The Purpose Of The Babchenko Hoax
The Ukrainian secret service SBU claims it plotted the fake murder of the Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko in Kiev to uncover a real murder plot by the Russian state. That makes no sense at all.
The hoax is one of several incidents which dangerously escalate the new cold war.
As former British ambassador Craig Murray comments on the SBU's explanation:
Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg - 19:24 UTC- 30 May 2018
If you believe that particular piece of Ukrainian propaganda you are even more stupid than I had already deduced. I wore a book on my head today to prevent Boris Johnson stealing my fridge. My fridge is so there, which is undoubted proof that my scheme worked and Johnson guilty.
Here is how the BBC presents the Ukrainian fairytale:
Ukrainian security chief Vasyl Hrytsak said a sting had been set up to catch hitmen paid by Russian forces.
...
Babchenko said he had been informed a month ago about an alleged Russian plot to kill him. He said he had agreed to co-operate with a counter-operation and had been in constant contact with Ukrainian security services over the course of the past month.
He added that he thought security services had been planning the operation for up to two months.
Mr Hrytsak said the operation had begun after Ukrainian security services were informed about a Russian plot to kill the journalist.
He alleged that Russian security forces had recruited a Ukrainian citizen to find hitmen within Ukraine. He said the citizen had approached several acquaintances, including war veterans, offering $30,000 (£22,600) for the contract killing, one of whom revealed the plot to the security services.
The story as the SBU tells it:
the Russian secret service FSB hired a Ukrainian citizen to find someone to kill Babchenko
the Ukrainian citizen hires a killer
the hired killer tells the SBU about it and cooperates
the SBU knew from him who the Ukrainian middleman of the plot was and has now arrested him
If that is the story why would the SBU stage the murder hoax? They cooperated with the hired killer and had contact or access to the man who allegedly hired him. What else was there to know to prevent the alleged plot? What is the evidence they gained?
The official reason for the murder hoax was:
... to detain those responsible and prove the direct involvement of the Russian special service in the preparation of attempted murder of Mr. Babchenko.
That first part was achievable without the hoax. What about the second one? Was that achieved?
Mascha Gessen writes in the New Yorker:
Ukrainian security services claim to have proof that the middleman was hired by their Russian counterpart, the F.S.B. Babchenko offered one piece of evidence: the ostensible assassin, he said, had been shown a photograph of Babchenko taken twenty-five years ago, when he obtained his first internal passport (at the time, the document, a sort of universal domestic I.D., was issued three times in a Russian citizen’s life: at sixteen, twenty-five, and forty-five). Babchenko claims that the photo could be obtained only from security-service files.
Babchenko is 41 years old. There were plenty of recent Babchenko pictures on Facebook and the Russian social network Vkontakte as well as in the media. Are we to believe that Russian security services would use a picture of the sixteen year Babchenko dug up from an old passport file when a three seconds search would have found them hundreds of more recent pictures? Even this 'Holy Babchenko' fake is more useful to identify him than a 25 year old passport picture. The claimed 'evidence' makes no sense.
Babchenko is by no means a holy man. There are reasons why he is despised in Russia:
Дepлorabлe Russian @TeamTrumpRussia - 6:50 UTC - 31 May 2018
Russian opposition journalist who was "killed by Putin" Arcadiy #Babchenko mourning the death of 71 passengers of a small Russian airline domestic flight crash on February 11, 2018.
While Babchenko was "dead" a staged photo circulated that allegedly showed him killed.
Where did it come from? Is it another "White Helmets" production?
The U.S. propaganda outlet RFL/RE, seemingly miffed about the Babchenko fake, points to a U.S. connection:
The photo was first published on the Facebook page of a former Ukrainian reporter who says he now works for a shadowy consultancy organization based in the Washington, D.C., area.
...
Yevhen Lauer, the reporter who published the photo along with a caption reading “Damn It, Bitches,” told RFE/RL late on May 29 that he received it from a law enforcement source, whom he declined to identify.
Lauer, who has worked for various Ukrainian media outlets in the past, has more recently been affiliated with Trident Group LLC. Based in the Washington suburb of Arlington, the company says it specializes “in law enforcement, investigations, intelligence gathering and analysis, conflict prevention and conflict resolution, international risk control, executive protection and special operations.”
The company’s president, Yuri Koshkin, confirmed to RFE/RL that Lauer had done work for Trident but said he knew nothing of Lauer’s involvement with the SBU sting operation to nab Babchenko’s would-be killers.
Trident Group is a small company of Washington 'beltway bandits' which consults U.S. companies who want to operate in the former USSR. It is run by two former Russian military officers. Does that make it "shadowy"? It says it has offices in Arlington, Moscow and Kiev. Is it involved in the hoax or does it get framed?
The story of the fake murder of Babchenko made a big wave in "western" media. In 2016 alone 14 journalists were killed in the Ukraine after their names were put on a public hit list maintained by some Ukrainian Nazi outlet. The series of murder received less attention than the recent hoax. What drives the extraordinary sensation?
