Exclusive: A year after a U.S.-backed coup ousted Ukraine’s elected president, the new powers in Kiev are itching for a “full-scale war” with Russia — and want the West’s backing even if it could provoke a nuclear conflict, a Strangelovian madness that the U.S. media ignores, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
A senior Ukrainian official is urging the West to risk a nuclear conflagration in support of a “full-scale war” with Russia that he says authorities in Kiev are now seeking, another sign of the extremism that pervades the year-old, U.S.-backed regime in Kiev.
In a recent interview with Canada’s CBC Radio, Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said, “Everybody is afraid of fighting with a nuclear state. We are not anymore, in Ukraine , we’ve lost so many people of ours, we’ve lost so much of our territory.”
Peter Sellers playing Dr. Strangelove as he struggles to control his right arm from making a Nazi salute.
Prystaiko added, “However dangerous it sounds, we have to stop [Russian President Vladimir Putin] somehow. For the sake of the Russian nation as well, not just for the Ukrainians and Europe.” The deputy foreign minister announced that Kiev is preparing for “full-scale war” against Russia and wants the West to supply lethal weapons and training so the fight can be taken to Russia.
“What we expect from the world is that the world will stiffen up in the spine a little,” Prystaiko said.
Yet, what is perhaps most remarkable about Prystaiko’s “Dr. Strangelove” moment is that it produced almost no reaction in the West. You have a senior Ukrainian official saying that the world should risk nuclear war over a civil conflict in Ukraine between its west, which favors closer ties to Europe, and its east, which wants to maintain its historic relationship with Russia.
Why should such a pedestrian dispute justify the possibility of vaporizing millions of human beings and conceivably ending life on the planet? Yet, instead of working out a plan for a federalized structure in Ukraine or even allowing people in the east to vote on whether they want to remain under the control of the Kiev regime, the world is supposed to risk nuclear annihilation.
But therein lies one of the under-reported stories of the Ukraine crisis: There is a madness to the Kiev regime that the West doesn’t want to recognize because to do so would upend the dominant narrative of “our” good guys vs. Russia’s bad guys. If we begin to notice that the right-wing regime in Kiev is crazy and brutal, we might also start questioning the “Russian aggression” mantra.
According to the Western “group think,” the post-coup Ukrainian government “shares our values” by favoring democracy and modernity, while the rebellious ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine are “Moscow’s minions” representing dark forces of backwardness and violence, personified by Russia’s “irrational” President Putin. In this view, the conflict is a clash between the forces of good and evil where there is no space for compromise.
Yet, there is a craziness to this “group think” that is highlighted by Prystaiko’s comments. Not only does the Kiev regime display a cavalier attitude about dragging the world into a nuclear catastrophe but it also has deployed armed neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists to wage a dirty war in the east that has involved torture and death-squad activities.
Not Since Adolf Hitler
No European government, since Adolf Hitler’s Germany, has seen fit to dispatch Nazi storm troopers to wage war on a domestic population, but the Kiev regime has and has done so knowingly. Yet, across the West’s media/political spectrum, there has been a studious effort to cover up this reality, even to the point of ignoring facts that have been well established.
The New York Times and the Washington Post have spearheaded this journalistic malfeasance by putting on blinders so as not to see Ukraine’s neo-Nazis, such as when describing the key role played by the Azov battalion in the war against ethnic Russians in the east.
On Feb. 20, in a report from Mariupol, the Post cited the Azov battalion’s importance in defending the port city against a possible rebel offensive. Correspondent Karoun Demirjian wrote:
“Petro Guk, the commander of the Azov battalion’s reinforcement operations in Mariupol, said in an interview that the battalion is ‘getting ready for’ street-to-street combat in the city. The Azov battalion, now a regiment in the Ukrainian army, is known as one of the fiercest fighting forces in the pro-Kiev operation.
“But it has pulled away from the front lines on a scheduled rest-and-retraining rotation, Guk said, leaving the Ukrainian army, a less capable force, in his opinion, in its place. His advice to residents of Mariupol is to get ready for the worst.
“‘If it is your home, you should be ready to fight for it, and accept that if the fight is for your home, you must defend it,’ he said, when asked whether residents should prepare to leave. Some are ready to heed that call, as a matter of patriotic duty.”
The Post’s stirring words fit with the Western media’s insistent narrative and its refusal to include meaningful background about the Azov battalion, which is known for marching under Nazi banners, displaying the Swastika and painting SS symbols on its helmets.
The New York Times filed a similarly disingenuous article from Mariupol on Feb. 11, depicting the ethnic Russian rebels as barbarians at the gate with the Azov battalion defending civilization. Though providing much color and detail and quoting an Azov leader prominently the Times left out the salient and well-known fact that the Azov battalion is composed of neo-Nazis.
But this inconvenient truth that neo-Nazis have been central to Kiev’s “self-defense forces” from last February’s coup to the present would disrupt the desired propaganda message to American readers. So the New York Times just ignores the Nazism and refers to Azov as a “volunteer unit.”
Yet, this glaring omission is prima facie proof of journalistic bias. There’s no way that the editors of the Post and Times don’t know that the presence of neo-Nazis is newsworthy. Indeed, there’s a powerful irony in this portrayal of Nazis as the bulwark of Western civilization against the Russian hordes from the East. It was, after all, the Russians who broke the back of Nazism in World War II as Hitler sought to subjugate Europe and destroy Western civilization as we know it.
That the Nazis are now being depicted as defenders of Western ideals has to be the ultimate man-bites-dog story. But it goes essentially unreported in the New York Times and Washington Post as does the inconvenient presence of other Nazis holding prominent positions in the post-coup regime, including Andriy Parubiy, who was the military commander of the Maidan protests and served as the first national security chief of the Kiev regime. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine, Through the US Looking Glass.”]
