Messages

46

For Your Information / EU morphed into a military organization – Lavrov

« on: April 13, 2022, 08:24:22 PM »

EU morphed into a military organization – Lavrov
RT - Daily news

11 Apr, 2022


   Russia's foreign minister reacts to bloc's foreign policy chief statement that the conflict in Ukraine "will be won on the battlefield"

The EU made a "serious U-turn" by morphing into a military organization acting in the interests of Washington and NATO, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday in an interview with Russian media. He cited a remark that EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell made last Saturday.

The European official said the conflict in Ukraine "will be won on the battlefield" as he announced more European military aid to Kiev. Lavrov called the statement "outrageous."

"When a diplomatic chief says a certain conflict can only be resolved through military action Well, it must be something personal. He either misspoke or spoke without thinking, making a statement that nobody asked him to make. But it's an outrageous remark," Lavrov told Rossiya 24 news channel.

The EU has made a noticeable U-turn in its attitude towards Russia because Western powers are furious at Moscow for defending its vital interests in Ukraine instead of accepting a subservient role in the Washington-dominated "rules-based order", Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

Western nations acting in pursuit of American interests were trying to turn Ukraine into "a foothold for final suppression of Russia," Lavrov said. After Moscow used force to counter that threat, European nations made a rapid shift in their attitude towards Russia. Now it "reflects spite and fury" towards the country. The dramatic change is evidence that the conflict in Ukraine is not about Ukraine, Lavrov believes.

"Western propaganda shifted gear into depicting Russia as pure evil and [Ukraine] as pure good. The current Ukrainian regime is presumably a beacon of democracy, justice, freedom that is drawn to everything European, to the values that Europe claims it always adhered to," the minister said.

Neither is true, Lavrov argued. Ukraine is a hotbed of radical nationalism while Western powers easily break any norms when it fits them, while telling others to comply.

"Kosovo can be recognized as independent without a referendum. Crimea cannot, despite holding a referendum observed by [many international monitors]," he offered as an example of double standards.

"In Iraq, 10,000 kilometers away from the US, they imagined some threat to their national security. They bombed it, found no threat. And didn't even say they were sorry," he added. "But when right at our border they grow neo-Nazi ultra-radicals, create dozens of biolabs working on bioweapons, as documents prove, we are told we are not allowed to react to those threats," he added.

Russia launched a large-scale offensive against Ukraine in late February, following Ukraine's failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements signed in 2014, and Russia's eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French brokered Minsk Protocol was designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

Russia has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two rebel regions by force.

47

For Your Information / Re: Donetsk News Agency reports

« on: April 13, 2022, 08:10:13 PM »

Donbass – Mariupol port now fully under DPR and Russian control
Donbass Insider, Christelle Neant

April 12, 2022


   On 11 April 2022, the entire port of Mariupol came under the control of the DPR (Donetsk People's Republic) and Russia. At the same time, Russian and DPR assault groups underwent special training to eliminate the Ukrainian armed forces still entrenched in the Azovstal factory.

On 2 April 2022, we returned to Mariupol, bringing humanitarian aid to the civilians we had found in the eastern district of the city. We then headed to the sea, to meet Chechen soldiers fighting Ukrainian soldiers near the Azovstal factory and the port of Mariupol.

They told us how Ukrainian soldiers sometimes literally hide behind civilians to shoot at Russian and DPR armed forces, which considerably slows down their progress.

They also told us how, once cornered, both ordinary Ukrainian soldiers and the neo-Nazis of the Azov regiment try to flee by disguising themselves as civilians. This is not a very effective technique, especially for the female snipers, who are unmasked by the marks left by their rifle scopes! They also confirm that foreigners are fighting on the Ukrainian side, since they have confronted and found the bodies of several black fighters, who the Ukrainian soldiers send to be killed first in order to spot the Chechen soldiers!

See the report with French subtitles:

The Chechen soldiers also explain the help they are giving to the inhabitants of Mariupol, who lack everything, especially water. They also tell us about the terrible conditions in which civilians were held in the city by Ukrainian soldiers. The inhabitants continue to evacuate the city with the help of Russian and DPR soldiers. Currently, more than 135,000 inhabitants of Mariupol have already been able to evacuate the city. The testimonies of the Chechen soldiers confirm those of the civilians we interviewed in the western part of Mariupol on 31 March 2022.

See the report with French subtitles :

Several Mariupol residents confirmed that Ukrainian soldiers were sitting in flats shooting, that they did not provide any help to civilians, and that they even let a man die after being wounded in a shelling by taking his neighbors prisoner as they searched for an ambulance to take him to the hospital after the curfew. One of the residents even told us that the Ukrainian soldiers took a child as cover when they retreated from the AC2 bus station. We were also able to visit a school, which the Ukrainian soldiers had turned into their headquarters, making the building a military target.

Chechen soldiers also told us that the behavior of the Ukrainian soldiers they capture suggests drug use, as they are like zombies, indifferent to everything, even to pain.

The incredible discipline of the Chechen soldiers who follow their superiors' orders to the letter (to advance while protecting civilians as much as possible), despite the risks involved, clearly shows that the Russian bogeyman stories invented by Ukrainian propaganda (such as the story of the Bucha massacre) do not hold water.

In the meantime, hiding behind the inhabitants, but also behind the crews of the ships trapped in the port of Mariupol did not save the Ukrainian soldiers. The port is now fully under DPR control, and the assault on Azovstal is ready. Experience from the assault on the Ilyich Metallurgical Plant has shown that the use of flamethrowers is effective in the underground, so they will be used by the Russian and DPR armed forces in the attack on the last pocket of Ukrainian soldiers in Mariupol.

Faced with the inevitable, many Ukrainian soldiers from the 36th Marine Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are surrendering to the Russian and DPR armed forces in Mariupol. After a group of more than 250 soldiers, then a second group of 160 soldiers, a third group of about 100 Ukrainian soldiers has just surrendered. The crew of one of the ships taken hostage by soldiers of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov regiment (the ship "Azov Concorda"), explained how the latter boarded the ship on 24 March, threatening the crew with weapons, before stealing their phones, computers, personal belongings and money. The Azov soldiers then destroyed the ship's radio equipment and navigation instruments, stole the food on board and threatened the sailors with reprisals if they tried anything.

The day after they took control of this part of the port, DPR soldiers boarded the ships and the day after they brought them humanitarian aid, and allowed them to call their relatives by providing their own phones (something many journalists also do to reassure the relatives of civilians stranded in Mariupol).

The battle for Mariupol is coming to an end, and the battle for Kramatorsk and Slaviansk will soon begin. The new municipal authorities, already appointed, will be able to start assessing the damage and determine which buildings can be repaired, and which will have to be demolished and totally rebuilt, in order to launch the reconstruction of Marioupol as soon as possible.

Christelle Néant

48

For Your Information / US and UK conducting 'secret war' in Ukraine – Le Figaro RT - Daily news 11 Apr

« on: April 13, 2022, 08:08:15 PM »

US and UK conducting 'secret war' in Ukraine – Le Figaro
RT - Daily news

11 Apr, 2022 10:04

   SAS and Delta Force part of "secret war", a French intelligence source reportedly told Le Figaro

Elite special forces from the UK and the US have been present in Ukraine since the beginning of hostilities with Russia in late February, a source in the French intelligence community reportedly told a Le Figaro reporter, last week.

The claim was reported by the newspaper's senior international correspondent Georges Malbrunot on Saturday, the day when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made his surprise visit to Kiev. The British leader was reportedly surrounded by guards from the elite SAS force, though this claim was not officially confirmed.

UK hopes Ukraine will keep fighting – mediaREAD MORE: UK hopes Ukraine will keep fighting – media SAS units "have been present in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, as did [sic] the American Deltas," Malbrunot tweeted citing a French intelligence source. He added that according to the source Russia was well aware of the "secret war" waged against its troops by foreign commandos. Le Figaro included his report in their updates on Ukraine.

The UK and the US have been among the most active military supporters of Kiev. Johnson reportedly personally urged his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky to keep on fighting against Russia and not settle for peace until better terms are offered.

Western pro-fighting consensus was apparently confirmed last week by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who said on Saturday that the "war will be won on the battlefield" as he too was visiting Kiev.

British media earlier reported that dozens of "retired" SAS soldiers had gone or planned to go to Ukraine to contribute their expertise in reconnaissance and anti-tank warfare to Kiev's cause. Their services were allegedly paid for by "a country in Europe, still to be named, via a private military company" rather than by the British government, according to the UK tabloid the Daily Mirror.

The Russian military reported action against what it described as "mercenaries" fighting for Ukraine on several occasions. One of the recent instances was on Saturday, just as Johnson and Borell were in Kiev.

The Russian defense ministry said Kiev attempted to use a civilian ship in its latest failed attempt to evacuate high-value personnel from the port city of Mariupol, which saw some of the most intensive fighting during the conflict. The individuals intended for evacuation were identified as leaders of the ultranationalist Azov battalion and foreign mercenaries. There are unconfirmed reports that hundreds of foreign nationals could be blocked in Mariupol along with several thousand Azov troops.

The US and the UK have publicly stated they had no plans to involve their troops in the fighting in Ukraine. Both are major suppliers of arms to Kiev and were training soldiers in Ukraine before the Russian offensive. The experts were reported pulled out of the country in the run-up to the hostilities.

Britain's Defence Ministry banned active service members from traveling to Ukraine in early March, saying that violating the rule could result in prosecution. Kiev called on volunteers abroad to join the ranks of its newly-created "foreign legion" after the Russian attack.

Russia launched a large-scale offensive against Ukraine in late February, following Ukraine's failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements signed in 2014, and Russia's eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French brokered Minsk Protocol was designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

Russia has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two rebel regions by force.





RT - Daily news

11 Apr, 2022 10:04

   SAS and Delta Force part of "secret war", a French intelligence source reportedly told Le Figaro

Elite special forces from the UK and the US have been present in Ukraine since the beginning of hostilities with Russia in late February, a source in the French intelligence community reportedly told a Le Figaro reporter, last week.

The claim was reported by the newspaper's senior international correspondent Georges Malbrunot on Saturday, the day when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made his surprise visit to Kiev. The British leader was reportedly surrounded by guards from the elite SAS force, though this claim was not officially confirmed.

UK hopes Ukraine will keep fighting – mediaREAD MORE: UK hopes Ukraine will keep fighting – media SAS units "have been present in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, as did [sic] the American Deltas," Malbrunot tweeted citing a French intelligence source. He added that according to the source Russia was well aware of the "secret war" waged against its troops by foreign commandos. Le Figaro included his report in their updates on Ukraine.

The UK and the US have been among the most active military supporters of Kiev. Johnson reportedly personally urged his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky to keep on fighting against Russia and not settle for peace until better terms are offered.

Western pro-fighting consensus was apparently confirmed last week by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who said on Saturday that the "war will be won on the battlefield" as he too was visiting Kiev.

