Nuland-Pyatt Tape Removed From YouTube After 8 Years

A popular version, with subtitles, suddenly was made unavailable on Wednesday. The tape provides the smoking gun of U.S. involvement in 2014 Kiev coup. (Read the transcript).

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News

The smoking gun proving U.S. involvement in the 2014 coup in Kiev has been removed from YouTube after eight years. 

It was one of the most watched versions of the intercepted and leaked conversation between then Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, in which the two discuss who will make up the new government weeks before democratically-elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in a violent coup on Feb. 21, 2014.

The two talk about “midwifing” the unconstitutional change of government and “gluing it together” and of the role then Vice President Joe Biden should play and what meetings to set up with Ukrainian politicians.

The U.S. State Department never denied the authenticity of the video, and even issued an apology to the European Union after Nuland is heard on the tape saying, “Fuck the E.U.” Mainstream media at the time focused almost exclusively on that off-color remark, ignoring the greater significance of U.S. interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs. 

Consortium News has numerous times embedded the YouTube video in articles about the overthrow of Yanukovych. CN successfully embedded it earlier this week in an article now being written, but on Wednesday the video suddenly appeared this way in the draft article: 

The video was posted on April 29, 2014 and had 181,533 views before it was taken down, was among the most viewed versions of the conversation on YouTube. Eight years worth of comments on the video have also been removed.

This is a screenshot taken earlier from the video that has now been removed.  The same video can be viewed on Rumble here.

Nuland in screenshot from now removed YouTube video.

Timing of Removal

The removal of a video that had existed online for eight years raises major questions as it comes during the war in Ukraine. Corporate media has studiously avoided mentioning the causes of the current conflict, including NATO eastward expansion, the rejected Moscow treaty proposals in December, the civil war in Donbass and the 2014 coup in Kiev that led to the Donbass uprising and violent repression by the coup government. 

The coup in 2014 is the starting point that led to all these events culminating in Russia’s invasion in February. Removing the video would be consistent with the suppression of any information that falls outside the enforced narrative of events in Ukraine, including whitewashing any mention of the U.S.-backed coup. 

Transcript Still Online

The BBC on Feb. 7, 2014 — 14 days before Yanukovych was toppled — published a transcript of the Nuland-Pyatt conversation. Consortium News is republishing the transcript here, lest it be removed from the internet as well:

Warning: This transcript contains swearing.

Voice thought to be Nuland’s: What do you think?

Voice thought to be Pyatt’s: I think we’re in play. The Klitschko [Vitaly Klitschko, one of three main opposition leaders] piece is obviously the complicated electron here. Especially the announcement of him as deputy prime minister and you’ve seen some of my notes on the troubles in the marriage right now so we’re trying to get a read really fast on where he is on this stuff. But I think your argument to him, which you’ll need to make, I think that’s the next phone call you want to set up, is exactly the one you made to Yats [Arseniy Yatseniuk, another opposition leader]. And I’m glad you sort of put him on the spot on where he fits in this scenario. And I’m very glad that he said what he said in response.

Nuland: Good. I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea.

Pyatt: Yeah. I guess… in terms of him not going into the government, just let him stay out and do his political homework and stuff. I’m just thinking in terms of sort of the process moving ahead we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok [Oleh Tyahnybok, the other opposition leader] and his guys and I’m sure that’s part of what [President Viktor] Yanukovych is calculating on all this.

Nuland: [Breaks in] I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in… he’s going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it’s just not going to work.

Pyatt: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. OK. Good. Do you want us to set up a call with him as the next step?

Nuland: My understanding from that call – but you tell me – was that the big three were going into their own meeting and that Yats was going to offer in that context a… three-plus-one conversation or three-plus-two with you. Is that not how you understood it?

Pyatt: No. I think… I mean that’s what he proposed but I think, just knowing the dynamic that’s been with them where Klitschko has been the top dog, he’s going to take a while to show up for whatever meeting they’ve got and he’s probably talking to his guys at this point, so I think you reaching out directly to him helps with the personality management among the three and it gives you also a chance to move fast on all this stuff and put us behind it before they all sit down and he explains why he doesn’t like it.

Nuland: OK, good. I’m happy. Why don’t you reach out to him and see if he wants to talk before or after.

