Exclusive: In an interview with Oliver Stone, Russian President Putin explained his take on the Ukraine crisis, one that contrasts with what the U.S. mainstream media has allowed the American people to hear, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
A prime example of how today’s mainstream media paradigm works in the U.S. is the case of Ukraine, where Americans have been shielded from evidence that the 2014 ouster of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych was a U.S.-supported coup d’etat spearheaded by violent neo-Nazi extremists.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in Showtime’s “The Putin Interviews”
As The New York Times has instructed us, there was no coup in Ukraine; there was no U.S. interference; and there weren’t even that many neo-Nazis. And, the ensuing civil conflict wasn’t a resistance among Yanukovych’s supporters to his illegal ouster; no, it was “Russian aggression” or a “Russian invasion.”
If you deviate from this groupthink – if you point out how U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland talked about the U.S. spending $5 billion on Ukraine; if you mention her pre-coup intercepted phone call with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who the new leaders would be and how “to glue” or how “to “midwife this thing”; if you note how Nuland and Sen. John McCain urged on the violent anti-Yanukovych protesters; if you recognize that snipers firing from far-right-controlled buildings killed both police and protesters to provoke the climactic ouster of Yanukovych; and if you think all that indeed looks like a coup – you obviously are the victim of “Russian propaganda and disinformation.”
But most Americans probably haven’t heard any of that evidence revealing a coup, thanks to the mainstream U.S. media, which has essentially banned those deviant facts from the public discourse. If they are mentioned at all, they are lumped together with “fake news” amid the reassuring hope that soon there will be algorithms to purge such troublesome information from the Internet.
So, if Americans tune in to Part Three of Oliver Stone’s “The Putin Interviews” on “Showtime” and hear Russian President Vladimir Putin explain his perspective on the Ukraine crisis, they may become alarmed that Putin, leader of a nuclear-armed country, is delusional.
A Nuanced Perspective
In reality, Putin’s account of the Ukraine crisis is fairly nuanced. He notes that there was genuine popular anger over the corruption that came to dominate Ukraine after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 and the selling off of the nation’s assets to well-connected “oligarchs.”
Screen shot of the fatal fire in Odessa, Ukraine, on May 2, 2014, set by right-wing Ukrainian nationalists killing scores of ethnic Russians. (From RT video)
Putin recognizes that many Ukrainians felt that an association with the European Union could help solve their problems. But that created a problem for Russia because of the absence of tariffs between Russia and Ukraine and concerns about the future of bilateral trade that is especially important to Ukraine, which stood to lose some $160 billion.
When Yanukovych decided to postpone the E.U. agreement so he could iron out that problem, protests erupted, Putin said. But — from that point on — Putin’s narrative deviates from what the U.S. government and mainstream media tell the American people.
“Our European and American partners managed to mount this horse of discontent of the people and instead of trying to find out what was really happening, they decided to support the coup d’etat,” Putin said.
Contrary to the U.S. claims blaming Yanukovych for the violence in the Maidan protests, Putin said, “Yanukovych didn’t give an order to use weapons against civilians. And incidentally, our Western partners, including the United States, asked us to influence him so that he did not give any orders to use weapons. They told us, ‘We ask you to prevent President Yanukovych from using the armed forces.’ And they promised … they were going to do everything for the opposition to clear the squares and the administrative buildings.
“We said, ‘Very well, that is a good proposal. We are going to work on it.’ And, as you know, President Yanukovych didn’t resort to using the Armed Forces. And President Yanukovych said that he couldn’t imagine any other way of dealing with this situation. He couldn’t sign an order on the use of weapons.”
Though Putin did not specifically finger blame for the sniper fire on Feb. 20, 2014, which killed more than a dozen police and scores of protesters, he said, “Well, who could have placed these snipers? Interested parties, parties who wanted to escalate the situation. … We have information available to us that armed groups were trained in the western parts of Ukraine itself, in Poland, and in a number of other places.”
After the bloodshed of Feb. 20, Yanukovych and opposition leaders on Feb. 21 signed an accord, brokered and guaranteed by three European governments, for early elections and, in the meantime, a reduction of Yanukovych’s powers.
Ignoring a Political Deal
But the opposition, led by neo-Nazi and other extreme nationalist street fighters, brushed aside the agreement and escalated their seizing of government buildings, although The New York Times and other U.S. accounts would have the American people believe that Yanukovych simply abandoned his office.
Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion. (As filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)
“That’s the version used to justify the support granted to the coup,” Putin said. “Once the President left for Kharkov, the second largest city in the country to attend an internal political event, armed men seized the Presidential Residence. Imagine something like that in the U.S., if the White House was seized, what would you call that? A coup d’etat? Or say that they just came to sweep the floors?
“The Prosecutor General was shot at, one of the security officers was wounded. And the motorcade of President Yanukovych himself was shot at. So it’s nothing short of an armed seizure of power. Moreover, one day afterwards he used our support and relocated to Crimea (where he stayed for more than a week) thinking that there was still a chance that those who put their signatures on the (Feb. 21) agreement with the opposition would make an attempt to settle this conflict by civilized democratic legal means. But that never happened and it became clear that if he were taken he would be killed.
“Everything can be perverted and distorted, millions of people can be deceived, if you use the monopoly of the media. But in the end, I believe that for an impartial spectator it is clear what has happened – a coup d’etat had taken place.”
Putin noted how the new regime in Kiev immediately sought to limit use of the Russian language and allowed extreme nationalist elements to move against eastern provinces known as the Donbass where ethnic Russians were the vast majority of the population.
Putin continued, “First, there were attempts at arresting them [ethnic Russians] using the police, but the police defected to their side quite quickly. Then the central authorities started to use Special Forces and in the night, people were snatched and taken to prison. Certainly, people in Donbass, after that, they took up arms.
“But once this happened, hostilities started so instead of engaging in dialogue with people in the southeast part of Ukraine, they [Ukraine government officials] used Special Forces, and started to use weapons directly – tanks and even military aircraft. There were strikes from multiple rocket launchers against residential neighborhoods. … We repeatedly appealed to this new leadership asking them to abstain from extreme actions.”
However, the civil conflict only grew worse with thousands of people killed in some of the worst violence that Europe has seen since World War II. In the U.S. mainstream media, however, the crisis was blamed entirely on Putin and Russia.
The Crimea Case
As for the so-called “annexation” of Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea that was historically part of Russia and that even after the Soviet break-up hosted a major Russian naval base at Sevastopol, Putin’s account also deviated sharply from what Americans have been told.
When Stone asked about the “annexation,” Putin responded: “We were not the ones to annex Crimea. The citizens of Crimea decided to join Russia. The legitimate parliament of Crimea, which was elected based on the Ukrainian legislation, announced a referendum. The Parliament, by an overwhelming majority, voted to join Russia.
“The coup d’etat in Ukraine was accompanied by a surge in violence. And there was even the threat that violence would be perpetrated by nationalists against Crimea, against those who consider themselves to be Russian and who think Russian is their mother language. And people got concerned — they were preoccupied by their own safety.
“According to the corresponding international agreement [with Ukraine], we had a right to have 20,000 people at our military base in the Crimea. We had to facilitate the work of the Parliament of Crimea, the representative government body, in order for this Parliament to be able to assemble and affect actions in accordance with the law.
“The people had to feel they were safe. Yes, we created conditions for people to go to polling stations, but we did not engage in any hostilities. More than 90 percent of the Crimean population turned out, they voted, and once the ballot was cast, the [Crimean] Parliament, based on the outcome of the referendum, addressed the Russian parliament, asking to incorporate it into the Russian Federation.
“Moreover, Ukraine lost the territory, not due to Russia’s position, but due to the position assumed by those who are living in Crimea. These people didn’t want to live under the banner of nationalists.”
Stone challenged some of Putin’s concerns that Ukraine might have turned the Russian naval base over to NATO. “Even if NATO made an agreement with Ukraine, I still don’t see a threat to Russia with the new weaponry,” Stone said.
Putin responded: “I see a threat. The threat consists in the fact that once NATO comes to this or that country, the political leadership of that country as a whole, along with its population, cannot influence the decisions NATO takes, including the decisions related to stationing the military infrastructure. Even very sensitive weapons systems can be deployed. I’m also talking about the anti-ballistic missile systems.”
Putin also argued that the U.S. government exploited the situation in Ukraine to spread hostile propaganda against Russia, saying:
”Through initiating the crisis in Ukraine, they’ve [American officials] managed to stimulate such an attitude towards Russia, viewing Russia as an enemy, a possible potential aggressor. But very soon everyone is going to understand, that there is no threat whatsoever emanating from Russia, either to the Baltic countries, or to Eastern Europe, or to Western Europe.”
A Dangerous Standoff
Putin shed light, too, on a little-noticed confrontation involving a U.S. destroyer, the USS Donald Cook, that steamed through the Black Sea toward Crimea in the middle of the crisis but turned back when Russian aircraft buzzed the ship and Russia activated its shoreline defense systems.
Ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Stone compared the situation to the Cuban Missile Crisis when a Soviet ship turned back rather than challenge the blockade that President John Kennedy had established around the island. But Putin didn’t see the confrontation with the U.S. destroyers as grave as that.
Putin said, “Once Crimea became a full-fledged part of the Russian Federation, our attitude toward this territory changed dramatically. If we see a threat to our territory, and Crimea is now part of Russia, just as any other country, we will have to protect our territory by all means at our disposal. …
“I wouldn’t draw an analogy with the Cuban Missile Crisis, because back then the world was on the brink of a nuclear apocalypse. Luckily, the situation didn’t go so far this time. Even though we did indeed deploy our most sophisticated, our cutting-edge systems for the coastal defense,” known as the Bastion.
“Certainly – against such missiles as the ones we’ve deployed in Crimea – such a ship as the Destroyer Donald Cook is simply defenseless. … Our Commanders always have the authorization to use any means for the defense of the Russian Federation. … Yes , certainly it would have been very bad. What was the Donald Cook doing so close to our land? Who was trying to provoke whom? And we are determined to protect our territory. …
“Once the destroyer was located and detected, they [the U.S. crew] saw that there was a threat, and the ship itself saw that it was the target of the missile systems. I don’t know who the Captain was, but he showed much restraint, I think he is a responsible man, and a courageous officer to boot. I think it was the right decision that he took. He decided not to escalate the situation. He decided not to proceed. It doesn’t at all mean that it would have been attacked by our missiles, but we had to show them that our coast was protected by the missile systems.
“The Captain sees right away that his ship has become the target of missile systems – he has special equipment to detect such kinds of situations. … But indeed we were brought to the brink, so to speak. … Yes, certainly. We had to respond somehow. Yes, we were open to positive dialogue. We did everything to achieve a political settlement. But they [U.S. officials] had to give their support to this unconstitutional seizure of power. I still wonder why they had to do that?”
It also remains a question why the U.S. mainstream media feels that it must protect the American people from alternative views even as the risks of nuclear confrontation escalate.
Regarding other issues discussed by Putin, click here. For more on Stone’s style in interviewing Putin, click here.
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).
“Heresy” is not used as much in religion these days, but it’s use is increasing in politics, and it means the same as “alternative view”.
This is a review connecting 3 men I much admire: Editor-Journalist Robert Parry, whom I had the pleasure/honor to meet a couple of weeks ago; Oliver Stone, met on the same occasion–a hero of mine since “Platoon”–some 40 years ago; and Vladimir Putin, whom I’d like to meet sometime within the next 25 years, buy him a beer or Vodka, and say “Spasibo!” for restoring Russia after America’s disastrous attempt to “regime-change” that 1000-year old nation with the wobbly, clownish Boris Yeltsin. It’s a first-rate review, but I do have a quibble….
