Ukraine War! What Is It Good For? Propaganda [& to Destroy the Existing World Order]

Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine has been presented to us, in the West, as unprovoked and unjustified.

We have not been told about Russia’s legitimate security concerns in the face of NATO expansionism. Nor has Ukraine’s significant Nazi problem been honestly reported, with some Western propagandist even promoting them.

The Russian government claims that its recognition and defence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) are born from “compassion” for the people who have been under siege for eight years. However, Russia also needs the new republics as satellite states, providing a foothold for its own national security as it opposes NATO’s advance.

It should be noted that Russia’s military actions, in trying to oust Nazis from their strongholds in Mariupol, Kharkiv and elsewhere, has led to the near destruction of many cities and towns in Eastern Ukraine. As of the 19th March the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCR) estimate that 847 civilians were killed in three weeks, primarily as a result of shelling.

The OHCR noted that the “actual figures are considerably higher” but could not be verified. Credible eye witness reports and video evidence indicate that the Nazis in Mariupol and other besieged areas had stopped civilians leaving through humanitarian corridors opened by Russia. There are many reports of Nazi (Asov) atrocities, including the murder of fleeing civilians.

NATO has courted Ukraine as a future alliance member for decades, taking firm steps to admit Ukraine along the way. This has never been acceptable to Russia, whose national security concerns have been consistently ignored.

Only days prior to the Russian attack, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference threatening Russia, not only with a nuclear-armed Ukraine, but a NATO nuclear power on Russia’s south-western border.

Ukraine is a pinch-point for Russia’s natural gas trade with the European Union. The purpose of the Nord Stream pipelines, constructed in partnership with Germany, was to circumvent that problem. It raised the potential for greater EU independence from the US and, with an EU commitment to defence union, presented a possible threat to the US dominance of NATO.

Consequently, the US applied unrelenting pressure on the EU, including enforcing sanctions on German companies, to halt the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. In response to Russia’s official recognition of the DPR & LPR, German Chancellor Olaf Sholtz immediately announced that Germany would not certify Nord Stream 2 for operational use. Russia began it’s military operation in Ukraine three days later.

Please read Parts 1-3 of this series for an exploration of the evidence informing this analysis. This provides us with what we might call the “official-unofficial” explanation for Russia’s aggression. It is an appraisal founded upon the established, accepted concept of international relations.

However, any such investigation is necessarily incomplete. It fails even to describe the globalist forces that are both ripping Ukraine apart and propelling Russia to act. We will explore these in Parts 5 – 6.

Before we do it is important to appreciate just how far we, as supposed democratic societies, have strayed from democratic ideals. This can be understood if we consider the extreme propaganda and censorship our governments are using, hobbling our ability to discern reality.

The Propaganda Environment

There is little chance that the issues we have already discussed will receive fair coverage in the Western mainstream media (MSM) and none at all that it will cover what we are about to consider. The West’s propaganda, in a rapidly evolving conflict, has at times been absurd.

Immediately following the launch of Russia’s military operation the Western MSM reported the unbelievable bravery of the Ukrainian border guards defending Snake Island in the Black Sea. They stated that 13 died in their valiant defence against a Russian “air and sea bombardment.”

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said he would award the guards posthumous medals for gallantry. It soon emerged that this was a fabrication. None of them died and Russia took the Island without harming anyone.

The MSM reported that Russian forces deliberately targeted a Mosque in Mariupol where civilian woman and children were said to be sheltering. The Turkish media later revealed that the Mosque had not been struck by anything.

The BBC were among a wide number of Western MSM outlets that reported an alleged Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol. This apparent outrage, deliberately targeting pregnant women and their babies, led the BBC to report the comments of the Deputy Mayor who said:

We don’t understand how it’s possible in modern life to bomb a children’s hospital. People cannot believe that it’s true.

