The delusions about Ukraine continue as from the start. Washington and its puppet regime in Kiev have lost the war they provoked but there is no speaking of a defeat.
Fan art of the “Ghost of Kyiv.” (Wikimedia Commons /CC BY-SA 4.0)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
How odd to look back now — now, as Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine ends in ignominious defeat—and think of that cornucopia of propaganda spilling out of what I called during the early months Washington’s “bubble of pretend.” Take a few minutes to remember with me.
There was the “Ghost of Kyiv,” an heroic MiG–29 pilot credited with downing six, count ’em, six Russian fighters in a single night, Feb. 24, 2022, two days after the Russian intervention began. The Ghost turned out to be a fantasy confected out of a popular video game.
So crude, the early Ukrainian propaganda, so rank.
And then, shortly to follow, we had the heroes of Snake Island, 13 Ukrainian troops who — trumpets and drums here — defended a Black Sea islet to the death. It turned out this unit had surrendered, and the posthumous medals of honor President Volodymyr Zelensky awarded them with great flourish were neither posthumous nor deserved.
This corny nonsense, slathered on as thick as frosting on a wedding cake, went on and on such that The New York Times could no longer pretend it didn’t exist. I do not care for journalists who indulge in self-reference, but allow me these sentences from a piece published a couple of months into the conflict:
“After railing against disinformation for years, the Times wants us to know, disinformation is O.K. in Ukraine because the Ukrainians are our side and they are simply ‘boosting morale.’
We cannot say we weren’t warned. The Ghost of Kiev and Snake Island turn out now to be mere prelude, opening acts in the most extensive propaganda operation of the many I can recall.”
Prelude, indeed — prelude to a war so malignly reported it was soon impossible for readers and viewers in the Western post-democracies to see it (which was, after all, precisely the point).
And prelude, let’s be careful to note, to the probably fatal collapse of foreign correspondence among Western media, the Times and the BBC well in the lead in my estimation, but with many pilot fish swimming beside them.
By the end of that first year of the war — last reference to columns past here — I reckoned there were two versions of the Ukraine conflict: There was the war suspended in an opaque solution of cloudy rhetoric and the war taking place in reality.
And now, as we come out the far end of this debacle, the delusions and illusions remain just as they have been throughout. The U.S. and its puppet regime in Kiev have decisively lost the war they provoked but no, there is no speaking of a defeat.
There is no calling the victor in this conflict the victor and certainly no accepting that victory — the real world intrudes here — gives the victor the upper hand in setting the terms of a settlement. As to these terms as Moscow repeatedly articulates them, if you study them they are thoroughly reasonable and to the benefit of both sides but must never be spoken of as such. If they are Moscow’s terms — the golden rule — they cannot by definition be reasonable.
Most of all, there is no acknowledging the cynical sacrifice of Ukrainian lives somewhere in six figures in a cause that has had nothing to do with their well-being and certainly nothing to do with the democratization of their country.
And most, most, most of all, there cannot be and must not be any lessons learned from this wasteful disaster. The imperative is to go on to the next one.
The Ordering of Obfuscations
Soldiers raise the Ukrainian national flag on Snake Island, July 2022. (Dpsu.gov.ua / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0)
The mis– and disinformation soon got heavier-going after those first months of outright silliness, and, so far as I could make out, this was when the propaganda pros in Washington and London took over from those amateurs in Kiev.
The “Russian massacre” in Bucha over the last couple of days of that first March was not at the hands of Russians — persuasive evidence of this — but the never-happened brutality of retreating Russian soldiers is now fixed in the official record and the collective memory of those who still allow mainstream media to mesmerize them. [A U.N. report was ambiguous about who was responsible for the Bucha killings but blamed Russia for executing civilians in the Kiev region.]
Among my favorites in this line occurred later in 2022, when the Armed Forces of Ukraine was shelling the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant on the east side of the Dnieper River.
But because the A.F.U., the good guys, could not possibly be reported as indulging in so reckless an act, it had to be — straight across Western media, this— that the Russians were risking a nuclear meltdown by bombarding the plant they guarded and occupied and within which there were Russian detachments and a lot of Russian matériel.
Let us be clear as to what lies behind all this chicanery. Before all the obfuscation of the progress of the war in Russia’s favor these past three years there was the obfuscation of its causes.
