Tag: ukraine

What’s Going on in Ukraine? Part 4: The Corona Connection (2)

Introduction

The previous parts of this series have discussed the Western and Russian narratives surrounding the conflict in Ukraine. The Western narrative, as usual, is full of untruths about the situation in Ukraine, ignoring intervention by the West and pretending that the bombing of civilians in Donbass doesn’t exist. The Russian narrative is more in line with reality as it acknowledges Western aggression and the suffering of people in the Donbass. However, the Russian government’s promotion of the Official Covid Narrative, including lockdowns and forced ‘vaccinations’, mean scepticism of the Russian government is warranted. This situation has led people to speculate about the role of orchestration in the Ukraine conflict.

The Model Before the Official Covid Narrative

One of the key questions relating to the current situation in Ukraine is how we assess foreign policy – and particularly questions of international collusion – in the wake of the Covid 19 scam. Prior to Covid 19 it was accurate to frame foreign policy around Western imperialism and resistance to that imperialism as the model. Imperialist invasions took place in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, imperialist subversion in Syria, imperialist occupation in Palestine, and imperialist coups in Honduras and Bolivia. All of these events had significant economic and resource gains for Western elites. On the other hand, independent minded governments resisted this subversion. This included Islamic governments (like Iran), right wing governments (like Russia), secular Arab governments (like Iraq or Syria) and left wing governments (like Cuba, Venezuela, or Bolivia).

In particular, once Russia began to regain some economic and military strength after the disaster of the 1990s, they began to slowly push back against the West. It is worth noting, however, that Putin’s views have become more hostile to the West over time and he did not begin his tenure as implacably anti-Western. For example, in a New York Times interview in 2003, Putin expressed his desire for good relations with the US, while considering the war in Iraq as an error:

I have already mentioned strategic stability. The United States and Russia remain the strongest nuclear powers. Our interests in the sphere of fighting radicalism and terrorism coincide, and we are very much concerned about the radicalisation of certain countries and certain regions. Our common interest lies in counteracting one of the main threats of the 21st century – proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

[…]

You know our attitude toward the war in Iraq; I have made it public. I said from the very beginning and still believe that it was a mistake. This is why there is no surprise for us about the situation that has taken shape because we foresaw the development of the situation there just exactly as it is developing now. First of all, this has to do with the political aspect, the collapse of the statehood, as you correctly mentioned. How could one imagine a different course of events in case the Saddam Hussain regime is dismantled? Of course, statehood is destroyed. How can it be otherwise? But what do the special services have to do with it?

Vladimir Putin

Putin became more hostile as the lack of cooperation from the West and the disdain for Russian interests became more and more obvious with the expansion of NATO and the undermining of the government of Bashar Al Assad, a long time Russian ally. Russia militarily intervened in Syria (with the permission of the Syrian government) to fight the Western supported terrorist groups such as ISIS, Al Nusra and the White Helmets.

Collusion and Competition?

However, both sides complying with the Covid Narrative raises questions about this model of geopolitical competition. The fact is that almost all countries (excluding Belarus, Sweden, and some African countries whose leaders died in mysterious circumstances) went along with lockdowns and all Western countries, Russia and China supported the jabs. The question at issue here is the idea of global conspiracy in the creation of a fake pandemic in order to institute a global control grid of digital IDs, transhumanism, and full spectrum authoritarian control, broadly called ‘The Great Reset’.

The fact that the vast majority of countries complied with these anti -health directives in the name of health has to arouse suspicion. If a few countries had done lockdowns, or many countries had done them but for a short period, incompetence would seem a more plausible explanation, but the sheet length of the life destroying lockdowns combined with sinister legislation suggests the possibility of conspiracy.

In reality, there is evidence that both phenomena exist simultaneously: geopolitical maneuvering is real, but so is a push towards some sort of ‘great reset’ type scenario among certain elite groups. The best model to adopt to understand the current scenario is one in which countries are competing within themselves (largely the West, Russia and China) while all supporting some aspects of a digital control grid. Groups like the World Economic Forum have relevance within this matrix, as they drive an ideological agenda forward and facilitate liaison between different elites (Davos, etc.).