British media earlier reported that dozens of "retired" SAS soldiers had gone or planned to go to Ukraine to contribute their expertise in reconnaissance and anti-tank warfare to Kiev's cause. Their services were allegedly paid for by "a country in Europe, still to be named, via a private military company" rather than by the British government, according to the UK tabloid the Daily Mirror.

The Russian military reported action against what it described as "mercenaries" fighting for Ukraine on several occasions. One of the recent instances was on Saturday, just as Johnson and Borell were in Kiev.

The Russian defense ministry said Kiev attempted to use a civilian ship in its latest failed attempt to evacuate high-value personnel from the port city of Mariupol, which saw some of the most intensive fighting during the conflict. The individuals intended for evacuation were identified as leaders of the ultranationalist Azov battalion and foreign mercenaries. There are unconfirmed reports that hundreds of foreign nationals could be blocked in Mariupol along with several thousand Azov troops.

The US and the UK have publicly stated they had no plans to involve their troops in the fighting in Ukraine. Both are major suppliers of arms to Kiev and were training soldiers in Ukraine before the Russian offensive. The experts were reported pulled out of the country in the run-up to the hostilities.

Britain's Defence Ministry banned active service members from traveling to Ukraine in early March, saying that violating the rule could result in prosecution. Kiev called on volunteers abroad to join the ranks of its newly-created "foreign legion" after the Russian attack.

Russia launched a large-scale offensive against Ukraine in late February, following Ukraine's failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements signed in 2014, and Russia's eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French brokered Minsk Protocol was designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

Russia has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two rebel regions by force.

49

For Your Information / They Saw and Heard the Truth. Then Lied About it

« on: April 09, 2022, 03:41:43 PM »

They Saw and Heard the Truth. Then Lied About it, media on Donbass delegation omitted mention of Ukraine’s 8 year war on the autonomous republics

by Eva K Bartlett, April 5, 2022

In Gaza*Following is a lengthy overview of my recent re-visit to the Donbass, on a two day media delegation, with a brief critique of some of the media's slanted reporting. It is also a follow up from my 2019 visit to hard hit areas of the Donetsk People's Republic. It is now 8 years of Ukraine's war on the people of the Donetsk & Lugansk Republics.


In the last week of March, I stood on a central Donetsk main street next to two of the impact points of a Ukrainian missile attack that killed 21 civilians and injured nearly 40 more on March 14. The Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) maintains that their military intercepted Ukraine’s Tochka-U ballistic missile, that not all of the cluster munitions inside exploded in the city streets, thereby lessening the already terrible bloodshed it caused. Indeed, if all of the munitions exploded in the streets, it would have been a bloodbath more horrific than the 21 killed.

Near the ATM, flowers and candles laid in memory of the civilians murdered that day, with haunting photos nearby depicting the aftermath of the bombing, the grisly scenes of the dead and the maimed—scenes you will generally never see blasted across Western corporate media, just as the same media were silent when terrorism struck civilian areas of Syria.

I’m intimately familiar with war zones, and with Western corporate media’s white-washing of the perpetrators’ crimes (Israeli crimes against Palestinians; Western-backed terrorists’ crimes against Syrians; Ukrainian military and Nazi crimes against the civilians of the Donbass—and also against Ukrainians proper), so the lack of media coverage on this recent Ukrainian war crime doesn’t surprise me.

They don’t report on it, or the myriad Ukrainian war crimes prior, because it doesn’t suit their narrative, the narrative which erases the eight years of Ukraine’s war against the four million people of the Donbass republics, killing at least 14,000 people, a modest estimate.

War crimes investigator, Ivan Kopyl, spoke about Ukraine’s March 14 attack, noting, “The warhead of a Tochka-U missile contains 50 cassettes of cluster munitions. We managed to find 28 traces of cluster explosions on the soil…A Tochka-U missile changes its orientation just before landing, so after it flies on a trajectory it makes a turn and falls vertically down before detonating at a certain height. The fragments then shower the surface in a radius of approximately 150 meters.”

I have one of those cluster fragments, a twisted and jagged square-shaped piece of metal—seemingly harmless looking on its own, but deadly when flying through the air at high speed, in great numbers.

The attack occurred around noon, when this central city street—not a military area, but a civilian one—would have been busy. Photos show a gutted bus and gutted cars. Pensioners, Koply noted, would have been lined up at the ATM right where the blasts occurred. “There was also damage to a yard where there are two kindergartens – there were several craters there,” he noted.

The strike on the heart of the city is among the latest of Ukraine’s litany of war crimes.

Ukraine again bombed Donetsk following the March 14 attack. Donetsk News Agency reported on March 30 Ukrainian forces’ bombing killed one person and seriously injured four others. Of that attack, the DPR Ombudsman noted that one of the injured, a girl, fell into a coma.

And just now, news of another Ukrainian Tochka-U attack. According to RT, at least 50 people were killed at a railway station in Kramatorsk. Eduard Basurin, a representative of the DPR People’s Militia, stated the attack was a missile containing prohibited cluster munitions.

Gonzalo Lira writes:

“This is a fragment of the missile that hit the Kramatorsk train station, and killed at least 30 civilians who were waiting to evacuate.

The AFU has blamed the Russians, but this picture of the missile shows that it is indisputably a Tochka-U rocket — used exclusively by the Ukrainian side. It’s the same kind of missile that two weeks ago hit the center of Donetsk and killed 27 civilians.

What’s that saying? Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times . . .”

As of March 31, the Ombudsman reported 6,010 deaths, including 96 children, since Ukraine’s war began in 2014. And that’s only with regards to the DPR. In the neighbouring Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), also under Ukrainian fire since 2014, as of late February, 1,762 civilians were killed, including 35 children.

During my 2019 visit to the DPR, I went to the northern city of Gorlovka, of which I wrote:

“Gorlovka was hardest hit in 2014, especially on July 27, when the center was rocked by Ukrainian-fired Grad and Uragan missiles from morning to evening. After the dust settled and the critically-injured had succumbed to their wounds, at least 30 were dead, including five children. The day came to be known as Bloody Sunday.

A monument commemorates the Gorlovka victims of Ukrainian bombings and sniping from 2014-2017. Near a sculpture of an angel, over 230 names fill the marble slabs, the first dedicated solely to children, 20 of them.”

At the site of the March 14 bombing, DPR head Denis Pushilin spoke, outlining the chronology the last 8 years, from the violent coup in Ukraine and subsequent increase in radical Ukrainian nationalism, to the two republics’ decision to push for autonomy, to Ukraine unleashing hell on the 4 million people and continual violations of the (2014 & 2015) Minsk Agreements and the massive amounts of weapons pumped from the West to Ukraine (see also). [*Note: I’ll be adding a subtitled clip of his words in the next day or two.]

School and Hospital shelled by Ukrainian forces
The town of Volnovakha—on the road between Donetsk and Mariupol further south—was secured by DPR forces nearly two weeks prior to our visit. Entering the town, we passed destroyed homes and buildings, expected as there was heavy fighting to liberate the area of the Ukrainian forces.

As they did in their copy-paste reporting on liberated areas of Syria, most Western media reports on Volnovakha focus on the destruction, without any context as to why it occurred—these residential areas were occupied by Ukrainian forces, and not all of the destruction was from DPR forces’ fighting against the Ukrainian forces: the Ukrainian forces themselves fired on homes, and according to hospital staff, on the hospital itself.

In addition to not giving this context, most Western media in general depict the liberating forces as deliberately and wantonly destroying everything in sight. Some media went as far as to claim Putin himself destroyed the town. This cartoonish narrative so prevalent in Western reports whitewashing terrorism in Syria and now in whitewashing Ukrainian forces’ crimes unfortunately does achieve its intended effect: duping Western viewers into believing the opposite of reality: that the liberators are the war criminals.

Again, just as terrorist factions in Syria occupied schools and hospitals, so too did Ukrainian forces, including in Volnovakha. When DPR forces liberated the city, they found foreign weapons used by Ukrainian forces inside the hospital. [See also: Western media quick to accuse Syria of ‘bombing hospitals’ – but when TERRORISTS really destroy Syrian hospitals, they are silent]

In a central area of Volnovakha, Russian soldiers handed out humanitarian aid to lines of residents: bags of canned goods, fresh bread, water.

According to Alexander Yurievich Kachalov, the interim mayor, Ukrainian forces used civilians as human shields. “They made sure to destroy as much infrastructure as possible. They bombed buildings in order to leave ruins after they left, to make harder for us to restore it.”

This was common in Syria, terrorist factions destroying buildings and vehicles when fleeing, also leaving mines and booby traps on streets and in houses, to kill still more civilians and soldiers. A woman waiting in line for humanitarian aid said, “They say Russia did this. This wasn’t Russia, Ukraine did it, destroyed everything here! They shot at our hospital. I work there. The new children’s and infection units have been destroyed. The outpatient clinic was destroyed. And then they left. They took the medical staff’s car and went away.”

At the destroyed hospital, Chief Physician, Viktor Fedorovich Saranov, said:

“[The Ukrainian army] were there. There were tanks on our territory. There were guns and Grads outside the territory. I asked them to act in accordance with the Hague and Geneva conventions. I asked them to leave the hospital. They said it was war.

Many people come to us from nearby houses under fire. About 500-600 people came to our basement. We gave everyone three meals a day.

The second and third floors were occupied here. We were preparing for a long siege, and then it turned out like this: they conducted an attack. They evacuated the soldiers. And they mined the entrance to the intensive care unit. On the last day when they were leaving, they shot at the intensive care unit.” The ICU, he said, had already been evacuated.

A woman who said she had worked at the hospital as a nurse for nearly 58 years said:

“On the 28th I was home alone. They soon started shelling. How can they do it with their native hospital? With patients here. They were laying in corridors, as they had been evacuated. They said there were no one in the hospital, no staff, no patients. This is a lie.”

Later, researching, I came across this news (*warning, graphic video at the link):

“Foreign mercenaries who were wounded in the Volnovakha hospital were shot by their own before leaving the city so that they could not tell anything. All the wounded have a control shot in the temple or the back of the head.”

On the road back towards Donetsk, we stopped at a school that had been shelled in late February.

According to Victoria Terichenko, head of education department of the Dokuchaevsk city administration, the shelling was by Ukrainian forces.

“Of course, Ukraine. There were only Ukrainian troops there. We had no military here, we were only civilians here.”

Fortunately, children weren’t at school at the time of the shelling, but Terichenko said a kindergarten in the area had been shelled, with children inside, but again fortunately, not on the side of the building shelled.

Horrors of Ukraine’s war on the people of the Donbass republics
Ukraine’s relentless bombing and sniping of the Donbass people is bad enough, along with it being ignored by Western press and politicians.