Indeed not, because there is considerable evidence to suggest it isn’t. When the claimed airstrike occurred the Russian state officials engaged in some ham-fisted disinformation themselves, alleging that the whole thing was staged using “crisis actors.” They also noted that the hospital had been occupied by the Ukrainian forces, thus presumably making it a military target and undermining their own propaganda.

A subsequent account from the most famous eyewitness, Mariana Vishegirskaya, who Associated Press (AP) publicised as the face of the alleged Russian war-crime, paints a very different picture.

There were certainly explosions but no evidence of an airstrike, as no one heard or saw any planes. The hospital had been occupied by the Asov regiment three days earlier. Tellingly, Mariana stated that the Asov Nazis wouldn’t allow people to leave the city through the humanitarian corridors agreed by Russia.

There have been widespread Western reports of destruction of Mariupol and other cities by Russian forces. However, civilian witness testimony from Mariupol notes that Ukrainian forces also shelled Mariupol, causing much of the destruction. Mariupol civilians reported that Ukrainian forces placed their defences in civilian areas, occupied their homes and other municipal locations including kindergartens, hospitals and office buildings, and even blew up buildings with tanks.

Even the Western MSM acknowledged that the Ukrainian military (including the Nazis) were effectively using the civilian population as a human shields by placing their assets in civilian areas. The Washington Post noted:

Increasingly, Ukrainians are confronting an uncomfortable truth: [. . .] Virtually every neighbourhood in most cities has become militarized, some more than others, making them potential targets for Russian forces trying to take out Ukrainian defenses.

Analysis by French military observers clearly showed that Russia had secured significant military control in eastern and north-eastern Ukraine. On March 29th 2022, during ongoing peace talks between the Russian and Ukrainian authorities in Turkey, Russia announced that it would withdraw its forces from around Kyiv as a sign of “good faith.”

A few days later video evidence emerged from town of Bucha, lying west of Kyiv, appearing to show the aftermath of a Russian war-crime. The horrific footage showed apparent carnage in the body strewn streets of Bucha. The Ukrainian government blamed this butchery on the retreating Russian forces. The Western MSM immediately reported everything that they were told, accusing Russia of the Bucha massacre.

There were some suspicious anomalies in the footage that required explanation. An unusually high percentage of the bodies were lying face down, ruling out identification, and there was an inexplicable lack of blood or other signs of obvious injury on the corpses. Most of the corpses appeared with hands bound behind their backs and many were wearing the white arm bands which Russia gave to civilians in order for them not to be confused with combatants.

In one of the four main videos, unquestioningly accepted as evidence of the Russian atrocity, an alleged corpse appears to get to its feet, observed in the wing mirror of one of the filming vehicles. It is possible that mirror distortion accounts for this. However, these unexplained inconsistencies weren’t the primary reason to doubt the Western MSM’s account.

The Mayor of Bucha gave a video interview which aired on April 1st where he appeared happy, praising the Ukrainian forces for the liberation of the town. He noted that the Russian forces had vacated Bucha prior to March 31st. As of the 31st there were no Russian troops left in Bucha. The Mayor said:

March 31st will go down in the history of our settlement, the entire territorial community as a day of liberation from the Russian orcs [. . .] a great victory in the Kyiv region.

Reporting his statement, the local media claimed that Russian forces had left unexploded mines in a local factory. Neither the Mayor nor the local news reports said anything about a massacre. Two days later Reuters reported the same mayor, Anatoly Fidoruk, this time alleging that Russia had engaged in the mass slaughter of civilians. Something he was either unaware of or forgot to mention two days earlier.

This unfathomable oversight by the entire population of Bucha, none of whom posted anything on social media even hinting at the supposed mass slaughter during the Russian occupation, casts significant doubt upon the story presented by the Western MSM. The “Bucha-Live” Telegram channel didn’t mention the massacre until the story broke internationally.

Initially, it was reported across the West that 400 bodies were scattered throughout the streets and basements of Bucha. We know that Russian forces completed their withdrawal on the 30th of March. Yet the Western reports of the killing spree didn’t emerge for a further four days.