The best analogy I can think of is this: In the 19th century, all the major European states (France, Germany, Britain et al.) supported the concept of having colonies. However, they all competed over who had the most colonies and therefore the most access to natural resources, cheap labour etc. Sometimes these countries would come together and make agreements regulating colonialism (a form of collusion) but they would also try to undermine each other’s imperial power. In this analogy the belief in colonies and the collusion would equal agreeing on the great reset and colluding at meetings such as Davos, whereas the competition plays out in areas such as Ukraine and Syria for dominance by different powers.

Relevance of Imperialism

Only seeing one side of the coin as real leads to mistakes in analysis. Ultimately I don’t think all geopolitical competition has disappeared with the Covid narrative, regardless of the elements of bizarre international agreement on the issue. Different interests of different countries – such as economic or geostrategic – still function as a relevant mode of analysis.

The Western (that is, US and its lackey countries such as the UK, etc) imperialist drive inevitably brings it into conflict with other countries. The imperialist nature of the West – that is, their need and ability to exploit peripheral countries – is not something that can be arbitrarily abolished as it evolved out of the capitalist system and the dominance of these powers over that system. In fact, there is ample evidence of the continuation of imperialist warfare and exploitation despite ‘Covid-19’ (see my previous article on ‘Mass Murder ‘In The Middle of a Deadly Pandemic”).

One of the countries it must come into conflict with is Russia, despite the similarities in domestic policy between the two powers when it comes to Covid 19. Despite some claims to the contrary, Russia is not an imperialist power, and it is misleading to portray it as such just because it invaded Ukraine. Just because one country militarily intervenes in another does not automatically make that intervention ‘imperialist’ unless you want to argue absurdities such as Vietnam being an imperialist power (as they invaded Cambodia in the 1970s). Russia is not economically powerful enough to compete as an imperialist state and it does not have masses of finance capital it can use to exploit other countries through neocolonialism. Instead, it is a middling country that finds itself in conflict with the West because they constantly threaten Russia’s borders.

These conflicting interests remain real and cannot be ignored as a driver of Western and Russian actions. The fact that these conflicting interests exist means that theories of direct collusion (such as collusion to create a distraction in Ukraine, for example) are less plausible unless there is direct evidence. There is enough reason for the two powers to compete without having to use direct collusion as an explanation.

Relevance of Global Elites

While we should be careful in attributing every action during the ‘Covid-19 pandemic’ to conspiracy, there is some evidence for that position. The fact that the US government ran a pandemic exercise called Event 201 “which predicted a global pandemic caused by a novel Coronavirus just months before the Covid-19 outbreak” – is suspicious. (Interestingly, there was also a Monkeypox simulation exercise). Ultimately I find it difficult to explain the Covid-19 scam through opportunism alone, given the fact that a large number of states went along with it for such a long period of time. Particularly the clear transhumanist drive present within all aspects of the Covid agenda shows a unified elite ideology being driven by individuals like Klaus Schwab, leader of the World Economic Forum.

Organisations like The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum are using Covid-19 to push sinister global agendas. In fact, this barely qualifies as a ‘conspiracy’ since they are open about the fact that this is what they are doing (Schwab literally wrote a book called ‘The Great Reset’, how much more open do you want?). Bill Gates clearly wants to use the ‘pandemic’ to push vaccines, one of his most notable interests, and there is also evidence he has an interest in depopulation. Schwab argues for a transhumanist future under the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution‘, where human beings meld with technology and where genetic editing is normalised. Covid-19 is considered a method to bring about this future. Groups like the WEF and BMGF infiltrate and fund initiatives within states (for example, the WEF uses the Young Global Leaders program to groom people into its ideology, whereas the BMGF uses money to fund initiatives it supports).

The weaknesses of focusing mainly on these organisations is that they do not have direct methods of enforcement (militaries, police forces, etc.) that can force the population to obey. Only states have those. States have to have some interest in imposition of the policies also to ensure their implementation. So what we have, in my view, is a system based on mutual overlapping interests. This includes between governments, global institutions (WHO, WEF, BMGF etc) and big corporations such as Big Pharma, Big Tech and the arms companies. These mutual overlapping interests involve means by which to control the population (vaccine passports, Digital ID’s, lockdowns, smart cities, technocracy) as well as transhumanism (the US and UK governments are interested in ‘human augmentation’), and of course the big corporations benefit through increased profit and mandated markets for their products.