But in its eight years of warring on a people who rejected the rule of ultra-nationalists and Nazis, who just wanted to live autonomously, speak their own language, remember their history (Ukraine has rewritten history to glorify Nazis and Nazi collaborators and to vilify those who defeated Nazism, namely the Soviets), Ukraine has committed war crimes as heinous as ISIS and co-terrorists in Syria, with more and more testimonies coming out of mass graves, rapes, torture of civilians and Donbass soldiers, beheadings…none of this shocking given the crimes these extremists commit against even Ukrainian civilians and journalists.

Along a sidewalk flanking a central park, a row of photos, incredibly disturbing images of murdered LPR civilians.

Elders slaughtered on benches, in wheelchairs. The corpse of an infant. Mass graves. A room used to imprison and torture people. The insignia of the notorious rapists and murderers of the “Tornado” battalion.

One photo shows Nazi graffiti left on a wall.

Similar to what I saw in Gaza in January 2009, graffiti left by Israeli soldiers who occupied the home of a Palestinian family, half of which were killed by Israeli-fired White Phosphorous. One of the slogans written in Hebrew was: “Next time it will hurt more.” This, to the family whose infant had burned alive due to the White Phosphorous bombing and whose surviving family members were badly mutilated from the prohibited weapon. In another house in eastern Gaza, likewise occupied and desecrate by Israeli soldiers, more hate and death graffiti left for the traumatized inhabitants.

Different people and places, same violent hatred of the population being targeted.

In the same park area, a monument to two journalists killed in 2014 by Ukrainian forces. Were these journalists killed by Russia or Syria, their names would have been front page, on TIME magazine covers. In Syria, dozens of journalists have been killed by terrorist forces, to the silence of not only Western media by also the groups supposedly advocating for journalists’ rights and safety.

In Shchastia, north of Lugansk, more civilians received humanitarian aid in the liberated town.

*Humanitarian aid being handed out in Shchastia, a town north of Lugansk, liberated in early March.
Western delivered weapons on display
In the two republics, we saw some of the vehicles and weapons captured from Ukrainian forces. Telesur journalist Alejandro Kirk spoke to me about these weapons and vehicles that have been captured, noting the many foreign made weapons sold to Ukraine. Western countries continue selling weapons to Ukraine.

On March 20, journalist Alexander Rubinstein wrote of the West’s exorbitant shipping of billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine over the years. He noted:

“At least 32 countries have announced their intention to ship billions of dollars in weapons into Ukraine for use against Russian forces in Ukraine. Photographic evidence shows that these weapons have already ended up in the hands of neo-Nazi paramilitaries – units which have already received training and arms the US and its NATO allies.

All of this builds on $3.8 billion in military aid from the United States to Ukraine, the training of 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers by Canada and the United Kingdom, and a longstanding CIA program aimed at cultivating an anti-Russian insurgency.

…weapons furnished by NATO allies have been placed in the hands of the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi former paramilitary organization incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard.

The governments of Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom have presided over a massive program to train and equip Ukrainian soldiers for a full-scale war with Russia. Trainees have included top commanders of the Azov Battalion.

In late February, the European Union opened the floodgates of weapon shipments to Ukraine, approving financing through the aptly-named “European Peace Facility” to reimburse countries sending weapons to the country to the tune of $500 million USD. Another $55 million USD is earmarked for non-lethal military aid.

This February, the State Department announced $350 million in additional military aid to Ukraine, bringing “the total security assistance the United States has committed to Ukraine over the past year to more than $1 billion.”

Another $200 million was sent in early March, and following Zelensky’s March 16 appeal to Congress for more weapons, Biden is reportedly set to dole out another $800 in military aid including 800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, 9,000 anti-tank systems, 5,000 rifles, 1,000 pistols, 400 machine guns, 400 shotguns, 400 grenade launchers, 20 million rounds of ammunition, 100 tactical drones, 25,000 sets of body armor and 25,000 helmets. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

These figures add to the $2.5 billion in military aid the US delivered between 2014 and the summer of 2021, bringing the total to $3.8 billion.”

Missing context: what the Donbass people have endured under 8 years of Ukraine’s war
After my September 2019 visit to the DPR, I wrote about the mostly elderly civilians I met who were living in battered homes damaged by Ukrainian shelling and heavy machine gun fire just 500 metres and 600 metres from Ukrainian forces. They remained there, they told me, mostly because they had nowhere else to go. Some spoke to me on camera, others were afraid of Ukrainian retaliation were they to be interviewed.

But their stories were all pretty much the same: at night, when the observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) left, the Ukrainian terrorizing began, with shelling throughout the night.

I also met a couple who had been living for 6 years in the stinking, dank, basement of a battered school, after Ukrainian bombing destroyed their home.

The DPR press officer who accompanied me and provided translations, spoke of how Ukrainian forces use weapons prohibited under the Minsk Agreements.

Irina Dikun, head of the administration of Zaitsevo, another frontline village, spoke at length on the Ukrainian bombing that erupts nearly every night.

“They are destroying street by street in the town. They take one street and destroy it house by house. Then they turn to another street. There was a school, and a kindergarten, before, but they were both destroyed by Ukrainian artillery.”

As in Syria, when schools and hospitals are actually destroyed (in Syria by terrorist factions), the same media that howls over militarized hospitals being targeted, the same media that also manufactures stories that never even occurred, is silent when the destroying is actually done, by Ukrainian forces.

In Zaitsevo, Irina explained fire trucks and medics couldn’t reach targeted homes, because ambulances themselves became targets for Ukrainian forces (as happens in Gaza, medics targeted by Israeli forces, as I myself witnessed).

During that 2019 visit, I also interviewed some of the defenders of the DPR, painted by Western media as “separatists”, “pro-Russian forces” and other such descriptions meant to dehumanize. The same Western media so quick to humanize terrorists, including one who chewed the organ of a dead Syrian soldier.

One more relevant note from that visit: Dmitri asked what people in the west think about the fact there is a Nazi state in Europe. I replied most people don’t know, because of the media whitewashing.

Which brings me to my recent return to the Donbass: I was curious to see whether the journalists on the same delegation reported truthfully, partial truths or fabricated lies. As it turned out, my scepticism was warranted.

Distortions and omissions of some Western media on the ground in the Donbass
Telesur’s report gave historical context needed to understand the present: including the coup in Ukraine, the active neo-Nazis in Ukraine and entrenched in the Ukrainian army, the past eight years of Ukraine’s war on the Donbass and the 14,000 killed during these years, and the media blackout on the suffering of the Donbass people.

Sky News’ report was good, mentioning the civilians killed in the Donbass by Ukraine’s war, including the March 14 attack, the school shelled, as well as giving air time to the DPR’s Pushilin.

Neither of the two French channels’ (FranceInfo and TF1Info) reports on the delegation’s visit mentioned of the March 14 Tochka-U attack, even though we visited the site & Pushilin spoke at length of it, much less mentioned of the roughly 8,000 civilians alone killed in the two republics. I couldn’t find mention of the Azov or other Nazi battalions participating in the atrocities against the Donbass people, even though we heard about them and saw the graphic photo display in Lugansk. Their reports were framed as, “this is what Russia wants us to see,” regarding the humanitarian aid and reclaimed towns.

And of course, they focused greatly on the destruction, but not on the reasons for it, the implications being the Russians and the “pro-Russian separatists” were responsible.

The chief physician of the hospital in Volnokava had spoken at length, and did specifically state the Ukrainian army had occupied the hospital, as did the nurse I cited, both of whom spoke in front of the group of journalists.

FranceInfo’s mention of the hospital was framed as, “The Russians accuse the Ukrainians of having bombed it.” They included a few seconds of the chief physician saying he didn’t know who did it, there were soldiers in the area, he didn’t know who.

But actually, the physician spoke to us for about several minutes, during which—as I wrote earlier—he did specifically address the presence of the Ukrainian army in the hospital.

One journalist: “Why did such destruction happen?” To which the chief physician replied: “I don’t know. They were military. And who they were: military, national battalions, army? I don’t know.”

That’s the bit France TV cherry picked, omitting his previous words about the Ukrainian army occupying the hospital, as well as omitting what he said after: “There was Ukrainian territory on that side and the rockets were from that side. They mined the entrance to the intensive care unit. On the last day when they were leaving, they shot at the intensive care unit.”

Likewise, TF1Info included a few seconds of the physician’s words on Ukrainian cannons and machine guns’ presence at the hospital, but then followed with the presenter’s caveat: it is one of the arguments often presented by the Kremlin—in spite of the fact that not only he, but the nurse and many people I encountered in the town specifically blamed the Ukrainian army for occupying the hospital and further attacking it themselves when leaving.

If there were any further TF1Info reports from their journalist’s visit which might have included mention of Donbass’ dead, I couldn’t find them. Likewise of FranceInfo.

Global media abusing the suffering of the Donbass to further anti-Russia war propaganda, just as they did in Syria…
It is already bad enough that Western media generally don’t report on Ukraine’s relentless bombing of the Donbass. But all the more disgusting when using a scene from the March 14 bombing of Donetsk and depicting it as Lvov under Russian bombing.

At the site of the Tochka-U missile attack in Donetsk, photos of the moments after the bombing, including the scene depicted in Western media as in Lvov. Photo: Eva Bartlett, March 24, 2022.
This isn’t the only instance. More recently, different Western media used the scene of a March 30 Ukrainian bombing of a Donetsk multi-story apartment building to infer the scene depicted areas of Ukraine bombed by Russia. If you followed the war propaganda around Syria, you will be aware that this practise is common, not accidental.

New York post using Donetsk bombing photo to infer the scene was Kiev or elsewhere, under Russian bombing. The article has since been updated, photo removed. They would say it was a mistake. With corporate media, it never is. Luckily, at the time, some observers caught the lie.
And as with war propaganda on Syria, some media will use footage not even from Ukraine:

I could add paragraphs of examples of how Western media did this in Syria, but for the sake of brevity will state simply that this is one of many deceitful and deliberate propaganda tactics used to both downplay the hell the civilians are suffering under Ukraine’s bombing, and instead to pretend Ukraine is the victim. How the journalists that propagate such lies live with themselves, I’ll never understand.

Finally, a note on some in independent media who feel the need to denigrate Russia’s denazification operation in Ukraine by being snidely putting “special operation” in quotation marks, or others who took to social media to tell the world they don’t like war, and denounced Russia for its military operation (to stop a war), the people of the Donbass don’t like war, they didn’t ask for Ukraine to unleash hell upon them. Such posturing disrespects the at least 14,000 killed by Ukraine’s 8 year war (including 8,000 civilians in the Donbass).

As journalist Roman Kosarev, who has covered Ukraine’s war on the Donbass republics for eight years, said: Russia isn’t starting a war, Russia is ending one.

One thought on “They Saw and Heard the Truth — Then Lied About it: media on Donbass delegation omitted mention of Ukraine’s 8 year war on the autonomous republics”

50

For Your Information / Statement by Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia at the UN Security Council Meet

« on: April 09, 2022, 09:54:42 AM »

Statement by Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia at the UN Security Council Meeting April 5
Mme. President,

We would like to express our appreciation and gratitude to the delegation of the UAE for its Presidency in March.

