Standing strong against “Russian aggression” has become the only acceptable US position on Ukraine for Washington and mainstream media, reminiscent of the relentless anti-Saddam propaganda campaign running up to the Iraq War. This time the demonization of Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, substitutes for any nuanced account of events in Ukraine.
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates insists Putin is “trying to re-establish Russian influence,” and the State Department condemns Russia’s “illegal actions” and its “incredible act of aggression.”
In response to this alleged aggression, the US stirs the cauldron of a new Cold War, sending destroyers into the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, scheduling US-NATO troop movements in East Europe, and tightening economic sanctions on Russia. But if we learned any lessons from the belligerent lies that led us into Iraq, we now need to question this latest single-minded messaging fed to us by the US media and government.
Here, then, are some inconvenient facts from the world press, unavailable in mainstream media, for us to consider:
In early 1990, as the USSR collapsed, then US Secretary of State James Baker assured the Kremlin that there would be “no extension of … NATO one inch to the east.” Despite Baker’s promises, NATO has expanded steadily eastward into a dozen former Soviet satellite countries, threatening Russia’s borders.
Ukraine represents the latest effort to extend Western economic policies and eventually NATO to Russia’s doorstep. President Yanukovych was not receptive to the West’s hardline economic demands and was turning toward Russia. So thousands were paid with Western money to participate in the allegedly grassroots Maidan protests, and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland went to Kiev to personally choose Ukraine’s post-coup government leaders. Nuland acknowledged that the US had spent $5 billion over the past 20 years to build up “pro-democracy” forces in Ukraine.
Though many Maidan protesters were motivated by a desire to join the European Union, neo-Nazi elements made up a significant number, and were later awarded four ministries, including national security, in the new government. They remain a violent force within the unelected Kiev government and have been responsible for violent incidents in the East, such as the recent massacre in Odessa.
Much of the unrest in eastern Ukraine was driven by fear over austerity measures threatened by the pro-Western government. This in part was why in Crimea, people voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia, although the US still blames Moscow’s aggression for this voluntary annexation.
Washington still insists that Russia organized and funded the pro-Russian separatists in Eastern cities. But the New York Times reported the separatists to be mostly indigenous former Ukrainian or Soviet soldiers unaligned with Moscow, using outdated weaponry rather than sophisticated Russian weapons.
Just recently, separatist leaders, rebuffing Putin’s own call for a delay, insisted on holding a referendum that resulted in an overwhelming vote for independence from the unelected Kiev government. Russian and European leaders are now trying to broker ceasefire negotiations between Kiev and the separatists, but the US refuses to recognize the separatists’ independent legitimacy.
This is no surprise, since CIA Director John Brennan, notorious mastermind of Obama’s “kill list,” made a secret visit to Kiev in April, apparently to assist and fund Kiev’s coup government in a violent crackdown on these separatists. So-called “anti-terrorist” campaigns in Eastern Ukraine have escalated since Brennan’s visit.
The above account of the Ukraine crisis stands in stark contrast to anti-Russian stories fed to us by US mainstream media. These same media dutifully served Washington’s bellicose interests in 2003 by demonizing Saddam and his alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Of course, in the current crisis, there is little doubt that Putin has his own interests and his own propaganda. But it is our US government and its media mouthpieces that have lied to us before and are now again. Let’s not be fooled this time, for the consequences could be catastrophic.
Doug Noble is a longtime writer-activist with Rochester Against War and Metro Justice.
This article appears in May 21-27, 2014.
as an american,i do beleive that we have a trustworthy government,but its no secret that there is no honest politician.when bush jr was in office he declared war with saddam and other supposed iraqi terrorists,because he wanted the american government to police the world. 9/11 was a trick by government agents to pin something on these supposed terrorists,when they had nothing to do with any attack on us,the boston marathon bombing was similar to this trick to further plant something on fake terrorists.politics is a game of the best liar and there is a winner….the president of the united states
Author doesn’t say anything regarding memorandum signed in 1994 in Budapest:
The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances is a political agreement signed in Budapest, Hungary on 5 December 1994, providing security assurances by its signatories relating to Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The Memorandum was originally signed by three nuclear powers, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents.
