Tag Archives: Ukraine

MSNBC Pundit Goes To Fight In Ukraine, Acts Like A Disruptive Troll And Leaves, by Caitlin Johnstone

A rare humorous moment from Ukraine. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

One year ago then-MSNBC analyst Malcolm Nance announced he had left the network to join the fight against Russia with the Ukrainian International Legion, telling MSNBC’s Joy Reid “I’m done talking” to much fanfare from the blue-and-yellow-flag-waving crowd.

A year later, The New York Times has published a report which would seem to indicate that Nance was not done talking after all.

In an article titled “Stolen Valor: The U.S. Volunteers in Ukraine Who Lie, Waste and Bicker,” the Times describes how foreign volunteer fighters “who lack the skills or discipline to assist effectively” are hindering the war effort, saying that “people who would not be allowed anywhere near the battlefield in a U.S.-led war are active on the Ukrainian front — often with unchecked access to weapons and military equipment.”

The New York Times’ Justin Scheck and Thomas Gibbons-Neff name several of these problematic volunteers who “lie, waste and bicker,” including well-known American volunteer fighter James Vasquez, whom they confront about lies they’ve discovered he told in order to get himself to the frontline in Ukraine. But like many articles in the mainstream media, the chewiest bits aren’t found until many paragraphs down.

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Is the US Funding an Experiment in Digital Control in Ukraine? By Marie Hawthorne

Call it proxy digital totalitarianism. From Marie Hawthorne at theorganicprepper.com:

Fighting between Russia and Ukraine has been going on for a little over a year now, ending the lives of hundreds of thousands of young men and displacing millions.  Ukraine’s Defense Minister, Oleksii Reznikov, invited Western arms manufacturers to test their newest weapons against Russians in 2022. And indeed, all kinds of weaponry have been flowing into Ukraine.  It is truly a testing ground.

So, this begs the question, is anything else getting tested there?  The Ukrainian government seems pretty willing to use its own citizens as guinea pigs, and the American government seems pretty willing to foot the bill.  Are American tax dollars going to any other interesting projects?

Here’s what the US is funding in Ukraine.

Yes, actually.  Volodymyr Zelensky became president of Ukraine in May 2019, and almost immediately he introduced his idea of a “country in a smartphone.”

In early September 2019, Ukraine launched its Ministry of Digital Transformation, headed by a World Economic Forum participant, Mykhailo Fedorov  According to Federov, the goal of this new government department was to streamline government services, making it easier to apply for driver’s licenses, passports, and so on.  Ukraine has long held the reputation as Europe’s most corrupt country, and young politicians like Federov want to take advantage of new technology to make changes.

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Ukraine’s Endgame, by James W. Carden

Best case for Ukraine it ends up another U.S. dependency, a relationship from which the U.S. will gain nothing. From James W. Carden at theamericanconservative.com:

The Biden administration is setting the Ukrainians up for a state of permanent dependency.

The one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion today, and President Joe Biden’s surprise five hour trip to Kiev on Monday, should be occasion to raise some uncomfortable, indeed, unpopular questions, as to what exactly Ukraine—a beneficiary of, among many other things, over $100 billion in U.S. aid—has been seeking to achieve in the nine years since the Maidan revolution.

From the time Ukraine declared independence on August 24, 1991, until the Maidan coup of February 2014, Ukraine was essentially a binational kleptocracy that used its position as a buffer state, particularly in its role as a transit hub for Russian natural gas to Europe, to the advantage of its kleptocratic elite—a coterie of deeply compromised politicians and former Soviet-era functionaries-turned-oligarchs.

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The tension between the Russian East and Galician West came to a head during the Maidan protests when then-president Viktor Yanukovych, a politician from eastern Ukraine, sought to leverage Ukraine’s unique geographic position during the country’s E.U. accession bid—a bid against which Russia, with long and deep economic ties to Ukraine, furiously objected.

Yanukovych squeezed both sides, and in the end, the economic deal offered by the E.U. paled in comparison to the one offered by Russia’s Vladimir Putin. And so, Yanukovych, avaricious, yes, but also wary of upsetting his restive neighbor to the East, went with the deal, worth some $15 billion, offered by the Russians.

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Setting the Record Straight; Stuff You Should Know About Ukraine, by Mike Whitney

Russia is more sinned against than sinning in the Ukraine-Russia war. From Mike Whitney at unz.com:

On February 16, 2022, a full week before Putin sent combat troops into Ukraine, the Ukrainian Army began the heavy bombardment of the area (in east Ukraine) occupied by mainly ethnic Russians. Officials from the Observer Mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were located in the vicinity at the time and kept a record of the shelling as it took place. What the OSCE discovered was that the bombardment dramatically intensified as the week went on until it reached a peak on February 19, when a total of 2,026 artillery strikes were recorded. Keep in mind, the Ukrainian Army was, in fact, shelling civilian areas along the Line of Contact that were occupied by other Ukrainians.

We want to emphasize that the officials from the OSCE were operating in their professional capacity gathering first-hand evidence of shelling in the area. What their data shows is that Ukrainian Forces were bombing and killing their own people. This has all been documented and has not been challenged.