We thank the Secretary-General, Ms.Rosemary DiCarlo and Mr.Martin Griffiths for their briefings.

We also listened to President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky.

We would like to thank Martin Griffiths for his visit to Moscow during which, as we can judge, he had very useful meetings and discussions. He knows better than anyone else what efforts Russia is undertaking every single day to organize humanitarian corridors. However, Ukraine consistently avoids fulfilling its commitments even within the arrangements reached with the help of international mediators.

I am not going to overload you with figures since our Defense Ministry publishes daily reports. I will merely say that we have managed to save 123,686 people from Mariupol, who moved east, without any participation from Ukraine. In all, over 602,000 people, including more than 119,000 children have been evacuated to Russia since the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO). Contrary to the assertions of our Western partners, these people were not coerced to leave or abducted. Numerous video clips, accessible in the social media, show that they made this decision voluntarily.

Mme.President,

I would like to take advantage of the fact that the President of Ukraine is participating virtually in our meeting and address him personally.

Mr. Zelensky,

We will leave to your conscience all unsubstantiated sweeping accusations addressed to the Russian military. Those accusations are not backed by any evidence of eyewitnesses, of which we spoke in detail at yesterday's press conference.

We all remember well the moment you were elected president of Ukraine in 2019. Many people pinned their hopes on you taking office, because you campaigned with the promise of establishing peace and ending the war in Donbass. The Russian-speaking people, whose rights you pledged to protect, had faith in you. It seemed that a historical injustice when, following the Maidan coup in 2014, Ukraine was put on track to become an evil "Anti-Russia" would finally be history.

However, those hopes were in vain. You began contemptuously calling the residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics "species," echoing your predecessor in office who issued threats to the effect that the children of Donetsk and Lugansk "would rot in the basements," and urging them to leave for Russia. And now you are up in arms against your native Russian language, having introduced a "language inquisition" in a country where Russian is the native language to at least 40 per cent of the population.

Today, explosions can be heard almost all over Ukraine, not just in eastern Ukraine, where they have been heard for eight years now. And they can be heard precisely because, unfortunately, there is no other way left to bring peace to Donbas after you and your subordinates vehemently refused to comply with the Minsk Agreements and prepared to resolve the problem of Donbas by force back in March. During our special operation, we have found many secret orders that testify to this.

We are being told that there cannot be any Nazis in Ukraine. However, we know for sure that they not only are there but, unfortunately, they are running the show. How can it be otherwise if Ukraine's national heroes are Nazi accomplices Bandera and Shukevich who bear responsibility not only for the Holocaust, but also for killing hundreds of thousands of civilians among Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and Jews? You prefer to turn a blind eye to the Ukrainian neo-Nazis pretending that they simply do not exist.

Unfortunately, they do exist, and even more regrettably, there are many, with many young people among them. How do we know? They are not concealing it with Nazi tattoos, decorating their clothing with swastikas and other Nazi insignias, and using the Nazi salute to greet each other. They have never tried to conceal themselves on social media. They have thoroughly infiltrated Aidar, the Right Sector and Azov battalions. This would not have been such an issue had they not acted the way Nazis do and perpetrated killings the Nazi way. This was not just about Russian soldiers who were taken prisoner — they would go online to boast about the suffering inflicted on them, but also about their fellow countrymen. Your neo-Nazis and radicals act with unrivalled cruelty when dealing with civilians, use them as human shields and deploy heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems near residential buildings.

We have heard huge amounts of lies about Russian military today. We have hundreds if not thousands of video recordings of people who are ready to testify to cruelty of Ukrainian nationalists. Let me read just some of them. Those are tough stories, but you have to hear them.

Natalia Kudinova: "The city mayor was one of the first to flee, and later the Ukrainian authorities lied to us that Russia did not let people use the humanitarian corridors. The Azov nationalist battalion held women and children in basements and robbed civilians at checkpoints. A grandmother with her grandchildren said that Azov fighters did not let them out of the basement and would shoot to kill anyone taking a step towards the exit. Women and girls were stripped naked at an Azov checkpoint, with fighters taking their gold and money, including the last they had".

Valentina Borisenkova said that the Ukrainian military chased a woman with her two children out of their single-family home and used it as a firing position to fire mortars. "She left with tears in her eyes chased from her own house, with two children by these boys with blue armbands (Ukraine's insignia)."

Marina said she was tortured in a Ukraine Security Service basement in Kramatorsk: "They tied me to a sewer pipe. When they learned that I was Russian, they started beating me, electrocuting me, raping, and threatened bringing my underage daughter to do the same with her."

Olga Shapovalova: "We left Mariupol, Mangush, on March 25. The Ukrainian Armed Forces put their firing positions in between residential buildings and in school courtyards, hiding behind civilians. A Ukrainian tank kept driving around the drama theatre and shooting in all directions, targeting residential buildings. Tanks were parked near school numbers 69, 68 and 5. I saw this with my own eyes."

Olga Suportkina: "Mariupol's School No. 15. The Ukrainian Armed Forces took up positions there on February 25 and left on March 7. They fired from there. Our building was hit by gunfire. On March 8 and 9 there was heavy shelling targeting residential housing. When asked why they were doing this, the Ukrainian service personnel replied that they would stay there until they completely eradicate the Russian spirit. They started looting right away, pillaging all the shops. DPR troops helped us get out and took us to Mangush."

There are many more heartbreaking stories about Russians and Ukrainians tortured to death with swastikas branded on their chests, about people killed by plunderers and criminals who were given arms, about peaceful population and foreigners, whose deaths Ukrainian leadership tries to blame on Russian military — contrary to all facts. I said it already and I say it again now — thinking that Russian military are capable of doing what they are accused of is vile.

On top of that, there are outright criminal theatre shows with peaceful Ukrainians killed by their own radicals in order to, in the best Goebbels traditions, blame the Russian army for their deaths. They were killed in the areas the Russian troops left following the peace talks in Istanbul, which gave hope to so many people. As it turns out now, they should not have left it. I am talking primarily about Bucha.

I am aware that you saw the dead bodies and heard the stories. However, you only saw what they wanted to show you. You can't fail to see blatant inconsistencies in the version of the events being promoted by the Ukrainian and Western media, including the fact that there were no dead bodies in the town after the Russian troops left, as evidenced by a number of videos.

There are records where Ukrainian radicals shot those who wear white armbands, that is, civilians. A close look at the video demonstrated today would reveal that people lying on the ground wore white armbands, meaning that they were civilians. And the fact that the bodies in the video do not look like they have been lying out there in the street for three or four days (according to the sensational and scientifically absurd information provided by The New York Times, the bodies have been lying there since March 20). Only complete amateurs or our Western partners who do not want to listen to anything and have long called everything that's black white and vice versa, could fall for this fake show.

Unfortunately, those countries don't care in the slightest about Ukraine. For them, it is and was just a pawn in their geopolitical ploy against Russia, which they will easily sacrifice. For now, though, they will try to prolong this conflict by supplying weapons and ammunition. To reiterate, and most importantly, how did we come to the cruelty that we see from these nationalists, for example, from the Azov battalion? And you, in an interview with the U.S. media, bashfully defend them, saying that "they are what they are."

I just want you to give it a thought and really hope that you will find a solution to this situation, because it depends only on you. We didn't come to you for Ukrainian land. We came to bring a long-awaited peace to a bleeding Donbas. Not a truce, but a genuine lasting peace. To do so, it is necessary to root out the cruelty that I mentioned and remove that Nazi malignant tumour that is devouring Ukraine and would have eventually begun to devour Russia.

We will achieve this goal, hopefully sooner rather than later. There may be no other outcome. We avoid shelling civilian targets in order to save as many civilian lives as possible, and this is why we are not advancing as fast as many expected. We are not acting like the Americans and their allies in Iraq or Syria who wiped out entire cities. They did not care about them, while we do, because those people are our close ones. The radicals, however, have nothing to lose. They can't care less about civilians. They are ready to take all the people of Ukraine down with them into the grave, as the provocation in Bucha clearly showed.

Mr. Zelensky, don't let the West achieve its goals. Make the right decisions for your country, because the West is prepared to fight in Ukraine to the last Ukrainian. Make this decision now. After all, you are well aware of the actual situation at the front. It may be too late after that.

Thank you.

51

For Your Information / Accusations of Russian War Crimes in Bucha

« on: April 09, 2022, 09:49:33 AM »

In the News April 7

Accusations of Russian War Crimes in Bucha

TML

Russia Holds Press Briefing to Denounce Provocation Staged at Bucha

On Sunday April 3 Russia formally requested the holding of an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to discuss what it called the “heinous provocation of Ukrainian radicals” in the town of Bucha, saying such provocations posed a direct threat to international peace and security.

The UK, which holds the presidency of the Security Council for the month of April, refused to grant Russia’s request on Sunday, and again on Monday when it pressed the matter again, telling Russia it could add its concerns to the agenda of an already scheduled meeting on Tuesday, April 5.

In light of that rebuff, The Russian Ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia called an emergency press conference on Monday afternoon at the UN Headquarters. There he denounced what he called the UK’s shameful and unprecedented abuse of the President’s prerogatives. Even if the president disagrees with a member’s request for a meeting they are obliged to call a meeting and put the question to a procedural vote, he said, noting that the meeting Russia called for should have taken place within three hours of being requested.

“You can see clearly now what a ‘rules-based order’ promoted by the UK and other Western countries means in real life,” Nebenzia said. “It means them imposing rules that are comfortable to them with total disregard for the international law and UNSC rules of procedure.”

Ambassador Nebenzia then presented what he said were the real facts about Bucha.

He began saying that on March 30, following a round of talks in Ankara, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced the withdrawal of forces from a number of regions, including Bucha. That fact was confirmed the next day by the mayor of the town. In his video of March 31 Anatoly Fedoruk presented the withdrawal of Russian forces as a victory of the Ukrainian Army. Interestingly, Nebenzia said, he did not mention any mass atrocities, dead bodies, killings, graves or anything like that. It is hard to imagine that a mayor can “forget” to address such a devastating scenario, he said.

Nebenzia then showed a video posted by the Ukrainian National Guard on April 2 showing the Ukrainian military entering Bucha three days after the Russian troops had cleared out. There were no dead bodies in the streets. It also featured interviews with citizens, none of whom spoke of any “massacre” or mass killings. The video that showed dead bodies lying in the streets appeared only on April 3. According to its authors, he said, the bodies were lying on the streets for at least four days by the time the video was filmed. However, they showed none of the telltale signs of a body left outside to decompose for that amount of time. The blood on and around the bodies is fresh, not coagulated and dry. There is no obvious bloating or signs of rigor mortis. In other words, the deaths were recent.