(Now, of course, everyone interprets drama differently…, and this was “drama”–two very smart men grappling with the biggest questions of war and peace, democracy and authoritarianism, Statecraft and Deep State. )
After watching the first 3 parts on Showtime, I wrote: “Stone is natural, informal, and very sharp. Putin, the child of factory workers, is similar. Very good rapport between them, especially over time. Very good to get the “other side”–of Ukraine crisis, Chechnya, NATO expansionism, lies from B. Clinton, Bush, Obama, etc. Yet, Putin, always diplomatic, referring to Russia’s “partners”–US, Europe, etc. One understands his Judo training in balancing one’s foes’ aggression, counter-measuring it. 4th part will focus on “hacking.” Must see.”
My “quibble” is this” I did not see anything like Stone “getting the better of” Putin in those first 3 parts! I did see mutual respect and serious probing of the essential problems facing humanity now. Also, I noted, importantly, that Putin twice referred to the short-sightedness of certain Western leaders who fail to look ahead at the world’s needs 25-50 years from now! Contrariwise, Putin’s far-sightedness much impressed me!
Stone is most “trying” in the 4th and last part. Putin never loses his cool, but he does look somewhat irked with Stone. But, clearly, he’s not going to reveal state-secrets, dirty laundry or methodologies. He can’t be lured; he’s nobody’s fool! At any rate, in the last 5 minutes or so, when they’re “winding up,” they exchange compliments, congrats, even hugs (!), and Putin says that Stone is a fortunate man because he is able to do his work as an artist-journalist, be taken seriously. (I thought of Proverbs: “A man’s gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men.”)
These interviews were a far cry from what passes for journalism in US.2017! Frankly, I think the coup against Trump is mostly about T’s campaign comments about getting along with Russia being a “good thing.” With “getting along,” Deep State and the M.I.C would lose their main bugbear, and raison d’etre.
Americans have very little sense of history–their own or others! I grew up thinking we were a democracy, but I haven’t thought so for about 1/2 a century. Stone is a hero because he has done so much to “fill in the gaps”–enlightening, like Howard Zinn used to do, confronting, challenging, and, because he is an “artist” (and a “moral artist” at that!), revealing us to ourselves.
Very few people know that the OUN/B are fascists. For more, listen to Dave Emory, Spitfire list.
How even Americans could have been ignorant of Victoria “F the EU” Nuland and her cookies and coup actions in Ukraine is hard to believe.
Certainly the “annexing of Crimea by an aggressive Russia” was the only explanation of what Putin explains well in the interview.
If there is a fair American MSM reader/viewer who sees these videos and still thinks Pres. Putin is an evil dictator, there is no hope!!
Correction to Taras Tchiakovsky reply . Not “Nazi Germany” but “Germany”. Sorry.
Nazi Germany orchestrated the Russian Revolution in 1917 that saw Lenin’s thugs overthrow the government.
Nobody invaded Russia because of this however Russia invaded 20 neighbouring countries to impose its new political philosophy causing death to tens of millions and misery to millions more.
US backed or not, over a million people demonstrated peacefully for two months in the depths of winter in Kyiv to rid the country of a President who was a corrupt Russian thug.
Sure there were disruptive elements as there always is in any crowd but to label them violent neo-Nazi extremists is a stretch in anyone’s imagination except for the obvious few.
Ukraine neither invaded nor threatened to attack Russia. No one threatened to kill ethnic Russians living in Ukraine.
A coup d’etat requires some military and police cooperation to succeed which was not the case in Ukraine.
There are many ethnic Russians living in Ukraine because of Russia’s deliberate resettlement program that saw millions of Russians sent to Ukraine to Russify the country.
Russia’s imperialistic nature makes it believe that there is no Ukraine with a history of its own instead it is territory that belongs to Russia.
Russia is like a rejected lover who refuses to accept that the phantom affair is over and continues to stalk the unwilling prey.
An ethnic majority in isolation can be used to justify any political agenda however the events in Kyiv did not precipitate a vote in Crimea rather it was as a result of a cowardly invasion by Russian forces that didn’t have the guts to identify themselves then made people vote at the point of a gun to join Russia.
Much like the Chechens were given the democratic vote to remain part of the Russian Federation.
Extreme right hate groups can be found in Russia too; in fact Russians are ultra nationalistic and imperialists by nature considering Ukraine as theirs.
Better a fascist than a Stalinist. At least fascists didn’t murder their own people by the millions.
Is the media in the USA state controlled? It is most certainly state controlled, just not by the USA.
What can real Americans do about this?
As I commented to James Carden’s article on the same subject, the Ukraine coup executed by the Bandera brotherhood was sponsored by the US CIA. Bandera was the Hitler loving Ukrainian who was responsible for much of the holocaust Jew slaughter in that nation during WW 2. As Nuland and McCain ranted against the legally elected government, they were also aiding in the arming and financing of the coup plotters. As proof of their collusion, how many are aware of the removal of 40 plus metric tones of physical gold from Kiev to the US Treasury vaults as the coup was succeeding.
Bandera took the opportunity to settle the score on those who tormented Ukrainians for many decades including Jews who formed the majority of the early politburo.
Ukrainians saw Germans as their liberators from Russian totalitarianism and the unimaginable evil that oozed from Moscow.
Some 10 million Ukrainians were starved to death in an artificial famine called the Holodomor in 1932-33 orchestrated by Stalin’s henchmen to bring Ukraine to its knees and be subject to the failed communal farming program of the regime.
Bandera was no more nationalist than the Russian leaders who killed anyone opposed to their ideology but whereas Russia invades other countries to impose its rule Bandera only defended his homeland and if it takes a deal with the devil to achieve this then so be it. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The Jews neither have a monopoly on suffering nor are they incapable of heinous crimes.
I don’t really see any information in this which has not already been made available to US readers on the internet, not least by Mr Parry himself. What nobody has ever explained is why Putin didn’t just restore Yanukovych to power. If Putin had done that, he would have been hailed as the hero of European democracy, instead as the international pariah he now is. Strictly speaking, of course, Yanukovych wasn’t “overthrown”. He simply fled, abandoning his office, which he took no steps to recover, leaving Ukrainians with no option but to elect a new president. Yanukovych didn’t challenge Poroshenko’s election, even though he could have, since his own term hadn’t expired. Yanukovych later popped up in Russia, alive and well. There was thus no reason why Putin, when he grabbed Crimea, couldn’t simply have restored Yanukovych to power under Russian protection. If he had done so, it’s hard to imagine that the coup wouldn’t have collapsed, all the more so as the demonstrators weren’t seeking to overthrow Yanukovych but simply to have him withdraw his objections to signing the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. Interestingly, it was only after Yanukovych changed his mind, under pressure from the demonstrators, and agreed to sign the agreement that he was “overthrown”, which suggests that the coup was staged by anti-EU supporters of Putin and the US neocons, who seem to have been in cahoots at that time. Thus, it’s hard to see the Ukrainian coup as anything other than an anti-EU scam cooked up by US neocons in which both Putin and Yanukovych were complicit.
By way of “all’s well that ends well”, visa-free access to the EU for Ukrainian citizens under the Association Agreement came into effect last Sunday, 11 June.
It’s the new charm offensive being played. We’re playing Irish. Get Lucky Charms and drown them in milk for the kids. The kids get everything and the Russians get nothing. Everything else is for Hope.
Love. At any cost.
Tessa Quayle: I thought you spies knew everything.
Tim Donohue: Only God knows everything. He works for Mossad.
Russia. Leak. At any cost.
Never operate on leaks. Kill them softly, like she says in the song.
RT You are as fucken idiot as CNN and most Wester medias. You have censured my last comment because I wrote than Vladimir Putin should stop calling his real enemies friends, colleagues and partners. You also must be supervised by the US’s NSA. I don’t write to idiots so bye bye…As far as I can see Americans take every one for dumbies (including Russians) and you love it…Adios !
Yankuvoych was not impeached.
A January 28, 2009 cable from the US embassy in Kiev, classified by Ambassador William Taylor, titled “Impeachment Threat Against Yushchenko.”
The cable is clear that while there is a threat to impeach Yushchenko is “technically possible” it is unlikely as there is less than a year left in Yushenko’s term.
The cable then presents the section of the Ukrainian Constitution related to impeachment of the President.
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09KYIV155_a.html
“Impeachment Technically Possible, But Unlikely…
——————————————— —-
5. (U) According to the Constitution, in order to impeach the president for “state treason or other crime” a majority of the Rada must vote to appoint a special investigation commission to investigate the charges against the President.
The January 15 legislation sets forth the procedures, and the authority, of the commission. Based on the conclusions of the commission, two-thirds (300) of the 450 Rada MPs must
vote to move forward with impeachment proceedings. The commission report would then be forwarded to the Constitutional Court, which reviews the constitutionality of
the impeachment proceedings, and the Supreme Court, which must confirm that the President’s actions contain elements of “state treason or other crime.” Once the case has been reviewed and affirmed by both courts, three quarters (338 of 450) of the Rada must vote in favor of impeachment for the president to be impeached.”
The Ukrainian Constitution in effect at the time of Yankuvoych’s removal is clear that to Impeach the Ukrainian President:
1) An initial vote of the Rada requiring 50% of the 450 authorized membership of the Rada (225 members) to begin the impeachment process
2) If 225+ vote to proceed to impeachment then the Rada MUST vote to appoint a special investigation commission to investigate the charges against the President.
3) The special investigation commission then presents their report to the full Rada which will vote a second time. If Impeachment is to proceed then a two-thirds vote of the 450 authorized members of the Rada is required (300 members). If the second vote does not receive 300 votes in the Rada then the impeachment is dropped (a 299 – 0 vote for impeachment means impeachment fails).
4) If the Rada in the second vote chooses to proceed with impeachment then the report of the special investigation commission would be forwared to BOTH the Ukrainian Constitutional Court AND the Ukrainian Supreme Court.
Both Courts, independently review the commission report AND BOTH courts MUST VOTE AFFIRMATIVELY for the impeachment to proceed.
5) If BOTH Courts state the impeachment may proceed, then the impeachment goes back to the Rada for a third and final vote.
To impeach in this third and final vote requires the affirmative vote of three-quarters of the 450 authorized members of the Rada (338 members) to impeach.”
The cable by the US Embassy in Ukraine makes this clear.
A “328 – 0” vote to remove Yanukovych, while impressive, is still 10 votes short of the total necessary to have impeached Yanukovych.
To support my position allow me to provide a piece of clear PROPAGANDA, that being a quote from a story from “Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty” by Daisy Sindelar published February 23, 2014. (I mean we have known since its creation that Radio Free Europe has been a source of American propaganda).
As Ms Sindelar wrote: “However, it is not clear that the hasty February 22 vote upholds constitutional guidelines, which call for a review of the case by Ukraine’s Constitutional Court and a three-fourths majority vote by the Verkhovna Rada — i.e., 338 lawmakers.”
https://www.rferl.org/a/was-yanukovychs-ouster-constitutional/25274346.html
It is quite clear that Yanukovych was removed from the Presidency through a COUP not through Constitutional proceedures.
Anyone who would claim other wise is a LIAR.
The coup in Ukraine was also the moment the Western media became fully uniform and propagandistic.
An Anglo alliance of the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada hastily recognized the Ukraine coup government as “legitimate” and so rejected the European mediation agreed the previous day. Europe’s diplomacy thereafter would rely on NATO.
Russia’s response to the ensuing instability was predictable as it had been articulated to their “partners” previously. Yet NATO and the media reacted hysterically anyway, and to events which had been deliberately stoked. The continuing outrage directed at Russia is obviously based in bad faith, but has authority as the agreed script, certainly in the Anglo countries.
jaycee… I actually think it started near the beginning of the Sochi Olympics. I was watching CBC News and instead of it beings about the world coming together in friendly competition it became about Pussy Riot, dog’s in the streets and everything negative they could dig up on Russia. Even our leaders were absent (maybe some were too busy planning the coup in Ukraine).