I am so weary of the word “unprovoked” in accounts of this conflict I could… I could write a column about it. Ditto the notion that it began in February 2022 and not in the same month eight years earlier, when the U.S.–cultivated coup in Kiev set off the regime’s daily attacks on its own people in the eastern, Russian-speaking provinces, causing of the order of 15,000 casualties.
At issue here are questions of history, causality, agency and responsibility. The U.S. and its clients in Kiev and the European capitals have erased the first and denied the latter three.
The reason Westerners have not been given a clear view of the war is that they must not develop an understanding of why it began. Start to finish and no exceptions, the good guys must always be the good guys and the bad guys always the bad.
How’s that for the Western powers’ idea of high-end statecraft in the 21st century? Shall we call it un–Realpolitik?
Undercutting Peace Talks
U.S.-Ukraine talks in Munich on Feb. 14. (State Department/Flickr)
Recent rounds of talks notwithstanding, in my read this purposely constructed distance from reality is likely to make an enduring settlement — at the mahogany table, not on the battlefield — difficult and perhaps impossible. This stands to doom the lives of who knows how many more Ukrainian and Russian men and women.
Russia’s conditions — chief among these a new security framework in Europe, de–Nazification and a guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO — are deserving of negotiation, as I have already suggested. But, the bubble of pretend having never burst, any suggestion of this in Washington or anywhere else in the West is marked down as “echoing Putin’s talking points.”
It is infra-dig, no other term for it.
We find in consequence various new delusions abroad in the West. Volodymyr Zelensky, understood at last as the punk of the piece, carries on as if Kiev, the loser, has the power to set the terms of settlement talks with the victor.
The Europeans, having supported Ukraine for years and now promising to continue this support, are working on a “peace plan” whereby they would change uniforms, so to say, and require Russia to accept them as keepers of the peace on Ukrainian soil.
As we watch the Atlantic powers twist themselves into pretzels to avoid any admission of defeat in Ukraine, I look to the larger significance of this conflict. Boiling the matter down, this is a confrontation between the West and non–West. At bottom — and I missed this for a time — it is a major front in the war the reigning order, the disorder with which we live, wages to resist the new world order swiftly enough coming into being.
To make this point in specific terms, a new security architecture between the Russian Federation and its European neighbors would mark an historically significant turn toward parity between the West and non–West. And it is parity that the Western powers resist most vigorously — never mind it will prove of benefit to all of humanity when it is finally achieved.
The Times of London ran a thought-provoking piece in last Sunday’s editions about an 83–year-old veteran of the Vietnam war named Stuart Herrington. He served as an army intelligence officer in the final years of the war and recalled for a Times interviewer the days before the Viet Cong closed in on what was then Saigon.
Vividly and painfully, Herrington remembers those fateful last days in April of 1975, when the last Americans evacuated from the rooftop of the U.S. embassy. He had assured passage out to all the Vietnamese who had collaborated with the Americans, only to sneak out on a staircase to the roof and leave them behind in the final hours.
It was the broken promise that caused me to reflect on the then-and-now of the piece. The broken promise, the abandonment of those who supported the American cause, the implicit reality that the war was not waged for the Vietnamese but for some larger ideological cause that had nothing to do with them: Herrington seems to be no peacenik in his advancing years, but these were the sources of his enduring regret.
We have learned nothing from those days, he remarked as he considered, 50 years on, the Ukraine war. “Here we go again,” he remarked as the interview ended.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.
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Another great article which should be read by all English speaking countries who’ve shamelessly hoodwinked their people with junk news based on unsubstantiated claims.
Had it not been for ConsortiumNews I would not be familiar with the real journalists of our time, such as Patrick Lawrence. My friends and family remain NPR and PBS devotees, poor fools.
Amazing what we learn reading essays by real-deal journalists. Intended hopes of bringing humane peace worldwide, it’s my belief we have the responsibility to share articles written by these authors – whose commitment to factual truths, dutifully enlightening the gullible; those still hooked on mainstream media.
If one should compare journalists to music composers, the writings by Patrick Lawrence is like listening to Mozart, Beethoven, Bach or any of those masters. Mainstream media makes the sound of bad elevator music, off key and insipid.
From my local column, a current addendum to this superb piece:
I wanted to wait until the peace deal was signed for Ukraine, but a discussion so outrageous happened on Morning Joe, the official Pravda of the Blues, that I have to vent or blow up.
Discussing the anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the lesson they got from the war was that we Americans lost trust in our government because they lied to us: the deaths, the hopelessness, the war crimes, the imaginary Domino Theory. But their lessons were for the always-evil Reds, saying that Trump is lying to us about everything, and the Reds will pay a price for that.