The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine as well as those of Belarus and Kazakhstan. As a result Ukraine gave up the world’s third largest nuclear weapons stockpile between 1994 and 1996.
Following the 2014 Crimean crisis, the U.S., Canada and the U.K. all separately stated that Russian involvement is in breach of its obligations to Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum, and in clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Here is better explanation about fascism in Ukraine:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/mar/20/fascism-russia-and-ukraine/?insrc=rel
As an American of Ukrainian descent, I’m not picking sides, I’m just praying for peace.
The author in his anti-war activism not only repeats all the cliches of the kremlin propaganda, but even goes beyond it.
Not even Kremlin takes the recent farce in eastern Ukraine seriously enough to call it “referenda” without quotation marks.
I do not agree with some of my Ukrainian friends, who are fast to blame the author of being a payed pro-kremlin mouthpiece.
But I blame him of being lazy and naive, and as a consequence – immoral.
Mr. Noble,
You get your information from only one source just because it fits your ideology so well. If only you spent some time researching the readily available information from Ukraine you wouldn’t call the Russian aggression “alleged”. You would repeat the myth about thousands of payed Maidan activists. To make a long story short, you wouldn’t write this piece. Maybe, you would write another one – about the striking differences between the belligerent conduct of the American administration in 2003 and the indecisive conduct of the current administration.
I am a former Russian citizen. It is hard for me to see that my home country became a fascist state, an aggressor. People who do not see it fall into two major categories: those who are not really interested in what is going on there, and those who get their information about Russia and the world from Russian TV.
It looks like you belong to both categories.
The article is not based on “inconvenient facts”, like the author puts it, but on the Russian propaganda pieces. The author displays a pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian, anti-American and anti-Western point of view. He is lucky to live in the U.S. and not Russia – where such article criticizing the Russian government would not be published and would cost him his freedom.
Mr. Noble’s open affection for soviet style communism/socialism is on full display here. He is in disbelief that his beloved communism/socialism is being exposed worldwide for the inhumane fraud that it is. So what does mr. Noble do as a response? He fails at attempting to slander and discredit the ukranian people struggling to free themselves from it. Pathetic.
I am an American that just returned from Russia because the non-profit I was working for was shut down. I have two graduate degrees related to the study of the former Soviet Union and have spent nearly five years there.
The assertions that the US frequently misled and even lied to Russia regarding NATO enlargement are largely true. We have engaged in an extremely flawed and often disingenuous policy towards Russia since 1991.
That said, where is your evidence that the US was paying people to protest in Kyiv? I know hundreds of western-minded people who participated in the protests in the last year in Ukraine (by the way I speak Ukrainian, have published articles on national identity in Ukraine, and have been to Crimea and Donetsk) and none of them were on the US payroll. That is a Kremlin assertion. People protested because they were not having their needs served by a corrupt and inept government. And to deny that Russia is not getting involved in developments in Eastern Ukraine would make one wonder if you’re not on the Kremlin’s payroll. As someone that consumes Russian news media on a daily basis (both official and opposition) it’s obvious that Russia is very involved. Of course, they are not sending ground troops, but don’t deny that there are thousands of troops amassed at the border (a message in and of itself), communications, and encouragement. And never mind the many Russian citizens that have crossed the border to get things rolling in Eastern Ukraine.
This statement is absurd:
“Much of the unrest in eastern Ukraine was driven by fear over austerity measures threatened by the pro-Western government. This in part was why in Crimea, people voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia, although the US still blames Moscow’s aggression for this voluntary annexation.”
I was in Russia the whole time. I don’t know where you get this information from. I don’t even think anyone would agree with you here, neither anti-Russian Americans, pro-European Ukrainians, Russian nationalists, or residents of Donetsk.
I would love to debate you, but please spend a few years learning about what’s going on there first. This analysis is nearly as bad as the US government’s.
All the back and forth from various state press agencies aside, there are a handful of facts about Ukraine that are pretty clear.