I have to say that I have been glad to see Oliver Stone’s interviews with Mr. Putin. So far I have watched 3 episodes and I found Putin’s answers intelligent. I am glad to hear from Putin himself rather than filtered through the MSM and I have had a great respect for Oliver Stone who made the same kind of courageous documentary about the demonized leaders in South America entitled “South of the Border”. Now there were a few things that I do disagree with Putin on such as the Gay Propaganda Law, though Perez Hilton did point out that I believe 11 US states have almost identical laws, and also the newer law to spy on the Russian people (though the west also has similar laws that I disagree with). The Russian hysteria in insanity in my mind especially when the Doomsday Clock is closer to midnight than it has been since, I believe, 1953.
we need to focus on our involvement in Ukraine. What happened between the various parties could have had a positive effect or a negative effect on what happened. But that does not really matter for us here in the USA. What we should be hostile against is a lack of diverse coverage by our media. Millions of Americans believe that the New York Times is a bastion of truth and independent news analysis. The New York Times brandishes their authority and independence as a bona fide purveyor of journalistic excellence.and makes many claims that their intent is to provide truth to millions of Americans.
The New York Times coverage of the events in Ukraine echo similar New York Times coverage of the lead up to the war with Iraq.
In both cases the self proclaimed deliverer of truth has been proven to be a liar. That is a strong word. Being called a liar means that you have been accused of deliberate falsehoods. But the label of “liar” in both of the observed false narratives about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and Russia’s supposed invasion of Ukraine which the New York Times promoted as a truthful account reveal that the New York Times was in fact lying to the American Public and was guilty of publishing “news” which was false.
No WMD were ever found in Iraq and no evidence was ever presented to support the claims by the New York Times. Similarly, the New York Times published “news” articles depicting an Invasion of Ukraine by Russia as an unprovoked attack when the evidence of a US backed coup was hiding in plain sight. The release of the leaked telephone calls between Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt were published widely. There was an initial attempt by the US media to lay bare the plot to overthrow the government of Ukraine but these initial press stories were rapidly controlled and a newer story about how Russian aggression was responsible for the violence in Ukraine became the group think in the main stream press. The leaked telephone transcript which revealed American influence in promoting the chaos in Ukraine was buried and a new narrative replaced it with all of the blame on Russia.
We simply cannot and must not tolerate a national commercial media system which can turn on a dime and change the facts and in turn convince millions of Americans that what they just heard is merely a fading echo and what they are presented with by supposed neutral commercial media immediately after their truthful coverage is replaced by lies.
The twists and turns of our media system have been accurately described by Putin: “Everything can be perverted and distorted, millions of people can be deceived, if you use the monopoly of the media. But in the end, I believe that for an impartial spectator it is clear what has happened – a coup d’etat had taken place.”
Indeed for this impartial spectator it is clear what has happened. A coup d’etat had taken place backed by the USA. It is in the record for those who choose to look.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-ukraine-tape-idUSBREA1601G20140207
There are numerous websites with similar stories about how Nuland was engaged in a coup d’etat to overthrow the Ukrainian government.
Fast forward to the New York Times Op Ed called “The Dumbed down Democracy” which stated “If more than 16 percent of Americans could locate Ukraine on a map, it would have been a Really Big Deal when Trump said that Russia was not going to invade it — two years after they had, in fact, invaded it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/opinion/the-dumbed-down-democracy.html?mcubz=1
The article by the New York Times had some surprising effects chiefly the massive response to the New York Times Op Ed titled “The Dumbed-Down New York Times Columnist” which told a very different story contrary to the claims by the New York Times of a Russian invasion in Ukraine.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/31/ukraine-and-the-dumbed-down-new-york-times-columnist/
The Counterpunch article was not alone and Consortium News also published a rapid response to the New York Times Op Ed titled “The Dumbed-Down New York Times”
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/08/27/the-dumbed-down-new-york-times/
The New York Times, the so called “paper of record” was called out by Robert Parry for its dishonest reporting.
“The Times’ reporting on Ukraine has been particularly dishonest and hypocritical. The Times ignores the substantial evidence that the U.S. government encouraged and supported a violent coup that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014, including a pre-coup intercepted phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who should lead the new government and how to “midwife this thing.”
“midwife this thing” means support for giving birth to a coup d’etat.
It is simply unacceptable for the American People to be used in this way by an alleged free press which foists propaganda and blinds millions of us to support foreign wars which have had the ultimate effect of weakening our credentials as a trusted leader nation.
There is nothing to gain here either by foisting lies except to perpetuate the cold war and give us reasons to hike the budget for our national defense. It is war mongering for profit.
No wonder why Putin states in his interview with Oliver Stone, “We did everything to achieve a political settlement. But they [U.S. officials] had to give their support to this unconstitutional seizure of power. I still wonder why they had to do that?”
Even Putin is perplexed at why we need to demonize Russia and continually try to destabilize foreign governments who have been the targets of unwarranted US aggression and meddling.
Putin seems at a loss to explain our motives for our actions. The “free press” is busy covering up and making up false narratives for our actions. Is it a deliberate attempt to propagandize us with false narratives which tell a twisted tale in order to deceive us?
I think you know the answer.
This is the first that I have ever heard that Yanukovich went to Crimea for a week, awaiting international reinforcement for his presidency. That was the correct thing to do. What President Putin does not mention, which I have read, is that if Yanukovich had stayed in Ukraine, he would have soon been legally impeached and removed from office the proper way anyway, and probably would have been arrested for incredible corruption, as evidenced by the wealth discovered in his abandoned mansion. That does NOT justify a coup, and I was shocked at the time when my western leaders were publicly supporting this usurpation of the democratic process. I suspect that some of what Putin has said will be debunked by the western media.
The two senators who voted ‘no’ on new Russian sanctions are Mike Lee, R-UT, and Rand Paul, R-KY. I knew Rand Paul would vote ‘no’, he is a breath of fresh air in a stale room of brain fuzzed senators. Do we think they might do any business for the American people? I’m going to call and rip the NH senators tomorrow, and, though I’m not from KY, I’m going to call Rand Paul’s office and thank him for his vote against.
Wonderful!
The cowardly zombies in the US Senate did as expected on the Russia vote. I get more respect for Rand Paul every day. On the other hand 97% of politicians are scum.
Jessica, I heard that Progressives are meeting some where to start Peoples Party requesting Bernie Sanders to be the leader. How disgusting. Bernie Sanders is and has been part of the Establishment all along, voting with them. He is going to build socialism? What a joke! His socialism slogan is just like Obama’s “hope and Change” scam. It is beyond belief how ignorant the masses are.
I did not trust Bernie Sanders, ever. Though out of two choices in the democratic primary, I went along with him, lesser of the two evils choice type of thing.
How could you Americans vote these individuals to the senate?
We don’t; the mass media and elections are controlled by the oligarchy.
Just read the BBC: US senate votes 97 – 2 to introduce new sanctions on Russia over alleged interference in the 2016 elections.
Mob lynching before trial or even evidence.
Ok guys, your point offre view id intetesting but just what told URSS government. Or just putin… I was in ukraine White tho se évents happend. No on coule exactly told what was happening during the coup exept People Who where there. And god bless you for yourte informations but I coule told you that russian presse was dealing a lot of sheet during the events. People were just laughing of journalists that can t speek because offre thé 10 People met in Kiev for a coup lol. Don t stop telling us your story. It should interest a lot of blind People. ..
They’re buzzing ships. They raided the wine cellar for a 240 year old bottle. Heads should be buzz cut and thrown screaming from helicopters. NSA is owed millions for the breached systems. Criminal state stealing land because it’s out of capital. There’s still hard labor. Smash up the washing machines to make a living taking in laundry. Crimea river.
Good to see this presented. Love Oliver Stone. Victoria Nuland is an embarrassment.
His references to the Donald Cook were interesting. It was reported that a Russian plane buzzed the destroyer and the entire ship became disabled and helpless. Putin praises the captain for his restraint in not shooting down the jet. All the onboard electronics were destroyed including the missile control system on the Cook. This is the “special missile systems” Putin is disclosing, probably an advanced EMP directed energy weapon. It was widely reported the entire crew was so buzzed by what happened, when the ship was towed back to port, 40 of the crew either resigned or requested to be relieved of duty.
This is good news for anyone wanting to avoid conflict by NATO provocation and de-escalate tensions, promoting peace in the area, avoiding nuclear weapons, avoiding a first-strike capability forcing a pre-emptive strike. Russia’s weaponry is second to none and designed for peacemaking.
I wonder if this is the same weapon used in response to Trump’s tomahawk tweet?
The creation of Ukraine, and Belarus as countries was accidental, plot of those three heads of those three republics in Soviet Union, in 1991. It never should have happened. Ukraine, and Belarus should have been created States with in Russian Federation with their own languages for their official use in that state with Russia as the National Language. South Eastern Ukraine is Russian speaking with Russians and Russian Ukrainian mix. Also, these three languages are very similar.
That is how it is in India. There are twenty nine States, each State with it’s own language, and Hindi as the official language. English is kind of second language too for the entire country. If West Ukrainians want to go their own way and have a separate country, they could do so.
Almost for four centuries now, the people in these now three countries – Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus – have lived together. With creation of three countries , families have been split apart, all relations of four centuries of living together have been broken – The situation now is just like the East Germany and West Germany used to be.
Since it has happened, the solution now is to let people of South Eastern Ukraine decide, if they want to join back with Russia. Odessa, Kharkov, Donetsk are Russian Cities. To ban Russian language, change their names, and all what is being forced on the people of South East Ukraine by very Nationalist Ukrainian Government is outrageous. In India if anything – like Ukrainian Government is doing – is attempted by the Central Government in any State; the people in that State will rebel and answer in kind.
Just like the East Germans, It is the birthright of Donbass people if they want to join back with their brothers across the border.
That is so insightful. You well understand the nuances between those three Slavic countries with far more similarities than differences. Even those besieged in the Donbass don’t bring up the striking parallel with East and West Germany, or across the various states of India.
Thanks Realist. Take out West Ukraine, and a few western Oblasts of Belarus. The people of rest of Ukraine and Belarus, and all of Russia have been living together for four centuries now. Just like India, it was an organic unit. It should not have been split into three countries. Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarus are very close languages too, Even alphabets are similar.
In India , In the north, Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu (Pakistan), which are very close to each other , and people can understand each other, though alphabets of three are completely different from each other. Urdu has Arabic alphabet. But the other languages of India are much different. people from North can not understand them. Being under empires, over the centuries, India has become kind of Organic Unit.There are no clear cut separations of the people at the borders of the states. They have relatives across the borders for centuries now. If you split the states it into different countries, there will be chaos as it happened in India at the the time of partition when Pakistan was created at the time of Independence. Three million people died in the Carnage.
That is what is happening in Ukraine now. All this carnage, and killing by these neo-nazis thugs from Western Ukraine. If Russia was not Weak, and alone as it is, it would have settled the issue long time ago. Putin said it in his speech, at the time of Crimea joining back with Russia, in March, 2014 that Russians, Ukrainians, White Russians of Belarus, we are the same people. We never thought we are different People.
Communism had fallen. Russia wanted to be back in the fold with the Europeans. I can not understand why the Western European Nations have the policy of antagonism towards Russia.
When Putin accepted Crimea back into Russia, he could have gone further and accepted the other majority ethnic Russian areas as well. I think it was a mistake that he did not do so. I suppose he wanted to show restraint, and that the strategic asset of Savastopol was the deciding factor for Crimea. I believe there would have been less bloodshed overall if he had been more forceful immediately following the coup.
Well, it wasn’t for nothing that Belarus was always called “White Russia” and the Ukraine was always called “Little Russia” when I was growing up as a kid in Chicago. The neighboring Lithuanians, Poles and Hungarians always saw the close affiliation between those peoples. The whole of Eastern Europe has succumbed to an American plan to divide and conquer, especially in the old Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, ever since the Cold War ended.
You are right Realist. The Western Nations, the Imperial Powers have brought this chaos, violence on Earth, by design. It is sad looking at Ukraine, what is happening there now. Same is true of the Middle East. People lived together peacefully in the Israel, Syria, and Egypt area before World War II. And it was true of Iran too, before we toppled the democratically elected government of Iran in 1952.