Pyatt: OK, will do. Thanks.

Nuland: OK… one more wrinkle for you Geoff. [A click can be heard] I can’t remember if I told you this, or if I only told Washington this, that when I talked to Jeff Feltman [United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs] this morning, he had a new name for the UN guy Robert Serry did I write you that this morning?

Pyatt: Yeah I saw that.

Nuland: OK. He’s now gotten both Serry and [UN Secretary General] Ban Ki-moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday. So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and to have the UN help glue it and, you know, Fuck the EU.

Pyatt: No, exactly. And I think we’ve got to do something to make it stick together because you can be pretty sure that if it does start to gain altitude, that the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it. And again the fact that this is out there right now, I’m still trying to figure out in my mind why Yanukovych (garbled) that. In the meantime there’s a Party of Regions faction meeting going on right now and I’m sure there’s a lively argument going on in that group at this point. But anyway we could land jelly side up on this one if we move fast. So let me work on Klitschko and if you can just keep… we want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing. The other issue is some kind of outreach to Yanukovych but we probably regroup on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into place.

Nuland: So on that piece Geoff, when I wrote the note [US vice-president’s national security adviser Jake] Sullivan’s come back to me VFR [direct to me], saying you need [US Vice-President Joe] Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick. So Biden’s willing.

Pyatt: OK. Great. Thanks.

CORRECTION: This article previously said the removed video was the most watched version of the leaked call. A version from a Russian YouTube channel with Russian subtitles, still available, has garnered 1.4 million views. It may have been de-ranked on YouTube’s search as it is difficult to find, whereas the removed version was near the top of a search request.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times.  He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe  

 

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58 comments for “Nuland-Pyatt Tape Removed From YouTube After 8 Years

  1. Visiting Professor
    May 27, 2022 at 07:48

    Many participants in this discussion seem to be overlooking the significance of the loss of eight years of viewer comments. These comments were unique and were not posted on other websites — so their erasure represents a real and permanent loss. This was truly erasing a part of history.

    Readers here may recall that erasing history by putting it “down the memory hole” was the draconian method of social control used by the government in George Orwell’s prescient dystopian novel, 1984. In many ways, this fiction has become reality.

  2. Henry Smith
    May 27, 2022 at 04:04

    “That is the point.”
    Exactly, where does Jo Public go for their news feeds ? Google, Amazon, YouTube, etc., etc. They don’t go to CN or the Archive or other alternative sites because most ‘ordinary’ people don’t know they even exist – that’s the problem.
    Censorship is not just redacting, it’s removing and hiding information and destroying the sources. Ask Snowdon, Assange or Manning.

  3. rachel
    May 27, 2022 at 03:19

    i clicked on the link in the article and the video works for me…
    181,662 views Apr 29, 2014 and 737 comments

    there are YT clone sites at Invidio.us. the video is there @
    hxxps://yewtu.be/watch?v=i__GPdwz3Sw

    the lesson to be learned from web content that has been censored or removed is that whenever you read an article or watch a video that you think is important to history and/or truth telling, you should save it right then. download the article/video and the comments. it’s up to us to preserve that for future generations. if many people make copies, the information won’t be lost.

  4. Hans Meyer
    May 27, 2022 at 03:11

    Are you sure?

    Here is an example of a quick search as of 26 of May. Didn’t they use encryption at the time, were they stupid?
    This tape would prove that Russia action is reactive to NATO closing toward its instead of acting (invasion to conquer land) on the situation in Ukraine. They manufactured the situation for it to happen and the Russians stepped into the trap. Life could be saved by setting a neutral zone with mutual assurances by the two parties to the countries included in the zone. Instead they offer other countries bordering Russia a speedy inclusion into NATO. They don’t care about people lives in Ukraine, their goal is set to subjugate Russia. Any peace talk will be disregarded and “Fuck Europe” is in it by force or by choice. This tape may not be that important to them to hide, most of the people in the US and in Europe are following the party’s line and regurgitating the medias’ narratives. Putin is not better or worse Tham Bush, Biden, Obama, Sarkosy…, a reformed bureaucrat and discovered capitalist in the new Russia. But he is not the one launching undeclared war over the globe. You tell that to people and remind them that people were needlessly dying in eastern Ukraine for 8 years before the Russian’s invasion and you are declared pro-Putin or anti-American… You have them listen to the Nuland-Pyatt ‘s conversation, they tell you is not possible, it must be a Russian trap. No discussion is possible. Left leaning Youtube channels like “The Majority Report, Waldorf Nation, The Ring of Fire…” are adament on the version of the unprovoked Russian invasion. And the recording was there from almost the beginning, so, is there a need to remove it? People are so far not aware that in that case, we are not talking about putative weapons of mass destruction. We are talking about countries having at their disposition stockpiles of chemical, bacteriological and nuclear weapons. We only need one incident and Mars can wait.