So, the question we must all ask ourselves is this: Is the bombardment and slaughter of one’s own people an ‘act of war’?

We think it is. And if we are right, then we must logically assume that the war began before the Russian invasion (which was launched a full week later) We must also assume that Russia’s alleged “unprovoked aggression” was not unprovoked at all but was the appropriate humanitarian response to the deliberate killing of civilians. In order to argue that the Russian invasion was ‘not provoked’, we would have to say that firing over 4,000 artillery shells into towns and neighborhoods where women and children live, is not a provocation? Who will defend that point of view?

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On the Influence of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine, by Joe Lauria

If you need a comprehensive article to refute those who pooh-pooh Neo-Nazism in Ukraine, this is it. From Joe Lauria at consortiumnews.com:

A short history of neo-Nazism in Ukraine in response to NewsGuard’s charge that Consortium News published false content about its extent. 

Torchlight parade behind portrait of Bandera on his birthday, Jan. 1, 2015. (Wikimedia Commons)

The U.S. relationship with Ukrainian fascists began after the Second World War. During the war, units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) took part in the Holocaust, killing at least 100,000 Jews and Poles.  Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist OUN-B, was recruited by the C.I.A. after the war, according to a 2010 study by the U.S. National Archives.

The government study said, “Bandera’s wing (OUN/B) was a militant fascist organization.” Bandera’s closest deputy, Yaroslav Stetsko, said: ““I…fully appreciate the undeniably harmful and hostile role of the Jews, who are helping Moscow to enslave Ukraine…. I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine….”

The study says: “At a July 6, 1941, meeting in Lwów, Bandera loyalists determined that Jews ‘have to be treated harshly…. We must finish them off…. Regarding the Jews, we will adopt any methods that lead to their destruction.’”

Lebed himself proposed to “’cleanse the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish population,’ so that a resurgent Polish state would not claim the region as in 1918.” Lebed was the “foreign minister” of a Banderite government in exile, but he later broke with Bandera for acting as a dictator. The U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps termed Bandera “extremely dangerous” yet said he was “looked upon as the spiritual and national hero of all Ukrainians….”

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Congress Warns Of Government Shutdown If We Don’t Fund Ukraine By Friday

From The Babylon Bee:

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — As Congress continued to conduct its final pieces of business before the holiday break, lawmakers warned that a total government shutdown could ensue if an agreement to send an additional package of tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine is not made by Friday.

“This situation is dire,” Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said to reporters gathered at the U.S. Capitol. “Our government is facing a shutdown, and the only way to avoid it is for us to send $45 billion to Ukraine by the end of the week. Life as we know it in the United States depends on us funding Ukraine. It doesn’t get any more clear or understandable than that.”

Though the public at large is confused as to how continuing to send tens of billions of dollars overseas to pay for Ukraine’s ongoing war against Russia affects their own lives here in any way, members of Congress stressed its importance. “Providing billions in aid to Ukraine — for weapons, aircraft, government salaries, and other things we won’t mention or keep track of — is the most surefire way to keep our government up and running,” explained Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “Christmas will surely be very lean in the homes of your elected officials if more money is not sent to Ukraine.”

At publishing time, Congress was also rumored to be putting together an additional bill that would mandate all Christmas gifts and candy be rounded up from American families and shipped off to President Zelensky and other Ukrainian government officials.

https://babylonbee.com/news/congress-warns-of-government-shutdown-if-we-dont-fund-ukraine-by-friday

U.S. Defense Contractors Sponsor Party at Ukraine’s D.C. Embassy, by Michael Tennant

How appropriate! The defense contractors certainly should host a party for Ukraine; the country has made them a ton of money. From Michael Tennant at thenewamerican.com:

U.S. Defense Contractors Sponsor Party at Ukraine’s D.C. Embassy
David Monniaux/Wikimedia Commons

Defense contractors who are raking in big bucks arming Ukraine at American taxpayers’ expense sponsored a December 8 party at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, Vox reported Friday.

Although the Ukrainian ambassador and defense attaché were the ones officially inviting D.C. bigwigs to a reception “on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of the armed forces of Ukraine,” the invitation stated that the event was “sponsored by” four U.S. defense contractors — Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Pratt & Whitney, and Lockheed Martin — whose logos collectively occupied more space on the card than the official Ukrainian emblems.

It’s easy to see why these companies would be thrilled with Ukraine’s armed forces right now: Those forces need weapons, and they’re getting most of them from American defense contractors, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

President Joe Biden, who has said his administration will support Ukraine for “as long as it takes” to beat back the Russians, has already convinced Congress to send Kyiv $68 billion, and is asking for another $38 billion.

Meanwhile, he has also sent Ukraine $19.3 billion worth of direct military assistance, much of it in the form of supposedly excess weapons. Biden claims the power to do this under “presidential drawdown authority,” which allows the chief executive — under “emergency” conditions — to transfer unneeded weapons, then replenish the stocks at taxpayer expense.

