there combined with militant solidarity here.
Stand with which Ukraine?
During a war crisis, when the capitalists push out campaigns like “Pray for Ukraine” or “Stand with Ukraine,” preying on the humanitarian impulses of uninformed people, we have to ask: Who are they actually trying to rally support for?
It’s not for the common people, the workers or the rank and file soldiers. They are trying to tie people here to the fortunes of the neocolonial Ukrainian government, the capitalist elite, military leaders and neo-Nazi gangs that infest the state from top to bottom.
The “suffering Ukrainians” aren’t an undifferentiated mass. Hidden from the people here is the fact that many Ukrainians have been ruthlessly repressed since the 2014 Euromaidan coup: imprisoned, killed, exiled or terrorized on the streets.
Progressive organizations were outlawed. Journalists and people who opposed the war against Donbass were jailed. National minorities were banned from using their native languages.
Neo-Nazis in Kiev routinely attacked women’s marches, LGBTQ2S Pride parades and anti-fascist historical commemorations. Russian speakers, Roma, Jewish people, Vietnamese immigrants and African students were attacked.
At least 48 people were killed by neo-Nazis at the Odessa House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014. Thousands of activists were driven into exile under threat of imprisonment or death.
Those are the Ukrainians who need our solidarity.
We know from activists inside Ukraine that the anti-fascist underground is working with Russian troops to identify and capture fascist war criminals. Victory to them!
I hope that exiled comrades who were driven away from their homes, families and communities will soon be able to return.
Confusion in anti-war left
As revolutionary Marxists and Leninists, we understand that pacifism, especially of the “plague on both your houses” kind, amounts to backhanded support for imperialism and its goals.
The job of the anti-war movement here is to end U.S. wars, proxy wars and sanctions by any means necessary, and to support those around the world who are fighting back.
Unfortunately, many anti-war organizations and even some groups that describe themselves as revolutionary socialists and communists have bowed to the intense pressure of imperialist propaganda and taken positions of denouncing Russia or drawing an equal sign between the U.S./NATO and Russia. Just a week ago, they were warning that Washington was pushing Russia into a corner where it would have no choice but to take military action!
Most of these groups have never raised the plight of the people of Donbass, who have endured brutal war and blockade at the cost of over 14,000 lives for eight years.
Likewise, some are now downplaying the role of neo-Nazi and white supremacist forces in Ukraine. These groups were the motor force of the 2014 coup. Today they are completely integrated into the military, police and all sectors of the state, and are used by the U.S. to keep pressure on Kiev’s political elite to do Washington’s bidding.
They don’t talk about how Ukraine has become a training ground for fascists and white supremacists from Europe and North America. In the film we are watching today, “Ukraine on Fire,” you’ll see how that situation came about and how both Democrats and Republicans were intimately involved.
I want to be clear that my criticism is directed at the leaders of these anti-war groups, not the rank and file who may be confused or misinformed. We know there are also folks affiliated with these groups who take an anti-imperialist position and have done excellent work in recent weeks building opposition to war with Russia.
We hope these organizations will come around to a principled view, and soon, because the workers and anti-fascists of the region need the widest possible support.
https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... n-ukraine/
******************************************
War in Ukraine to boost Pentagon’s annual budget closer to trillion dollars
Date: March 4, 2022
Author: Rick Rozoff
March 3, 2022
Russia’s Invasion Will Boost 2023 Defense Budget, Top Democrat Says
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will boost the Pentagon’s funding for next year, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee predicted on Thursday.
“Without question, it’s going to have to be bigger than we thought,” Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said at an American Enterprise Institute event. “The Russian invasion of Ukraine fundamentally altered what our national security posture and what our defense posture needs to be. It made it more complicated and it made it more expensive. I don’t see much way to argue it.”
During annual budget negotiations, Republicans typically push for more defense spending while Democrats overwhelmingly argue for cuts to the military and increased spending on domestic programs. But the bipartisan support for Ukraine could unite both parties around a higher defense budget.
“The political reality is that the Russian incursion in Ukraine has created much more support for an increase in the defense budget,” said Todd Harrison, director for budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “At a minimum, I think [Democrats] won’t oppose it….”