The Nazi Reality
Regarding the Azov battalion, the Post and Times have sought to bury the Nazi reality, but both have also acknowledged it in passing. For instance, on Aug. 10, 2014, a Times’ article mentioned the neo-Nazi nature of the Azov battalion in the last three paragraphs of a lengthy story on another topic.
“The fighting for Donetsk has taken on a lethal pattern: The regular army bombards separatist positions from afar, followed by chaotic, violent assaults by some of the half-dozen or so paramilitary groups surrounding Donetsk who are willing to plunge into urban combat,” the Times reported.
“Officials in Kiev say the militias and the army coordinate their actions, but the militias, which count about 7,000 fighters, are angry and, at times, uncontrollable. One known as Azov, which took over the village of Marinka, flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its flag.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Whites Out Ukraine’s Brownshirts.”]
Similarly, the Post published a lead story last Sept. 12 describing the Azov battalion in flattering terms, saving for the last three paragraphs the problematic reality that the fighters are fond of displaying the Swastika:
“In one room, a recruit had emblazoned a swastika above his bed. But Kirt [a platoon leader] dismissed questions of ideology, saying that the volunteers, many of them still teenagers, embrace symbols and espouse extremist notions as part of some kind of ‘romantic’ idea.”
Other news organizations have been more forthright about this Nazi reality. For instance, the conservative London Telegraph published an article by correspondent Tom Parfitt, who wrote: “Kiev’s use of volunteer paramilitaries to stamp out the Russian-backed Donetsk and Luhansk ‘people’s republics’ should send a shiver down Europe’s spine.
“Recently formed battalions such as Donbas, Dnipro and Azov, with several thousand men under their command, are officially under the control of the interior ministry but their financing is murky, their training inadequate and their ideology often alarming. The Azov men use the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or anti-Semites.”
Based on interviews with militia members, the Telegraph reported that some of the fighters doubted the Holocaust, expressed admiration for Hitler and acknowledged that they are indeed Nazis.
Andriy Biletsky, the Azov commander, “is also head of an extremist Ukrainian group called the Social National Assembly,” according to the Telegraph article which quoted a commentary by Biletsky as declaring: “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”
The Telegraph questioned Ukrainian authorities in Kiev who acknowledged that they were aware of the extremist ideologies of some militias but insisted that the higher priority was having troops who were strongly motivated to fight.
Azov fighters even emblazon the Swastika and the SS insignia on their helmets. NBC News reported: “Germans were confronted with images of their country’s dark past when German public broadcaster ZDF showed video of Ukrainian soldiers with Nazi symbols on their helmets in its evening newscast.”
Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion. (As filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV.)
But it’s now clear that far-right extremism is not limited to the militias sent to kill ethnic Russians in the east or to the presence of a few neo-Nazi officials who were rewarded for their roles in last February’s coup. The fanaticism is present at the center of the Kiev regime, including its deputy foreign minister who speaks casually about a “full-scale war” with nuclear-armed Russia.
An Orwellian World
In a “normal world,” U.S. and European journalists would explain to their readers how insane all this is; how a dispute over the pace for implementing a European association agreement while also maintaining some economic ties with Russia could have been worked out within the Ukrainian political system, that it was not grounds for a U.S.-backed “regime change” last February, let alone a civil war, and surely not nuclear war.
But these are clearly not normal times. To a degree that I have not seen in my 37 years covering Washington, there is a totalitarian quality to the West’s current “group think” about Ukraine with virtually no one who “matters” deviating from the black-and-white depiction of good guys in Kiev vs. bad guys in Donetsk and Moscow.
And, if you want to see how the “objective” New York Times dealt with demonstrations in Moscow and other Russian cities protesting last year’s coup against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, read Sunday’s dispatch by the Times’ neocon national security correspondent Michael R. Gordon, best known as the lead writer with Judith Miller on the infamous “aluminum tube” story in 2002, helping to set the stage for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Here’s how Gordon explained the weekend’s anti-coup protests: “The official narrative as reported by state-run television in Russia, and thus accepted by most Russians, is that the uprising in Ukraine last year was an American-engineered coup, aided by Ukrainian Nazis, and fomented to overthrow Mr. Yanukovych, a pro-Russian president.”
In other words, the Russians are being brainwashed while the readers of the New York Times are getting their information from an independent news source that would never be caught uncritically distributing government propaganda, another example of the upside-down Orwellian world that Americans now live in. [See, for example, “NYT Retracts Russian Photo Scoop.”]
In our land of the free, there is no “official narrative” and the U.S. government would never stoop to propaganda. Everyone just happily marches in lockstep behind the conventional wisdom of a faultless Kiev regime that “shares our values” and can do no wrong — while ignoring the brutality and madness of coup leaders who deploy Nazis and invite a nuclear holocaust for the world.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.
While I was growing up, I learned how comically misguided the “blame Russia” reflex could be. Now that I’m older, I’m learning how horrific it can be, too, because it serves as both an excuse and a justification for all ranges of atrocities.
The other day, I wrote several essays about the role of freedom in multinational disputes, only to tear them up (if one can apply the metaphor to virtual documents). I had sulked into the awareness that the international agenda is not guided by reason, but dictated by a hyper-American clique which seems to think that it’s universal freedoms are somehow more real than everybody else’s.
The diminutive and previously ineffective protests carried out by the opposition will now be “far larger” and serve as a “powerful platform for Kremlin critics,” a reality that simply would not have existed had Nemtsov not been murdered.
One must also factor in the United States’ various proxy conflicts it is waging against Russia, and seemingly losing – including in Syria and Ukraine. The opportunity to spread chaos in the streets of Moscow would not only benefit the US and its agenda beyond its borders, but is in fact America’s stated foreign policy.