Nebenzia also pointed out that several of the corpses could be seen with white armbands on their sleeves. Others had their hands tied behind their backs with a white cloth that would have been an armband. Nebenzia explained that the Ukrainian forces use either blue or yellow arm bands. Because members of Ukrainian militia do not always wear military uniforms, he said, local civilians in Bucha wore white armbands when the Russian forces were in the town so they would not be mistaken for members of the militia. However Ukrainian forces, especially the virulently anti-Russian members of the Azov regiment and other neo-Nazis would shoot those people as supposed Russian collaborators, he said. As proof, he referred to a video on social media that shows a conversation between members of what he called “a radical nationalist fighting group.” One of them asks his commander if he is permitted to shoot at the people who are not wearing blue armbands, and is told in reply “Of course!”

Nebenzia concluded saying that the video circulated by the Kiev regime is a crude forgery that does not stand up to any scrutiny, and that what took place in Bucha was a false flag attack by Kiev and its Western sponsors.

Asked by a reporter if he considered other videos with footage of people saying their loved ones — Ukrainian civilians — have been killed by Russian troops also to be fake, Nebenzia said that in warfare, anything can happen, including that civilians may die, calling it a sad fact of life. But he insisted that Russian military forces act in strict compliance with international humanitarian law and do not target civilians and civilian objects.

“From the very beginning,” Nebenzia said, “it has been clear that this is nothing else but yet another staged provocation aimed at discrediting and dehumanizing of the Russian military and leveling political pressure on Russia. Not many of you know about the Russian military, but I assure you that Russian military is nothing that it is being accused of, in particular what regards ‘cruel atrocities’ against civil population. It is not the case. It never was, and will never be.

“We have factual evidence that proves this point. We intended to present it to the Security Council as soon as possible so that the international community is not misled by the false narrative promoted by Kiev and its Western sponsors.”

On April 5 the Russian Mission to the UN in New York posted a quote taken from remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov regarding how he saw the situation: “During the military operation in Ukraine there have been many cases of fake information being injected. It is followed instantly by a propaganda campaign and angry condemnation. When the truth surfaces a few days later, nobody in the West wants to speak about it any longer.”

For the entire briefing click here.

TML Daily, posted April 7, 2022.

52

For Your Information / Widespread assassination of leftists and perceived opponents of the pro-fascist

« on: April 08, 2022, 10:09:08 PM »

Widespread assassination of leftists and perceived opponents of the pro-fascist Zelenski regime
American Federation of Teachers AFL-CIO, Professional Staff Congress (PSC), International-Committee, City University of NY (CUNY)

April 7, 2022


   On Apr 7, 2022, at 1:44 PM, via PSC International Committee psc-international-committee@googlegroups.com wrote:

"In the interview, [he] read a list of Ukrainian names, which he said were the names of his friends and acquaintances based in Ukraine, some were Communists, others were labor activists, who have disappeared since 1st of March 2022 from their apartments in Kyiv and Kharkiv, after Ukrainian 'special forces' knocked on their doors."

[UPDATE]The [above] is correct. But it goes much farther. In a zoom conference that I attended on Ukraine organized by the International Action Center several days ago, a Ukrainian leftist named Leonid I. reported that he knows of dozens of murders of leftists and perceived opponents of the pro-fascist Zelensky regime, who were visited in their homes by Ukrainian fascists and killed on the spot. So, yes, the analogy to the death squads in Central America is apropos. Also, we should add that Ukrainian fascists have genocidally murdered and targeted Roma in recent weeks, including in Mariupol, which fortunately is almost entirely liberated. Leonid argued that everyone on the left in Ukraine would welcome the total military defeat of Zelensky's regime by Russia (which surprised even me when he said it, but is totally understandable in light of the fascist atrocities taking place by Ukrainian forces).

*Report from the New York Labor International Committee Post

53

For Your Information / Re: Donetsk News Agency reports

« on: April 05, 2022, 08:35:04 AM »

   Mariupol – strange attempt to evacuate AZOV officers by helicopter fails
Donbass Insider

April 2, 2022


   On 31 March 2022, several helicopters attempted to evacuate officers of the Azov regiment from Mariupol, where they are completely surrounded. The DPR (Donetsk People's Republic) anti-aircraft defense shot down two of these helicopters (one with a Stinger missile abandoned by the Ukrainian soldiers as they fled from the advancing Russian army), thus preventing this strange evacuation attempt from taking place.

And if I say that this attempt to evacuate officers of the Azov regiment by helicopter from Marioupol is strange, it is because two days before, Emmanuel Macron called Vladimir Putin and raised among other things the question of an evacuation of Marioupol. A request that makes no sense, since as we have seen for several weeks now, the Russian army and the DPR people's militia are helping civilians to evacuate the city as they advance.

A total of three helicopters were involved in the attempt to evacuate Ukrainian officers trapped in Mariupol. Two were shot down and the last helicopter returned to Mariupol. One of the downed helicopters crashed into the sea, but the second one crashed near the village of Rybatskoye, where two survivors were found, as well as several bodies of members of the Azov Regiment.

One of the survivors explained that the operation to evacuate the officers of the Azov Regiment from Mariupol was organized by the Ukrainian Main Directorate of Military Intelligence.

It should be noted that this is not the first evacuation attempt in Mariupol. On 28 March, the DPR People's Militia shot down a helicopter that was supposed to evacuate the Azov Regiment Commander Prokopenko and the 36th Brigade Commander of the UAF, Baraniouk. Then, on 30 March, another attempt was made but the pilot became frightened by DPR air defense fire and the helicopter turned back before it reached Mariupol.

Interestingly, it was between these two failed evacuation attempts that Emmanuel Macron made a phone call to Vladimir Putin to discuss this famous evacuation of Mariupol!

As a result, Russian journalists are lost in theories about the real identity of the people who justify risking so many helicopters to evacuate them from Mariupol. Indeed, it seems strange that Kiev would go to such lengths to evacuate the commanders of Azov and the 36th brigade of the UAF, while the option of retreat has always been refused by the Ukrainian general staff, who prefer their soldiers to become "martyrs".

However, given Emmanuel Macron's eagerness to launch an evacuation operation in Mariupol, there is speculation that French intelligence officers or trainers may have been among those to be evacuated from the city, while the areas where Ukrainian soldiers have taken refuge are shrinking and are now isolated (the cauldron has been split in two).

It is hoped that the remains of the helicopter that crashed near Rybatskoye, and the testimonies of the two survivors, will clarify the identity of all those who were to be evacuated.

In the meantime, with more than 90% of the city now controlled by the Russian army and the DPR people's militia, Denis Pushilin has already ordered the creation of a republican local and regional administration in Mariupol to replace the Ukrainian authorities who have abandoned the inhabitants to their fate.

Christelle Néant

54

For Your Information / Re: Bucha Massacre Allegations

« on: April 05, 2022, 08:22:37 AM »

   Ukraine – the massacre of Bucha, a Ukrainian Timisoara
Donbass Insider

April 4, 2022


   On 3 April 2022, Ukrainian authorities and Westerners accused Russia of committing a massacre of civilians in Bucha, a town on the outskirts of Kiev. But several inconsistencies indicate that the Bucha massacre is an episode worthy of the Timisoara mass grave case (a textbook case of disinformation).

To understand what really happened, we need to go back to the chronology of events.

On 30 March 2022, the Russian army withdrew from Bucha, as part of the redeployment of troops to the main theatre of operations, namely the Donbass. Alexander Kots, a journalist who was with the Russian troops in Bucha, even says that the Russian army had started to withdraw from this area already several days before, and that 30 March is just the date when the last soldiers left. The Ukrainian army did not immediately realize that the Russian army had left and continued shelling the area for several days, which may have caused civilian casualties.

On 31 March 2022, the mayor of Bucha, Anatoli Fedorouk, recorded a video in which he expressed his joy at the departure of the Russian armed forces from his town. At no point in the video does he mention the massacre of civilians. The mayor smiles broadly and speaks of victory, etc. Not a word about a possible massacre in Bucha, not a word about civilian casualties. Not a word about civilian casualties. Nothing. Which is strange, to say the least.

UKRINFORM (Ukraine National News Agency YouTube nellEd8umKU

At the same time, the Telegram channel Bucha Live, which reports on Bucha, does not mention any massacre of civilians on 29, 30 or 31 March 2022. There is nothing on this channel before the public scandal broke. Rather strange for a channel that is supposed to be aware of what is happening locally.

On 1 April 2022, a video was posted on Twitter by an account belonging to a Ukrainian woman, who said she had received it from her brother. It clearly shows bodies lying in the street, but also at 8 seconds a fresh crater, probably left by a mortar shell, is clearly visible to the right of the road. Several bodies are only a few meters away from this crater, which seems to clearly indicate that these civilians died because of a recent shelling (and therefore a shelling by the Ukrainian army) and not because of a bullet in the head (they are not tied up unlike other bodies).

TWITTER VIDEO "Another View of the street that i tweeted video about yesterday": https://twitter?com/i/status/1510368736590675976

On 2 April 2022, the Ukrainian police published a long video of their journey through Bucha, in which only one body can be seen in all the streets visited (at the beginning of the video – and from the state of the body, it is obvious that it was killed by a bombing.

VIDEO: Youtube Z7yIyNBMpQY

This video is such a blot on the narrative that some in Ukraine are saying so publicly.

"Our source in the presidential office said that there is a big scandal in Bankova about the video of the national police, which was posted online on the instruction of Anton Guerashchenko on the clean-up of Bucha. It is this video, which shows strong discrepancies with the images of the murdered residents, which went viral yesterday, but which was made two days after the clean-up and was not included in the state police report, that is now raising questions. Mr Arestovich considers Mr Guerachthchenko's actions a deliberate provocation, as the video raises many questions as to why there are no dead people in the streets and the mayor is only reporting on the clean-up operation," the post reads.

On the same day, 2 April 2022, the head of Kiev's territorial defense, Sergei Korotkikh, nicknamed Botsman (who fought in the neo-Nazi Azov regiment), publishes several videos of the work of ‘his guys'. In the second video of his post, at 6 seconds you can clearly hear one of the guys asking if he can shoot the "men who don't have blue armbands" (Ukrainian army armbands). To which his commander (Botsman) replies positively.

However, a number of bodies, including those in the famous "torture cellar", wear white armbands, typical of civilians living in a Russian-controlled area (these armbands are used to indicate that they are not hostile), and echo those of the Russian army in Ukraine.

Moreover, if we look at Botsman's Telegram channel, we can clearly see that the first photos of dead AND tied up people, date only from April 2, i.e. when Botsman and his men are already on the spot with the Ukrainian police to (and I quote there the Ukrainian media LB.ua, in an article of April 2, 2022) clean the city "from saboteurs and accomplices of the Russian forces" !!!

If you put this together with the question from Botsman's team about being able to shoot men not wearing a blue armband, the scenario starts to become clearer.

Let's highlight the other inconsistencies. On the numbers alone, no one agrees. Prosecutor General Venediktova announces 410 bodies, the mayor of Bucha told AFP by phone 280 bodies found in mass graves, AFP itself speaks of only 24 bodies seen, and Associated Press announces 20 dead in the streets.