  5. ricardo2000
    May 26, 2022 at 17:49

    Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley: A Memoir: “Certain unflattering truths: I had felt unassailable behind the walls of power. Society was shifting, and I felt safer inside the empire, inside the machine. It was preferable to be on the side that did the watching than the side being watched.”

    Every part of the Western media cloaca voids lies to support their profit margins. Right wing media long ago accepted their role as ad sales junior associates. Extremist media sources deal in sick, sexually deviant, hero fantasies of small, stupid people. MSM journalism can be described by the phrases, ‘Go along, to get along’, or, ‘It isn’t what you know, its who you blow’. As corporate whores, the only job is to moan, wriggle, and scream on cue, or take a vicious beating from their editorial pimps. The ‘Left’, ‘Woke’, ‘Radical Chic’ media believe in fashion. So one month its ‘Baby seals’, the next ‘Black Lives Matter’, ‘Extinction Rebellion’, or ‘Occupy Wall Street’. There is no memory, no substance to their support. They aren’t looking to make things better. They’re just looking for the hottest party, and the easiest lays. As the above Wiener quote suggests: Western media wants to be ‘embedded’ with murderers, not stand with the raped or murdered.

    So Consortium News, Mint Press News, and Scott Ritter’s courageous opinions threatens the illusions of every kind of Western media. Just like Hemingway’s Spanish Civil War reportage, Gary Webb’s ‘Dark Alliance’ exposure of Contra-CIA crack cocaine trafficking, Alfred McCoy’s ‘The Politics of Heroin’, or, Col Prouty’s ‘The Secret Team’, announcing CIA penetration of all facets of US government.

    Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451: “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

    William Casey (CIA Director 1981-1987): “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

  6. robert e williamson jr
    May 26, 2022 at 16:27

    They took it down and now it becomes a classic example of just how these cowards operate.

    Thanks CN

  7. dave
    May 26, 2022 at 13:42

    It should be mentioned that Oleh Tyahnybok, one of the people with whom Nuland recommended “Yats” consult with “four times a week”, is no mere “opposition leader”. He’s the head of the far-right Svoboda party who said that a “Moscow-Jewish mafia” is running Ukraine.

    Here’s a photo:

    hxxps://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Oleh.jpg

  8. John S. Carpenter
    May 26, 2022 at 08:48

    I included it in one of my own videos, so it’s safe for now

    • jim McCurdy
      May 26, 2022 at 18:00

      Good man. I knew someone would’ve downloaded it.

    • CNfan
      May 26, 2022 at 19:45

      Thank you. This is such an obvious case of trying to hide a smoking gun. YouTube/Google is blatantly working for a criminal oligarchy and against the citizens, the Constitution, and democracy.

  9. Vera Gottlieb
    May 26, 2022 at 08:40

    Can it get any dirtier??? And this is the nation so many adulate? Think again…air out the brain.

    • Realist
      May 26, 2022 at 15:53

      ROTFLMAO! (Except not laughing, but wailing, rending garments and gnashing teeth!)

      No doubt these gangsters who pose as the patron saints of “freedom and democracy” would have the masses believe that smoking-gun hard evidence recorded on digital devices is surely “disinformation” which must be eradicated.

      I know, the Russians counterfeited the digital data! Yeah, that’s the ticket! Just can’t believe anything counter to the official American narrative. Stop trying to use logic, common sense and your own mind as long as American intel is here to set you free with the official truth.

  10. May 26, 2022 at 07:30

    I have the video recording on my blog Contraviews. It’s still there but they have removed the sound. I will try to copy the text and publish it on the same post.