Despite attempts to frame it otherwise, even the US State Department cannot escape the fact that Russia lacked any motivation at all to murder a fading opposition leader, let alone incriminatingly murder him practically on the doorstep of the Kremlin itself. Whoever killed Nemtsov meant for the uninformed general public to think it was the Kremlin, however.
US State Department Admits Russia had Nothing to Gain from Killing Boris Nemtsov
By Tony Cartalucci
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2015/02/us-state-department-admits-russia-had.html
Putin’s opposition shot dead today. Thank God he’s not a fascist.
I would like to think we have all learned, that when you “win” a nuclear war, you don’t really win. The environmental damage, and the fallout is too great to allow even the most ignorant of person to push the button. Everybody knows this. Now if they want to completely destry the Earth and all who is on it, that would be the method to do so. Just don’t expect to get anything else out of thermonuclear war. No land gain, no peace. The Earth would be too damaged to even live on for 100’s of years. We would be extinct by then. No food, no safe water. Radiation everywhere.
So this article is not nonsensical. Nobody would push the “button”, save for a few nuts who want the who world to blow up and they live in an all or nothing mindset.
Legions of these nuts infest the governments of North America and Europe. The fact that Vladimir Putin isn’t among them may be the only thing preventing thermonuclear war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQg2vMl34KI
The Deputy Speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, Andriy Parubiy, who had been the co-founder of the Nazi-inspired Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine, met in Washington on Wednesday, February 25th, with members of the U.S. House and Senate who support his request that the U.S. Government donate weapons to his virtually bankrupt Government. Parubiy also visited with the Pentagon. Weapons are needed by his Government because his Government is engaged in a civil war against the residents in the area of Ukraine that had voted 90% for the former Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Parubiy himself (when he was called “the Mayor of Maidanâ€) led to overthrow in a violent February 2014 coup.
Top Ukrainian Nazi Visits U.S. Congress, Pentagon, Seeks Weapons for Ukraine
By Eric Zuesse
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/top-ukrainian-nazi-visits-u-s-congress-pentagon-seeks-weapons-ukraine.html
The similarities between Kiev’s attempts to drag the US into a shooting war with Russia and Israel’s attempts to drag the US into a shooting war with Iran, lead me to believe that both countries are under of one unique group of people who have never been able to live in harmony with a neighbor they cannot dominate or destroy at will.
The Serpents Egg is back, mate.
ISIS, the neo-nasties, it’s the same tale. Murderous thugs on the loose, but they’re our murderous thugs.
Now watch neo-nazism spread across Europe. And these aren’t Hitler’s Hugo Boss nattily-attired chappies. They are very evil people. They may be nasty when working on the east but, the way I hear it, they are particularly vicious with their own people in western Ukraine. If you live in Kharkov and your mobile phone doesn’t have any recognised nazi friends on it, it’s off to the clink with you. And they have a special penchant for pretty girls.
Don’t have any links to back up my claims, but it is out there.
Isn’t the neo-con Victoria Nuland president of Ukraine, really?
Funny, she did not leave office with the Dick Cheney.
Okay, having watched this madness from the corner for a while and having no luck rationalizing the insanity I have developed a pet theory for it all.
Recent environmental information regarding the release of methane and clathrates could end up causing human extinction in the short term (in 15-25 years) and if that is the case I can see “them” in the military industrial complex not wanting to have to waste all these toys they spent the last 70 years building – so why not use the neocon ideology through the NAC to promote a world nuclear conflict and get to play with those toys before its all flushed away anyway? Sure it is inviting world suffering and pain for everybody else, but since when do they care about that?
While the neocon ideology is most probably the source of this current craze, this scenario at least gives a motivating force to this insanity which is very difficult to justify on its own, of course discounting the wonderful reporting of consortium news which paints a picture of global economic instability being the driving force for a war to cover up the misdeeds of the financial elite.
Ben~
Tens of thousands of words in the article and comment thread and the word Holodomor is never mentioned. A decade before the Russians “broke the back of the Nazis,” they broke the back of Ukraine by killing three million Ukrainians. You might cut Ukrainians some slack if they’re still a little sore about it
Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard
By Douglas Tottle (1987)
http://rationalrevolution.net/special/library/tottlefraud.pdf
This book documents how and why fraudulent stories about the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s made the presses worldwide and have become accepted as fact by almost everyone, despite the fact that they are provably false. The stories of millions of deaths caused by famine in Ukraine in 1933 and 1934, supposedly caused by the effects of the Soviet system, were fabricated by Nazi propagandists in their propaganda campaigns against Bolshevism. The spread of these stories to America took route through the presses of William Randolph Hearst, who has also since been proven, as I have documented on this website, to have been working in collaboration with the Nazis and publishing Nazi propaganda in mainstream American publications throughout the later half of the 1930s and into the 1940s.
These fabrications, which are well documented in this book, have become almost completely accepted as facts by Americans, and these fabrications have been repeatedly used, and are still used, by politicians despite the fact that they are provably false and were provably produced by a Nazi conspirator. The fact that William Randolph Hearst was conspiring with the Nazis during the 1930s is proven outside of this book, and is a part of official American government record, yet his fabricated publications about the Ukrainian famine are still referenced as fact today.
Well, I guess as far as my experience goes, who to believe? Your Stalinist apologist link, or the lyin’ eyes of people who survived it?
Well, I guess as far as my experience goes, who to believe? Your Stalinist apologist link, or the lyin’ eyes of people who survived it?
Just check the facts — the famine took place in the Ukranian, Russian and Kazakh parts of the Soviet Union. One of the main characters behind the famine was a Ukranian (Kaganovich), while the leader was Georgian (Stalin). How could anybody in his right mind interpret that as Russian aggression towards Ukraine? Utter nonsense.