If we look at the different bodies, four different locations emerge:

– Yablonskaya Street, where about 20 civilians were killed, presumably by Ukrainian army shelling on Bucha after the departure of Russian soldiers. They were left behind until 3 April 2022. A BBC report sheds light on this. At 16 seconds, the cameraman films a mortar shell embedded in the asphalt. Once geolocated, we realize that this shell comes from the south, i.e. from the place where the Ukrainian army was! VIDEO: BBC World Service on YouTube bb5uXrK-hGI

– The mass grave near St Andrei's church. The trench was dug by the municipal authorities in consultation with Russian troops, to bury civilians who died during the exchange of fire between the Russian and Ukrainian armies. And this trench does not date from 30 or 31 March, but from mid-March, as this video from 13 March shows, where the bodies were decently buried. The video also clearly states that the people buried died as a result of the bombing. So there is nothing to do with civilians executed by the Russian army. According to the video, there are 67 bodies in this mass grave. VIDEO: YouTube bb5uXrK-hGI

– There are nine bodies near, and in, a building that would have housed the Russian armed forces. One of the dead has his hands tied behind his back with tape and cling film (a typical Ukrainian method, visible in all the videos of people tied to poles before being beaten, which have been actively circulating on the internet for several weeks). One of the bodies also visibly shows a bullet wound in the knee, a method of torture used by the Ukrainians against captured Russian soldiers (which they themselves filmed).

– Photos of dead civilians on the Zhitomir highway. This is in fact the same place where a video was filmed on 7 March showing a shoot-out involving members of the so-called territorial defense battalions.

Finally, to complete the picture, in an interview given to the media outlet Meduza (classified as a foreign agent in Russia), a woman living in Bucha and a member of the territorial defense (so not a pro-Russian), says herself that "the people lying on Yablonskaya died because of chaotic shooting", and she does not report any cases of Russian soldiers shooting civilians during the time they controlled the city. Rather odd.

If we now take all this information, and analyse what emerges from it all, the scenario that emerges is this:

– On 30 March 2022 the Russian army withdrew its last soldiers from Bucha. But the Ukrainian army did not immediately realize this and continued to fire on the town for several days, including on Yablonskaya Street where there was a building occupied by Russian troops.

– On 31 March 2022 the mayor of Bucha made a video to celebrate the liberation of the city, and made no mention of civilians being massacred by Russian troops or bodies being seen in the streets.

– On 1 April 2022, the bodies on Yablonskaya Street are filmed from a car and the video is published late at night on Twitter. This means that these people certainly died on 31 March (after the time of the mayor's video) or on 1 April (before the time of the video showing the bodies).

– On 2 April 2022, the Ukrainian police filmed the streets of Bucha and only one body obviously killed by a bombardment appears at the beginning of the video. There is no mention of a massacre, or even of the deaths on Yablonskaya Street. Yet the information is known since a video has been circulating since the day before. My hypothesis is that the Ukrainian police did not want to show the bodies because these civilians were killed by Ukrainian army bombing and not by Russian troops. The police would therefore have tried to avoid highlighting this crime of the Ukrainian army against its own population. It seems that the Ukrainian police did not have the idea of exploiting these deaths to blame Russia. This has earned them a reprimand.

– Also on 2 April 2022, Botsman's team of Ukrainian fighters arrived in Bucha with the Ukrainian police to flush out possible saboteurs or accomplices of the Russian troops. Botsman's troops were given permission to shoot at men not wearing a blue armband. The Ukrainian troops then reportedly captured, tortured and killed several civilians whom they considered to have collaborated with the Russians. It was at this point that photos appeared of civilians being tortured and killed with their hands tied behind their backs, whose deaths were attributed to the Russians. The same goes for the civilians who were buried in the mass grave near the church in mid-March, even though they died during the bombing and were not executed by Russian soldiers at all.

If we add up the 67 civilians buried in the mass grave, the 20 bodies in Yablonskaya Street, and the nine near and in the building where the Russian soldiers were stationed, we are a long way from the 410 bodies announced by the Ukrainian authorities. Civilians have died in Bucha, but most of them died during the shelling of the city, including shelling by the Ukrainian army, and nine were clearly tortured and murdered by Ukrainian troops for collaborating with Russian troops.

As can be seen, the Bucha massacre case bears a striking resemblance to the Timisoara massacre, but with a Ukrainian twist. It is clear that an impartial and rapid international investigation into what happened in Bucha is needed. But it seems that this is not on the agenda, with the West refusing Russia's request for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council on what happened in Bucha.

Christelle Néant

55

For Your Information / Re: Bucha Massacre Allegations

« on: April 05, 2022, 08:20:57 AM »

UK Presidency of the UNSC Blocks Russia's Request for Emergency Meeting
Internationalist 360° , Dmitry Polyanskiy

April 4, 2022


   It's hard to imagine and apprehend, but the UK presidency of the UN Security Council which has just started tries to deny our right to request a separate meeting of the Council on heinous Ukrainian provocation in Bucha. We asked for it to take place at 15.00 on Monday 4 April 24hrs in advance of the planned meeting in full respect with SC rules of procedure.

We are overwhelmed by the scope and brutality of the Bucha staged set-up made in the best traditions of "White-Helmet-Pictures". The today's Ukrainian neo-Nazis are fully respecting the old Goebbels Nazi provocation school and trying to shift the blame on Russia.

The whole set-up has incredible discrepancies and gaffes and was extensively debunked in Internet, for example here.

As we understand, the main task of our British colleagues is to dissolve through baseless procedural pretexts our request in another meeting on Ukraine scheduled on Tuesday with a bigger focus. They clearly want to avoid us raising this issue separately which will cause reputational damage to Western countries who have already blamed Russia of murdering civilians in Bucha. This will not work and the world should learn the truth. We will insist that the meeting takes place on Monday as we requested.

We want to remind our UK colleagues that such a behavior is unbecoming to a SC Member, not to mention a Permanent one. It's worth mentioning that Russia being President of the Council in February despite all the Ukrainian provocations and tense situation on the ground didn't object to a single meeting on Ukraine no matter how little time passed since its request. Now London risks compromising its presidency from the very beginning. We hope that clear duty to respect SC traditions will prevail on dishonest tactical calculations.

56

For Your Information / Bucha Massacre Allegations

« on: April 05, 2022, 08:19:17 AM »

Russia to insist on UN Security Council meeting on Bucha situation on April 4 — envoy
TASS

April 4, 2022


   Moscow will insist on holding a UN Security Council meeting on Monday over the provocation in Bucha, despite Britain's attempts to refuse to organize the meeting, First Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Dmitry Polyansky said.

"It is hard to imagine and realize, but the British presidency of the Security Council, which has just begun, is trying to deny us our right to request a separate Security Council meeting on the terrible Ukrainian provocation in Bucha. We requested the April 4 meeting at 3 P.M. (10 P.M. Moscow time - TASS), 24 hours before the scheduled meeting [on Tuesday] in full compliance with the Security Council's rules of procedure," Polyansky said in his Telegram channel.

"We will insist that the meeting be held on Monday, as requested," the diplomat said.

"We are shocked at the scale and brutality of the staging organized in Bucha in the best traditions of 'white helmet cinema,'" Polyansky pointed out, "Today's Ukrainian neo-Nazis are completely faithful to Goebbels' old Nazi school of provocations and are trying to shift the blame to Russia." He noted that "there are striking inconsistencies and mistakes in the production." "It has already been refuted on the Internet," he noted.

Polyansky added that the British are trying to use procedural excuses to reject the Russian initiative because another UN Security Council meeting is scheduled for Tuesday on a broader issue. "They obviously want us not to bring this up separately because it would cause reputational damage to Western countries that have already accused Russia of killing civilians in Bucha. But it won't work, and the world will know the truth," he said.

Polyansky reminded the British that such actions are not worthy of a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and Russia, as chairman of the Council in February, "despite all the Ukrainian provocations and the tense situation on the ground, has not opposed a single meeting on Ukraine, no matter how much time has passed since its request." "London, on the other hand, has now compromised the presidency of the Council from its inception. We hope that the obvious commitment to respect Council traditions will prevail over dishonest tactical calculations," he concluded. Two Security Council meetings

Ukraine on Sunday requested that the UN Security Council meet on Tuesday to consider, among other things, the situation in Bucha. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expected to speak at it. Later on Sunday, Russia asked the Security Council president to hold a meeting on Bucha.

According to Council procedure, the president is required to convene a meeting no later than 24 hours after receiving the request. However, the president can state that, for various reasons, he received the formal request much later than it was sent. As a result, the president has a formal right to convene a meeting later than the requesting country would like.

In addition, there is a practice where the president can decide to discuss related topics in the framework of one meeting of the Security Council without scheduling a second one within the required procedural time. The last time agendas were merged was in 2018, when Ukraine and Russia also proposed to discuss related topics.

57

For Your Information / Iran Rejects Britain-drafted UN human rights resolution on Iran ‘illegal, spitef

« on: April 02, 2022, 09:47:06 AM »

Iran Rejects Britain-drafted UN human rights resolution on Iran ‘illegal, spiteful': Foreign Ministry
Press TV

Apr 1, 2022


   Iran has categorically rejected a United Nations resolution on the human rights situation in the country, saying it has been drafted by Britain and other Western countries based on groundless claims and incorrect and spiteful information.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran condemns the move by the British government and other founders of this resolution which is a clear example of abusing the transcendent concepts and values of human rights to advance short-sighted political motives and considers it devoid of any legal validity," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Friday.

He added that Western countries are making efforts to continue the spread of Iranophobia and defamation of Iran, emphasizing, "These countries, which themselves have a long history of gross human rights violation, including the sale of weapons to authoritarian, occupying and aggressive regimes, have made human rights as a means to advance their own political aims and ambitions."

The Iranian spokesperson warned that such "immoral and unjustified" moves would not only fail to promote human rights and respect for it globally, but would merely fuel negative stereotypes and political labeling against nations which have seriously tarnished the true meaning of human rights.

Khatibzadeh said the resolution extends the mandate of the Special Rapporteur, who, in recent reports, has shown that he is acting based on the British, American and Zionist directives and is using the UN human rights mechanism as a plaything to achieve their vicious and illegal goals.

"As repeatedly emphasized, the appointment of a special rapporteur on human rights [situation in] a country like Iran is fundamentally unjustified and unconstructive," he added.

Despite oppressive pressure of the US economic terrorism, the spokesman said, Iran has always lived up to its commitments to its citizens and the international community.

Khatibzadeh said Iran is a religious democratic system that takes steps to promote human rights at national, regional and international levels and is committed to observe the issue.

He emphasized that countries which violate nations' rights must be held accountable for their crimes committed in gross violation of human rights.