Conclusion

There are both circles of overlapping and competing interests when it comes to understanding the operations of the modern world and neither can be dismissed out of hand as an influence on the behaviour of states. Ultimately Russia’s behaviour in Ukraine can be explained via traditional geopolitical motives. However elites in most countries (including Russia) have an interest in the transhumanist digital control matrix being pushed by such elites. Contra to some claims in the independent media, I see no evidence that Russia is opposed to the fundamentals of transhumanist technocracy.

What’s Going on in Ukraine? Part 3: The Corona Connection (I)

Introduction

The first two posts in these series discussed the current situation in Ukraine from the point of view of geopolitics and an anti-imperialist critique of Western actions. However, while the points made in those posts were based on factual evidence, there is one point that hasn’t been discussed so far. That is the fact that this Ukraine narrative swooped in and almost completely eclipsed the Corona nonsense that we have been dealing with for the past 2 years. This part will discuss the reality of Russia, Covid 19 and the Sputnik V ‘Vaccine’.

The Reality of Russia and Covid

In order to begin looking at this question, we need to start with Putin’s views on Corona and what policy positions he took during the ‘deadly pandemic’. Unfortunately it remains a fact that the Russian government supported the ‘deadly pandemic’ narrative. Here are some examples of the Russian policies towards Covid 19.

Russia used lockdowns as a means to ‘control the virus’ during the ‘first wave’ of Covid 19. These lockdowns – as well as a ban on foreign travelers to Russia – began to be introduced near the end of March 2020. This legislation, signed in April 2020 by Vladimir Putin, outlines fines of 300,000 to 700,000 roubles as a punishment for spreading false information regarding the situation regarding Covid 19. Violating quarantine is also a criminal offense according to this law if people become ill with Covid 19 due to the breach and can be punished with prison time.

Furthermore, Moscow introduced a ‘pass system’ for travel in April 2020, a draconian move that fits in well with later measures such as vaccine passports:

On April 11 [2020], Mayor Sergei Sobyanin signed a decree, introducing special digital passes to travel around Moscow and the Moscow Region using personal or public transport. This measure was imposed to curb the spread of coronavirus as much as possible.

TASS

The Russian lockdown did not last as long as in some other countries. There were also fewer lockdowns there than elsewhere but there was another regional lockdown in Moscow as late as October 2021, demonstrating that Russia has not given up on that policy position. This regional lockdown disputes any argument that Russia did a lockdown because it was ‘duped’ by other actors.

The Sputnik ‘Vaccine’, Vax Passports and Forced Jabs

As well as promoting a large number of Corona policy positions, Russia also developed their own ‘vaccine’ against Corona. According to the Sputnik Vaccine website:

Sputnik V is the world’s first registered vaccine based on a well-studied human adenovirus vector platform [similar to the Oxford/AstraZenena jab developed in the UK]. It has been approved for use in 71 countries with a total population of 4 billion people.

The vaccine’s efficacy is 97.6%, based on the analysis of data on the incidence of coronavirus among Russians vaccinated with both vaccine components between December 5, 2020 and March 31, 2021.

There hasn’t been a large amount of discussion about the Sputnik V ‘vaccine’ in the West. Most criticism of these jabs has focused on the Pfizer, followed by the Moderna, AstraZeneca and Janssen.

It would be off topic to perform a detailed analysis of the harms of the Sputnik V injections, and the lack of discussion and information coming out of Russia on these jabs makes it difficult to assess. Given the similarity between the Sputnik V and AstraZeneca, which has been admitted to cause blood clots (among other things), we cannot assume it is safe.

There are in fact some hints about the dangers of these Russian jabs. Mark Crispin Miller has been doing a series over the past couple of months where he documents people who ‘died suddenly’ with no cause of death or a cause in line with proven jab side effects. He also compiled one of these for Russia:

Those of us who’ve noticed the appalling toll of those “vaccines” worldwide have naturally been hoping that the jabs administered in Russia (and in China) aren’t so dangerous; but that’s evidently wishful thinking. Since Russia has no public database, like VAERS, we must rely on Russian press reports of “sudden deaths,” most of them with no cause noted, while two were due to strokes, and one to (what else?) COVID.