My, quite a sore spot has been reached by Oliver Stone’s interview with Putin! Never have so many trolls appeared, may be an indication that a climax is nearly reached of this Russophobia insanity in Uncle Sam’s land! The article by Mr. Parry is quite well done, and I have understood that Ukraine has been in a mess ever since the coup, corruption of fighting oligarchs and citizens paying the price as usual.
What is the point of you Putin haters, anyway? Who else do you hate? What a pathetic state of affairs we have arrived at on Planet Earth, there was once great potential for humans and we should live with petty viciousness just at a time when humans have a pressing need to cooperate to save their very own planet they have nearly trashed! There’s a runaway disaster over in the Pacific Ocean, Fukushima, unstoppable spewing radiation that has the potential to give us all cancer! It’s ruining that great ocean and its magnificent creatures. What idiocy to spend time in hate, and toward someone you trolls have never met but base your judgements on secondhand knowledge.
Congress is getting ready to impose new sanctions on Russia for their purported meddling in the US election, when the electoral meddling record is held by USA. The record of the US dirty deeds done to countries by good ol’ “freedom loving” Uncle Sam is far longer than that done by any other country! Covert and overt ops, coups, assassinations, even approved by our vaunted saintly Eisenhower (who started the “Atoms for Peace” program, and we’re stuck with nuclear power for eternity, it may be our demise). America is isolating itself as a bully belligerent. This worked for awhile but now we are reaching a critical mass and the rest of the non-Western nations get that America is not the great nation it claims to be. It seems that the period of “The Enlightenment” is now over.
You are right Jessica. I think the Western Governments are in panic. They are unleashing Media War, Cyber War, just about throwing everything at Russia. I am beginning to believe that Masters who rule in U.S., and other Western Countries, along with the Media , and other collaborators are insane. Anything can happen now – for the worst.
Yes, “America is isolating itself as a bully belligerent.” I seldom describe individuals as insane, who can be quite irrational in worldview while going about ordinary lives, but the term does describe the groupthink process of right-wing oligarchy and its tyrants.
Their group methods of deciding a viewpoint or policy do not seek truth, justice, or even national benefit, and so cannot be moral or rational. Their wars injure the nation for the benefit of the few. Congress has failed as a mechanism of public debate and resolution of differences, and indeed all three branches of federal government and the mass media are irretrievably corrupt.
An anomaly introduced by our tightly-controlled propaganda media, is that when oligarchy factions are in conflict, the usual platitudes and myths of tyranny become frantic and contradictory claims, revealing the falseness of the myths.
The ends justify the means. At some point in a plutocrat’s rise to power, probably at the very first step, an unethical choice is made that the ends justify the means. When greed and a thirst for power, finally generate the “success” of an individual (many will fail and lose out in this game but a few will succeed) it can and often does result in a self which increasingly is led by willful irrationality and deliberate manipulation and lying The underlying psychology of these “successful” people who hold in their underpinning belief that the ends justify the means grows as they enter complex organizations where their tactics of lying, manipulating and distorting reality based on their underlying psychosis reaches a level in an organization where their authority enables them to position themselves as “leaders” who are not leaders at all but are self centered egotists who, having arrived, greet their new subjects with a derision and a hatred for those who are honest and a demand based on their power for loyalty above all else. They see their subjects as allies or enemies based on their firmly held belief that they have arrived at their station via their long held beliefs that the ends justify the means. They become paranoid and become harsh critics of anyone who dares to differ with their manipulations and lies since these are a direct threat to their perceived ends and the means with which they use to obtain the ends they seek. The ends are always personal and have self enrichment as their ends. The means become ever more inhuman as they devise ever grander plans to enrich themselves via their power and also their highly tuned and tested means of manipulation and control over others through a variety of means which include any action either illegal, immoral, unethical or irrational. By this point, the future plutocrat has become so invested in the preservation and enrichment of the self that they view everyone as an enemy with something to be stolen for self enrichment. They begin to view all the World as a pathetic mess deserving of plunder. They will use any means available to continue their “success” even leading to war.
Many of the people who start on this path will end up in prison for petty crimes and lead lives of violence and incarceration as they fail to achieve a high level of power. But a few will reach higher stations in society by virtue of their original status as members of the upper class. A few more will rise through the levels of poverty to attain great wealth and power. It all depends on their individual choices and actions. Yet when occasionally someone does reach a level of power based on an initial psychological personality as a believer that the ends justify the means, a Tyrant is born.
History is littered with the infamous deeds of tyrants. They start wars, kill millions and hold all of humanity in contempt as either slaves, useful tools or those to be attacked and destroyed all based on their lust for power and wealth guided by the principle that the ends justify the means.
Today, we are seeing in the halls of power the emergence of a group of leaders who have as their goals to manipulate and distort reality for the masses all for their personal enrichment. They control large organizations including governments and have a complete lack of concern for anything other than their own self interest.
The media is one such beast which through its greed wealth and power has fully embraced the age old mantra that the ends justify the means, That is the observed phenomenon we are seeing in the news media today. An oligarchy of ultra wealthy individuals who have decided that the truth no longer matters and that telling lies and manipulating the masses for their personal enrichment is completely justified since it benefits them.
This is an end stage of democracy. A complete control of government by a handful of ultra wealthy plutocrats who have managed to create laws which further enable them to grab more and more for themselves and who don’t care one whit about the rest of their “constituency” whom they despise and attack anyone who threatens their gravy train.
The Supreme Court fight over Justices is really about which politician in a robe will be nominated to the highest court in the land to uphold laws and create new laws for the benefit of the wealthy at the expense of justice and fairness and democracy. In fact, the Supreme Court is an excellent example of how our government and a super rich few have enacted laws to further enable their ability to grow richer and garner more control over our democracy and redefine our nation’s Constitution into the protector of the rights of the rich over the protectors of the people from the abuses of power by the rich.
We have entered a new world where the campaign finance laws enacted over the last one hundred years to prevent the poisonous influence of money in politics has been wiped off the laws of the land ushering in an era of dark money in politics. The result of these new laws is clearly seen in the current condition of our government as it is increasingly controlled by the plutocrats who show their disdain for the masses and classify them via laws as unworthy of care.
A careless plutocratic government which holds as its core a belief that the ends justify the means by which they will maintain their grip on power holds dark forebodings for the future.
These people are the refined product of the most successful individuals who have sold heir soul to the belief that any means to obtain ever more power and wealth are justified by the end product of those means which is more power and wealth for themselves.
Mr Smith goes to Washington has been replaced with an ugly reality that King Midas has gone to Washington and the curse that everything that the king touches will turn to gold is the sincerest wish of every politician.
I think we know how the story of King Midas goes. In the end he ends up killing everything and turning all the World into useless Gold.
Take heed all you climate deniers. You may sit on an ocean of gold but with nobody left to control.
And Mister Putin still have the guts to call Americans: friends, colleagues and partners. Wake up Mister President; those criminals who have made troubles all over the World for the past 70 years, are your enemies; they wish your death (and almost got it). Ask Mc Cain ! Have you not yet realized that they only respect power. It is impossible to deal intelligently with such crazy idiots or buy anything from them?. Boycott everything made in America. This should be your priority. Nothing else…To avoid the ultimate apocalypse, it is the only peacefull way to use with what has become (in spite of its own people) the new nazi empire of this planet…
Mr. Putin is an internationalist. He understands “diplomacy” and his terminology reflects that approach and is also a testament to his manners. He is not under any illusions about geopolitical realities and threats to Russian and/or human interests. I don’t know that there is a more fully awake statesman on the planet.
I watched the second segment of Oliver Stone’s interview last night. From watching Putin’s many speeches and other interviews as well, I find that he has an astounding grasp of not only of the Western Countries but of all other major Nations as well – really a very capable leader. Responding to Oliver Stone’s questions regarding the threat of Nuclear Weapons and related issues, he seemed a little sad. I could understand it. With U.S. and NATO pushing ever closer to the Russian Borders, with their declared policy of First Strike Doctrine, there is a danger of real catastrophe. He, as the leader of the Nation has that push button close to him. He seemed pained inside thinking about such a possibility.
And watching here, the leaders in U.S. are totally oblivious of what can happen. They seem to be exulting in their First Strike capabilities.
“It’s all about Russia. Trump wanted to “normalize” relations with Moscow which pitted him against the powerful US foreign policy establishment. Now Trump has to be taught a lesson. He must be crushed, humiliated and exiled. And that’s probably the way this will end.”
This is the last paragraph of Mike Whitney’s article linked below. I want to say that it does not have to end that way if Trump decides to go all in to fight his accusers. Don’t know if he will do that, but I hope he does, because those trying to take Trump down are more dangerous to our world by far than Trump himself. Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows – I never thought I would be bundling with The Donald!
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/14/comeys-lies-of-omission/
“Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows – I never thought I would be bundling with The Donald!”
Nor did I. Obama didn’t just move around some game pieces when he very deliberately and forcefully reignited the Cold War, he overturned the board and started a new game which saw Hillary become so bellicose towards Russia that many thinking liberals (not the knee-jerk variety) saw Trump as the best bet for precluding nuclear annihilation. Both parties need to offer some drastically new talent of the sane variety, then we can go back to our typical domestic liberal-conservative dialectic without tripping Armageddon. The rest of the world and our children will thank us if we can get past the current madness. The alternative is no one will be left if this keeps escalating.
Beautiful. Simply beautiful.
It’s been fun watching you guys do up the troll(s). Good for a few laughs along with the deadly serious work of trying to sort out and publish the real truth of current history. Trolls have succeeded in being really disruptive on some sites I have frequented before. But here on CN there is a core of really solid commentators that are not so easily knocked off balance or discouraged. Trolls need to be directly challenged and refuted, and if they persist – ignored.
Boy, you treasonous scumbags sure do love you some Russians.
Attacking the patriotism of their moral superiors is the preferred tactic of traitors. Patriotism is and always has been the last refuge of scoundrels.
Fred/Bill,
You do realize you make your living lying to the American public?
It wondered why the US supported a coup in Ukraine (at least, Victoria Nuland talked about “midwifing” it). After all, Yanukovich was really very unpopular in the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014 (as Poroshenko is unpopular now, in Ukraine, presidents quickly become unpopular because fundamental economic and political problems are not resolved). He was ready to make lots of concessions as far as power sharing and early elections were concerned (this was also supported by EU countries and Russia), and it seems likely that the next elections would have been won by the opposition. So, it seems rather odd why a coup was needed when at a later time, elections would probably have brought a similar result. Was it really the feeling of urgency that the Ukrainian presidency had to change immediately?
But I think discussions about the “deep state” in other countries can help understanding this question. A coup is not the same as a change of government after elections. If the opposition had won the next elections, the changes would not have been that fundamental. But after the coup, many judges and other people on important positions were dismissed, and Russian media were banned. It it had been attempted to ban media and to purge the administration in such a way after normal elections instead of a coup, this would have led to internal resistance, and in other European countries, questions about Ukraine’s turn towards authoritarianism would have been raised. Therefore, probably, a coup was much more convenient for the interests of US neocons than a negotiated compromise until the next elections that would probably have been won by the opposition.
This seems to be a wider part of the strategy of “controlled chaos” which the US prefers to elections for exerting power in other parts of the world, as well (I mainly think about the Middle East), and in other cases, this chaos is even more deadly than in Ukraine.
Adrian, excellent comments. I agree.
I think there is a great deal to what you say, plus in the months leading up to early but orderly elections the public may have learned a lot more about, come to understand better, and perhaps even agree with the decision that Yanukovich made on the IMF loan and EU membership: that the loan offered by Russia was a much better deal and didn’t require the dismantling of Ukrainian industries, privatization of state resources, sale of assets to foreign investors and the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars in revenues the country had long depended on. Plus the loans came with no guarantee of EU membership, just a nebulous goal, not a promise, for such; whereas membership in the Eurasian Economic Union was a lock. I think Esau got more for his birthright than Ukraine received in return for its sovereignty and economic future.