"Proponents of this [anti-Iran] resolution must first condemn the US administration's measures such as economic terrorism and the intensification of unilateral and cruel sanctions and their destructive impacts on Iranians' access to basic needs, including medical equipment and items during the coronavirus pandemic," Khatibzadeh pointed out.

In a resolution on the situation of human rights in Iran, adopted by a vote of 19 in favor, 12 against and 16 abstentions as orally revised, the Council decides to extend the mandate of the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic for a further period of one year, and requests him to submit a report on the implementation of the mandate to the Human Rights Council at its fifty-second session and to the General Assembly at its seventy-seventh session. It calls upon Iran to cooperate fully with the special rapporteur to permit access to visit the country and to provide all information necessary to allow the fulfillment of the mandate.

58

For Your Information / Russia presents new evidence on Ukraine biolabs, comments on links to Biden and

« on: March 31, 2022, 10:14:37 PM »

 Russia presents new evidence on Ukraine biolabs, comments on links to Biden and US
Documents detail fate of US-funded deadly pathogens that may have been tested on Ukrainians
Russia presents new evidence on Ukraine biolabs, comments on links to Biden and US
© Getty Images / Andrew Brookes

The Russian military has presented documents showing Ukraine’s interest in using drones to deliver weaponized pathogens developed in US-funded biolabs. Names of US officials involved in the biolabs projects, and the role the current US president’s son played in the program, were also made public during the special briefing on Thursday.

One of the key pieces of evidence was a letter from the Ukrainian company Motor Sich to the  Turkish drone manufacturer Baykar Makina – makers of the Bayraktar TB2 and Akinci UAVs – dated December 15, 2021. The Ukrainians specifically asked if the drones could carry 20 liters of aerosolized payload to a range of 300 kilometers – putting them in range of a dozen major Russian cities and almost all of Belarus.

“We are talking about the development by the Kiev regime of technical means of delivery and use of biological weapons with the possibility of their use against the Russian Federation,” said Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces.
RT
©  Russian Ministry of Defense

Kirillov also referenced a US patent (No. 8,967,029) for a mechanism to deploy aerosolized pathogens from a drone. The US response to a 2018 Russian inquiry about this patent did not deny its existence, but claimed that it technically did not violate Washington’s obligations under the treaties banning chemical and biological weapons, he pointed out.

Kirillov showed signed contracts between US government agencies – Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the Pentagon, the Department of State – and the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, as well as the specific facilities inside Ukraine. The Pentagon spent more than $30 million for biological research at just one Ukrainian facility, the Public Health Center of the Ministry of Health, according to the Russian military.
Russia makes new allegations about US-funded biolabs in Ukraine READ MORE: Russia makes new allegations about US-funded biolabs in Ukraine

DTRA official Robert Pope was “one of the key figures” in the program, and “the author of the idea of creating a central depository of especially dangerous microorganisms in Kiev,” Kirillov said. The Pentagon’s biological projects in Ukraine were coordinated by Joanna Wintrol, head of the DTRA office in Kiev, until she left in August 2020. She directly supervised projects UP-4, UP-6, and UP-8 to study deadly pathogens, including anthrax, the Congo-Crimean fever, and leptospirosis, according to Kirillov.

The US agency’s point of contact was Ukraine’s Health Minister (2016-2019) Ulyana Suprun, herself a US citizen, Kirillov noted, while a major go-between was the private contractor Black and Veatch, whose Kiev office was headed by Lance Lippencott. Another Pentagon contractor, Metabiota, also had a role in the project.

Kirillov said that Hunter Biden – son of the current US President Joe Biden – played “an important role in creating a financial opportunity to work with pathogens on the territory of Ukraine,” pointing to several emails between him and executives of Metabiota and Black and Veatch. In particular, he described the Metabiota VP as “a confidant of Hunter Biden,” based on  their correspondence. According to the general, the “Western media” has confirmed the authenticity of these emails – presumably a reference to materials published last week by the British newspaper the Daily Mail.
RT
©  Russian Ministry of Defense

Even Kiev was concerned about the biolabs, according to a memo Kirillov showed. A 2017 letter from the Kherson department of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) said that DTRA and Black and Veach intend to “establish control over the functioning of microbiological laboratories in Ukraine conducting research on pathogens of particularly dangerous infections that can be used to create or modernize new types of biological weapons.”

Pointing to a June 2019 document from the Public Health Center of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, Kirillov wondered why it insisted on secrecy and required that “serious” incidents “including the death of the subjects” had to be reported to the US bioethics authorities within 24 hours – when other documents about that specific program only reference standard blood sampling work.
Russia presents new evidence from US-funded Ukraine biolabs READ MORE: Russia presents new evidence from US-funded Ukraine biolabs

“We do not exclude that the official research program is only the ‘visible part of the iceberg’, while in practice, volunteers were infected with the Congo–Crimean fever virus, hantaviruses and the causative agent of leptospirosis,” the general said, accusing the US of “a dismissive attitude towards the citizens of Ukraine,” and treating them as guinea pigs for biological and medical experimentation.

The US has long claimed that allegations about Pentagon-funded biolaboratories in Ukraine were “Russian disinformation.” Earlier this month, however, US diplomat Victoria Nuland testified before the Senate that “biological research laboratories in Ukraine” did exist, and that Washington was working with Kiev “to ensure that the materials of biological research do not fall into the hands of Russian forces.”

According to Kirillov, all pathogenic biomaterials stored in Ukraine were “transported by military transport aircraft to the United States via Odessa,” in early February 2022. On February 24, as Russian troops entered Ukraine, the ministry of health in Kiev ordered the remaining strains to be destroyed, the general said.

Kirillov said that the Russian intervention halted activities at five Ukrainian biolabs that had been working with anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis, cholera, leptospirosis, and African swine fever.
You can share this story on social media:

59

For Your Information / Britain's Interference in Ukraine Can Never Be the Road To Peace

« on: March 31, 2022, 11:50:39 AM »

Britain's Interference in Ukraine Can Never Be the Road To Peace

Workers' Daily News
http://www.johnbucklecentre.org.uk/opensite/wdnews/news.php?xnewsaction=fullnews&newsarch=032022&newsid=3

Whilst today the British state has disengaged from the EU and is now in lock-step with the US it is probably now among European countries the most supportive of Ukraine joining in with the EU, NATO and Western Europe. Whilst this irony following Brexit cannot be lost, it also goes along with the British state and its media being also one of the most hostile to Russia in Europe.

Of course, at the time of Ukraine's independence in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Britain's role was then as part of the EU. The US with Britain as their main ally in the EU, moved to break up the Russian Federation and expand eastwards. As such, Britain has always been interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine from this standpoint of dividing Ukraine from its close relations with Russia. These close relations of Ukraine to Russia spanned centuries and were based on vast areas in Ukraine speaking the same language as Russia and with close cultural ties to all Russians.
 
The aim of the US, Britain and the European powers was not just the liberalisation of Ukrainian state enterprises. It was not just that their private monopolies could try and grab the vast Ukrainian agricultural resources and industries, but equally the aim was geopolitical division of the Russian Federation, to weaken the largest country in the world in the interests of US domination. British European Minster, David Lidington, spelt this out in a statement in 2011 when he said, Ukraine matters [1] “as a growing market for British goods and services; as an investment destination; as an energy transit route and as an energy supplier”. He continued that this is so “because its relationship with the European Union is a test case for the EU’s entire strategy towards its Neighbourhood”. In other words, the EU's strategy towards Russia!

Much has rightly been written about the so-called colour revolutions in Eastern Europe and in Ukraine to effect regime change in favour of the US and its western allies. However, it was the Maidan coup in 2014 in Ukraine which finally brought about a Ukrainian regime hostile to Russia. This is a regime on Russia's borders that would engage with the US, Britain, the EU and with NATO in their preoccupation to isolate and threaten Russia. At the same time, the nature of this stateless and dangerous situation caused by the coup divided Ukraine, and the peoples of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbas region declared their independent republics through their own referenda, and the people of Crimea also voted to secede from Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

Of course, people of the world know to their cost that divide and rule, was Britain's notorious hallmark in its brutal colonisation of the world, as they divided the people of Ireland, India and Africa in pursuit of world domination in the previous centuries. Today, the British ruling elite still pursue this dangerous policy in their illusions that it will “make Global Britain a force for good in the world”.

Britain's role prior to the Maidan coup is revealing. For example, posts of the British government [2] show that in 2010 “the British Military Advisory and Training Team” started “training officers and senior non-commissioned officers” in the Ukrainian army. This was a move which clearly showed Britain's role in attempting to subvert the army leadership to its own outlook. In 2013, prior to the 2014 coup, the British Embassy in Ukraine launched a project [3] “explaining the benefits for Ukraine of closer European integration” with the aim of determining “how Ukrainians perceive the EU and how one could raise their awareness of the benefits of signing the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement”.

It was also in this context, as one of many examples show, that in 2013 David Lidington met with a pro-EU opposition Ukrainian Party leader, former boxer Vitali Klitschko [4]. The Minister claimed: “The British government remains a firm supporter of Ukraine’s EU aspirations. We want to see them make the necessary reforms to allow the Association Agreement to progress to signature. Mr Klitschko knows that Ukraine has a lot of work to do, and we discussed the role that a pro-active opposition (our emphasis) can play in promoting the implementation of reforms that benefit all citizens.”

This was particularly significant because it was not only empty promises of “benefits of signing up to path of joining the EU” but the aim was also at inciting the opposition politicians against the government of that time and creating illusions among the Ukrainian people. The elected President Viktor Yanukovych of the time as well as the many in the government were opposed to the liberalisation of the Ukrainian economy as a condition of joining the EU and to the hostility of Britain and the EU towards Russia. In 2013, the Ukrainian President was also pursuing closer ties with Russia rather than the EU. It was this contradiction between the interests of the US/EU and the President that was the spark for the US/EU-led Maidan coup in 2014.

Since that time, successive British governments have continued to send troops, military advisers and trainers to Ukraine. Most alarmingly, British governments helped integrate neo-Nazis into the Ukrainian army and state and fuelled Russophobia in Ukraine and in Britain. Last year, in a provocation against Russia, Britain's HMS Defender entered the territorial waters of Crimea, part of the Russian Federation, a hostile move that was aimed at inciting Ukraine against Russia in the Crimea. That was followed by a deal with Ukraine on HMS Defender in Odessa to supply eight new missile vessels to Ukraine, with two of those constructed in Britain. Britain also agreed to "assist in building naval bases around the Azov Sea and the Black Sea regions" with Babcock International, a British Marine, Nuclear, Land and Aviation arms manufacturer "as the prime industrial partner".

Presenting the actions of the US, Britain and others in NATO in continuing to arm Ukraine in its conflict with Russia as peaceful, unprovocative and supportive of a free, sovereign independent and friendly country and choosing their own future is a historical fraud of the first order. This can never be the road to peace.

