Eric Zuesse
What follows here, about the current U.S. government’s lying, is banned by all major news sites in the United States, and by most ‘alternative news’ sites, such as Common Dreams, Alternet, and Truthout (although some of those alt-news sites do issue watered-down reports from Robert Parry and a few other establishment journalists, about related matters):
Vladimir Kornilov posted to his facebook page on August 15th, a terrific question that’s getting increasing attention on other independent websites:
I wonder about this: When the army of the DNI [commonly called Ukraine’s ‘rebels’] are retired Russian military, the West immediately writes about “Russian aggression”. And if retired (believe that retired) military mercenaries from the EU are fighting on the side of the APU [commonly called the Ukrainian government], why do the same media not write about “the aggression of the European Union?”
That’s a great question, because it laser-focuses upon a Big Lie in the Western press regarding the civil war in Ukraine: that the Russian army is itself participating in Ukraine’s civil war (not merely providing professional military advisors to a self-arisen civilian army who are protecting their own families from invasions and basically from a U.S.-sponsored ethnic cleansing campaign by an imposed Ukrainian government in Kiev, which the residents in the separatist region never even had any participation in democratically electing – and, after the man, for whom those residents had actually voted 90%+ in Ukraine’s last genuinely democratic election, was thrown out of office in a violent February 2014 U.S. coup).
The Russian armed forces are not participants in Ukraine’s U.S.-caused civil war: that’s a fact. The allegation to the contrary is a U.S.-Ukrainian government lie – nothing else. (See note at the bottom if you don’t believe this.)
The U.S. Government is simply trying to fool the public into believing that the Ukrainian government’s bombing that area of the former Ukraine doesn’t cause thousands of the residents there to take up arms against those invaders, and against that government – the government which calls all of these residents ‘terrorists.’
Despite the claims by the Ukrainian government and by the American government that placed them into power, the Ukrainian government only wishes that it were fighting against Russia, and so it is urging the U.S. government and America’s allies to supply more weapons to them so as to enable that to happen. On August 15th, a Ukrainian government site headlined, “Ukrainian army is not ready for war with Russia with the use of aircraft, helicopters and missiles – expert,” and quoted “Director of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament, Valentine Badrak. According to the expert, ‘I am still of the opinion that the Kremlin made a bet on the maximum loss of Ukrainian personnel [in the event that Ukraine were to invade Russia – an invasion which some Ukrainian leaders strongly want], but in the final analysis the Kremlin boss can decide on war generation using modern aircraft, helicopters and missile technology.’”
Of course, ever since the war started, the bombs have been dropped by the Ukrainian government’s planes, onto the residents in this area, not by planes on the residents’ side, which has no air force of its own.
On 19 September 2014, I had headlined, “Russia’s Leader Putin Rejects Ukrainian Separatists’ Aim to Become Part of Russia,” and reported that, “The leader of the Ukrainian separatists says that their efforts to get Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to accept their territory as being a part of Russia have been firmly rejected by Putin’s government; and, so, ‘We will build our own country.’” And, ever since then, Putin has been very clear in all of his communications with Merkel and other foreign leaders, that Russia would not accept that region as being a part of Russia. He also made clear his reason: He wants the people in that region – who had voted 90%+ for a neutralist person, Yanukovych, to lead Ukraine – to remain within Ukraine’s electorate, so as to provide the necessary moderating element and counterbalance to the rabidly anti-Russian racists that were placed into power in Ukraine (next door to Russia), by Obama’s February 2014 coup.
In other words: not only is the Ukrainian government not at war with the Russian government, but Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, is doing everything he can to prevent such a war from occurring.
In fact: Before the United States overthrew and replaced Ukraine’s government in February 2014, in a coup that started being organized in early 2013, Ukraine had no civil war; it was at peace, as it long had been.
Obama destroyed Libya, and also Ukraine, and is now destroying Syria, all in his obsession to conquer Russia, which had helped all three. And, now, Vladimir Putin is demonized by the Western ‘news’ media.
That’s how ‘news’ is being ‘reported,’ in the West. Except for sites like this, which don’t sugar-coat the reality to protect the guilty (and to shift blame to the actual victim).
In fact: the entire case for sanctions against Russia is pure lies.
Please click onto the link here at any point where you want to see the evidence. (For example, here you can listen-in while Obama’s people are actually planning whom to place in charge of Ukraine after their coup will be over. Obama has some nerve, pontificating against Putin, even after such vileness became public.)
NOTE: So many comments have come in from readers at various websites who have been duped by Western propaganda to reject the reality that Ukraine’s armed forces were being defeated by the residents of Donbass (the former Ukrainian region where voters had voted more than 90% for Yanukovych), rather than by the Russian army. Therefore, I now recognize that a need exists for more than a link to the Ukrainian general saying this. His statement should be understood within its context. Here is that context: He went on television to explain to Ukrainians that the defeat of Ukraine’s armed forces was due to the residents of Donbass. He needed a bit of reality to sink into the duped Ukrainian public. He went as far as he could to avoid contradicting official propaganda, which blamed all of Ukraine’s problems upon Russia. But he needed the public also to understand that this really was a defeat of his forces by the residents of Donbass, instead of by Russia. A certain amount of truthfulness is occasionally needed even in a dictatorship (in this case, originating from Washington). He thus needed his people to understand that their armed forces actually were defeated by the Donbass residents. Here are some of the news reports at the time, which make clear the extent of that defeat:
23.1.2015 http://rian.com.ua/columnist/20150123/362446425.html
26.1.2015 http://rian.com.ua/story/20150126/362589244.html
If he had been saying this at a time when Ukraine’s forces were winning, then he might have been giving a speech about the ‘need’ to go further, beyond Donbass, and to invade Russia itself (which so many in the coup-government’s leadership have said they want to do). But he was instead saying this at a time when he needed a certain minimal amount of realism to sink in amongst his public. This was perhaps more patriotic on his part than the U.S. stooge-regime he represented wanted, but he evidently felt the need for a bit of honesty here. He just had to let some of the truth out, regardless what the regime’s masters in Washington might have wanted. After all: he knew that, ultimately, if he was to win at all, he would need his own troops, and their families, to understand the reality, at least a little bit, in order to be able to achieve such a victory. He knew that support from Washington would never be able to be enough to do the job, on its own.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.