A Tale of Two Pills: Media bias in reporting Ivermectin and ensitrelvir
By Guy Gin | Making (Covid) Waves in Japan | October 21, 2022
Last month, Japanese pharma company Kowa put out a press release of the results of its 1030-person double-blind randomised control trial (RCT) of Ivermectin conducted at 54 institutions in Japan and 2 in Thailand.
Here’s how the results were reported in The Japan Times.
Not effective, you hear! I mean, look at the photo. You don’t get Ivermectin from a pharmacy; you get it from a farmer. Anyway, on to the trial.
A clinical trial was unable to prove the efficacy of the antiparasitic medicine ivermectin against coronavirus variants, according to Japanese drugmaker Kowa Co., which has indicated that it will no longer seek approval for the drug as a COVID-19 treatment.
So this means that not only has IVM not been widely used in Japan (despite what many people outside Japan think) but probably never will be. So what happened? Did the people who took the anti-vaxers’ favourite veterinary medicine all get sick?
In the trial, 1,030 patients with mild COVID-19 were orally administered the drug daily for three days and then compared to others given a placebo.
Ivermectin was found to be safe and few people given the drug developed severe symptoms, Kowa said. But both the group given the drug and the one administered a placebo saw improvements in symptoms, meaning the trial did not show the drug’s efficacy over the placebo as a COVID-19 treatment.
So the reason Kowa was “unable to prove the efficacy” wasn’t because IVM is “not effective”; it was because almost everyone in the placebo group got better quickly too. According to Kowa’s press release, “Both intervention and placebo arms showed milder symptoms around 4 days after the start of administration” and “There were no deaths and hardly any severe cases.”
Although Kowa hasn’t released the full trial details or results, the 0% mortality rate among the 500+ participants in the placebo arm suggests they were mostly at very low risk of severe disease. So the results don’t show IVM was ineffective; they show no medication was necessary for these participants to prevent symptoms worsening or for them to recover quickly.
This a not a new issue in studies on early treatments. Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch noted the same thing in RCTs showing non-significant effects for another “controversial” drug, hydroxychloroquine.
The RCT studies proclaimed supposedly as definitively showing no benefit of HCQ use in outpatients have all involved almost entirely low-risk subjects with virtually no hospitalization or mortality events and are uninformative and irrelevant for bearing upon these risks according to HCQ use in high-risk outpatients.
When tested on larger numbers of people for mortality benefit, IVM often performs a bit better.
Next, let’s compare how the JT reported Kowa’s IVM trial press release with how Reuters reported Shionogi’s press release for its 1821-person RCT of its anti-Covid drug ensitrelvir.
Japan’s Shionogi & Co Ltd said on Wednesday its oral treatment for COVID-19 demonstrated a significant reduction in symptoms compared with a placebo in a Phase III trial in Asia.
The drug, a protease inhibitor known as ensitrelvir, met its primary endpoint in a trial conducted among predominantly vaccinated patients with mild to moderate cases of COVID-19, the company said in a statement.
A significant reduction in symptoms! So how many people were kept out of the ICU? Well, the Reuters article didn’t clarify what the main result was, so here it is from Shionogi’s press release.
the median time to resolution of the five COVID-19 symptoms [stuffy or runny nose, sore throat, cough, feeling hot or feverish, and low energy or tiredness] was significantly reduced in those treated with the low dose of ensitrelvir (the dose level submitted for approval in Japan) compared to placebo: 167.9 hours versus 192.2 hours, a statistically significant difference of 24 hours (p=0.04).
Yep, ensitrelvir cleared runny noses 1 day quicker than a placebo. So the media reporting of Shionogi’s results wasn’t dishonest, but it wasn’t exactly candid.
Similar to in Kowa’s IVM trial, no deaths were reported among the 900+ placebo recipients in Shionogi’s trial, which again suggests they were very low risk. So these results give us no idea about whether ensitrelvir will prevent the progression to severe disease in high-risk immunocompromised people, which is what actually matters.
Shionogi also reported that no serious adverse events occurred in the intervention arm. But one problem with not trialing a medication on the type of high-risk people who will actually need it is that the trial probably won’t pick up major safety signals that become clear later.