On the John Batchelor Show Professor Stephen F. Cohen points (@8:00+ min) to the accumulation of defaming anti-Russian stories just before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. He sees a parallel to the recent stories and the upcoming soccer Worldcup in Russia.
Russiagate, the deadly Skripal poisoning and their resurrection, the new sanctions against Russian oligarchs and functionaries, the reissuing of the old report accusing Russia for the downing of the MH17 flight over the Ukraine, the same false allegations of Russian hostility towards gays and now the Babchenko hoax all serve the same purpose. To "isolate" Russia in the global public opinion.
This is all part of the new cold war launched in 2014 by then President Obama after his failed attempt to nab the whole Ukraine out of Russia's sphere.
Another aspect of this cold war are the upcoming large NATO maneuvers near the Russian border just in time for the Worldcup start. I plan to detail those in a future post.
Russia is, as Prof. Cohen argues, far from being isolated. Since the launch of the U.S. campaign against it Russia gained more international standing. Despite U.S. sanctions the recent St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) was attended by some 15,000 business people and politicians from over 120 countries. Japan's Prime Minister Abe, France's President Macron and many other high ranking personalities took part. A week before the Indian Prime Minister Modi and the German Chancellor Merkel visited Putin in Sochi.
It is the Ukraine and the U.S. who are losing international support. Even the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and Reporters Without Borders condemned the Babchenko hoax. The new steel and aluminum tariffs against Europe will further split the U.S. from its core allies.
The new cold war propaganda and its various hoaxes have a dangerous aspect. They make it more difficult for the parties to talk. President Trump would be harshly condemned in the cold-war media if he would hold a summit with President Putin. Small incidents, which under normal circumstances would be solved by a phone call and in a peaceful manner, can escalate when the parties don't know and trust each other and no longer talk.
It is in everyone's interest to avoid that.
Posted by b on May 31, 2018 at 05:20 AM | Permalink
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/05/th ... -hoax.html
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Ukraine - The Babchenko Hoax Was Part Of A Corporate Raid
The case of the death and resurrection of the Russian journalist Babchenko in Kiev is even more surreal than it seemed so far. According to Ukrainian sources and court documents the whole hoax was part of an attempt to raid and take over a private company. High levels of the Ukrainian security services staged the whole affair not only to blame Russia but also for someone's personal gain.
In 2017 Arkady Babchenko, despised in Russia for his open hostility against its people, came via Israel to the Ukraine. He was welcome in Kiev for his anti-Russian position. Babchenko found a job with ATR, a Crimean Tatar TV station. The fine-print on the ATR website says that it "was supported by the Media Development Fund of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine".
On May 29 the Ukrainian government claimed that Babchenko had been assassinated. As usual the death of a journalist hostile to Russia was used by NATO aligned media to blame Russia, the Kremlin and Putin. That there was zero evidence that Russia was involved did not matter at all. A photo of the allegedly killed Babchenko laying in his blood emerged.
The very next day the General Prosecutor of the Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko and the head of the National Security Service (SBU) Vasyl Grytsak (also written as Hrytsak) held a press conference and presented a very alive and happy Arkady Babchenko. He had not been shot at all. The whole hoax, it was explained, was launched to find the people behind an alleged assassination campaign originating in Russia. In this official version the Russians hired some Ukrainian "operator" who then hired the "killer" to assassinate Babchenko. The hired killer told the police about it and the hoax of Babchenko's death was staged to find the culprits behind the plot.
All those western "journalists" who had believed Ukrainian government claims without any evidence and wrote unfounded accusations against Russia were not amused. The Ukrainian government exposed them as the mere propaganda tools aGernd fools they are. The "journalist" Babchenko himself, interviewed by Bloomberg's Leonid Bershidsky, comes off as a naive and rather dim light.
Yesterday the "hired killer", one Alexey Tsymbalyuk, went public. He is a Ukrainian nationalist who had fought against the the Russia supported entities in eastern Ukraine. He has since become an orthodox priest.
Would an operator for Russia hire an Ukrainian nationalist and priest who had fought Russian aligned entities in east-Ukraine to kill a well known anti-Russian figure? Hmmm.
The SBU did not confirm that Alexey Tsymbalyuk is the "killer" but Ukrainian media seem to believe him.
The General Prosecutor of the Ukraine named one Boris German (also written Herman) as the Russian paid "operator" how had hired Alexey Tsymbalyuk to kill Arkady Babchenko.
Boris German denies that he worked for Russia.
According to Strana.ua (Russian, machine translation), Jewgenij Solodko, the attorney of the accused "operator" Boris German, rejects the accusations against his client. Boris German (the man) is co-owner of a Ukrainian joint venture with the German (the country) company Schmeisser (also written Schmyser or Shmyser) which produces optics for sniper rifles. German's company had good relation with his customers at the Ukrainian defense ministry. He had also supported the "anti-terror-operations" of Ukrainian nazi formations against the "Russian's" in the east.