Boy, you can see that we’ve really gotten to the heart of the matter with the sudden appearance of the trolls. I wonder if they are many, or just one or two using multiple id’s? I suppose we should have seen it coming with the pre-emptive strike on Stone in the MSM. The troll I found most interesting was Bobby who claims we are all paid Russian agents. I don’t know about you guys, but that cheapskate Putin ain’t sent me a dime yet.
Yeah, we suffer the same fate as our leader General Flynn – he had his treason fee negotiated down by the Russians to only a couple of tens of thousands (nominally for a speech). Likewise, we get paid a pittance to spout this “polished Russian propaganda” at this website.
Tell me Bobby, is the US polished propaganda fee better, should we guys here join you for better pay and benefits? Or do Saudis and Israelis pay even better? I heard that Saudis are not tight at all, whilst Israelis are not spending their own then US money anyway, so they do not pinch nickels and dimes either.
Gee, with his super-human omniscient and precognitive abilities, plus his unrivaled mastery of digital communications giving him unimpeded access to any computer on the planet, you would think that Vladimir Vladimirovich would have contacted and offered fat contracts to any number of us who post on this site. We can all be a lot more productive if there are Rubles to be earned. Is it not so, comrades?
My sides are splitting! Really like the Israelis using US money anyway…
This thread in response to Joe Bodia is a prime example of what CN has to offer (and why I read CN)… graduate level discourse steeped in knowledge and laced with appropriate amounts of good humor and wit.
If I could quit my job and just study for 20 years, I could still not “catch up” with many of you. Thanks for the people here who cultivate my outlook and deepen my understandings, but most importantly, do so within an ethical framework I can admire as well.
You should complain! Some of us peaceniks have been waiting for our Moscow gold for over forty years now… Those cheapskate Soviets/Russians should be ashamed of themselves.
Oliver Stone is being portrayed as a modern-day Leni Riefenstahl in the MSM and on “progressive” websites, all because he dares to let the Monster of The Day speak some truth to the rabid anti-Russian madness swamping DC.
If Americans actually hear what Putin has to say, why, they might be deterred from supporting Neocon regime-change in Syria, and suicidal NATO aggression on Russia’s own borders.
And the warmongers of the RNC/DNC, and their toadies in the media, can’t have any of that.
I live in Ukraine and was at the Maidan as well as the Odessa treason, and have lived here for five years, as well as Eastern Europe (Prague, Budapest, Sarajevo) since the early 90s. I have worked in media as a researcher and a publisher, am married to an ethnically Russian Ukrainian in Odessa. I speak Russian on a daily basis and have first hand experience with what happened here before and after Putin ordered Yanukovych to scrap the EU trade association agreement.
I just want to point out that this article is 100% polished Kremlin propaganda.
There are so many spins and twists of reality here, that it would take several pages to demonstrate this orchestration of lies. I would simply advise anyone curious about the situation, to look more into it and not on Kremlin propaganda sites like this. For example, the “$5 million” referenced as having been given to Ukraine “for the coup” was actually US aide programs over many, many years, and seeing as Russia recieved even more from these same aid programs, does the author think that means there was a coup in Russia too? See the twisty lies they have employed?
I will close with the simple fact, that the US didn’t “take Ukraine from Russia” because Ukraine is a sovereign nation, it simply does not belong to Russia, no matter how many centuries they have spent trying to colonize it (which is why there are so many Russian speakers in the east).
1. No one has to be in Ukraine to see the issues; you appear to be of West Ukraine sympathies only.
2. If you see polished Kremlin propaganda you can generate polished US or West Ukraine propaganda.
3. Your use of “treason” to describe the Odessa dissent shows that you see only one side of the issues.
4. It was $5 billion not million, and the article nowhere says that it was all “for the coup.”
5. Cuba was a sovereign nation in the 1962 missile crisis, and the US embargoed and demanded removal of USSR missiles, so why should the US be allowed to interfere on the borders of unoffending Russia?
6. The march of an aggressive NATO to the borders of Russia is plain enough; do you dispute that?
7. So what brought your career to follow that march, if you are not part of western mass media?
8. This site has shown balance in considering views in opposition to western mass media.
9. As you are a journalist familiar with Russia and associated with Ukraine, perhaps you can explain the new Russian technology of massive invasions with invisible armored divisions. This has been fascinating, that our propaganda-free western mass media cannot see even one instance of what was so often photographed with very simple cameras even in the early twentieth century.
10. Also please explain why the 80% ethnic Russian East Ukraine should not be allowed independence to associate with Russia, and why one faction of Ukraine should dominate over the other, when the factions have been unable to find peace since WWII or earlier?
11. Many here would also like to know why flight MH17 was diverted over the war zone, why West Ukraine was trying to shoot down Putin’s plane, why only the ATC records for that area were “lost” that day, and why West Ukraine maintains that the missiles involved were controlled by East Ukraine despite lack of evidence, a predominance of such missiles under West Ukraine control, lack of a motive of East Ukraine, and apparent origin in territory controlled by West Ukraine?
”As you are a journalist familiar with Russia and associated with Ukraine, perhaps you can explain the new Russian technology of massive invasions with invisible armored divisions”
As well as missing waves of Russian infrantry and clouds of helicopter gunships and attack jets. What about Russian marines wading through the water in a seaborne operation of the Crimea. Tell us about the battles that took place – when and where, and the cities that fell into Russian hands.
Oh there was one photograph I forgot. The Russian armour advancing along a dusty road; trouble was that it was taken in Georgia during the Russo-Georgian war in August 2008.
I think it was E. Howard Hunt who worked in South America as a “journalist” and “author”. He claimed to speak Spanish fluently on a daily basis, and may have been romantically involved with a a local national. Somebody wrote a book about Hunt’s version of “journalism”. It explained how to subvert a foreign government on ten thousand dollars or less – I think it was called “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”. That five billion dollars went – NOT to charity – but instead to NGOs or “Non-Governmental Organizations”. These so-called “charitable” organizations emerged after the Church Committee hearings when the CIA had to create front groups like National Endowment for Democracy – headed since about 1983 by prominent Neocon Carl Gershman. The primary activity of these organizations is the creation of political opposition for the purpose of destabilizing governments who resist economic exploitation by Western governments.
The resume you provide – along with your spurious objections – sounds very similar to Mr. Hunt’s career path. The “Ethnic Outreach Program” and “Crusade for Freedom” programs which reached their pinnacle under the Reagan administration were also thought of as “benevolent” initiatives. They were operations which aided particularly the recruitment of Ukrainian and other Eastern European Nazi factions for the purpose of cold war operations against the Soviet Union. The Allan Dulles CFF was responsible for enabling the immigration to the United States of Nazi notables such as Otto von Bolschwing, Adolf Eichmann’s immediate supervisor. Bolschwing’s protege, Helene von Damm, was even given a job in Reagan’s personnel management office.
The bottom line is, you’re a troll, and it would be pretty hard to find one more “highly polished” or transparently packaged. I guarantee that no matter how hard they try, no Consortium News reader will be able to find your by-line on a legitimate publication. Even if they do, it isn’t your real name. But, it’s a great cover story for a “secret agent”. You ought to try writing spy novels. As Ukraine’s economy continues to implode thanks to the disaster your handlers created, the only paying jobs left will be smuggling contraband cigarettes and prostitution. I hope you’re proud of yourselves.
Great reply- F.G.
John Perkins was the author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.”
I forget where I read it, but someone pointed out the irony of the west allowing Scotland to vote to secede from the UK, but not accepting the right of the citizens of Crimea to vote to secede from Ukraine.
As opposed to the polished MSM propaganda? If you want to see how propaganda works, compare the full length Megyn Kelly interview of Putin with the NBC version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_WPk6Rxx00
http://www.nbcnews.com/megyn-kelly/video/megyn-kelly-one-on-one-with-russian-president-vladimir-putin-960120387521
I like your polished Kiev propaganda – Ukraine and Russia receiving aid from the same fund, lol. Yes, except that it is not Russia as a country and Ukraine as a country receiving this kind of aid then the anti-government NGOs which the West finances in those countries. You are absolutely right that $5B aid was spent on those NGOs in Ukraine over many years, it actually paid also for the previous “colour revolution” organised in Ukraine before Maidan. Apparently, the US State Department spent more on Russian NGOs than on Ukrainian NGOs before Maidan, I have seen a figure of around $1B per year spent on “democracy development” in Russia. What Yanukovytch did not do and Putin did do was to introduce a law that such NGOs receiving money (to organise revolutions) have to register as foreign agents, that is Putin copied a very similar foreign agent registration law from US. Putin’s high popularity in Russia, plus the Russian memory of Yeltsin’s years, plus this law have successfuly castrated color revolutions in Russia, so much so that they are desperately holding on to Navalny now in the hope that he could, by some miracle, pull a revolution off.
I heard from a friend that during Maidan there were improvised stalls around the square where you could walk up and get paid anything between $50 and $200 for your effort to bring democracy to Ukraine. Therefore, it was not only the cookies which were distributed. My friend told me that they did not discriminate based on language, speaking Ukrainian or Russian, you still got paid if you could prove that you are taking part. The US tax payers should know that this is how those $5B of their money “aided” Ukraine, although an additional part of the money also came from Soros and the related private do-gooders.
I do believe you that you are a journalist just based on your quick, easy and natural manipulation of the truth, creation of straw men (who claimed that Ukraine was taken from Russia?) and so on. You really picked a wrong place to distribute manipulated reality which we living in the West get daily from our own MSM.
Great reply Kiza. Joe Bodia is definitely out-classed by you and F.G.
Thanks Skip, I forgot to mention that they did not even bother converting “aid” into hrivna, then they were paying the democratisation fee out in straight greenbacks,
Ukraine was never an independent country before the break-up of the Soviet Union, and it was never unified. The entire Southeastern part from Karkhov to Odessa, including the Donbass, was part of Russia and populated by Russians. If you want to say that region called Novorussiya was colonised by Russia, the lands were acquired from the Ottoman Empire (the Turks) by Catherine the Great. The Western regions around Lwow were part of Poland and populated by Poles until they were exterminated by the Banderite Ukies in WWII. The Southwest was part of Austria-Hungary. Only the Northcentral region centered on Kiev was ethnically “Ukrainian” but always ruled by Russia or the Soviet Union.
Since you live in the area, why don’t you consult some actual history books written by educated European scholars rather than simply consuming the revisionist propaganda dispensed by Right Sektor and that lot of fascists who seem more interested in repressing ethnic Russians than advancing the political and economic prospects of Ukrainians. Ask yourself: Do you have more money, opportunity, human rights and domestic tranquility under Poroshenko than you did under Yanukovich? Did Yanukovich burn dissidents alive and send armed militias into ethnic enclaves to smother resistance to a coup? Who has been slaughtered in the fighting? Mostly ethnic Ukrainians or ethnic Russians? Have residents of the Donbass been invading Kiev-held lands? Or just the opposite with Kiev incessantly shelling Donbass interspersed by sporadic but futile forays of troops and militia into the Donbass?
And, since you will insist that it has been many tank divisions of regular Russian troops that have invaded and occupied Ukraine, why can proponents of that mythology never produce any evidence, not a single satellite image or smartphone photograph? Why has the evidence in Ukraine’s possession relevant to the Malaysian airliner shoot-down been withheld by its government rather than triumphantly released to support its claims of Russian responsibility? The United States has technology that can read a license plate from outer space plus they are known to monitor every square inch of that conflict zone 24/7, why will Ukraine’s NATO advisors not share any of this data with the investigators, or with the public? Just like the Odessa incident that stinks of a Ukrainian cover-up of its own sins. For someone who claims to work in media as a “researcher and publisher” you seem to miss or purposely avoid a major component of reality.