In December, Congress authorized nearly $778 billion for defense spending in fiscal 2022, which began Oct. 1, though lawmakers have yet to pass a budget to disperse that money. The Biden administration is expected to submit a 2023 budget request this month. Two weeks ago, “sources familiar with the negotiations” told Reuters the request would include more than $800 billion for overall defense spending, including $773 billion for the Defense Department.
https://antibellum679354512.wordpress.c ... n-dollars/
**************************************************
THE WEST BREAKS NEW RECORDS IN FAKE NEWS ABOUT UKRAINE
5 Mar 2022 , 6:58 am .
People check their cell phones while commuting on the Moscow metro (Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr./Associated Press)
If we open Facebook or Twitter right now, it is almost certain that we will come across one of the hundreds of thousands of posts that show a negative image of Russia.
Planes bombing Ukrainian cities, soldiers "shooting civilians" or soldiers who surrender en masse to Kiev, are some of the things that appear in videos and photographs that circulate on the web, and of course, they are accompanied by messages that incite categorical rejection of the special military operation that is developing right now in Ukraine. However, if we only examine a little more closely, we may discover that this "news" is actually fake.
The purpose of disseminating false information is to try to discredit the Russian Armed Forces by any means, as it was in previous years, during the anti-terrorist operation in the south of Russia, during the peace enforcement in Georgia and the fighting against international terrorism in Syria.
We have compiled the most popular fakes here:
1.Video of the downed Russian plane turned out to be video game footage. A video circulating on Facebook, Twitter, Telegram and WhatsApp, in which a Ukrainian plane allegedly destroys one and up to five and six Russian fighter planes, was false, which did not prevent the Ukrainian Defense Ministry from sharing it by the social media. The video was identified as being from an air combat simulation video game called DCS World.
2.They pass off an airstrike in Turkey in 2016 as if it happened now in Ukraine. The video shows people on the street trying to escape the gunfire coming from above. The user who shared the fake news alleges that "Russian warplanes are shooting at innocent civilians in Ukraine." The reality is that the recorded events occurred in Turkey in 2016.
3.Who bombed a residential building in Kiev? Another post that went viral was one accusing Russian troops of allegedly destroying a residential building in Kiev with a rocket. From the 17th to the 21st floor, a hole was formed in the place of the apartments by the impact of the ammunition. The mayor of Kiev said the destruction was caused by an incoming rocket from the Russian military. The Russian Defense Ministry denied that story: the damage was caused by a Ukrainian anti-aircraft system.
4.The resurrection of the "fallen heroes" on the Serpent Island. "13 border guards died heroically, but they did not give up," President Zelensky said of a clash between Ukrainian border guards on Snake Island and the Russian Navy that arrived there. The information that was spread in the Western media was that they did not want to surrender and that they were killed by the Russian side. Later, the Ukrainian border guards were miraculously " resurrected ". All of them, the 82 Ukrainian border guards who refused to resist and voluntarily laid down their arms, reached Sevastopol (Crimea) intact.
5."Vladimir Putin is killing children, the elderly and pregnant women." This is the title of a video that shows missile launches at night, without further details to support these accusations. The video is real, but from May 2021, when the Palestinian resistance responded to the attacks that the Zionist entity, calling itself Israel, sustains against the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip.
At the beginning of this article we talked about hundreds of thousands of anti-Russian publications that we can come across. This is not a random figure. We rely on the statement of experts from the Russian Defense Ministry who, with the help of artificial intelligence, detected almost 1.5 million false information spread through social networks since the beginning of the operation in Ukraine.
Now, the strength of these hoaxes lies precisely in the immediacy of communications on social networks, which does not allow spaces to stop, reflect and verify the information that is being received; there is only room for reactions.
Its other strength is in the elimination of sources that contrast the anti-Russian narrative. We have already seen how Russian media outlets are being blocked in entire countries, while their pages on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are marked with the words "This outlet is under the control of the Russian state".
*The Russian government has taken steps to curb the impact of disinformation within its borders. The State Duma (Russian parliament) approved in the final reading a draft law on imprisonment for crimes that discredit the Russian army with false information. In case of serious consequences, the maximum penalty will be up to 15 years in prison. This law has already been supported by the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs.
We live with social platforms and hegemonic media that are responsible for spreading false accusations and news to discredit everything that is not in line with the hypocritical and lying Western criteria. Until this is the exception and not the rule, it becomes much more important to maintain a critical view of the information that comes to us from any source.
https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/oc ... re-ucrania
Google Translator
from Kiev :
b]