But as El Gato Malo has said, pharma doesn’t make mistakes in trial design; it makes choices.
Moscow comments on alleged military use of Iranian drones
Samizdat | October 18, 2022
All weapons used by troops have Russian designations, Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov has said, reiterating a denial of reports that Moscow was using Iranian-supplied drones against Kiev.
“No, we have no such information. Russian hardware is being used. You know it well. It has Russian designations. All further questions can be addressed to the Defense Ministry,” Peskov said on Tuesday.
American and Ukrainian officials have claimed on many occasions that Russia received various unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) from Iran and was using them in the conflict with Ukraine.
On Monday, multiple drones were spotted flying over the Ukrainian capital Kiev, with troops desperately trying to shoot them down with small arms, according to videos from the scene.
At least one “kamikaze drone” was reportedly hit and crashed into an apartment block, setting off a deadly explosion. A soldier interviewed by Ukrainian television claimed that he was among those who managed to divert the aircraft off its course with gunfire, adding that he later helped rescue people from under the rubble at the crash site.
The mayor of Kiev, Vitaly Klitschko, said that Russia attacked the city with 28 drones on Monday morning and that the Ukrainian military managed to intercept “most” of them. He reported a total of five explosions, including the one at the residential building. Other drones apparently reached their intended targets, including energy infrastructure facilities.
The drones, designated Geran-2 in Russia, are allegedly a localized version of the Iranian-made Shahed-136. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky claimed last week that Russia had acquired as many as 2,400 Shahed UAVs, as he asked G7 members to provide more air defense systems.
Last month Ukraine cut diplomatic ties with Iran over the alleged supply of weapons to Russia. Neither Moscow nor Tehran confirmed the purported purchase.
Kiev reportedly urged Israel to ramp up intelligence-sharing in response to Moscow’s alleged deal with Iran. Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Nachman Shai said last Sunday that he supported taking Kiev’s side because of the claimed Iranian involvement.
Submission to Canada’s Public Order Emergency Commission
Fearless Canada | October 16, 2022
As a non-partisan, volunteer activist group, Fearless Canada was present at the beginning and on several other occasions during the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. As such, many of our members witnessed first-hand what the situation looked like on the ground and how it all began. We took extensive video footage of the events during the first weekend from the moment when truckers were being directed toward Parliament by Ottawa police. We have decided to submit our evaluation of the events as well as our strongly held view that the invocation of the Emergency Measures Act (hereafter referred to as “EMA”) by the Trudeau government was not only inappropriate, but also unlawful and unconstitutional.
We must first unequivocally state that, in our view, the Trudeau government’s decision to invoke the EMA in no way met the legal threshold to do so. The usage of the EMA is reserved for exceptional circumstances in which a serious foreign or existential threat imperils the security of the nation. Such security threats would be typically related to war, as the older, subsequently replaced War Measures Act aimed to address. In no conceivable way could the temporary discomfort or inconvenience borne by Ottawa citizens or businesses justify the use of an Act that is meant to aid the government in protecting the nation against threats of an incalculably larger scale. As such, the purpose of the Commission is not to determine whether the invocation of the EMA served the Trudeau government in its objective to deescalate the so-called “occupation” of Ottawa’s downtown core, but rather to assess whether the legal threshold for its invocation was met.
The Early Days in Ottawa
Our group arrived in Ottawa in the early afternoon of January 28, 2022. The first thing we noticed was Ottawa police directing truckers and their rigs onto Wellington Street towards Parliament. The atmosphere was festive and light despite the frigid weather. As more protesters arrived in Ottawa over the course of the weekend, we would quickly observe that the crowds were both peaceful and diverse. Men, women, and children from all different backgrounds and walks of life gathered in the capital with a common goal. They demanded that the Trudeau government lift measures that, in their view, were both unjustified and discriminatory in nature. As a result of those measures, the majority of protesters in Ottawa were themselves directly impacted in profound and often irreversible ways.
In talking with dozens of truckers and protesters, we learned that many had lost their jobs, connections to loved ones, access to essential services, and much more. While speaking with police officers, we learned that many felt they were unlawfully coerced into taking a COVID vaccine in order to keep their jobs. Our impression on the ground was that the majority of police officers were in fact aligned with the goals of the protest. They, too, wanted to see an immediate end to damaging and ineffective policies that divided our nation along medical lines previously acknowledged as a matter of private and personal concern.