Svoboda and Pravy Sector have actually established a branch of government to “revise” Ukrainian history to remove anything derogatory about the Banderist Nazis. He can’t refer to any books by legitimate Ukrainian historians because those books have been banned or burned. People keep referring to them as “neo” Nazis. In actual fact, they are ideological descendents of actual Wehrmacht Galician Division Nazi units, and proud of it.
Joe, as an impartial observer, reading the History by the Western authors it tells me that there was never a country called Ukraine, except for a brief period during World War I, when Germans created that rouge state called Ukraine in the area which is now Western Ukraine. After Germans lost the War, Bolsheviks attached, I think ten Oblasts of Eastern and Southern Ukraine to the Western Ukraine in 1922 for political reasons. I do not want to go in detail into earlier history. Russia won the territory, which is now Eastern and Southern Ukraine back from the Turks during seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
I hope you watch Peter Hitchens – that famous Conservative Tory Journalist and writer, speaking at a University in U.K. in November, 2015. He discusses the Ukraine Issue in detail in his presentation and question answer session. Here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CNeDtZmpjU
What happened in Odessa, when that neo-nazi mob burned the fifty or so peaceful protesters was there on TV in the countries – beyond The Western Nations – to see. It is time for The Nationalist Ukrainians who have created all this hostility, hatred, and war to come to their senses. During the last three years, those neo-nazi Azov battalions have killed more than 10,000 East Ukrainians in the middle of so called Civilized Europe. Also a correction in your comments: it is not “$5 millions” as you wrote. It is “$5 billions”
That was an excellent history lesson, packed with facts, highly nuanced with only enough verbiage to concisely make the point. If I were a history professor and you were a student, I would assign you high marks for that essay.
Dave, thanks for this brief and to-the-point summary.
It is fascinating that the borders established by the German Reich in Europe around 1941 have now returned by virtue of US, not only in the area of the former Soviet Union then also in the area of the former Yugoslavia. It is even more fascinating that it is not Germany (at least not yet) which imposed those new borders then US. It makes me wonder if all the Nazis that US sucked in at the end of the WW2 (or their children) have not attained some pretty influential positions in the US administration, to be re-arranging the East European borders according to their old schemes. You may be familiar or not that it was common after WW2 for the Nazis and Fascists to re-package themselves as anti-Nazis and anti-Fascists and vie for the positions of power.
Kiza, you are right on the borders . I think Germans are also actively involved behind the scenes in rearranging borders. In Yugoslavia, they started rearranging it with making Croatia first. Germans are back in the game. I read, in Der Spiegel article a few years ago (during Crimean crisis), Madam Chancellor Merkel has portrait of Russian German Empress Catherine The Great’ on the wall in her office. We can expect more to come. She has not given up on Crimea yet. I have read somewhere about Nazis and Fascists re-packaging themselves – of course with the help of their friends here.
It is fascinating how you can live five years in a country and still not grasp practically anything of the complex, rich and multifaceted culture and history.
Let alone respect all of it.
Dear Joe Bodia,
I am afraid that your comments cannot be trusted, even given your experience in living in Eastern European countries for more than 20 years. The reason is simple. You lack certain mathematical requirements. Victoria Newland acknowledged that she put 5 billion USD into the Ukraine to “… tear Ukraine away from its historic relationship with Russia and into the US sphere of interest (via “Europe”).
Had Rex Tillerson or Jeff Immelt put 5 million USD into the Ukraine to further their companies’ business, they would have landed in jail for bribery. For Newland the hurdle seems to be higher by a factor of more than 1,000, since she still runs around freely.
To give you an example on the difference between a million and a billion, here is the story of the estranged wife of a rich person. When she asked her husband for one million dollars to spend 1,000 a day, he gave it to her … and she did not come back for more than three years, when she asked her husband for more money. Then her husband gave her a billion. After that she did not come back for more than three thousand years.
How can we possibly trust your probability calculation of “100% polished Kremlin propaganda” if you don’t know your arithmetic? I suggest, you come back after 3,000 years or get a better education in math.
Joe Bodia: You said you were at the Maidan, and then you were in Odessa at the time when those fifty innocent People were burned alive. Are you one of those neo-nazis?
Thank you, Mr. Bodia. I appreciate hearing what the pro-Russian writers have to say. I want to hear their perspective, but it’s like listening to western media over and over- after a while it gets repetitious, and you know the rest of the story is missing. So it was refreshing to have your opinion here, too. I was starting to wonder if consortium news printed other viewpoints.
“This entire article (and most of the comments thus far) are simply paid, controlled Russia state propaganda.”
Finally, one of the paid anonymous fake news minions of ProporNot.
And still the warmongers in Washington steadily escalate the tensions with Russia, not only over Ukraine but Syria and “Russia’s stealing of the presidential election for Donald Trump.” As reported on Tuesday in RT, a whole new round of very robust sanctions against Russia were initiated in the Senate by a veto-proof majority. The bill will then go on to the House where it is said another veto-proof majority intends to rubber stamp it. After that they expect Trump to sign it, and probably get impeached if he refuses. The warmongers are pushing hard for an Armageddon to avenge Hillary. Pretty soon the only move left to these idiots will be to actually push the button and start WWIII.
Sec. State Tillerson reportedly opposes this nonsense, claiming that America’s “allies” think it’s just more bad policy emanating from Washington.
An excerpt from RT: “US senators, both Republicans and Democrats among them, agreed on new restrictive measures against Russia on Tuesday. Citing alleged Russia’s “interference” in the 2016 presidential election in the US, as well as the situations in Crimea and in Syria, the senators say they want new sanctions imposed on Moscow. The vote is reportedly set to take place Thursday.”
Just when you think things couldn’t get any worse…
God help us. Hey Realist, maybe we need to say a Rosary.
Oh, someone will claim the answer is surely in that catechism.
Our stupid criminal congress in action. if this is “democracy”, lemme outa here!
Realist: Excellent. Need more information on that.
Paul Craig Roberts:
“It must be wonderful being Vladimir Putin and being the most powerful person on earth. And not even have to say so yourself. The US Democratic Party is saying it for Putin along with the entirety of the Western presstitute media and the CIA and FBI also. The Russian media doesn’t have to brag about Putin’s power. Megyn Kelly, the Western presstitutes, and Western leaders are doing it for them: Putin is so powerful that he is able to place in office his choice for the President of the United States.
I mean, Wow! What power! Americans are simply out of the game. Americans, despite a massive intelligence budget and 16 separate intelligence services plus those of its NATO vassals, are no match whatsoever for Vladimir Putin.
I mean, really! What is the CIA for? What is the NSA for? What are the rest of them for? Americans would do better to close down these incompetent, but expensive, “intelligence services” and pay the money to Putin as a bribe not to select our president. Maybe the CIA should get down on its knees and beg Putin to stop electing the President of the United States. I mean, how humiliating. I can hardly stand it. I thought we are the “world’s sole superpower, the uni-power, the exceptional, indispensable people.” It turns out that we are a nothing people, ruled by the President of Russia.”
As Putin himself said, Russia basically uses American product for all its IT requirements, both hardware and software. The country does not have a corporation within the top 100 in the field. And, of course, it is outspent at least 10-to-1 by the U.S. alone on the military, including R&D. Then there were the revelations from Vault 7 indicating that most of the malware floating around out there was designed by the NSA and CIA. Occam’s Razor tells me that if the U.S. election was hacked, it was done by Americans who didn’t even do a credible job of trying to shift the blame to the Russians. Shit, American cheaters don’t even have to hack anything to steal elections, as they’ve been doing it since the late 18th century.
Indeed. Good one!
IT was funny and witty.
ya, it would be so much more efficient if we only had one person telling us what the “truth” is!
What a sick piece of communist propaganda shit!
Yet another new name, eh, Troll?
Russia … you’re done. You will sooner rather then later implode on your own stupidity. Go ahead, go full force against Ukraine let’s see what happens. Freaking nation descendents not of Kieran -Rus but the mongols. God damned barbarians
Bk – “Go ahead, go full force against Ukraine let’s see what happens.” Exactly the type of thinking that gets my children killed.
I think you are responding to a troll who used about four different names in a short interval but spouts a consistent incoherent Russophobia.
Realist – thanks, you’re probably right about that.
MH 17. The price real people pay for assholes like you.
“Russia … you’re done. You will sooner rather then later implode on your own stupidity. Go ahead, go full force against Ukraine let’s see what happens. Freaking nation descendents not of Kieran -Rus but the mongols. God damned barbarians”
I don’t think Russia has ever heard this one before. You should check out this Wikipedia link(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia) it will give you some perspective about Russia and wars, and how it has fared in history(1100-1200 of documented history mind you). The have been at war with parts or all of Europe for the last 500 years and have mostly come out on top. I think Russia will be alright…
Robert Parry – excellent article! Oliver Stone has given a great gift to the American people by providing these interviews. Of course no one should just accept everything Putin says, but at least you get to hear the other side of the equation.
Why is Victoria Nuland still walking around, free?
Bobby – the media are bought-and-paid-for, an arm of the Deep State. We’re in 1980, heading straight for “1984”, and you’re going to be living the life of Winston in the not too distant future. 6 corporations owing 90% of the media? Nothing like healthy competition (sarc)! The media must be “splintered into a thousand pieces and scattered into the winds” and then the Rule of Law must be restored.
“What he and his White House need to understand is that this is not going to end, that this is a fight to the finish, that his enemies will not relent until they see him impeached or resigning in disgrace.
To prevail, Trump will have to campaign across this country and wage guerrilla war in this capital, using the legal and political weapons at his disposal to ferret out the enemies within his own government.
Not only is this battle essential, if Trump hopes to realize his agenda, it is winnable. For the people sense that the Beltway elites are cynically engaged in preserving their own privileges, positions and power.
He should campaign against the real enemies of America First by promising to purge the deep state and flog its media collaborators.
Time to burn down the Bastille.”
This entire article (and most of the comments thus far) are simply paid, controlled Russia state propaganda. No one that has any first hand knowledge of the situation in Ukraine, or who has even followed news reports with any kind of critical eye could come to any other conclusion. US media sucks in general, but at least it’s not state-controlled and the bias often exhibited is based on other motives than the writers being paid media puppets.
US media sucks in general, but at least it’s not state-controlled and the bias often exhibited is based on other motives than the writers being paid media puppets.
The mainstream media are controlled by the plutocrats and oligarchs that run the nation with the Israel lobby adding to censorship. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and has a contract with the CIA. If the media are controlled, it makes little difference which force does the controlling if the product is predominantly lies.
Yes clever Amerikan, soon, after converting enough of you to the cause, Sasha and I will have enough for the dacha we always dreamed of.
*Sigh* – the sanctions must really be hurting Russia, for last month’s check from Moscow still hasn’t arrived. I am NOT going to keep doing Russia State Propaganda without pay!
Finally we got trolls back at CN. Unfortunately, these trolls show such poor English that they are obviously “conviction trolls” rather than paid trolls because the US establishment would never pay for such low quality commenting. Therefore, dear trolls, keep your day jobs, you are still too far from the paid employment online.
Very well said, Kiza.
Therefore, dear trolls, keep your day jobs, you are still too far from the paid employment online.
Um, is this proper English? Go back to your school in Kiev, and tell your English professor that he/she did a poor job teaching you proper English grammar. Well, you probably will not be able to find him/her, because he/she was likely an ethnic Russian, since most “western” Ukrainians are nothing but serfs and farmers.
Whether or not the media is ‘state’-controlled is not necessarily the litmus test of a free-press. The British Broadcasting Corporation is a state funded media. Does it purvey propaganda? maybe, maybe not. And BTW it is a complete non-squitur to suggest that private ownership in and of itself necessarily endows media freedom. Much of western state propaganda has simply been outsourced to the private sector who have apparently taken up their brief with considerable alacrity. The private sector media in the Anglosphere speaks with one voice and brooks no dissent. Inconvenient facts and competing narratives are simply shut out. Not that there is any conspiratorial process at work. ‘It’s just’, as the late Gore Vidal once opined, ‘that they all think the same.’ A British political theorist, one Ralph Miliband, father of the two less intelligent sons, once descrbied the British press as ‘ranging from a spectrum of soundly conservative to uttlerly reactionary.’ Who needs state censorship when in Trotsky’s words, ”Every bourgeois journalist has a gendarme in his head so that the external one is unnecessary.’