Well, I see we’ve moved from “it didn’t happen” to “it happened, but the guy who administered it was ‘Ukrainian’ (please spell it right) and the maniac who oversaw it was ‘Georgian.'” This is what Marx would recognize as dialectic.
So we’ve gone from “it didn’t happen” to “yeah, it happened, but it was implemented by a Ukrainian and ordered by a Georgian.” Marx would call that dialectic
The collectivization of agriculture in the USSR (1929–31) resulted in terrible Soviet famine (1932-33). The famine affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union, leading to the deaths of millions in those areas and severe food insecurity throughout the USSR. These areas included Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Volga Region and Kazakhstan, the South Urals, and West Siberia.
The subset of the famine within the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic is called Holodomor or “hungry mass-death.”
According to Douglas Tottle, claims that the Holodomor was an act of intentional genocide directly focused against the people of Ukraine are “fraudulent”.
Tottle does not claim that famine “didn’t happen” in the USSR. However, he does suggest that Ukrainian resistance to collectivization contributed to the severity of famine in Ukraine.
Tottle shows that Nazi propagandists spread anti-Semitic “famine-genocide” propaganda to support their 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union.
Tottle admits that he “does not attempt to study the famine in any detailed way”. He focuses on the “Nazi and fascist connections” and the “coverups of wartime collaboration” by Ukrainian nationalists.
In short, Tottle does not deny that famine happened in Ukraine and elsewhere in the Soviet Union.
Tottle exposes the Holodomor notion of a genocidal “terror-famine” specifically directed against the people of Ukraine by a vengeful Stalin as a “myth” based in fascist (Nazi German and Ukrainian nationalist) propaganda.
For more on this subject read:
“In Search of a Soviet Holocaust” by Jeff Coplon
(Originally published in the Village Voice (New York City), January 12, 1988)
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/vv.html
The collectivization of agriculture in the USSR (1929–31) resulted in terrible Soviet famine (1932-33). The famine affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union, leading to the deaths of millions in those areas and severe food insecurity throughout the USSR. These areas included Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Volga Region and Kazakhstan, the South Urals, and West Siberia.
The subset of the famine within the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic is called Holodomor or “hungry mass-death.”
According to Douglas Tottle, claims that the Holodomor was an act of intentional genocide directly focused against the people of Ukraine are “fraudulent”.
Tottle does not claim that famine “didn’t happen” in the USSR. However, he does suggest that Ukrainian resistance to collectivization contributed to the severity of famine in Ukraine.
Tottle shows that Nazi propagandists spread anti-Semitic “famine-genocide” propaganda to support their 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union.
Tottle admits that he “does not attempt to study the famine in any detailed way”. He focuses on the “Nazi and fascist connections” and the “coverups of wartime collaboration” by Ukrainian nationalists.
In short, Tottle does not deny that famine happened in Ukraine and elsewhere in the Soviet Union.
Tottle exposes the Holodomor notion of a genocidal “terror-famine” specifically directed against the people of Ukraine by a vengeful Stalin as a “myth” based in fascist (Nazi German and Ukrainian nationalist) propaganda.
How important is trade “cooperation?”
In the event that some have forgotten, the US-backed coup occurred because Yanukovych had formally announced that Ukraine as a whole would be better off it joined the Russian (BRICS) alliance over the EU, which the Ukraine is still not a part of.
If this were a lesson the US/NATO alliance were trying to teach the developing countries and emerging economies seeking to move away from the Wall St neoliberal investment regime, it may have been somewhat successful, because as many of the developing countries now seek closer relations with the new BRICS-led institutions, they are also cautious and need to tread slowly and carefully.
Try this site which opposes war and all sets of oligarchs, USA supported and Russian supported
http://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/
Thank you for another nice article, Mr. Perry. I am so glad we have such people like you who has healthy view on issues in Ukraine. It’s civil war but main stream media is trying to say it’s Russian aggression and doesn’t provide any evidences. It’s sad some people are so blind and believe this b… s….Open your eyes, World! Look on most Ukrainian soldiers and what symbols they use. Neo Nazi’s. And we try to ignore this fact? Wake up, World! It’s can be too late as same as with ISIS.
This is such bull. In the Budapest Accord Ukraine was guaranteed territorial integrity by Russia and the US when they gave up 1200+ nuclear warheads at the end of the Cold War. This has not been honored at all by Putin, just like the Minsk accords. In addition, Putin is violating WWII territorial agreements. There is a tiny NAZI element in one brigade in Ukraine, but they even expelled the racist NAZI elements. Banderas, the original leader was put in a NAZI concentration camp after working with them to expell Communists from Ukraine, then he fought both. So resurrecting this history is ridiculous, but it is certainly what Putin wants to do to justify his invasion. Looks like this here are buying his propaganda, hook line and sinker.
Word for word, your comments are US-NATO-Kiev boilerplate.
The US-NATO financed coup d’etat in Kiev directly violated the pledge to respect the political independence of Ukraine.
As for the “tiny Nazi element in one Brigadeâ€. In the case of the Azov battalion, the commander (not some low-rank member — the commander!) who, as far as I know, is still in charge of the fully operational and highly active fighting squad, is an outspoken Nazi.
Here’s from the British newspaper The Telegraph: “ The 35-year old commander began creating the battalion after he was released from pre-trial detention in February in the wake of pro-western protests in Kiev. He had denied a charge of attempted murder, claiming it was politically motivated.