Riley Waggaman has also examined the risk of the Sputnik V injections as one of the few commentators to analyse Russia during the current Covid madness. He pointed out that the makers of the Sputnik jab were cooperating with Big Pharma entities such as Pfizer. He adds that there have been large numbers of safety signals indicating that Sputnik is not safe:

Data from other nations using Sputnik V suggests that while the drug is not the most dangerous COVID shot on the market, it’s still far from harmless.

A recent article that reviewed the adverse event tracking systems from Argentina, Mexico, Paraguay and the Philippines concluded that, in terms of the frequency of mild and severe side effects, Sputnik V is comparable to foreign vaccines.

Russians seem much more sceptical of the Covid jabs than in many other countries. The Our World in Data website indicates that as of April 23 2022 the Russian population is only 50% ‘fully vaccinated’. Furthermore take up rates were initially extremely slow. By May 2021, the amount of Russians that had taken at least one dose of a Corona ‘vaccine’ was only 9.52% of Russia’s population. (Compare this to high take-up in England for example where over half of the population had taken at least one jab by the end of May). A poll from Levada Center on ‘Vaccination’, printed on the 9th August 2021, showed a ‘vaccination’ rate for Russians of 24% in their sample. However, their polling over time shows a consistent 55% of the Russian population who have not taken the jabs and do not have any plans to take them (another 19% in this poll stated that they were planning on getting the injections).

In order to increase uptake among the population, the Russian government has used a wide range of strategies, many of which are coercive. In the above article on Russian jab take-up, the Mayor of Moscow, Sobyanin, complains that the measures taken to encourage Russians to get jabbed are failing:

What’s more, we are vaccinating in polyclinics, in shopping centres we are vaccinating, now in parks we are vaccinating, now even 1 thousand roubles will be paid to pensioners, in order that they can go shopping, only if they will be vaccinated – but there is no one.

Sergei Sobyanin, Mayor of Moscow

In response to the weak take up, the government applied coercive pressure, forcing service sector workers to get jabbed. Moscow Times reports the following back in June 2021:

Moscow has rolled out one of the world’s most ambitious mandatory vaccination schemes, requiring 60% of all service sector workers — more than 2 million people — in the capital to be fully vaccinated within the next seven weeks. [..]

Several other Russian regions have followed suit and announced similar mandatory vaccination rules for service sector workers and civil servants. 

Businesses in the service sector must ensure 60% of their customer-facing staff get vaccinated with one of the four coronavirus vaccines approved for use in Russia. At least 60% must have received a first dose by July 15, and the same proportion must be fully vaccinated by Aug. 15.

Moscow Times

Furthermore, vaccine passports have been in operation in many Russian regions. The official St. Petersburg administration website gives an outline:

From November [2021] a new system will be introduced for residents and guests of the city. This is because of the seasonal rise in the quantity of people made ill by coronavirus infection. What kind of documents will be present? QR Code on previous infection (period of use – 6 months), QR Code on Vaccination (period of use – 1 year), medical exemption (for those who cannot be vaccinated). It will be necessary for you to have your passport!

On top of coercion, the Russian government has been involved in demonisation of those who are sceptical of the jabs.

Using such measures, the Russian government has been able to increase uptake, with another more recent Levada Centre poll showing that now only 36% of Russians have no plans to take the jabs [as this number was consistently above 50% before the above coercive measures were applied, it is a reasonable extrapolation to assume some of the 55% in previous polls were coerced into the jabs].

A Spoke in the Pro-Russia Narrative

Some commentators on the current Ukraine issue have offered a more pro-Russian narrative, in line with what Putin offered himself as an explanation for his actions (combating NATO aggression and protecting the people of Donbass – see Part 2). Certainly, as previously examined, this pro-Russia narrative is much closer to the truth than the pro-Western narrative, which holds that Putin invaded Ukraine because he is a madman bent on bringing back the Soviet Union.