Vent now, Rick. Big breaths.
As I’ve written here at length, the history lesson of the Ukraine war is Vietnam, not Hitler.* Joe and his panel are oblivious to: hundreds of thousands dead in a war around the world that gains no one anything; staying in too long just so Presidents don’t look bad; refusal to negotiate; enlisting our allies in a futile struggle; alienating half the world; feeding the war machine; killing or giving PTSD to a generation of trusting young men.
The majority of Blues and minority of Reds and Independents who support this Lost Cause do not so much lie about any of the above, as just ignore it, or call absolutely any factual discussion of the merits of this war as “Putin’s talking points! Grrr!”
The conclusion of all this is that what we mistakenly call the ‘West’ – which is in fact the United States and its lackeys – is governed by a formidable collection of incompetents whose culture is inversely proportional to their egos. Pathological liars, truth is a concept that does not exist for them.
Now, in Europe, orphaned by Biden, Macron, Starmer and the future German Chancellor are protecting the interests of the ‘Democrat’ house by pretending to continue supporting Zelensky against all odds. These guys are fools who betray their people. They represent the bankruptcy of representative democracy.
THE FIGHT
An old, old story tells of two boys fighting on a playground one bigger and stronger than the other. The smaller
boy is pinioned helplessly to the ground . The smaller boy from the ground where he is being held shouts to
the others gathering round, “I got him, I got him!!”
I think the smaller boy’s name was Zelensky.
Peter Loeb,
Bada-Bada, Bing-Bing, “An old, old story tells of two boys fighting,” ‘got,’ everything,” Tragedy! Comedy!! Basically, it’s Epic poetry!!! Imo, “mirroring” Bob Dylan’s, Desolation Row. *“A timeless cautionary tale that speaks not only to the folly of his generation but also serves as a mirror for future ones.”
……“Praise be to Nero’s Neptune. The Titanic sails at dawn. Everybody’s shouting, “Which side are you on?” And, Ezra Pound & T.S. Elliot fighting in the captain’s tower; while calypso singers laugh at them; &, fishermen hold flowers. Between the windows of the sea, where lovely mermaids flow; AND, nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row.” Bob Dylan’s “1965 album ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ paints a panorama of chaos and disillusionment, reflecting the tumult of its era whilst maintaining a timeless quality that keeps it relevant today. “Decoding The Surrealist Odyssey of Social Commentary,” @ (SMF) * hxxps://www.songmeaningsandfacts.com/desolation-row-decoding-the-surrealist-odyssey-of-social-commentary/
TY, Peter Loeb! Onward & Upwards. “Keep It Lit.” Ciao
I was shocked by the deluge of propaganda (“unprovoked,” Ukraine nazis vanished, evil Russians) at the beginning of the war. And I’m old enough to remember “Nayira”
No doubt, “many, people,” know Patrick Lawrence’s reporting, analysis, writing, “Columns,” are rock solid!! Lawrence zoning-in on how “living w/war” s^cks!!! Is on f/target! Bull’s-Eye! (My words. NOT, P. Lawrence’s).
By all means, “Patrick Lawrence,” WRITE that column, about it,” the debacle. The debacle “in the deserts here & the deserts far-away.” Clarifying 1) the Start Dates, 2) the Provocateurs, 3) the Fall-Out, “the U.S.–cultivated “coup, coup d’etat” in Kiev setting off the regime’s daily attacks [On Its OWN People] in the eastern, Russian-speaking provinces, causing of the order of 15,000 casualties.”
Sound, familiar? Everybody, knows, “from the river to the sea,” the casualties are upwards of 65,000. *“The root of all the violence, including the violence of Oct 7, is Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and its subjugation of the Palestinian people. History did not begin on Oct 7, 2023.” Arundhati Roy
“And now, as we come out the far end of this debacle, the delusions and illusions remain just as they have been throughout. The U.S. and its puppet regime in Kiev have decisively lost the war they provoked but no, there is no speaking of a defeat.” Patrick Lawrence
As well, “there’s no speaking of:”1) *“NO Elections,” in Ukraine, during WARtime, under Martial Law, 2) Hence, the legitimacy of Volodymyr “El Chapo” Zelensky’s presidency is questioned, 3) Until martial law is lifted, Volodymyr “El Chapo” Zelensky remains Ukraine’s “Head of $tate,” groveling for relevancy; AND, imo, Russia, the USG, NATO are NOT stoked by the resolution, Martial Law, empowers Volodymyr “El Chapo” Zelensky continued authority as Ukraine’s Head of $tate.