Following the agreed Russian exit, on the 31st of March it was reported in Ukraine that the first Ukrainian forces to enter Bucha were Ukrainian special forces (the SAFARIS.) They posted a video of their operation on the 1st of April. One body was observed in the video, no execution sites or any evidence of mass killings were filmed.

These “specialist units” were said to be tasked with clearing Bucha of “saboteurs and accomplices of Russian forces.” Again there was no mention of any massacre in the further reports published on the 2nd of April.

On the same day, the 2nd of April, the New York Times reported:

Ukrainian soldiers from the Azov battalion walked through the remnants of a Russian military convoy in the recently liberated town of Bucha. [. . .] For the past five weeks, photographers with The New York Times and other news organizations throughout Ukraine have chronicled the invasion.

Yet none of these reporters or photographers “chronicled” the Bucha massacre that allegedly occurred at least three days before they arrived in the town. The New York Times (NYT) then tried to double-down on their incomprehensible failure to spot the biggest story in the World, by changing it.

They published purported US satelite images that allegedly pinpointed the position of the bodies. The NYT claimed they had lain there for more than three weeks.

It seems extremely unlikely that this story is true. The bodies had supposedly been lying in the streets, undisturbed for three weeks, and yet there was no sign of decomposition.

The NYT article implied that neither human nor animal activity had disturbed the location of a single body for the best part of a month. It also required readers to believe that US officials and military personnel knowingly ignored an alleged Russian massacre, without saying a word, not just for 4 days but for weeks.

Regardless of which version of the story people may choose to believe, there is another incongruous aspect. The Russian military, having committed a war-crime either four days or more than three weeks earlier, left the scene without trying to hide any of the evidence. If the NYT’s second version of events is to be believed, they also exposed their own troops to the severe risk of disease for practically the entire duration of their occupation of Bucha.

While there is no evidence that the Asov Nazis staged the alleged bloodbath, circumstantial evidence suggests that possibility. It is notable that no one reported the massacre prior to their arrival in Bucha.

On the 3rd April the world was suddenly regaled with fresh tales of Russian barbarity. It would be good to know what happened to the suspected “saboteurs and accomplices of Russian forces” that were “cleared” from Bucha by SAFARI and Asov troops.

Russian military actions have included heavy bombardment of cities like Mariupol and Kharkiv. There is no doubt that they have killed many Ukrainian citizens. However, if we discard the NYT’s rather silly claims, unless Russia commanders lost control of their troops in Bucha, the indiscriminate slaughter of unarmed civilians, following an agreed withdrawal and their identification as non-combatants, makes no sense either from a military or propaganda perspective.

It served only to undermine the peace negotiations. As we will discuss in Part 5, prolonging the conflict is in the US-led NATO alliance’s interests, not Russia’s.

This does not rule out the possibility that Russian troops were responsible, but further investigation is certainly necessary. This appeared to be the position of the Russian government who, having strenuously denied the Bucha allegations, requested an emergency session of the UN Security Council (UNSC) to discuss the matter. For some reason, the UK government blocked Russia’s request.

Initially it appeared that the US-led NATO alliance were less eager to discuss the evidence. However, acting as the president nation of the Security Council, the UK’s UN ambassador, Barbara Woodward, then announced that the UK would convene a session to discuss Bucha on the 5th. Woodward changed the story yet again. This time 800 people had been murdered.

Prior to examining any of the evidence, and relying solely upon videos provided by the Ukrainians, Woodward stated that the footage was evidence of war-crimes. This had in no way been established. No one knew what they were evidence of. Woodward clearly implicated Russia and predetermined the outcome of the discussions, so there wasn’t really any point in holding them.

This illustrates the problem we have discussed previously. The institutions, mechanisms and rulings that combine to form so-called international law are worthless. There is no justice to be found anywhere within a system that is shaped by nothing but hard-nosed realpolitik. It is just another weapon to be used in a global power struggle. International law, as it stands, is no law at all. (read more)