The attorney says that over the last six month German's apartment and company had been searched by the SBU several times. The SBU, he alleges, shook German down for some $70,000. The SBU, he writes, had not presented any evidence of any Russian involvement. The attorney denies, according to the Strava.ua report, that his client had any connection with Russians.
Meduza's report on German's court appearance presents a slightly different version:
The man charged with trying to organize the murder of the Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko announced in court on Thursday that he was acting as a Ukrainian counterintelligence agent.
German says he started cooperating with Ukrainian counterintelligence after he was approached by an “old acquaintance” living in Moscow who “works at a Putin foundation, organizing unrest in Ukraine.” German says he was told to learn more about the flow of Russian money into Ukraine funding certain politicians and “terrorist groups.”
According to reports in the Ukrainian media, German said his acquaintance in Russia is named either Vyacheslav Pivovarkin or Vyacheslav Pivovarnik. It’s still unclear if German accuses this person of ordering Babchenko’s murder.
It is curious that the attorney makes claims which are partly contradicting by those made by his client.
The killing, the killer and the operator who hired the killer were all fakes. Arkady Babchenko, Alexey Tsymbalyuk and Boris German all worked with the Ukrainian security service. All seem to have anti-Russian credentials.
But wait, the mess is even deeper.
In our piece yesterday we laid out how the Ukrainian plot and other recent incidents were arranged to discredit Russia just in time for the start of the soccer Worldcup in Russia. It turns out that this was only one aspect of the hapless plot.
Bloomberg writer Leonid Bershidsky points to a piece by one Volodymyr Boiko, a "parachuting instructor in Kiev", who describes (in Ukrainian) an even darker level of the story.
Boiko quotes from official Ukrainian court reports giving their case numbers and dates. He starts (machine translated):
Just do not laugh. The imitation of the "murder" of Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko, which caused such anger in international diplomatic and human rights circles, was a way to resolve the corporate dispute between the founders of the Ukrainian-German joint venture "Schmayser", whose head Boris Herman, SBU head Grytsak and the Prosecutor General Lutsenko was declared the customer of murder and terrorist, acting on the tasks of Russian special services.
The court papers show that the whole affair started in February 2016 and was about an attempt to take over a company. Since 2016 German, the executive director of the company, was fighting off creditors including the founder of the company. These creditors alleged that German, or the company he led, had not paid back some loans and demanded to take over the company to cover their losses. German provided that the loan had been repaid and produced receipts. The creditors said that they were counterfeit. Several cases and many motions were filed and the whole court case ran for nearly two years. German seems to have won it.
Such attempt to take over a company via fraudulent court claims have been a distinct feature of the "wild east" after the Soviet Union broke apart. In Russia, in the Ukraine and elsewhere fraudulent legal cases, physical raids, intimidation and murder were regular means to grab industrial assets. As such the German case is nothing remarkable. But its further development into an absurd hoax makes it special.
As their attempt to raid German's company through a court campaign over minor loans failed, the raiders, with SBU chief Grytsak seemingly behind them, thought out a different way to go after German. Hence the Babchenko hoax and the "operator" allegations.
Volodymyr Boiko continues (machine translated):
But "getting" Herman through the police his opponents could not, because judges consistently refused to choose a precautionary measure because of the insignificance of the crime. And then the order was taken by the Department of Counterintelligence of the SBU. Apparently, it is a primitive provocation directed at the arrest of the head of the joint venture "Schmyser" in order to take away the share of the authorized capital of the enterprise, which he, according to the opponents, owns unlawfully.
The story Boiko tells is consistent with the claims German's attorney made about long ongoing SBU raids of German's apartment and company. The court paper Boiko cites seem valid. It likely is a real part of the Babchenko story, but it still may not be the whole truth.
The staged murder, with a fake cadaver, a fake killer and a fake operator behind it, was endorsed (video) at the highest levels of the Ukrainian government.
"Western" media used the hoax to accuse and defame Russia and its president Putin without the slightest supporting evidence. That alone is already a serious mess and reveals the utter failure of "western" journalism and media.
The background of the case, a takeover of a company by illegal means, demonstrates the total social failure of the "western" coup in Ukraine. The worst of the worst, robber barons like Poroschenko and criminal bankers like Kolomoisky went on to steal billions of "western" aid while the Ukrainian state fell apart. Defying the courts the power of the state is secretly abused for slapstick worthy plots to grab up industrial assets.
The victims are the people of Ukraine who were robbed of their means and their security. Russia, the permanent boogeyman of the "west", is least to blame for it.
Posted by b on June 1, 2018 at 12:33 PM | Permalink
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/06/uk ... -raid.html
Why does that first photo of the 'assailant' remind me of the cast of Seinfeld?
That is my succinct commentary.
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