Oh, and BTW the Moscow Times and St.Petersburg Times – both foreign owned – are journals which represent the non-systemic opposition to Putin involving the Oligarchs and the rest of the Euro-integrationists, whereas anti-systemic opposition to Putin includes the Communists, led by Zyuganov (Daily publication – Pravda) and Russia’s own Donald Trump, Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
Incidentally all the American publications and broadcasts are available in the Russian Federation. Since they are basicilly illiterate and non-credible they make an excellent propaganda tool for Putin.
It would be more fruitful to give examples of where you think the article is misleading. Otherwise, you’re say the article is wrong simply because it must be wrong, because it doesn’t fit into your world view.
You mean, the facts have anti-ziocon bias? The critical eye should have detected the presence of the (former) CIA Director Brennan in Kiev on the eve of the military actions against civilians in eastern Ukraine. The civilians’ crime? – They wanted federalization of the country (you know, like in the US). Has your critical eye noticed the neo-nazi insignia proudly shown by the US-supported Pravyj Sector, the best buddies of McCain the Tokyo Rose? It seems that your ancestors somehow avoided serving in the military during WWII, otherwise your critical eye would detect the neo-Nazi parades in honor of Bandera in Kiev and other cities of US-occupied Ukraine. Ever heard about the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) that is glorified by the current administration in Kiev? Let me suggest that you are either a progeny of nazi collaborators or an Israeli Russophobe.
The honorable and brave Robert Parry has a well-recognized name for his standing against the Empire of Federal Reserve, whereas you are hiding under a pseudonym.
”Ever heard about the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) that is glorified by the current administration in Kiev?” And not forgetting the UPA – Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the military wing of Bandera’s OUN-b party. This little outfit was responsible in 1943 for pogroms against Russians, Jews and above all Poles running into hundreds of thousands of deaths in Galicia and Volhyna. Today both the UPA – now described as ‘freedom fighters’ by the Kiev regime, as well as Bandera himself, now ‘Hero of the Ukraine’ are figures of national pride, at least in the west of the country. The descendants of this proto-nazi outfit, Praviy Sektor, have ritual celebrations of their great leader and history, and have taken the black and red flag of the UPA as their own. It is usually to be seen among the blue and yellow Ukrainian flags on mass demos.
You are living in a fantasy, Bobby. This article is quite factual and impartial as they get, despite what you think. Consortium is not a government website. It’s independent. No news source is completely impartial as no person is completely impartial, so one has to sometimes read both sides, do some digging to find the truth.
Bobby is one of the smarter Americans….. and still….he just doesn’t get it… Bobby cant trust anyone…not the “controlled Russia state propaganda” nor the “US media” it “sucks in general” and their bias “is based on other motives”.
Bobby doesn’t know where to get his news from…. but he’s got a good nose for paid trolls….
Yes Siree Bob… That good ol boy sure can sniff out dem media trolls…. Good for you Bobby.
“US media sucks in general, but at least it’s not state-controlled and the bias often exhibited is based on other motives than the writers being paid media puppets.”
Poor innocent. No, US media is not so much state-controlled as it is corporate-controlled, and six corporations control 90% of the American media – television, radio, movies, you name it.
http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6
So the bias exhibited is based on what is likely to work out to the most profit for shareholders. Bet you feel a lot better about it now.
Who cares what Putin thinks? America needs only to know that Ukrainians love freedom almost as much as they love America and money. That the Russians are helping to stop therm from getting back the parts of their country they are trying to get back – from the Russians. They need our help. And after they get back their country they won’t be any threat to the Russians, or anybody else, and they’ll even join NATO to prove it.
Russia is due some payback for 70 years of Castroite Cuba threatening America and denying it cheap cigars.
Keeping up with the Jones’ vs shooting down an airline full of people who have nothing to do with your nihilistic obsessions. MH-17? Freedom my asshole.
I care about what Putin is thinking. He has actually given us good advice: like, don’t invade Iraq, don’t attack Libya, watch out for those Chechnyan boys in Boston. Unfortunately, he has marred the good points with his Ukraine activity, and bombing hospitals in Syria. I would like to know what Putin is thinking. Unfortunately, it appears that what he is saying is not always what he is actually thinking.
Let’s review what actually happened in Ukraine in mid-February 2014:
A period of relative calm in the Maidan anti-government demonstrations ended abruptly on 18 February 2014, when protesters and police clashed.
Some 20,000 Euromaidan protesters in Kiev advanced on Ukraine’s parliament in support of restoring the Constitution of Ukraine to its 2004 form, which had been repealed by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine shortly after Viktor Yanukovych was elected president in 2010. Police blocked their path. The confrontation turned violent. Political commentators suggested that Ukraine was on the brink of a civil war. Some areas, including Lviv Oblast, declared themselves politically independent from the central government.
On 19 February, the authorities instituted police checkpoints, restrictions on public transportation and school closures in Kiev, which media referred to as a de facto state of emergency. One member of parliament said in an interview that a state of emergency was de facto implemented nationwide as transportation to the capital was paralyzed.
The 18-19 February violence included numerous sniper shootings which left 28 dead, 10 of whom were police and Berkut troops.
On 20 February, Minister of Internal Affairs Vitaliy Zakharchenko announced he had signed a decree authorizing the use of live ammunition against protesters. Armed assailants were visible among the largely unarmed protesters. Central Kiev saw the worst violence yet, and the death toll in 48 hours of clashes rose to at least 77.
The Ukrainian far-right group Right Sector, then occupying the Hotel Ukraine, co-ordinated the 18-20 February sniper attacks on Instytutska Street, but the deaths were blamed on Yanukovich.
21 February was the most pivotal day in the conflict. It ended with an armed coup d’etat.
In response to the mounting deaths and injuries, Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament Volodymyr Rybak announced that he had signed a parliamentary decree, condemning the use of force and urging all institutions (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Cabinet of Ministers, etc.) to cease immediately all military actions against protesters. The Ukrainian parliament also suspended Zakharchenko from his duties.
Yanukovych signed a compromise deal with opposition leaders which would implement constitutional changes to hand powers back to parliament and early elections, to be held by December.
While Yanukovich was attending the negotiations, an impeachment bill was introduced in Ukrainian Parliament, but no details were provided and the Ukrainian parliament did not vote to impeach Yanukovich according to the legal procedure.
In addition, the Ukrainian Parliament voted for the release of Yulia Tymoshenko in a 310-54 veto-proof vote. The leader of the All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland” political party, Tymoshenko had been convicted in 2011 of embezzlement and abuse of power, sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to pay the state $188 million. Her prosecution and conviction were viewed by the European Union as politically biased. The EU, and Germany in particular, had repeatedly called for her release as the primary condition for signing the EU Association Agreement.
To release Tymoshenko, the members of the Ukrainian Parliament decriminalized the Article on which she was charged and brought it into compliance with Article 19 of the UN Convention against corruption. That could enable immediate release of Tymoshenko through the corresponding court ruling. However, Yanukovych did not have the opportunity to sign the bill into the law.
During the night of 21 February 2014, Yanukovich left Kiev for Kharkiv to attend a summit of south-eastern regions. Yanukovych claimed that his car was shot at by automatic rifles as he traveled to meet with representatives of local parties in Kharkiv, and that he was forced to move around Ukraine amid fears for the safety of himself and his family.
Protesters, many of whom were armed, took full control of the government district in central Kiev, including the Parliament, the President’s administration quarters, the cabinet, and the Interior Ministry.
On 22 February, the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove Yanukovych from his post, on the grounds that he was unable to fulfill his duties, although the legislative removal lacked the number of votes required by Ukraine’s then-current constitution. Parliament set 25 May as the date for the special election to select his replacement and, two days later, issued a warrant for his arrest, accusing him of “mass killing of civilians.”
Also on 22 February 2014, the Ukrainian Parliament with 322 votes adopted a decree based on the decision of the European Court of Human Rights and corresponding decision of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.
On February 23, 2014, while in a parliamentary session, a deputy from Tymoschenko’s “Fatherland” party, Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, moved to include in the agenda a bill to repeal the 2012 law “On the principles of the state language policy”. The motion was carried with 86% of the votes in favor–232 deputies in favor vs 37 opposed against the required minimum of 226 of 334 votes. The bill was included in the agenda, immediately put to a vote with no debate and approved with the same 232 voting in favor. The bill would have made Ukrainian the sole state language at all levels.
This attempt to repeal the 2012 law on state language policy was met with great disdain in Crimea and Southern and Eastern Ukraine, provoking waves of protests against the Maidan installed government ultimately culminating with the Crimean crisis.
Passage of the repeal bill was met with regret by the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe. The OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities expressed concern over possible further unrest. The bill was also criticized by the Ambassador for Human Rights of the Russian foreign ministry. The Hungarian foreign ministry expressed serious concerns, noting that the decision “could question the commitment of the new Ukrainian administration towards democracy”.
After urgently ordering a working group to draft a replacement law on February 27, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov vetoed the repeal bill on 28 February. But the intended political damage was done.
The stage was set for the US/EU armed assault on Russia’s near abroad to be depicted by the mainstream media as a Ukrainian “civil war.”
Merkel’s darling, Tymoshenko gathered military and defense experts in March. She suggested launching a special headquarters that would elaborate responses to threats coming from Russia.
In a leaked phone conversation with Nestor Shufrych, former deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Tymoshenko said in reference to the reunification of Crimea with Russia: “It’s about time we grab our guns and go kill those damn Russians together with their leader; and nuke 8 million Russians who are now exiles in Ukraine.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXooBkkCMP0
In April, Ukrainian security forces launched an “anti-terrorist operation” directed at anti-Kiev forces in eastern Ukraine.
However, EU-favorite Tymoshenko came a distant second behind US-favorite Petro Poroshenko in the 25 May Presidential election in Ukraine. That was when Europe really started getting “wobbly” about Ukraine.
Much to Washington’s delight, Poroshenko immediately intensified the military operations in eastern Ukraine. That didn’t go so well.
Malaysian Air Flight 17 “happened” on 17 July, just in time to goad the “wobbly” EU endorse the third round of sanctions against sectors of Russia’s economy.
It was clear from the start that US would make a mess in Ukraine and then leave it to EU to pay to clean it up.
Here is more about Russian attitude to the events in Ukraine, an excerpt:
(07/31/2015) UKRAINIAN WAR UPDATE: Geopolitics of Ukrainian “Winter Revolution” 2014 Part 2: The Role of Russia;
The shameful role played by US and most of EU countries especially central European countries in instigation of deadly conflict in Ukraine has been very well documented in some western independent news outlets [also in Consortium news] as well in Russian and Asian news media, therefore I will not be focusing on this aspect of the situation but rather on role of Russian government that has been subject to horrendous western propaganda of distortions devoid of basic facts, merits or rational judgments.
The West wants to put the questions of Russian role in Ukrainian crisis as fake binary morality play of hero or villain, and by that reducing important debate to kindergarten level, devoid of any merit. As always things in real life are much more complex and require political sophistication that turned out to be lacking in the west much more than in the east.
First of all Ukraine is in perpetual crisis since 1993 and never recovered from disorderly collapse of Soviet Union that left mountains of old political, economic and social issues unsettled, dangerous situation for brand new unstable and artificial state in search for its identity and legitimacy.