However, the fact that the Russian state is willing to impose things like lockdowns and ‘vaccine’ passports on its population, as well as promoting and distributing a clearly unsafe injection to millions of Russians means that the Russian state and Putin are not benign actors.

Part 4 (hopefully the final part) will discuss the interconnections between Covid and Ukraine.

What’s Going On In Ukraine? Part 2: Putin’s Take

Introduction

Western media outlets have been promoting a particular perspective on the Ukraine conflict, but also on Vladimir Putin himself. Western media have a long history of attempting to demonise foreign leaders as ‘madmen’: for example Kim Jong Un or Bashar Al-Assad. This is done to obscure any reasons or motivations that a leader may have had for doing something to downplay any Western role, but also to set up a susceptibility to belief in possible future false flags (for who would gas their own civilians other than an unhinged maniac?) In fact, however, Putin has laid out his logic for the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, and this is what we are going to examine here.

A Note of Caution

Many people like to strawman individuals who are sceptical of the Ukraine narrative. So let’s state the obvious for the record: just because Putin says something, it does not mean it is true. Nor does it automatically mean that it is Putin’s sincere motive. This is blatantly obvious to everyone except MSM ideologues and their followers, but I will state it just in case. We should apply scepticism and critical thinking to Putin’s claims in the same way we apply them to Western claims.

Putin’s Speech on the ‘Special Military Operation’

Putin gave a 28 minute speech announcing his ‘Special Military Operation’ (his words) in Ukraine. The speech can be found with English subtitles here. I have summarised the main points below:

Putin’s speech starts with criticism of Western governments for expanding NATO closer to Russia’s borders, and claims that he wanted to work with the West on the issue of security. However, he follows up by stating that his proposals were rejected. To explain this, he goes back to the 1980s and the failing Soviet Union, which allowed the US to assert complete dominance. He then lists examples of the US/NATO unilateral military actions. He starts with the bombing of Belgrade by the US, then discussing Libya and Syria and then the invasion of Iraq. While discussing these examples he emphasises the illegality under international law.

He believes Russia in the 1990s was willing to be a partner, but instead of taking this on board the West tried to destroy Russia by supporting terrorism in the Caucasus. Putin insists that he has continued to make attempts to get NATO to not expand further but has failed. He then claims that the USSR was not fully prepared for war against the Nazis and that Putin will not make the same mistake. NATO has hardened its position against Russia, and so Russia must react to the threat. It is a matter of “life or death” for Russia, and NATO have crossed his red line.

Putin then returns to the topic of Donbass. Putin says that Russia has been trying to resolve the conflict there for 8 years but has failed and so is taking military action. He then adds that the West is supporting Nazis in Ukraine, and the threat being posed by NATO in Ukraine makes Russia’s actions defensive. They have been asked for help by the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. In order to protect them, Ukraine will be denazified and demilitarised but the territory will not be occupied. He tells Ukrainians he is not concerned with them but those who are in charge of the country.

Putin’s Truth Claims

If we apply our knowledge of history to Putin’s factual claims (rather than his motives, which are more difficult to assess, or the morals of his actions) we will find that Putin makes a large number of truth claims and reasonable extrapolations.

Point #1: NATO did expand to be closer to Russia’s border. Instead of just having united Germany in their alliance they added ex-Soviet countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as well as several ex-Warsaw Pact countries (such as Bulgaria, one of the most pro-Moscow Soviet states).

Point #2: NATO has destroyed multiple countries, including those highlighted by Putin (Yugoslavia/Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria). Putin reasonably extrapolates from this that NATO is a threat to Russia’s security. A military alliance that has a long history of being aggressive and murdering civilians is an obvious threat, especially since the West has lied about and demonised Russia. The situation in Syria is of particular relevance given that Russia intervened to help the Syrian government fight Islamic extremism.

Point #3: The Ukrainian Neo-Nazi problem. Putin is correct that Ukraine has a significant problem with Neo-Nazis. The mainstream media, while they have talked about Neo-Nazis in Ukraine, downplay the issue. Supporters of the Ukrainian government generally say that all Western countries have fascist/white supremacist groups, so that the fact that they exist in Ukraine is normal, if undesirable. They also complain that talking about the Neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine we are supporting Putin.