    • Tom
      May 27, 2022 at 00:34

      Sorry, the sound is still there on the video in my blog Contraviews.

  11. JG
    May 26, 2022 at 00:46

    This is exactly like the scene in 1984 where Winston of the Ministry of Truth discovers a photograph in the archives showing three men that were supposed to be dead enemies that incriminates the Party and does his job by trying to memory hole it. YouTube is becoming the Memory Hole. Remember. Oceania has always been at war with Southeast Asia.

  12. Drew Hunkins
    May 26, 2022 at 00:23

    All this overreaching by our censorious elites is going to generate a righteous, yet unfortunately dangerous, backlash amongst the frustrated and infuriated masses.

    Our elites are going to eventually overstep, and the backlash is going to be intense, warranted, and sustained.

    • Alan Hodge
      May 26, 2022 at 11:18

      Or be exactly the response the state/media/corporate complex are working so hard to orchestrate. Nothing like a good backlash for putting the chosen suave, plausible, fascist nut job in office.

  13. irina
    May 25, 2022 at 23:32

    Thank you CN for posting this. At the time I was taking a class in Eastern European Contemporary Politics and went through a lot of printer paper and ink, printing out information that I didn’t want to lose. Amazingly, this article by NBC is still online,
    it gives a summary of how things settled out : hxxps://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/analysis-u-s-cozies-kiev-government-including-far-right-n66061

    Looks like a good one to print out ! Shows just how far down the memory hole we have fallen . . . .

  14. CNfan
    May 25, 2022 at 20:43

    This is the tip of the censorship iceberg, as CN readers well know. But it’s a very important tip to document in the current situation. CN was a leader in documenting the 2014 coup when it occurred, and is again leading the free press on the Ukraine story today. CN is the kind of publication the framers of the 1st Amendment were counting on.

  15. Jeff Harrison
    May 25, 2022 at 19:01

    Is there any question in anyone’s mind that the US primarily uses the classification system to hide high crimes and misdemeanors? The US uses their vassals in the media to hide what they want hidden and to deplatform, block funding, etc to the opposition media. Just like the Ukraine. Just ask Joe.

  16. Foggy Dew
    May 25, 2022 at 18:46

    Memory holed …the media and now social media and big tech have always been the propaganda and censoring arm of the state ,they exist solely to control and disseminate government propaganda they are the antitheses of free speech and independent media which is why they go to such extreme measures to snuff them out. If there is an inconvenient truth in an event they simply do not publish it or give it airtime ( Hunter laptop,) and most times it dies silently in the dark .What you see, hear and read is carefully framed and cultivated in such a way as to be of benefit for the state…. false atrocities, territorial incursions and aggression against the state are common tactics used to foment anger and outrage to such as degree that you willingly march into the giant meat grinder of war to avenge them while they sit safe and comfortable in Washington . The Ukraine story is falling apart as more and more independent journalists get the word out ,the state is losing control of the narrative and will become only more desperate in its attempt to regain control either through censorship or total main stream media saturation of their version. I am now almost entirely going to other free speech video platforms to watch these type of clips ,i archive them on an external hard drive because one day in the not too distant future this information and the truth it holds will vanish into the mists of time like that which was contained in the Great Library of Alexandria it will all be gone forever

  17. Drew Hunkins
    May 25, 2022 at 18:18

    Sullivan, Nudelman, Blinken, and President Klain are traitors. They should be tried for crimes against humanity.

  18. Drew Hunkins
    May 25, 2022 at 17:37

    Unbelievably outrageous!

    If you’re not concerned about censorship, start being concerned now!

  19. McNugget Alex English
    May 25, 2022 at 17:36

    Good that the transcript is up here, but the direction things are going means CN itself might be removed in the near future.

    I wonder if there are any actual anti-war politicians who would read this into the record in Congress. Or even pretend anti-war who are just doing that for political purposes.

  20. evelync
    May 25, 2022 at 17:19

    Try this – it’s available for now although a partial:
    – Robert Parry “Ukraine on Fire
    “hxxps://youtu.be/kGq_Xvzn_3I

    and this interrupted by reporter:
    hxxps://youtu.be/L2XNN0Yt6D8

    and this NBC complete available for now:
    hxxps://www.nbcnews.com/video/audio-of-leaked-nuland-conversation-162208835907

    Needs to be downloaded somehow before they all disappear…..sorry, not internet savvy…..