A former history student and amateur boxer, Mr Biletsky is also head of an extremist Ukrainian group called the Social National Assembly. “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival,†he wrote in a recent commentary. “A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.â€â€
A link to the article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11025137/Ukraine-crisis-the-neo-Nazi-brigade-fighting-pro-Russian-separatists.html
I haven’t looked deeper into Dmytro Yarosh, but he’s a prominent figure who might be worth investigating more as well.
On Dmytro Yarosh —
Brown Revolution in Ukraine: The Neo-Nazis’ Charm Offensive
By Eugene Girin
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/brown-revolution-in-ukraine–the-neo-nazis-charm-offensive/
Funny how the Israeli government jus’ loves them some Nazis.
Thank you, Abe!
Just to clarify, the UK, France, China, Pakistan, India, and South Africa also have nukes, and NATO have them deployed all throughout Europe…Belgium, Netherlands, Turkey, and Italy. The fear is not of a nuclear war. It just will not happen.
And if the EU or Americans really cared about Russian troops pouring unchecked across the borders, they would have moved entire combat ready army groups to the Russian border to “send a message”. No one will blink…It will fizzle out. the EU needs Russian energy, so there it is…until the EU finds reliable alternate stocks.
And Russian troops aren’t pouring across the border with Ukraine. (Well, unless you think the New York Times’ “reporting” is fact based.
Famous last words: “It just will not happen.”
“No such event can over take us here, we’re much too wise.”
– Bruce Cockburn, “Radium Rain” from Big Circumstance (1989)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE6ZF9-u8vY
@Dave
“…….Russian troops pouring unchecked across the borders…†?? Was that not shown to be blatant misrepresentation from these incredibly deceitful, viperous media conglomerates that are poisoning and clouding perceptions in the western hemisphere?
And of course Russian nervousness with NATO slithering around their borders is totally expected and justified. NATO is now under control of the most vile, most repugnant political creature ever spawned in this solar system.
In addition to the outragious comments of the Ukrainian vice foreign deputy I would also like to emphasize the remarks PM Yatsenyuk made on German TV ARD on 8th Jan.: “The Russian aggression in the Ukraine, that is an attack on the World order and onto the order of Europe. We can all remember very well the Soviets invading the Ukraine and eventually Germany. That has to be avoided. And no one has the right to re-write the results of World War II.†The quote has also been entered in Yatsenyuk’s wikipedia description. I can only conclude that he claims that WWII began in November 1942 with the Soviet attack and encirclement of the German city of Stalingrad. In other words, he wants to re-write world history and obviously believes that the Nazi-German attack on the Soviet Union in summer 1941 including all its atrocities is irrelevant or perhaps he believes this was also provoked by the USSR or whatever. Not even German neo-Nazies would view this historic events in that way. I find this shocking, the murder of millions of Jews, Gypsis, handicapped, etc. is irrelevant? Only the Czech president Zeman has so far issued a protest against Yatsenyuk’s utterance, the rest of the Western leaders and the media are quiet about it, I believe nothing about this has been published by the NYT. Nazi ideology appears not only to be present in some of the Ukrainian militias but also at the top of the government.
The stupidity is on both sides of the political aisle domestically within the Western World (as well as between the approaches seen in both Moscow and the West) and unfortunately we’ve never been able to be firm with Russia while also being fair. The writer must have missed the report documenting UK EU and US incompetience with regards to negotiating with Russia in relation to Ukriaine. We should have never offered them an opportunity to get closer to the EU, without considering the possible backlash from Russia. In other words we really pissed off the Russians (Putin) while promising the Ukrainians something that was not realistic given the situation.
Now we are faced with the reality that Russia is not willing to compromise on Ukriaine. So we are faced with partition. And no wants to accept this but all of Europe cries a loud NO! when the US says we should arm Russia.
What other options are there? Appease or arm them? More sanctions and remove all links to Russia including removing them from G7/G8, why is that no being seriously talked about? Well possibly we have to be firm but also pragmatic. But what if Putin is not ready to listen to reason or a fair compromise and he wants his new Russia? How far are we willing to go?
In the UK’s Independent this morning, I read a repor by war correspondent Kim Sengupta containing this sentence:
“Kharkiv, on the edge of the Donbas battleground, does not have a natural majority of pro-Russians like Donetsk and Luhansk, but controlling Ukraine’s second city will buttress the dream of “Novorossiya†and give it more defensible borders.”
I couldn’t resist commenting with this:
“I paused from reading when I got to: “Kharkiv, on the edge of the Donbas battleground, does not have a natural majority of pro-Russians like Donetsk and Luhansk…”
The population of Kharkiv is 63.22% Russian. Russians have lived in the city for hundreds of years, but moved there in larger numbers during the 19th century. So what is a ‘natural majority’ exactly?
Ah, Kim Sengupta with a name like that he can’t be part of the natural majority of British people. See how racist it begins to sound when put like that? UKIP couldn’t have put it better.”
The mental gymnastics needed to create the term ‘natural majority’ defy belief. Does it give some people more rights over others? And how would that work out if applied to the US?
Here’s a link to the full article: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/in-ukraine-a-dark-world-of-hybrid-warfare-and-murky-loyalties-prevails-10066132.html
God, but things are getting scary. Nuclear war over Ukraine? What are we collectively crazy?
God, but things are getting scary. Nuclear war over Ukraine? What are we collectively crazy?