“We have learned nothing from those days, he remarked as he considered, 50 years on, the Ukraine war. “Here we go again,” [Stuart Herrington] remarked as the interview ended.
Au contraire, Mr. Herrington, “We,” have learned, IMO, the USG/Nato vs. Russia WAR in Ukraine ends like all the rest. The USG is outta there! With or Without NATO!! Ukraine has been “Used, Abused, will be, Abandoned!!!
….. No doubt, Russia rocks the Queen. Ukraine is the Pawn. Et tu, USG/NATO?!?
No doubt, Volodymyr “El Chapo” Zelensky comes up short, on every level. Basically, Volodymyr “El Chapo” Zelensky is “Done & Dusted!” It’s beyond tragic. Not @ all funny that Trump-Vance, Inc., hold the card, that reads, “Have mercy on” Volodymyr “El Chapo” Zelensky’s warped soul.”
The #1, take-away, “The reason Westerners have not been given a clear view of the war is that they must not develop an understanding of why it began. Start to finish and no exceptions, the good guys must always be the good guys and the bad guys always the bad. “How’s that for the Western powers’ idea of high-end statecraft in the 21st century? Shall we call it un–Realpolitik?” Yes. It’s “SFO” – Spot F/On!!!” TY, Patrick Lawrence, CN!!! “Keep It Lit! Ciao
* hxxps://www.jurist.org/news/2025/02/ukraine-parliament-affirms-no-elections-during-wartime-under-martial-law/
* hxxps://pentransmissions.com/2024/10/15/no-propaganda-on-earth-can-hide-the-wound-that-is-palestine-arundhati-roys-pen-pinter-prize-2024-speech/
There’s a good chance that there will never be any acknowledgement in the mainstream media and establishment Russophobic circles about a Ukrainian defeat. They’ll use face saving rhetoric to gloss over the Russian victory and paint it as some sort of loss for Putin.
Make no mistake, the Washington-Zio-militarist empire is about to take one on the chin; its proxy war is a loser, it’s a loser to a nation that simply does not lose wars of existence!
The Straussians and Wolfowitzes won’t be successful in the long run. The RIC is a new dawning.
Victoria Nuland will never shed a single tear for the 1.1 million Ukrainian soldiers who perished under her cruel and steady gaze.
Excellent and timely article. Thanks for reminding us that the cascade of lies we have or are been subjected to has destroyed the capacity to see the world as it is. The very definition of stupidity. My neighbors at least those reading the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal still believe Ukraine is winning the war!
Perhaps the day will come when “Russophobia will be considered a true mental disorder, just like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
“The Europeans, having supported Ukraine for years and now promising to continue this support, are working on a “peace plan” whereby they would change uniforms, so to say, and require Russia to accept them as keepers of the peace on Ukrainian soil.”
Keir Starmer has never done anything to help end the war and now he supports this ridiculous idea. It is clearly designed to promote the continuation of the conflict. Those who surround Starmer are quite open about using war and conflict as a means to stimulate the UK economy.
One of the best summations of what has transpired in Ukraine for a long time.
I suppose this, like most ‘truths’ will be censored no matter where it is published.
I’m totally disgusted with so-called Americans who followed the governments’ and medias’ LIES that were so obvious from the get-go even before 2014.
It was always possible for a minimally rational and intelligent human to see this debacle for what it was. Before the first shot was fired, it was abundantly clear that unprincipled greed and hegemonic hubris were the motivators and everyone, as usual, was lying through their teeth.
The lies just got bigger and more blatant. The Ukrainians watched their country plunge into ruin, their friends and family disappear into a maw of blood and gore, their punk-thug “President” swan around cultivating his net worth and a bigger audience than a third-rate entertainer could ever have the stones to imagine. The mainstream media behaved unconscionably and reprehensibly, paving a superhighway to the complete abandonment of any pretension of journalism — the sorry state we find ourselves in now.
This was NEVER hard to see. It was absolutely obvious. What IS hard to see is how so many people could be — or pretend to be — so stupid so often and for so long. None of this propaganda was brilliant, convincing or effective. It was amateur crap. It always is. The real question is, why do we pretend to fall for it?