    • Consortiumnews.com
      May 26, 2022 at 06:36

      The article says other versions are available on YouTube and other platforms. Consortium News already has the removed video downloaded on our hard drive. We can now embed it from Rumble. The point is that the most viewed, besides a YouTube version from Russia, and the most easily accessible version in a YouTube search, has for some reason after 8 long years, been suddenly removed.

      • evelync
        May 26, 2022 at 09:05

        Thank you.
        So glad to hear that that you have it locked down.

        This is an ugly business. Shame on them all.

        This also ties back to why Julian Assange is in prison, IMO, for sharing with the people of this country the crimes that were perpetrated in our name and with our tax dollars and by/on the people who serve too because some of them can no longer live with themselves for what they were expected/told to do and later felt remorse and self hatred, lives ruined too.

        They’ll do anything to hide the truth but they seem to have bitten off more than they can chew now with their poorly thought through delusional sanctions backfiring because they refused to face the reality that military power has its limits.

        I found it fascinating that the Duran I think in a video yesterday pointed out that this putsch on Russia and Putin may have started or perhaps accelerated with Putin’s brilliant 2007 speech in Munich where he shares his thoughts on working together to rid the world of dangerous weapons and securing peace.
        Did the Slav sound too uppity for McCain and Lieberman and the other old white men? They look shocked.
        Angela Merkel seemed to be enjoying it and paying attention.

        It made a great deal of sense and we would have been far better off listening and working together as advised by wiser heads like AMB Jack Matlock, Russian history Prof Stephen Cohen, and so many others.

  21. Dan
    May 25, 2022 at 17:18

    The May 24 interview by Joe Lauria of a Ukraine poet has a comment posted by a reader identified as Humwawa who links a number of videos. The subject of the first link purports to show unarmed Donbass citizens stopping and disarming a Ukraine tank. This video is no longer available. The available videos should be seen and distributed. Thanks for the links Humwawa!

  22. Dienne
    May 25, 2022 at 16:41

    I’m sure glad I don’t live in Russia. They have censorship there. No wonder they hate us for our freedom.

    • Carolyn L Zaremba
      May 25, 2022 at 18:48

      Hah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!

    • Dennis
      May 25, 2022 at 20:42

      Well, ok, but this article is about erosion of freedom.

      Too often people offer this defence of “better than they are”.

      If we ever want to imagine ourselves or be seen by others as good guys, the process of being free is eroded by saying we are not as bad as that boy down the road.

      • Brian Bixby
        May 26, 2022 at 01:56

        I think your sarcasm meter needs recalibration.

      • May 26, 2022 at 02:06

        I am guessing that Dienne meant to convey sarcasm with that initial comment, but in any case, I concur with Dennis’s response.

        I would add that, much of the time (if not necessarily in every conceivable circumstance), people pointing out “whataboutism” (i.e., attempts to avoid answering for a favored nation-state’s behavior by pointing out the hypocrisies of its adversaries) is simply itself a form of “reverse-whataboutism.” In other words, they themselves are just tactically employing it to deflect from a discussion about accountability and culpability to protect their own nationalist emotional investments, rather than either, a) explaining and arguing in detail why their nation-state’s particular actions and behavior deserve to be considered qualitatively different from those of its adversaries, or b) conceding that their favored nation-state’s particular actions and behavior are equivalently atrocious and wrongful to those of adversary states, and that all should therefore face mutual accountability for similar reasons).

  23. Cara
    May 25, 2022 at 16:27

    This is the first time I’ve read the complete transcription and it seems to implicate the UN in the coup as well. Is that right? Or, am I misunderstanding Nuland? Because I don’t recall hearing about UN involvement and I find this aspect of the transcription completely unnerving for what it suggests about the UN.

  24. Barbara Mulllin
    May 25, 2022 at 16:21

    But but but Joe Biden keeps saying Russia’s attack on Ukraine is “unprovoked”!!!!!!!

  25. Linda Wood
    May 25, 2022 at 15:48

    You’ve raised my awareness that the version that has been removed may be the one with photographs of Nuland and John McCain smiling with Ukrainian Nazi leadership.