Even worse is that no one in the west is covering any of the atrocities that residents are reporting the Nazis committing. Mariupol residents have been interviewed wishing that the Novorussians would get there and save them. They’re reported to kidnap young girls who are never seen again. In other cities, their tortured bodies have been found in the woods after the NR takes the territory. They’re not just a bunch of boys playing with symbols and flags:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km2WKpJt7aM
When the billionaire oligarch and American puppet leader of Ukraine visited Canada, he said that outside of Ukraine, ‘Canada is the country most like Ukraine.’ And under neocon Stephen Harper, it seems like it more and more. So, it is not a suprise to read that Ukraine sent one of their Nazis to talk to some of ours, and yours:
Ukraine Wants Canada to Persuade US to Send Weapons
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ukraine-wants-canada-to-persuade-us-to-send-weapons/article23169571/
I don’t know there are still some sane folks in the US and europe … And some impartial journalist as well
Nuclear Winter: U.S.-Russian war producing 150 million tons of smoke
http://www.nucleardarkness.org/warconsequences/
• 2600 U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons on high-alert are launched (in 2 to 3 minutes) at targets in the U.S., Europe and Russia (and perhaps at other targets which are considered to have strategic value).
• Some fraction of the remaining 7600 deployed and operational U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear warheads/weapons are also launched and detonated in retaliation for the initial attacks.
• Hundreds of large cities in the U.S., Europe and Russia are engulfed in massive firestorms which burn urban areas of tens or hundreds of thousands of square miles/kilometers.
• 150 million tons of smoke from nuclear fires rises above cloud level, into the stratosphere, where it quickly spreads around the world and forms a dense stratospheric cloud layer. The smoke will remain there for many years to block and absorb sunlight.
• The smoke blocks up to 70% of the sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface in the Northern Hemisphere, and up to 35% of the sunlight is also blocked in the Southern Hemisphere.
• In the absence of warming sunlight, surface temperatures on Earth become as cold or colder than they were 18,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age
• There would be rapid cooling of more than 20°C over large areas of North America and of more than 30°C over much of Eurasia, including all agricultural regions
• 150 million tons of smoke in the stratosphere would cause minimum daily temperatures in the largest agricultural regions of the Northern Hemisphere to drop below freezing for 1 to 3 years. Nightly killing frosts would occur and prevent food from being grown.
• Average global precipitation would be reduced by 45% due to the prolonged cold.
• Growing seasons would be virtually eliminated for many years.
• Massive destruction of the protective ozone layer would also occur, allowing intense levels of dangerous UV light to penetrate the atmosphere and reach the surface of the Earth.
• Massive amounts of radioactive fallout would be generated and spread both locally and globally. The targeting of nuclear reactors would significantly increase fallout of long-lived isotopes.
• Gigantic ground-hugging clouds of toxic smoke would be released from the fires; enormous quantities of industrial chemicals would also enter the environment.
• It would be impossible for many living things to survive the extreme rapidity and degree of changes in temperature and precipitation, combined with drastic increases in UV light, massive radioactive fallout, and massive releases of toxins and industrial chemicals.
• Already stressed land and marine ecosystems would collapse.
• Unable to grow food, most humans would starve to death.
• A mass extinction event would occur, similar to what happened 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs were wiped out following a large asteroid impact with Earth (70% of species became extinct, including all animals greater than 25 kilograms in weight).
• Even humans living in shelters equipped with many years worth of food, water, energy, and medical supplies would probably not survive in the hostile post-war environment.
Death to Muscovy!
That will certainly take care of any global warming problem. Sleep tight everyone.
I grow tired of the American tantrum over not getting all of Ukraine “away” from Russia. Sure, Putin is an autocrat. This still does not justify our government endorsing the overthrow of elected leaders, or the antagonizing of Russia right on her borders.
Few workers in the US who voted for President (a foreign policy vote in part) presumably wanted this crisis. Romney threatened a more hostile policy with Russia. So did Hillary. Both were passed over.
Lol
I don’t know there are still some sane people and journalist in the US media
One dismissal of Putin-the-autocrat labeling: http://www.thenation.com/article/167746/stop-pointless-demonization-putin (written in May, 2012).
“Even the epithet commonly applied to Putin is incorrect. The dictionary and political science definition of “autocrat†is a ruler with absolute power, and Putin has hardly been that. There are many examples of his need to mediate, sometimes unsuccessfully, among powerful groups in the ruling political establishment and of his policies being thwarted by Moscow and regional bureaucracies. Moreover, if Putin really were a “cold-blooded, ruthless†autocrat, tens of thousands of protesters would not have appeared in Moscow streets, not far from the Kremlin, following the December presidential election. Nor would they have been officially sanctioned – as were the thousands who gathered yesterday before a small group breached the sanctioned lines and violence ensued – or shown on state television.â€
I have trouble posting comments, on several computers.
Again, I think this article superb, though frightening.
Frightening but essential and superb essay.
NYT reports an American anti-artillery radar system has been captured by separatists:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/world/europe/ukraine-rebels-celebrate-victory-at-strategic-city-with-a-festive-rally.html?referrer=
How did that get there? I thought the Obama team wasn’t sending this stuff. They apparently have, in secret.
“Col. Valentin Fedichiv, a deputy commander of the military’s operations in the east, told Channel 5 television on Monday of another setback for the military: An American-supplied counter-battery radar system, which spots the source of incoming artillery fire, was lost in the hurried retreat from Debaltseve.”
Anti artillery is considered defensive in nature and is perfectly OK to have. DPR is working on this and the other captured radio systems and should have them up and running for Ukraine’s spring offensive. English not being their first language, it takes a little while.
Good find. Could be part of the previous “non-lethal” assistance that the U.S. provided?
I don’t want to dismiss the likelihood of nuclear war, but I think that it has grown less likely in recent days. Germany, France, and the U.K. have made it clear that they do not wish to escalate.
I think the situation could change if the rebels were to take territory outside of Russian ethnically majority areas, especially if they were to get close to the Dnieper River. And especially if Russian troops were clearly deployed there.
At that point, NATO might consider injecting troops as a tripwire, much as in Korea. Russians rightly see Kiev as dangerously close to Moscow; the distance from Kiev to Berlin is not all that much greater. So if the Russians press their advantage too much, Europeans could coalesce around NATO resistance.