There was a democracy in Ukraine with a democratically elected President – that he was corrupt, and his govt inefficient and largely unliked by many simply means they are no different from most governments across the globe.
While most of the Maidan protesters simply wanted a better life and felt Yanukovitch was sacrificing a great opportunity, the elements that escalated the conflict to a deadly one were absolutely neo-Nazi and hard right. The photos don’t lie, plenty of neo-nazi symbols on the barricades and adorning the riot shields and garb of the anti-govt combatants. Far right leaders were rewarded with several high level posts in the current govt, also not propaganda. The resignation of many regional elected officials associated with the ousted Part of Regions, by threat of a hammer or bat to the head, also not propaganda.
What Yanukovitch ultimately wound up sacrificing was a continuity of legitimate govt by not responding with enough force when the protests turned into a violent coup attempt (pics of law enforcement being hit with firebombs also not propaganda). If the capital of Ukraine had been in Donetsk or even Odessa, it never would have blown up the way it did. Keep in mind the wretched hypocrisy of the EU and USA, threatening all manner of consequences if Yanukovitch used force to restore order when folks were burning people and government buildings, yet they rubber stamp use of artillery and air support on people who aren’t threatening anyone and whose only initial demand was a referendum on greater autonomy. If only they weren’t sitting on a sizable shale gas formation, or dealing with a legitimate, accountable government, they might have gotten somewhere.
Voters across the country and primarily across the East had the legitimate expression of their political will flushed down the toilet. It was many weeks of buildup and requests to the coup imposed government for a referendum on Federalization before the E Ukraine residents started to take political matters into their own hands. I cannot fathom how the democratic political will of these people can be so casually disregarded as Russian manipulation, yet the product of a violent overthrow can be immediately accepted as the legitimate voice of the entire country’s will. Note, the coup imposed government was quick to accept an EU deal with no legitimate mandate – what cannot be done democratically, the EU, IMF, USA is always ready to accept on the decree of a self-imposed government – send in the CIA and assorted psyops and military advisers to safeguard the investment!
This is tied in to the delay of the “interim” government in responding to the Eastern region backlash – they had to import troops and recruit a “National Guard” from hard right activists in the Western parts of the country, the locals wouldn’t shoot at their fellow citizens. These can only be called paramilitaries, and their arrival on the scene was punctuated by a willingness to use force where unquestionably, dialogue would have sufficed.
Another fact – Yanukovitch and Putin weren’t good buddies. The EU integration deal was scrapped because it wasn’t a good deal for Ukraine’s economy or banking sector aside from the agricultural sector(read the details and how it would have worked when the rubber hit the road). To top it off, it would have trashed the export potential of the only consistently functional industrial region of the country, the Eastern third. Yanukovitch might have done a better job of explaining this to his countrymen, but likely wouldn’t have helped. The EU deal is all about access to Ukraine’s natural resources, much like the recent Colombian trade deal with the US, it has nothing to do with democracy or a beneficial outcome for the majority of Ukraine’s citizens.
A final thought when comparing propaganda from various state sources, one would be hard pressed to find a more consistently dishonest source of information than the US State Dept, anywhere in the world. Generally speaking if one is interested in the truth you can start with an assumption the State Dept is lying and work backward trying to prove otherwise – is frequently impossible. If one simply waits a few months even the mainstream media will eventually have to publish the truth regarding their overheated falsehoods …in a trickle on page 5 or 6.
To Martin J.
Your thoughtful, knowledgeable comments here encourage me to ask if you
would consider joining a panel on Ukraine that Rochester Against War
(RAW) plans to hold in the near future. We already have confirmed a UR professor as a panelist and are seeking a panelist from the local Ukrainian-American community.
RAW has organized many such events during the past decade, in order
to offer public discussion of critical issues not adequately debated
in mainstream media. The complexity of the Ukraine crisis, ignored by
mainstream media, is a case in point.
I am the author of this City piece and a co-founder of RAW over a decade ago. Please contact me at dougdnoble@gmail.com. Thanks. Doug Noble