    After all these years, why remove it now? Maybe it’s because the Asovstal prisoners may now be forced to testify to Nazi atrocities in the Ukraine civil war.

    All these years, the smiling photographs were meant to soften the impact of American support for Nazis. Maybe now the photos are a liability.

    • Dan
      May 25, 2022 at 17:20

      Excellent observation.

    • Gene Poole
      May 26, 2022 at 03:58

      Cookies too. Cookies and milk means they must be good little boys

  26. alv
    May 25, 2022 at 15:22

    Not only it comes amidst the war in ukraine, it is well in compass with the latest revelations about the russiagate.

  27. James McFadden
    May 25, 2022 at 15:21

    Much of the Nuland-Pratt audio can be heard here
    hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2XNN0Yt6D8
    I wonder how long before this is also removed.

    • Carolyn L Zaremba
      May 25, 2022 at 18:49

      Download it.

  28. Linda Wood
    May 25, 2022 at 15:17

    This version has lots of accompanying photos of the persons involved, but none actually showing American officials posing and smiling with the Nazi Tyahnybok, whereas the version with such photographs may be the one that has been removed.

    hxxps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XwAcbZGDXww

  29. Me Myself
    May 25, 2022 at 14:55

    Is there a copy of that video so it could be posted online with a different host provider?

    So upset about the new information Iron Curtain.

    America, America, Wherefore Art Thou?

  30. Linda Wood
    May 25, 2022 at 14:53

    I found another YouTube file of the audio with photography just now. I hope this may mean they have removed the particular one that includes pictures of John McCain consorting with the Ukrainian Nazi leadership personality mentioned in the phone conversation, or something like that.

    hxxps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i__GPdwz3Sw

    • Consortiumnews.com
      May 25, 2022 at 14:55

      The video was posted on April 29, 2014 and had 181,533 views before it was taken down, the most viewed version of the conversation on YouTube.

  31. Vincent ANDERSON
    May 25, 2022 at 14:45

    Great preservation job, Joe & Co.! Is everyone aware that, more generally, YouTube just ‘remove[d] more than 9,000 channels relating to Ukraine war’?
    hxxps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/may/22/youtube-ukraine-invasion-russia-video-removals

    Per the Guardian, that the ‘[p]latform takes ‘unprecedented action’ to address content guideline violations since invasion…’ of course, fails to define such guidelines. Pretty vague here: ‘YouTube’s chief product officer, Neal Mohan, said: “We have a major violent events policy and that applies to things like denial of major violent events: everything from the Holocaust to Sandy Hook. And of course, what’s happening in Ukraine is a major violent event. And so we’ve used that policy to take unprecedented action.”’

    Against RUS agitprop, quote unquote. ‘[He] did not provide a breakdown of the taken-down content and channels but…said much of it represented Kremlin narratives about the invasion. “I don’t have the specific numbers, but you can imagine a lot of it being the narratives that are coming from Russian government, or Russian actors on behalf of the Russian government.”’

    Interesting footnote though: ‘YouTube has an estimated 90 million users in Russia, although it no longer allows advertising on the platform in the country. The decision by YouTube’s parent company, Google, has drawn protests from [Aleksei] Navalny, who said well-targeted ads helped counteract Kremlin propaganda.’ Inference: Unlike US/Brit style solitary confinement, RUS prisons give internet access to agitators.

    More generally, ‘Last week, the Russian minister for digital development, Maksut Shadaev, said the country would not block YouTube, despite disputes over content that have resulted in the platform being fined in court for not removing banned videos…. “We are not planning to close YouTube,” the minister said. “Above all, when we restrict something, we should clearly understand that our users won’t suffer.”’

    A final coda, regarding the supposed Gulag nature of the RUS penal system: The protestor who paraded the anti-war sign on a national newscast avoided jail time, due to a judicial rule that young mothers with children should not be (further) penalized by same. Tell that to the millions of US mothers and relatives who are not treated so generously. And, despite [1] ‘rejecting’ Macron’s offer of asylum, as a true patriot, she then [2] accepted a new job with DW.com, one of the most blatant ‘US party line’ media on the planet.