By the way, Professor Stephen Cohen probably doesn’t agree with that view. He delivered an address at Fairfield University on 2/5 to argue that escalation is inevitable.
Kiev to Moscow:
470.15 miles
756.61 kilometers
Kiev to Berlin:
748.15 miles
1204.00 kilometers
Moscow to Berlin:
999.19 miles
1607.99 kilometers
And Lviv to Berlin, 494 miles. And Lviv to Warsaw, 189 miles.
The point is that, just as Russia feels threatened by a military alliance close to its capital, other nations feel threatened by a military alliance with Moscow near to theirs.
And what “military alliance with Moscow” is threatening Berlin, Warsaw and Lviv?
Are they mobilizing the same “Russian armored columns” that Kiev is constantly “seeing”?
If I were living in Warsaw, I would be far more concerned that the “heroes of Ukraine” who “liberated” Lviv from its Polish citizenry might claim more territory in the west once they get nuclear weapons back in their hands.
I’m pretty sure that allowing a bunch of right wingers to drag us into an unnecessary (understatement) nuclear war would be quite weak-kneed on our part — much better to have a spine as Prystaiko says and tell him to F-off.
I deeply admire your civil courage!
Could it be possible that for a couple of years a certain clientele has been trying to experiment with worldwide people’s reaction to war? Now we are all used to this kind of news, the mainstream media keeps still and they have come closer to their real goal – a WW III? When respect for humanity got lost (Financial Crisis) it could be a next level of this thrilling game for money and power. You just have to be far away enough and support the right people (Prystaiko and companions). And with the right stuff like drones it’s not much more dangerous than computer games.
Let’s stop together the inhuman behaviour of our corrupt elites!
Gabriele
When Russia agreed to relinquish control of many satellite nations at its borders, including Ukraine, there was evidently an understanding that the USA would not encourage NATO forces to encroach on their borders. The (I gather very corrupt) Kiev government was threatening just this (moving force into Poland), encouraged by the US and NATO. Of course Putin reacted…Crimea gave them access to warm water ports and a sense of some self-protection against NATO threats. Frankly, this sounds very much like US strategy…with no enemy, we have little to rationalize our huge military investments for the past decades. Thus, create a crisis so fear could again shut down any resistance so such a policy. I beg the media to report truthfully and independently of our military leaders. And, Thank you Consortium News for your admirable work.
That’s not true. In fact, people attribute this to some things that Gorbachev has said. However, just last year (October of 2014) he repeated what he has said for decades.. it was not a promise that NATO would not extend, but HE FELT it was against the spirit of the agreement. If you read what the man has actually said instead of just repeating what others who have no clue have said, you’d know that NATO’s expansion was never a topic of discussion in regards to the reunification of Germany. Then again, when you read drivel like the article above (“US backed coup” … what?) .. I can understand why you would be so blind.
Pretty much everyone directly involved with the negotiations to withdraw Soviet forces from Germany in the early 1990s has said there was a tacit understanding (but not in writing) that NATO would not seek advantage by widening its membership eastward. This includes senior American policy makers like George Kennan, who later spoke publicly against the NATO expansions in context of specific understandings made in the early 1990s with which he was involved. Dismissing this as “drivel” or blindness or, as many have done, claiming that since it was not on paper it has no value as a pledge or promise – this is how the world ends up with these sorts of crisis.
Gorbachev didn’t feel this promise. It was understood between all parties that Soviet Union would leave the Eastern European countries including East Germany alone (everybody, however, understood with the West) and NATO wouldn’t make advances toward Russian borders (i.e., would not court former Soviet Union republics into NATO). I read the man in his own language and luckily can see for myself and not what others translate.
Do you like it or not, Ukraine is internal matter for Russia. As Mexico, Cuba and/or Canada are for the US. Russians and mostly Eastern Ukrainians are basically one ethnicity and what is happening right now over there is criminal. And the world would be in much more better situation, if people really knew what they’re talking about without paraphrasing media and brainless politicians.
Russian-Ukrainian
AJ, do you have any links to material with Gorbachev saying that? A video with him saying it in Russian would be the best (I know Russian).
Meanwhile, I’ve been giving most credibility on the matter to this: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/142310/joshua-r-itzkowitz-shifrinson/put-it-in-writing
James Baker has confirmed that there was such an agreement. It was not a written treaty, but a matter of honor between gentlemen! So much for that.
As for “drivel” about a US-backed coup, you are apparently completely ignorant of what the US did in Kiev in February last year. If you wish to protest that we NEVER EVER do such things, consider that the CIA has itself acknowledged many coups (beginning with the one in Guatemala, and in Iran, at the behest of United Fruit and of the major oil companies, respectively). No doubt, if we survive, there will be a similar acknowledgment about Ukraine in a couple decades.
AJ,
It is you who are blind. Even if you were right, is the Ukraine worth the grave risk of a nuclear-war?
Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War
By Michel Chossudovsky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX9Lv7Jc_sQ
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/american-british-polish-russian-experts-warn-continued-fighting-ukraine-lead-nuclear-war.html
I was under the impression that the Ukraine was nuke free except power plants? Then did bat-S%%%-crazy mccain drop one of in his last visit.
Otto von Bismarck still lurks in the shadows.
If only. Bismarck had a sense of proportion.
I would like to see CN publish a detailed breakdown of the ownership and control of US media.
Then comments like “that the media ignores” would never be needed to be said again.
It would be bloody obvious.
Just a small comment as the “bloody” attracted my attention.
Carefully planned 40 years ago, the cunning Zionists found a compliant foreign newspaper owner called Murdoch, who sold his soul for a dollar, became a US citizen, purchased as many newspapers he could with the help of the Zionist banks and he is one who dictates why the “media ignores” news items that do not meet the ‘grand plan’.