I wish I had something to add but you said it all my friend! The one and only statesman I have listened to is Mr. Putin in his truthful and precise speech concerning the conflict. He speaks in the John F. Kennedy vein as intelligent, pointed and truthful, Thank you for this precise comment, Jack Williams. PS there are many supporters of Bandara living in the US, Nazis in other words, lots!
You added something very important. J.R.W., IMHO!
What happened in Ukraine is the result of the U.S. intelligence community committing malpractice of covert politics. Actions taken by neocon Zionists who only respond to large profit margins.
It is no different than Vietnam or the War in Iraq. Syria, and numerous other countries the U.S. has stuck it’s nose into.
This all being much about money for U.S.military suppliers and not so much about building anything, in the true nature of nation building, The idea from the very beginning was ludicrous.
Turns out Biden was not so much different that dear leader, except he was much more intelligent.
I have some sage advice to the leaders of the remainder of the world. If the U.S. government shows up and offers help, kick them the hell out of your country!
Now I’m done with Ukraine. Now is the time to take our country back from the billionaires. If that is it isn’t too late.
Dear leader is furiously working to buy millionaires with his bit coin schemes, trying to urn them into billionaires, IMHO! One in fifteen Americans are millionaires, we have roughly 22 millionaires in the United States and dear leader needs those votes.
I seldom if ever agree with J.B. Pritzger, another multi billionaire running for POTUS trying to take guns from. everyone. He does have one thing right though. It time to hit the streets and give the republican party the hell. they so rightly deserve. If you ever expect to get. your country back!
If I ever trusted a billionaire he would be one not the least interested in running for POTUS!
Great post, barefoot. Thanks. I hope there are more of us than we think.
Never underestimate the stupidity of zealots. It was politically correct to support Ukraine and the social justice folks jumped onboard.
It seems that dissidents like yourself and others don’t understand what was also true during Vietnam which was also obviously a crazy and deeply corrupt war as well as all the rest of the post-WWII conflicts the US thrust itself into is also true in Ukraine, i.e., most people want to be told what to do and what to think and the State is happy to indulge them. Myth always trumps reality though I think opinion in the country is moving away from thirsting after the common myth that the US only wants to “spread democracy” when it is obvious that is simply not the case.
“At bottom — and I missed this for a time — it is a major front in the war the reigning order, the disorder with which we live, wages to resist the new world order swiftly enough coming into being. ”
Really? Lawrence missed this?
What a terrible admission.
Well, better late thn never, I suppose.
Very well written article,thank you for your good work!
Thank you, Patrick Lawrence, for putting the Ukraine war in focus for those who have been deluded by the war propaganda.
It makes me so sad.
The U.S.of A. has not been in a war since the big one.
Weapons suppliers always win these martial conflicts.
The USA entered WWII when it was already won on the Eastern front, and of course had NO invasion of its territory or death of civilians . It still likes to pretend it was the big heroic winner.
No it was not already won … in late ‘41, when the US entered the war, the war in the east (the real war in Europe) was still in question. It was the German overreach in 42 and Stalingrad that started the end.
That fools denigrate the SU’s historically great sacrifice and achievement against Naziism should not mean we denigrate also the great achievements of the USUK in the war … different order of magnitude but still very significant.
I might be enough to call into question the entire WWII and the Cold War itself and many more wars sold by lies and half truths. Like perhaps LBJ needing to bomb something to get elected when the civil rights movement flopped the parties. Or how Eisenhower aided school desegregation but whose reelection got a boost from a Hungarian revolution with little chance to hype the cold war. Strategic planning can be fickle. Then there is that US Embassy hostage crisis lasting just long enough to get the Casey/Reagan election. It may have ost GHWB his 2nd tern in order to stem the investigation of the 80’s covert activities.
Good point about the hostage crisis. It was manipulated to achieve what you do rightly point out. It’s been all down hill from there.
I remember a Guardian article; it had to have been straight out of a wannabe be comedian in MI6. The guardian asserted that the Russian war effort was badly foundering and Russians were reduced to fighting with shovels. I’m not making this up. At the time all of Ukrainian battle lines were moving backward at a steady clip. Of course Russians do wield a mean shovel.
The Lauria article on Bucha has a good level of detail. Russia has regularly asked for the names of those killed in Bucha, with no response. I suspect they were people who were ethnically Russian.
When I talk with a literary friend from Germany, one of these incidents always comes up to blame Russia for everything. The propagandists knows how to invent an uncomplicated moral atrocity, They know such a story. will stick in many minds who will take it in once, never question it, and will remember it as proof positive.