    RE [1] hxxps://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/18/russian-journalist-who-staged-anti-war-tv-protest-quits-job-but-rejects-french-asylum-offer

    RE [2] hxxps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/12/russia-marina-ovsyannikova-protester-ukraine-hired-germany/

  32. anon
    May 25, 2022 at 14:38

    It’s still available here:

    hxxps://web.archive.org/web/20220518154624/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV9J6sxCs5k

    • Consortiumnews.com
      May 25, 2022 at 15:05

      Yes we know. That’s not the point. This was the most viewed version on YouTube, which has far more reach than any other platform. It had over 181,000 views. Eight years worth of comments on the video have also been removed.

    • May 25, 2022 at 18:55

      I second the remarks of the Consortium News editorial staff.

      While people like you and I are familiar with web.archive.org, archive.ph, and similar resources for viewing lost or disappeared web content (albeit still depending on whether or not the automated web-capture mechanisms and/or individual users of those sites had the foresight to preserve it before it vanished), many casual internet users have no idea that this content exists in the first place, much less that those preservation resources exist. By removing the ability to passively discover audiovisual evidence of seeming US involvement in Viktor Yanukovych’s 2014 ouster without having to do extra research or otherwise expend active effort to find it, YouTube and other powers-that-be have excluded untold numbers of hitherto unexposed people from acquiring a more expansive contextual view of the post-Euromaidan Ukraine crisis.

      Additionally, the Consortium News editor(s) make a good point about the proxy censorship of commenters on the video (comparable to the indirect censorship of two to three years worth of my comments on The Anti-Media’s posts that I routinely linked to there containing collections of sources, information, etc. when that news site was deleted from Facebook in October 2018, which was one of the main catalysts for me getting rid of my account there at that time, since it drastically diminished its utility as both a nostalgia-storage and information-transmission medium).

    • JG
      May 26, 2022 at 00:41

      replace xx with tt

  33. Realist
    May 25, 2022 at 14:37

    Regrettable.

    Does YouTube have a copyright on this transmission which would prevent others who have recorded it from their site to post it?

    Is hard evidence that easily expunged? To me the letter of the law is always perplexing, especially when it is totally divorced from justice.

  34. Linda Wood
    May 25, 2022 at 14:37

    I found this audio file, just now, that corresponds to the transcript. It’s also a YouTube file. I hope someone reading here knows how to download the audio before it may also disappear.

    hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoW75J5bnnE

    • Consortiumnews.com
      May 25, 2022 at 15:07

      This was the most viewed version on YouTube, which has far more reach than any other platforms, where it still appears. It has not been totally erased from the internet. But this video had over 181,000 views. Eight years worth of comments on the video have also been removed. That is the point.

    • Afdal
      May 25, 2022 at 22:43

      A tool called youtube-dl can download videos from any Youtube page. PeerTube instances make it trivial to mirror Youtube videos as well (you simply make an account and select Import with URL).

  35. Carolyn L Zaremba
    May 25, 2022 at 13:43

    Thnk you for publishing the transcript. One of the reasons that I print out articles and transcripts is to preserve them against just this kind of censorship. If the government starts blocking internet access to these articles, I have a hard copy and I can send it to everyone on my email list, which contains a lot more people than my FB friends list. Victoria Nuland is a viper and a war criminal. Fortunately, most of us who follow Consortium News and other alternative news sites have already watched this video and cannot unsee it.

  36. May 25, 2022 at 13:19

    The US government has every reason to worry about this exchange because it makes it so clear not only that the US was behind the coup and the placement of the new government, but also the fact that the current president, who has started a massive proxy war with Russia over the Ukraine, was deeply involved all along when he was vice president. Of course, hiding it after 8 years seems very amateurish, but then again, they don’t think anyone is paying attention, So why not?

    Thanks for posting the transcript!

    • Gene Poole
      May 26, 2022 at 04:06

      Biden was deeply involved in all senses of the term, including deriving personal pecuniary gain from his association with the coup government. Now he wraps himself in the mantle of ‘fighting autocracy’.

  37. Afdal
    May 25, 2022 at 13:10

    Thanks for writing a discrete article about this. A lot of people have no idea just how heavy the censorship is coming down from the major social media monopolies, and every time such an instance is cataloged it helps in constructing a long list to establish a pattern of malicious behavior.

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