If you want to beat this cancerous influence, you need people to understand how it is, that Fox is not news but Zionist propaganda. This requires the people to see people like McCain for what they are, to know that the USA is now the #1 terrorist organisation in the world, the real story of 9/11 and on. The people need to shed their apathy.
Forget it.
In my study in the 1980s, about 40-60% of the 100 largest-circulation US newspapers were controlled by persons of the same ethnic group as determined by surname. Only about half of that group can identified by surname. At other newspapers, the same group controlled most positions of advertising director and circulation director, who can tell management what their readers and advertisers will tolerate. At others, the advertisers themselves were so controlled, and able to dictate news policy. The only exceptions were New Jersey (where most were of Italian heritage) and the oil states of Texas-Louisiana. where no correlation was clear. I am told that the oil state newspapers are controlled by the oil companies, but have not verified that. In other state most papers were controlled by persons of Jewish heritage, although one could not say on that basis whether those were liberal or conservative or otherwise. The same general trend appeared in US magazines.
But despite such studies, the majority believe what is safe, convenient, and profitable to believe, so the matter must be repeated by those with the courage, who are few indeed.
Why doesn’t Putin just storm the place and arrest the Nazi criminals who are obviously insane surely the KGB knows who they are and given all the people they (Nazis) have murdered surely he (Putin) would be justified. Putin has done his best to reach an agreement with sane people but obviously there is a lack of them in Kiev.
You know, it could come down to that. The momentum that can gather from these insane escalations of rhetoric can be very significant, and a reality of nuclear war could be a result. If that were to be the inescapable conclusion at some point in the future, Russia could reverse the Ukraine scam in very short order (sans nuclear weapons). This is far from optimal in a geopolitical sense, but if it would head off a nuclear holocaust such a step may trump political correctness.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to this.
My guess is that Russia is waiting for a populous up rising in Ukraine with a little help from them to unseat these maniacs. They don”t have any support from the people of Ukraine so it’s only a matter of time before the puppets are forced out. A lot like Viet Nam. Supported and propped up by the CIA until the people finally won the war.
I, like you, Steven, kept why Putin didn’t just move his giant army into Ukraine and impose a mandatory cease fire, with the full might that might have been necessary. Gradually I came to understand that Putin is playing chess while Obama and the State Department are playing bingo. All Putin had to do was be patient and give the US enough rope to hang itself and the Ukrainian radicals. The economy is now in free fall, the currency has lost 70% of its value in the last year, banks are going belly up and unrest and anger is filling the streets of Kiev. Their heating oil is about to be cut off for non-payment, and Ukraine’s economic problems are so massive that no nation or organization in the West can possibly bail them out. Social unrest and violence in Kiev will follow. Putin could never have achieved such destruction with bombs and his army.
I think the US is banking on the fact, Putin isn’t what we paint him to be, crazy. That he’s smart enough not to push it to these levels. Apparently we are not. It’s sad we can have no empathy for Russia, having gone through WWII with human and resource losses that far exceeded every other group abused by the nazis. Having been invaded by Germany after making a nonaggression pact with Hitler, and then being at the brink of national destruction…, we can’t show a little understanding as to how they might react to this act of aggression by the west. Everybody and culture should have a right to self-determination and whoever denies that right is in the wrong. But didn’t 90% of the disputed area vote to align with Russia? That seems pretty clear to me. I wonder if all this really has to do with is having another boogieman for the benefit of out Industrial-Military-Congressional Complex.
ISRAEL AND THE US HAVE DISPATCHED STORMTROOPERS ON
DOMESTIC POPULATION AND CONTINUE EVERY DAY
It is clearly false that “No European government since Adolph Hitler has seen fit to dispatch
tp dospatch stormtroopers on a domestic population…” Israel with full US backing and
complicity does this every day and has done so for many decades. Israel is not “European”
in the most precise sense of the word. It has both support from the US and from the EU.
Massacres, rapes, murder, depopulation, home demolitions, starvation of an indigenous
population, demolishing infrastructures, assassination of leaders of leaders who do not meet
with Israel-US approval and on and on But since Israel is our “allies” it is OK perhaps.
In Israel it is called “MOWING THE GRASS”.
If the western Ukrainians empowered by the US coup in Ukraine are declared our allies,
such behavior is acceptable as far as the moralistic US rhetoric is concerned.
—Peter Loeb, Boston, MA USA
Excellent narrative, thank you
I couldn’t have put it better, Peter. You just nailed it perfectly. Israel’s brutal wars of aggression against its own indigenous population (Palestinians), as well as against Lebanon and other Arab neighbors, has gone on virtually since its inception in 1948. The latest such wars cost Lebanon over 1,000 innocent civilians in 2006, and in Gaza, over 2,000 innocent civilians last summer. The Zionist Entity has even killed 34 American sailors aboard the USS Liberty during the June, 1967 Six-Day War, and played a pivotal role in the 09/11/01 terrorist attacks in NYC and Washington, DC, in which nearly 3,000 innocents were killed.
As for US wars of aggression, we can go back to Vietnam, in which 2-3 million Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian civilians were killed. And, the aggressive wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya that have created Jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS, topped with proxy wars across Africa, the ME, and parts of Asia are all geared toward regime changes to replace independent leaders with those subservient to the USSA Empire. Ukraine is just the latest.
We can go back several centuries, to the arrival of the European settlers, who considered the Native American population as savages to be eradicated, and proceeded to do so, citing the Doctrine of Discovery as justification. In many respects we resemble Israel, settler nations that removed inconvenient native populations. Maybe that is why we are “allies” today.
Mowing the grass!
Keep that on your tongue. You will hear it again.