A concise background on Ukraine can be found at:
https://contrarianopinion.wordpress.com/2015/01/18/ukraine-no-country-for-no-man/
Unfortunately, Russia, by supporting some Ukrainian oligarchs and their theft of Ukrainian national treasury, notoriety funded by western banking accomplices to a crime, somewhat contributed to misery of Ukrainian people. The Russian inability to form more politically savvy alliance with Ukraine during Yeltsin years, helped to breed social and economic instability, catastrophic collapse of high standard of living achieved under Soviet Union and hence facilitated rebirth of Nazism, neo-fascism and political extremism, ironically mostly anti-Russian in nature, which is a responsible for the collapse of the nation torn apart by their own oligarchs on Washington/EU and/or Moscow payroll.
More excerpts coming.
(07/31/2015) UKRAINIAN WAR UPDATE: Geopolitics of Ukrainian “Winter Revolution” 2014 Part 2: The Role of Russia; An excerpt No 2.
So what did Russia actually do as a response to Kiev coup d’état and pro-western pro-NATO fascist leaning factions officially taking power in Kiev?
First, Russia assured her national strategic interests including securing navy ports for her Black sea fleet headquarters, surface ships and submarines as well as air force bases and strategic anti-ballistic missile and surveillance installations in Crimea. Russia initially considered new Kiev government as illegitimate product of coup d’état, and hence viewed her precious military base lease agreements potentially under the threat.
Moreover, there was a threat of illegal fascist paramilitary units, mainly from Right Sector and private battalions, moving into 89% ethnic Russian Crimea, and likely to cause violence, mayhem and disruption of law and order, capabilities fascist paramilitary have shown already in eastern Ukraine.
In such circumstances Russia became more receptive and supportive of already autonomous ethnic Russian Crimean push for independence from Ukraine but from the beginning ruled out direct involvement of Russian troops stationed in Crimea as well from troops from mainland.
Hence, ethnic Russian civilians, mostly former veterans of Soviet Union or ethnic Russian conscripts of Ukrainian army took path of negotiating peaceful surrender of Ukrainian bases to new independent government of Crimea. It was mostly successful because many of soldiers were ethnic Russian reluctant to spill blood of their own kin. The taken over military bases in Crimea were major source of uniforms and weapons for the new Crimean militia and not Russian supplies.
Also Tatar minority that was initially split with allegiance between Russia and Ukraine was quickly swayed by Putin politically smart new policy of granting them rights of return to their ancestral land after expulsion for supporting anti Bolshevik forces 1917-1922 and collaboration with German Nazi State during WWII. A humanitarian move of supposedly evil empire, which “civilized” Israel continuously denies to Palestinians, forcefully expelled from their land in 1948 for allegedly conspiring with state enemies.
Russia, by taking over in Crimea saved thousands of lives that would have been lost or shattered and ultimately avoided devastation to the economy, which is even now being illegally strangled by Kiev regime economic blockade by impertinently shutting down water and electricity, to hospitals and pensioners homes, devastating tourist industry by imposing criminal penalty for westerners to travel to Crimea as well as western businesses doing business there. Since then number of Russian military personnel in Crimea rose only a little and only one Russian military invasion that was ever accomplished was a to ferry a column of hundreds military electrical power generators in support of Crimea people, but only few western media were there to witness it.
I looked at the youtube video link above. It is shocking to talk about the killing of 8 million people so casually. This is in contrast to this video, which followed shortly after on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiZkxZcHILA
I think that a valid point is made: Russia, UK, and USA all made an agreement to honor Ukraine’s borders and sovereignty when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Russia violated that agreement by allowing troops and fighters to pour through its borders, and by providing material support against Ukraine, such as the weapons system used to make Malaysian Flight 17 “happen.” Pro-Russian rebels in Donbass continue to send bombs into residential neighborhoods and kill their neighbors.
Ukraine is making many mistakes along the way, but Russian support of the breakaway rebels only helps continue the misery, and continues Russian violation of the agreement that they signed to honor Ukraine’s sovereignty.
It IS interesting to hear Tymoshenko refer to it as a revolution. A revolution against a democratically-elected president. Sad. Should not have been cheered by the Western leaders. But, it does not justify the Russian actions that followed that lead to human misery 100 times worse.
You repeat the BS that supports the narrative of the coup leaders in Kiev. That story has been repeatedly shown to be a complete fiction.
One day those who you support, who do not escape to Israel, will be condemned for their war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Interesting…distancing yourself from the NeoNazi coup perpetrators, yet managing to blame Russia in the end. Cute. You might actually look up a few things that you got completely wrong, most especially that Russia violated the agreement on troops. Russia had an agreement from the time they gave Crimea to Ukraine to have troops stationed there. They were there before hostilities began.You statement on the MH-17 is ludicrous as well.
Mr Parry, your article coincides with much of the independent research I have done, as well as conversations with Ukrainians. Mr Putins comments seem accurate and articulate and hard to contest. If the US media could pause their agenda for just a couple of weeks, many in the US would become better informed.
When the physician who treated many of the wounded in Maiden she mentioned the similar caliber of bullets used by the snipers both on the people and the unarmed police.
Also, as I had posted before, when Kiev ruled that Ukrainian was the official language and Russian could not be spoken it alienated most of the people in the Eastern region of Ukraine. And somehow this is all the fault of Russia? We need Devine intervention, if there is such a thing, when google and the other groups of ‘truth’ create the algorithms to purge what is really happening in the world outside of their desire to control the messages.
I find Mr Putin to have more sense than most politicians, and it’s a shame he’s considered pure evil by so many.
Thanks for the article.
Who or what is Devine? I have heard of Divine intervention. And by the way , I do not believe Putin is pure evil, just as Trump, Clinton, Bush, put- your- favorite, or least- favorite person, fill-in- the- blank name, is completely evil or wonderful. Diplomacy is what we need. People, we have to work together, and we need one another right now. Snarky, but serious. I mean it, we have to find common ground, or something we can work with.
The Maidan is history – visual images of a big mess now long cleaned-up and sanitized for western visitors. The regular ‘nationalist’, patriotic parades, protests and demonstrations against the current namby-pamby ‘peacenik’ government aren’t for western consumption. Not are the tanks and artillery divisions deployed on the ‘eastern front’. There is still, very much, ‘a war’ (an ATO they call it) going on in Ukraine.
There are a couple of very strong voices speaking for Ukrainians that we don’t hear from. Those Ukrainians who continue to stop the ‘liberators’ and ‘democrats’ from ‘taking back’ the Donbass. Google Patrick Lancaster – an American resident in Donbass and Graham Phillips, whose views have put an arrest warrant and a reward on his head from Ukrainian ‘authorities’. There are other western voices crying out in that eastern ‘non-occupied’ region of Ukraine. They aren’t singing with ‘the choir’.
“The neoconservatives can now demonize a leader of a country so you get a black hat versus white hat, and it works for the American people.”
– Independent investigative journalist Robert Parry in Oliver Stone’s 2016 documentary film, “Ukraine on Fire”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVdvp188rk4
The propaganda initiative aimed at demonizing Russia has been very effective. More and more “news” outlets speak of Russian “hacking” the US election in Trump’s favor as proven fact. Even Amy Goodman on Democracy Now does this with no sign of reasonable doubt. I’m afraid that before too long, those of us who doubt the veracity of these claims will be forced to renounce our doubts by social shaming and peer pressure, if not severe beating and incarceration, as pacifists were during the world wars. If the Russians or some Russians were able to hack and change votes in American elections, it only points out how easily American politician are able to do it.
The most striking thing about the coup d’etat in Kiev was the active collaboration of American zionists with east European neo-nazis. This is how the whole holocaust narrative – along with AIPAC’ and ADL’ non-stop squealing about antisemitism – went in flames.
The Israel-occupied US Congress has sided openly with neo-nazis in Ukraine. On the top of that, the Israeli-Ukrainian citizen Kolomojsky (a pillar of the Ukrainian Jewish community) was financing the neo-Nazi battalion Azov. This battalion has become infamous for its active involvement in burning score of a civilians alive in Odessa. Full circle.
The story of coup d’etat in Kiev should be invoked every time the chosen (Schumer, Dershowitz, and likes) attempt to cry about antisemitism. It is over. The American Jewry has sided with neo-nazis.
Jews are not a monolith, despite what you conspiracy jew hating theorists think.
She is not stating that Jews are all the same; there is little danger of such misconceptions. Those of us very concerned to protect Jews, as well as all other groups, nonetheless want the tragic development of zionism to be contained.
“you conspiracy jew hating” Listen Bernie, Today’s so called Jews are not Semites. Sad part,most are bunch of liars and thieves. Ask any Palestinian?
Fact: the most economically successful ethnic group in Israel today are Palestinian Christians. These Palestinians do not want to live under Hamas or the PA. They enjoy the benefits of living in a modern democracy. Their children go to Israel schools and universities. Refugees from the jihadist ravaged world are streaming into Western Europe and Israel as well. Wonder why?
One would expect Israel and KSA to be natural enemies as well. Not so much.
Dear Anna, if you want to know some FACTS about Ukraine you could listen to a couple of very well informed persons on the subject: Stephen F. Cohen, peofessor in Russian Studies for many Years, and John J.Mearsheimer, professor in political sciense in Chicago. They are both jewish. You can find several lectures by them om YouTube. If you are intrested in the subject. From my place in Sweden (where I live) I have learned much from them. They know what thay are talking about. And so does Robert Perry whom I often read. I also read a site called: New cold war, Ukraine and beyond. I do that because our media i so biased, in favour of the West.
Regardless of their religion it makes sense that western leaning bankers would support the coup.
I would encourage everyone to look at the ‘Bormann Organization’. You can google it but Soros and the Zionists, are most of them, are Bormann Jews. They have always sided with the Nazis, just as many fundamentalist Christians side with Zionism.
Gladio B and the Bormann Organization go a long way to explain the Ukraine fascist fiasco.
The Fifth Column has been active in the US since Dulles worked with Martin Bormann. Here is a Youtube. and it is stronger now than ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8hlP095JG4
Since both candidates were hated by most American voters, and as usual large numbers did not bother to vote at all and /or were deleted from the rolls (see Greg Palast’s work), and since Putin explained that they were willing to accept the POTUS elected by the US, what benefit would the hacking/leaking/meddling bring ??
While USA msm claimed violent Yanukovych security forces , YouTube videos showed extremely violent protesters and totally passive security forces, even to the extreme of accepting blow torches to their faces and pipes and chains over their heads without reacting. In the USA this would result in summary execution. Yanukovych did not sign the IMF loan and was promptly overthrown.
Rumsfeld would have described that as the’ breaking of eggs part’ of making the omelet. The omelet, by the way, has never been made – that’s Putin’s fault. Even though he didn’t steal one half of the first bolus of the $17 billion the IMF was to loan Ukraine, on condition – and that caused Yanukovich all his problems.
Nor is it, any more, so much a question of those ‘conditions’ (although the IMF boodle only continues to appear in dribs,, drabs and deposits in western banks) – as it is the ‘need’ to spend billions to conquer a couple of dissident provinces.
Do you have any idea that you are making no sense whatever? I doubt it.
Please explain and/or link to sources.
Gros Louis’ commentary is a mere reflection of the fiction Americans live and perpetuate every single day.
The question was nor about an IMF-loan. It was about signing a trade agreement with the European Union. Facts are important -to begin with. Few pepole in my country knows that, although we belong to EU. So I don´t blame you. Even here our media talks about the fightings in Ukraine as if the history there started in Mars 2014 with the annexation of Craimea. Easily djumping over the coup in Kiev. It´s a fix thing of doing it. But it is false. The result of cutting down trade relations with Russia you can read in the Guardian, 9 March 2016. Title of the article: “Why Ucraine needs Russia more than ever” by Nicolai Petro.
Yanukovych wished to trade with Russia and E.U. and contemplated taking IMF loan. Yanukovych decided against the loan and was overthrown shortly there after. I remember the events from real time.
Listen to Dave Emory. http://wfmu.org/archivefeed/mp3/DX.xml
His programs on Ukraine and fascism are the best out there. This is old news, but news people need to read and hear.