However, they ignore the fact that these groups (such as the Azov Battalion) are embedded within the Ukrainian military. They openly wear Neo-Nazi symbols, such as the ‘Wolfsangel’, which would not be allowed in any military organisation that was not infiltrated by Nazi influence, including Russia’s.

Even when they acknowledge the fact that it is embedded within Ukraine’s national guard forces, they generally state that it is a very small group and therefore not relevant. However, precisely how many of these Neo-Nazis there are is not they key question, it is their influence that is most relevant. The official Ukrainian National Guard account tweeted out a video of an Azov fighter dipping bullets in pig fat to kill Muslims:

More importantly, this article from Max Blumenthal and Alexander Rubenstein outlines the ways in which Neo-Nazi groups have significant influence over the government. It points out that Zelensky, when initially elected, tried to get the neo-Nazi brigades in Zolote to disarm, only to be threatened with more violence.

Instead of continuing down the road of trying to disarm or weaken the Neo-Nazi presence in the country, Zelensky came to accept and promote it.

Putin is also correct when he points to the West’s support for such Neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine. This was most obvious during the 2014 coup, when US figures like Victoria Nuland and John McCain met with far right individuals such as Oleh Tyahnybok.

Point #4: The killing of civilians in Donbass. Many critics of Putin’s actions are simply ignoring the Donbass region, pointing to alleged war crimes by the Russians but ignoring the same in the Donbass.

Contrary to the mainstream media, which acts as if Russia started the conflict in Ukraine, there was already a war in Ukraine. This is the conflict between the Kiev government and the separatists in the Donbass region. In short, the separatists in Donbass wish to be independent from the Ukraine government due to their hostility to Russian speakers. The Ukraine government has committed violence against those areas wishing to be independent, including killing many civilians. Independent journalists such as Patrick Lancaster have documented this through video footage and interviews.

Of course, the Neo-Nazis in Ukraine are part of this campaign to terrorise civilians in the Donbass, given that they see Russians as ethnically inferior to Ukrainians.

Conclusion

Putin has highlighted many points in his speech that are factually true, and form a rational basis for invasion of Ukraine (regardless of one’s moral stance on the question). NATO aggression in other countries and the expansion of such a military alliance is a logical reason for Putin’s actions and explains them without having to resort to calling Putin a maniac or madman. Whether he is sincere about denazifying Ukraine remains to be seen, although it is valid to sceptical of this claim due to Putin’s authoritarianism (though, pace Western media claims, he is is not a fascist or Neo-Nazi).

Part 3 of this article will discuss the biggest and most difficult questions of this whole Ukraine issue and that is its connection with the Covid narrative. There is a large debate in independent media about Putin’s stance on ‘The Great Reset’ and his alleged opposition or support for this. Part 3 will look at the evidence.

What’s Going On in Ukraine? Part 1: History

Introduction

The mainstream media is awash with feverish condemnations of Putin for invading Ukraine. Western governments and mainstream media are, of course, completely untrustworthy when it comes to any issue of foreign policy. In particular, prior to the Official Covid Narrative, they lied endlessly about Russia: Russia hacking emails to send them to Wikileaks, Russia swinging the election with Facebook ads, the bizarre Skripal psyop, and let’s not forget Russia freezing Americans to death. There have also been half assed attempts to maintain the Russia fear narrative throughout the Covid psyop: the Navalny narrative and the return from the dead of Boshirov and Petrov for one news cycle. In order to start to address this question, we have to be aware of the actual history of Ukraine, western intervention in that country, and how the US and NATO provoked Russia to act.

The Post-Soviet Space & Western Involvement: A Brief History

Ukraine became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, as eventually the USSR became 15 different successor states. The largest of these is the Russian Federation, which existed in a state of shambles throughout the 1990s under the leadership of the alcoholic Boris Yeltsin. During this period Russia’s influence outside its borders massively waned as it was consumed with issues such as economic crisis, a rampant mafia, and possible further territorial losses in places such as the Caucasus.