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‘Minsk II Was Agreed On To Arm Ukraine’ – Did Merkel Really Say That? By Moon of Alabama

Moon of Alabama has a different interpretation of Angela Merkel’s intention regarding the Minsk agreeements. From Moon of Alabama at moonofalabama.org:

Helmholtz Smith, Andrew Korybko and Andrei Martyanov have some thoughts about a recent interview the former German chancellor Angela Merkel gave to the German weekly broadsheet Die Zeit.

Smith says it shows that the ‘West’ is not trustworthy. Korybko thinks the interview will prolong the conflict in Ukraine. Martyanov says that Merkel is stupid. She isn’t.

In the interview Merkel seems to claim that the Minsk agreements between the Ukrainian government and the Donbas region, which she negotiated and co-signed as guarantor, was never meant to be fulfilled. It was only meant to give time to build up the Ukrainian military.

I however think that such an interpretation is wrong. Merkel is under very harsh critique not only in the U.S. but also in her own conservative party. She is now out to justify her previous decisions as well as the current bad outcome in Ukraine. My hunch is that she is making things up. Unfortunately she also creates serious damage.

The relevant passage of the interview is longer than the one paragraph Helmholtz Smith and other cite. The context is important. Here is my translation of it:

ZEIT: Do you ask yourself if the years of relative calm were also years of omissions and if you were not only a crisis manager, but also partly the cause of crises?

Merkel: I would not be a political person if I did not deal with that. […some stuff about climate action …] Let us look at my policy towards Russia and Ukraine. I come to the conclusion that I made the decisions I made back then in a way that I can understand today. It was an attempt to prevent just such a war. The fact that this was not successful does not mean that the attempts were wrong.

I think the above is genuine. The Minsk agreements were a serious attempt to prevent war by reintegrating Donbas into a federalized Ukraine.

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Ukraine Demands Yet More NATO Weapons and Generators, by Declan Hayes

In one important way Ukraine’s government is already a member of the Western government club: it doesn’t live within its means. From Declan Hayes at strategic-culture.org:

Although Ukraine’s power grid has been heavily hit, it is as nothing compared to what Syria is suffering this very day.

NATO’s BBC outlet reports that their NATO masters have promised to supply the rump Ukrainian Reich with yet more weapons and a pile of generators to keep Kiev’s Christmas lights burning brightly for both Christmas and Little Christmas. The problem, it seems, is that Russia’s Armed Forces have an increasing propensity to destroy Ukraine’s power grid, pulverize its water reserves and shred those NATO supplied weapons Ukraine does not offload onto Zelensky’s partners in the international black market.

NATO are unhappy with Russia’s actions, which they and their G7 flunkeys classify as war crimes, even though Russia’s actions are a watered down version of what NATO did in Iraq and what NATO and Israel currently continue to systematically do in both Syria and Gaza. The blockades of and systematic destruction of Serbia, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, Libya and a host of other countries NATO put on their butcher’s block show beyond any debate that it is NATO and her BBC apologists that belong both in the dock and on the gallows; not only is it a disgrace that these serial criminals have yet to face the harshest justice they richly deserve for their multiplicity of war crimes but their evasion of the hangman’s rope indicts us all.

Although Ukraine’s power grid has been heavily hit, it is as nothing compared to what Syria, a third of which is illegally occupied by U.S. troops, is suffering this very day. Although Ukrainians are suffering from the cold, it is as nothing compared to what NATO has inflicted on Syria’s children, countless numbers of whom freeze to death, winter after bleak Syrian winter.

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Dutch Genuflect to US, Convict Russians for Downing MH17, by Ray McGovern

The U.S. gets the evidence-free verdict it wanted from its Dutch satrapy. From Ray McGovern at antiwar.com:

On Nov. 17 a Dutch Court sentenced two Russians and one Ukrainian (all three in absentia) to life in prison. They were accused of playing supporting roles in the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, killing all 298 aboard.

MH17 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was downed over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. It was five months after the U.S.-sponsored coup d’etat in Kyiv and the ensuing offensive against “pro-Russian separatists” in eastern Ukraine who were unwilling to bow to the coup leaders in Kyiv.

Those pro-Russian separatists were quickly and widely blamed for the catastrophe, but the evidence has been – how to say this – elusive, and its reliability suspect from the start. On the morning-after, the NY Times pointed its finger at the separatists and, by extension, Russia, unabashedly using “intelligence” provided by Ukraine’s Intelligence Agency (S.B.U.). My assessment the same day withheld judgment, but compared the shoot-down with the shoot-down of KAL007 in 1983, when the U.S. played very loose with the evidence on whether the Russians knew KAL007 was a passenger aircraft when it was downed well into Russian airspace (they didn’t).

‘A Lot of Conjecture’

The Times article said U.S. intelligence was focused on a theory blaming pro-Russian separatists – not the Ukrainian air defense network that had Russian-made SA-series missiles in its inventory. “Everything we have, and it is not much, says separatists,” a senior Pentagon official said. “That said, there’s still a lot of conjecture.” The Times added:

“American intelligence and military officials said the plane had been destroyed by a Russian SA-series missile, based on surveillance satellite data that showed the final trajectory and impact of the missile but not its point of origin. [Emphasis added.]

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