Tag: Ultra-Nationalists

The Propaganda War

Thursday 14 April 2022

Within Ukraine, there is clear evidence of a disinformation mill churning out outrageous anti-Russian propaganda that is repeated by western Ukrainian journalists in English on their social media pages for western consumption. Naturally, this is picked up by western media and treated — uncritically — as news from the war. It is interesting to note that Lapatina also contributes in English to The Guardian and The New York Times. … More The Propaganda War

Partisan Hacks and Russian Rapists

Sunday 10 April 2022

Rape, while a particularly egregious and henious crime, is and has always been a feature of warfare. Women and girls face the threat of sexual assault and rape in peacetime, in every town and city in the world, surrounded by well-funtioning policing and legal institutional structures. All too often in wartime, these civilian structures are among the first things to breakdown; making people vulnerable to all kinds of danger, violence, and violations. … More Partisan Hacks and Russian Rapists

Serious Questions about Bucha

Tuesday 5 April 2022

One does not have to be ‘pro-Russian’ or a ‘Putin apologist’ to ask these questions. Bucha is a story about ordinary human beings caught up in an awful situation. Journalism should be about seeking the truth and serving people in a healthy and informed democracy. What we know for certain is that hundreds of people have been deliberately targeted and ruthlessly and mercilessly murdered by a state actor. What we do not know is which state actor perpetrated this despicable crime … More Serious Questions about Bucha

The Horror of Ukrainian Nationalism

Thursday 24 March 2022

There is nowhere else in the world where ideological Nazis enjoy the legal and political protection Nazis in Ukraine do. In January 2018 the Kyiv city municipal council signed an agreement with the ultra-nationalist C14 group, allowing them to form a ‘municipal guard’ — an auxiliary police force — to work with the Ukrainian national police, and twenty one other towns and cities have relationships like this with the far-right. … More The Horror of Ukrainian Nationalism

Russian Invasion of Ukraine (Assessment)

Wednesday 23 March 2022

We have not witnessed a hard push into the interior or to the west of Ukraine because the Russians are not interested in the interior or west of Ukraine. Strategically speaking, even a cursory glance at the map shows the Russian army either has or is within striking distance of everything of any value. This is Russian military doctrine — an economic war rather than ‘Shock and Awe.’ … More Russian Invasion of Ukraine (Assessment)

Why Ukraine’s Nazis are Different

Tuesday 22 March 2022

Ukrainian Nazis, however, are fairly unique in the fact that they have both a historical link and a political line of succession to the Nazism of the Third Reich, to the Schutzstaffel (the SS), and to the Nazi extermination camps. The Nazism of the Svobado Party, the Azov battalion, and many of the other Nazi groupings in Ukraine is a fossilised and authentic Third Reich Nazism. … More Why Ukraine’s Nazis are Different

How the US Instigated War in Ukraine

Monday 21 March 2022

As the old democracies know, the people do not always vote as they should — and this is what happened in Ukraine. From 1996 the State Department had always taken an active role in helping Ukraine choose the political leadership Washington wanted, but when the people had other ideas in the 2010 presidential election the US began to rethink its approach. … More How the US Instigated War in Ukraine

Protecting the Ukrainian Nazis

Wednesday 16 March 2022

An old bait and switch happened. No longer are we to be concerned. The focus has moved from the far-right’s military strength and its danger to Ukrainian democracy to its irrelevance within the democratic institutions and lack of popular support. Because so few people vote for the Nazis and because ‘Zelenskiy is Jewish,’ there is nothing to worry about. The narrative of Nazis being a threat to Ukraine was replaced with deflectionary asides about Putin’s fixation on the heroic myths of the Second World War and the Jewishness of the Ukrainian president. … More Protecting the Ukrainian Nazis

The Future of Ukraine

Monday 14 March 2022

There can be no question that this new configuration will establish the territorial boundaries of the new Cold War. And nothing of this should come as much of a surprise to anyone in Washington or Brussels. George Kennan and Henry Kissinger warned that NATO expansion into eastern Europe would provoke a conflict with Russia. Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin each expressed their concerns over the extension of US hegemony in the region, and in 2015 Noam Chomsky reminded the West what the end of Ukrainian neutrality would trigger. … More The Future of Ukraine

US Involvement in Ukraine

Tuesday 8 March 2022

US foreign policy strategists — or gamers — are not interested in defending Ukraine. They are interested first and foremost in weakening Russia. In this, then, Ukraine has been instrumentalised by the State Department as a theatre of war in which Ukrainians — trained and armed by the United States and its allies — will wage a protracted war of attrition against Russia which they simply cannot hope to win. Washington, however, does not need them to win. It needs them to fight for as long as they can and inflict as much damage on Russia as they can. This is ‘winning’ for the United States. … More US Involvement in Ukraine