The Western powers used this period to consolidate a bulwark against Russia by expanding NATO. The Baltic states – who always had more anti-Soviet/Russian sentiment – joined NATO in 2004 along with several other former socialist republics that were not part of the USSR. The other post-Soviet states remain outside of NATO, but there has been talk of trying to get certain other post-Soviet states (mostly Georgia and Ukraine) into the bloc.

The West has attempted to install and maintain anti-Russian, pro EU/neo-liberal governments in the post-Soviet states and former socialist republics, with varying degrees of success. This has involved the sponsorship of colour revolutions and the promise of EU integration. For example, the West opposed Shevardnadze’s government in Georgia (ousted in the 2003 Rose revolution) and Lukashenko’s government in Belarus (who they have tried and failed to oust several times, as recently as 2021).

The EU has also been involved in attempting to get 6 of the post-Soviet states to sign an Association Agreement. This plan was known as the ‘Eastern Partnership’ and started in 2009, targeting Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and most notably Ukraine. Some of these states, like Georgia, were fully on board, whereas others, such as Belarus and Armenia, were not (these countries preferred the Eurasian alternative promoted by Russia).

This initiative was portrayed by the EU as a technocratic and economic agenda, primarily about trade deals and reforms to make said countries more in line with neo-liberal ideology, such as deregulation. In reality such initiatives were designed to weaken Russia, the carrot to the regime change stick.

The ‘Euromaidan’ Coup, The Azov Battalion and The Donbass

The details of the Euromaidan Coup have been outlined in detail in multiple articles, both written at the time and more recently.

The Official Narrative of the Euromaidan is something like this. The corrupt, unpopular and pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych was ruling over Ukraine. The EU reached out an olive branch to Yanukovych in terms of of an Association Agreement, a deal beneficial to both parties that would improve and modernise Ukraine’s economy and help to harmonise it with the EU. However, Yanukovych, after negotiating this deal, rejected it under pressure from Putin.

The Ukrainian people desired integration with Europe and were outraged by Yanukovych’s choice for Russia over the West. So they went into the streets en masse to oppose Yanukovych’s unpopular decision. His strategy of police brutality failed. Following this, his unpopularity led him to flee the country and to be replaced by a pro-European leader who was in line with the desires of the Ukrainian people.

Of course, there are massive problems with this narrative. It is true that that the (more Russian speaking) east of Ukraine supported Yanukovych much more than the west. He was elected in 2010 in replacement for the more pro-Western Yushchenko (I won’t get into the complications of the ‘Orange Revolution’ here). Ukraine is roughly divided on east/west lines politically, with the east being more pro-Russian and having more Russian speakers.

It is also the case that the failure to sign the Association Agreement acted as the trigger for regime change. After Yanukovych decided not to sign the agreement, protesters took to the streets. However, there are multiple divergences in reality from the official narrative:

  • Firstly, the association agreement was not as benign as it was originally portrayed. As Stephen F. Cohen points out: “[The agreement] included protocols requiring Ukraine to adhere to Europe’s “military and security” policies, which meant in effect, without mentioning the alliance, NATO.”
  • Secondly, the role of Neo-Nazis in the coup is brushed over, if mentioned at all by the Western media. There were multiple fascist groups involved with the protests, who idolise Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. These groups included Svoboda, a far right organisation led by Oleh Tyahnybok, and Right Sector.
  • Thirdly, the US government admitted spending “5 billion dollars ‘assisting Ukraine’. This includes 180 million dollars on ‘development programs’ for ‘judges, members of parliament [and] political parties’.”
  • Fourthly, the US Deputy Secretary of State at the time, Victoria Nuland, was also involved in maneuvering behind the scenes to ensure a government acceptable to Washington. Nuland met with the far right leader Tyahnybok personally. There is also a leaked call in which Nuland takes part, discussing how the government would be reconstituted after the coup, with Nuland identifying who should and should not go into government.

Furthermore, the situation in Donbass has been completely ignored by the mainstream media. The media acts as if Putin started a war in Ukraine, when there was already one: the shelling of the people of Donbass by the Ukrainian government. The people of Donbass rejected the coup in 2014 that massively increased the power of violent neo-Nazi groups, and instead formed the Donetsk & Lugansk People’s Republics.

Journalist Eva Bartlett, who has visited Donbass, talks about some of the atrocities committed by the Kiev government in this article.