[1] Britain and Ukraine – Partners for Reform - July 2011
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/britain-and-ukraine-partners-for-reform

[2] British military training team to train Ukrainian Army personnel – October 2010
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/british-military-training-team-to-train-ukrainian-army-personnel

[3] Explaining the benefits for Ukraine of closer European integration – April 2013
https://www.gov.uk/government/case-studies/explaining-the-benefits-for-ukraine-of-closer-european-integration

[4] Minister for Europe meeting with Vitali Klitschko – March 2013
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/minister-for-europe-meeting-with-vitali-klitschko

60

For Your Information / British Intelligence Operative's Involvement in Ukraine Crisis Signals False Fla

« on: March 25, 2022, 06:56:13 PM »

   British Intelligence Operative's Involvement in Ukraine Crisis Signals False Flag Attacks Ahead
Internationalist 360, Kit Klarenberg

March24, 2022


   Shadowy UK intel figure Hamish de Bretton-Gordon was at the forefront of chemical weapons deceptions in Syria. Now in Ukraine, he's up to his old tricks again.

With Washington and its NATO allies forced to watch from the sidelines as Russia's military advances across Eastern Ukraine and encircles Kiev, US and British officials have resorted to a troubling tactic that could trigger a massive escalation. Following similar claims by his Secretary of State and ambassador the United Nations, US President Joseph Biden has declared that Russia will pay a "severe price" if it uses chemical weapons in Ukraine.

The warnings emanating from the Biden administration contain chilling echoes of those issued by the administration of President Barack Obama throughout the US-led dirty war on Syria.

Almost as soon as Obama implemented his ill-fated "red line" policy vowing an American military response if the Syrian army attacked the Western-backed opposition with chemical weapons, Al Qaeda-aligned opposition factions came forth with claims of mass casualty sarin and chlorine bombings of civilians. The result was a series of US-UK missile strikes on Damascus and a prolonged crisis that nearly triggered the kind of disastrous regime change war that had destabilized Iraq and Libya.

In each major chemical weapons event, signs of staging and deception by the armed Syrian opposition were present. As a former US ambassador in the Middle East told journalist Charles Glass, "The ‘red line' was an open invitation to a false-­flag operation."

Elements of deception were especially clear in the April 7, 2018 incident in the city of Douma, when an anti-government militia on the brink of defeat claimed civilians had been massacred in a chlorine attack by the Syrian army.

Veteran inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found no evidence that the Syrian army had carried out any such attack, however, suggesting the entire incident had been staged to trigger Western intervention. Their report was subsequently censored by organization management, and the inspectors were subjected to a campaign of smears and intimidation.

Throughout the Syrian conflict, a self-proclaimed "chemical warrior" named Hamish de Bretton-Gordon was intimately involved in numerous chemical weapons deceptions that sustained the war and ratcheted up pressure for Western military intervention.

This February 24, just moments after Russia's military entered Ukraine, de Bretton-Gordon surfaced again in British media to claim that Russia was preparing a chemical attack on Ukrainian civilians. He has since demanded that Ukrainians be provided with a guide he wrote called, "How To Survive A Chemical Attack."

How to Survive a Chemical or Biological Attack – this is Free – please disseminate as widely as possible to civilians in #Ukraine & surrounding countries https://t.co/tkV4Nb3PaO

— Hamish DBG (@HamishDBG) March 22, 2022

So who is de Bretton-Gordon, and does his sudden reappearance as an expert voice on the Russia-Ukraine war signal a return to the dangerous US-UK red line policy?

Hours after war erupts, a "chemical warrior" demands Western escalation

Following months of fevered speculation about an impending Russian invasion of Ukraine, when it finally came to pass on the early morning of February 24th, most were caught entirely by surprise. Media outlets and pundits scrambled to get their stories straight, while Western leaders rushed to construct a cohesive ‘response'.

By contrast, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a British army veteran identified by UK media as a "former spy," was in no such muddle. Within just three hours, he had a fiery op-ed prepared for The Guardian, demanding the US and Europe "show their steel in the face of Putin's aggression." Warning that Vladimir Putin was "much more willing to face off with NATO" than before, de Bretton-Gordon charged that the West "stood back and watched in Syria," and "it must not do the same in Ukraine."

"Syria shows what happens when you turn a blind eye and are too heavily influenced by peaceniks," de Bretton-Gordon fulminated. "Those of us involved in interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 30 years we look at Syria and know we should have done better. That knowledge should inform our response to Putin's aggression now."

In reality, Washington and its allies did not stand back and watch in Syria; it waged a decade-long proxy war employing jihadist paramilitaries and airstrikes on Damascus, then occupied oil-producing portions of the country and subjected its citizens to crippling sanctions, which to this day deprive them of food, electricity and vital medical supplies.

Of all people, de Bretton-Gordon – whose Twitter profile once identified him as a member of 77th Brigade, the British Army's official psychological warfare division – is uniquely placed to know of these horrors. After all, he played a pivotal role in promoting and extending the dirty war through the management of information surrounding chemical weapons incidents.

Manipulation, absurdities and obvious fraud

As The Grayzone has revealed, the involvement of de Bretton-Gordon in the Syrian conflict dates back to at least 2013, when by his own admission he was engaged in a covert effort to smuggle soil samples out of the opposition-occupied areas. This work would have inevitably placed him in extremely close quarters with jihadist elements raking in Western funding while benefiting from NATO training and weapons.

Contemporary media reports reveal the UK's MI6 was engaged in a sample-gathering effort in the country at the very time time de Bretton-Gordon was inside Syria, strongly suggesting his linkage to the foreign intelligence agency. One article makes abundantly clear the purpose of the soil-sample exercise was to push the US into intervening by proving government culpability for alleged chemical weapons attacks.

Other forms of evidence were also collected on-the-ground by de Bretton-Gordon, and provided to a number of official investigations into chemical attacks. In at least one instance – an OPCW/UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) probe into a purported chemical strike in Talmenes, April 2014 – videos submitted by CBRN Taskforce, a shady organization he founded in Aleppo, were found to show clear signs of falsification.

De Bretton-Gordon threw his chemical weapons expertise into further doubt when he told British media that any common refrigerator could be transformed into a chemical weapon, falsely claiming that R22 refrigerant cylinders contained material for improvised chlorine bombs. "Somebody could go to a waste site where people chuck away fridges [in the UK] and get a whole bunch of those things and blow them up," the supposed arms specialist claimed.

Hamish made the follow claims regarding household fridges and chlorine bombs: https://t.co/VJUOyW1UAR he is still regularly used by UK media @haynesdeborah @bbclysedoucet @F1onaHill pic.twitter.com/ytgQqdbjIp

— Piers Robinson (@PiersRobinson1) August 9, 2019

De Bretton Gordon has gone as far as claiming to a British tabloid that Russia could deploy missiles and hand grenades containing the highly deadly Soviet-era chemical agent Novichok "in any future war with the West."

Such absurd commentary and subterfuge has done nothing to dent de Bretton-Gordon's credibility, however. His mainstream profile has only grown over time, with outlets invariably presenting him as a courageous human rights defender risking his life to train local doctors and rescue workers.

On more than one occasion, however, de Bretton-Gordon has directly involved Western journalists in MI6's soil gathering efforts. For instance, during a 2014 podcast interview with Wilton Park, an NGO funded by the UK Foreign Office, de Bretton-Gordon boasted of his responsibility for a story in the Times of London alleging a Syrian chemical attack in the town of Sheikh al-Maqsood.

"In March last year there was a reported sarin attack in Sheikh al-Maqsood and I helped the Times – chap called Anthony Lloyd who very sadly got shot two weeks ago – to cover this story and tried to get samples to the UK for analysis I won't go into the details of that," he recalled.

Then-Prime Minister David Cameron invoked the Sheikh al-Maqsood incident to increase pressure on Damascus, citing "the picture as described to me by the Joint Intelligence Committee" as the basis for his assertion of a chemical attack against the town by the Syrian army.

Throughout the dirty war on Syria, de Bretton-Gordon routinely cropped up in the media attributing gas attacks and war crimes to Syrian and Russian forces, and fear-mongered about their implications for future conflicts with the West.

The latter role is one de Bretton-Gordon has enthusiastically resumed throughout the war in Ukraine, aggressively hyping the threat to Western countries. His messaging has tracked seamlessly with that of the US government, which initiated a program months before Russia's military operation to prepare Ukraine's security sector for an impending weapons of mass destruction attack.

Months before war, US trains Ukrainians in the threat of "targeted weapons of mass destruction attacks"

Back in May 2021, the State Department announced that Washington had conducted a "virtual training exercise" with "partners" in Kiev, including domestic security services, law enforcement, and first responders, to "identify, respond to, and investigate assassinations involving weapons of mass destruction," due to "recent events in Europe" highlighting "the real threat of government-sanctioned, targeted weapons of mass destruction attacks."

Along the way, Ukrainians were tutored in "[identifying] the medical symptoms that indicate WMD material use, the attack cycle involved in WMD assassination attempts, and the specific measures that enable safe and secure detection and response to WMD incidents."

Quite why this instruction was given at this particular time is unclear, as was the "recent events in Europe" to which the press release referred. Perhaps the State Department was alluding to the alleged novichok poisoning of the Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny in August 2020. On what grounds that failed assassination necessitated a grand, multi-agency training exercise in dealing with "targeted WMD attacks" is anyone's guess.

Whatever the purpose of the US training program was, Ukrainian security personnel can now claim they have the training to identify the precise "medical symptoms that indicate WMD material."

This is significant, because ever since the conflict began, Kiev has exhibited an endless enthusiasm for lying, having distorted or even outright concocted events and facts whole-cloth to advance its objectives on countless occasions.

The most dangerous claims advanced by Ukrainian propagandists have been reinforced by the supposed authority of de Bretton-Gordon, who has argued that Russian chemical strikes were absolutely inevitable, based his prediction on his opinion that Moscow "has no morals or scruples."

The self-styled chemical weapons expert has even cautioned that Putin could deploy nuclear weapons or create a pandemic "more deadly than Covid" with an Ebola weapon. He has further speculated that Russian forces may unleash a deadly virus seized from one of several Pentagon-funded biolabs in Ukraine, then blame it on the US. From a September 05 2020 Times of London profile of Hamish de Bretton-Gordon

From Syria to Ukraine, it is happening again

In a typical media appearance, on March 10th, de Bretton Gordon told London's LBC radio show that "nothing is off the table at this stage." Among the horrors he forecast was the use of white phosphorous "to set towns and cities on fire."

Justifying his certainty, de Bretton-Gordon forcefully asserted, "the only way to take a large city or town ultimately is to use chemical weapons." He pointed to Syria to prove his point – but without referencing his own pivotal role in escalating that conflict through the manipulation of evidence and scientifically bereft fear-mongering in the media.

Now, de Bretton-Gordon has resurfaced at the center of the aggressive push for escalation with a nuclear armed Russia. If his role in Syria is any guide, a series of cynical deceptions could be on the way.

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.