Conclusion

Western governments and the mainstream media have misrepresented the situation in Ukraine in order to promote a pro-imperialist narrative. The situation in 2014 is directly linked to the current situation in Ukraine, which will be considered in further articles.

Zombie Russians Part 3: In Which Bond Villain Putin Invades Ukraine

The Russia narrative is one of the most important ‘victims’ of the Official Covid Narrative. Prior to 2020, the Russia narrative was being sold non-stop, with endless theatre about Russia hacking the election and freezing people to death. Not to mention ridiculous nonsense about Russia smearing deadly nerve agent on door handles because the mastermind behind Donald Trump cannot assassinate people properly.

Now of course, if the Russian threat was so important and we were all at risk of being frozen out of house and home, it wouldn’t have been dropped in about 2 minutes when the next official narrative came along. However, despite the Corona fanaticism that has taken over the entirety of Western politics and society, the Russia narrative occasionally sputters out of its dead state to rise again. And then I take the piss out of it.

In part 1 of Zombie Russians, I documented the return of Boshirov and Petrov from a nice cathedral in Salisbury as a temporary distraction, the story that they blew up an Czech arsenal to disappear as soon as it arrived on the scene. In part 2, I documented the return of Christopher Steele to talk about his piss (poor) dossier on Trump.

And now we get the revival from the dead of another Russia narrative: The ‘Putin wants to invade every former Soviet country’ narrative.

Most of all this narrative focusses on Ukraine. Western commentators have been pretty obsessed with the idea that Russia is gonna go all out on Ukraine for a while. Because Putin is the one who just invades countries willy nilly to get what he wants…oops, I got Russia mixed up with the US there.

Tobias Ellwood MP has been promoting this narrative, saying Russia is going to invade Ukraine in weeks. This guy is a reservist in the 77th brigade – no I am not making this up, you can check for yourself – so you know he’s gotta be trustworthy.

He’s also promoting a particularly hilarious view of foreign policy:

We did a defence select committee visit to the United States and we were shocked by just how distracted they are from international events other than China,” he said.

[…]

There’s a 1930 to feel to the world, authoritarianism on the rise, a lack of Western leadership, weak international institutions unable to hold errant nations to account.

So the US isn’t doing enough bombing (as if), so authoritarianism is on the rise. Well yeah, I agree with that last bit. That’s what Ellwood himself has been promoting, complaining about people at Christmas seeing each other. But yeah, we keep pretending literally banning social interaction isn’t authoritarian. Because reasons.

And we also have the US government claiming that Russia is going to do a false flag to justify invading Ukraine. You couldn’t make it up. This is the best example of projection I have ever seen. And they are also complaining about Russia having troops within its own territory. I’d like to see Russia complain about Americans sticking troops in Texas and see how far they get. (Or maybe on the border with Canada, given the insane Corona fanaticism going on over there.)

Meanwhile, in the UK:

So the solution to Russian troops doing some war games in Belarus is to send some troops into Ukraine. Yeah, because it’s not like the West has ever aggravated the situation by war gaming with Ukraine, right? Right next to this thing called ‘the Russian border’?

There is zero context with any of these arguments in the mainstream media. Yeah yeah, so so what if the 2014 democratically elected Ukrainian government was overthrown with the help of some Nazis? So what if the West wanted to get Ukraine in NATO-by-proxy through the Association Agreement, which stipulates agreement on issues of security? Eh, Putin bad. Though it’s funny that Putin is still the ‘enemy’ despite his obvious compliance with the Covid narrative.

The serious discussion here is about competition versus co-operation in the clearly global Biosecurity State agenda, and what balance of those factors currently exists between the West, Russia and China. The classic imperialist European powers competed over colonies while all agreeing about the importance of the maintenance of the colonial domination over Africa, Latin America and Asia, and indeed sometimes agreed on the division of colonies between themselves for mutual benefits. We are observing the same dynamic today, in which Russia, China and the West have colluded with the Covid narrative in order to increase domestic control over their populations while the West continues its imperialist adventures abroad (often opposed by Russia/China for their own reasons).

But nah. Putin is stroking his white cat so get distracted folks!