Legacy Media and the Trudeau Government’s Portrayal of the Freedom Convoy
While in Ottawa, our group kept an eye on the news coming out of legacy media outlets such as the CBC, CTV News, and Global News. It became impossible not to notice that a concerted narrative had quickly taken shape to misrepresent the situation and characterize protesters as far-right extremists, racists, antisemites, and more. The unjustified slander of protesters directly conflicted with our experience on the ground. What we saw was a festive and peaceful rally, replete with volunteers offering food and shelter from the cold, routinely cleaning streets and sidewalks, and organizing fun activities for the kids. At no time did we spot a single racist or Nazi in the vast crowds, as was incessantly suggested by both the Liberal government and the mainstream media. From what we could tell, these characterizations were fabricated in order to serve a narrative that aimed to discredit the legitimacy and lawfulness of the protest.
As time went on, the media’s portrayal of the situation continued to unhinge itself from reality. The press published stories about imminent violence, a van loaded with illegal firearms, and more. None of these allegations turned out to be true. Yet, the misrepresentation of the situation had already reached the eyes and ears of Canadians from coast to coast, very few of which witnessed the event themselves. But by then, the damage had already been done, just as it seemed to have been intended.
The Invocation of the EMA
At the moment the Trudeau government invoked the EMA, it must be noted that the protest in Ottawa was already in the process of de-escalation. The protest organizers and their lawyers had already brokered a dismantlement deal with the Ottawa mayor and police services. Truckers were already on their way out of the downtown core and the blockades at two Canadian points of entry had already long-since been dismantled. Yet rather than follow an organized de-escalation plan agreed to by all factions, Ottawa police and the Trudeau government instead opted to escalate the situation by using violence and propaganda against Canadian citizens. The impacts of the invocation of the EMA were profound and unwarranted.
Immediately ensuing the invocation of the EMA, police and governmental authorities froze protesters’ bank accounts and deployed violent anti-riot squads all over the downtown core of Ottawa. Several protesters were injured as police again escalated tensions using all manner of crowd dispersal techniques. In the days following the invocation of the EMA, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland wasted no time in announcing that certain aspects of the EMA would be written into law, granting broad and unconstitutional powers to government without the requisite EMA enacted. It had become clear that the Trudeau government had a predetermined objective in enacting the EMA, one that would grant greater leverage over political dissidents and, more broadly, Canadians that disagreed with its ideology. This in itself represents an egregious misuse of the EMA in order to further a political agenda.
Conclusion
The volunteer activists at Fearless Canada include Canadian scholars, lawyers, professors, small business owners, and artists. We unanimously and unequivocally feel that the Trudeau government’s invocation of the EMA as a response to ongoing protests in Ottawa was both unlawful and unconstitutional. We submit that the government manipulated public opinion by fabricating evidence of unlawful activity in Ottawa and invoked the EMA under false pretenses in order to abet their predetermined agenda. We believe that the evidence overwhelmingly supports our position, and we look forward to seeing all of it brought to light during the Commission’s discovery process.
This statement was authored by the executive of Fearless Canada and endorsed by members.
The statement has been submitted to the Public Order Emergency Commission of Canada, which began public hearings on Thursday, October 13, which will run every weekday until November 25. Live hearings can be viewed here, and True North Centre publishes a recap for each day.
Corona is a Flat Circle
For the third autumn in a row, the German press screeches about overwhelmed hospitals, and there’s no reason to think they’ll ever stop.
eugyppius | October 15, 2022
It’s virus season, and the headlines are already here: Many New Corona Infections: Hospitals Demand Indoor Mask Mandate — Lauterbach Already Hopes for Corona Restrictions — High Covid Incidences: Medical Association Wants Compulsory FFP2 Masks Indoors — Corona: Baden-Württemberg Health Minister Considers Mask Mandate Possible. I could add a dozen more, but you get the idea. It’s the same reheated pablum from last year. Hospital staff have their backs against the wall; a new tide of Corona patients threatens to overwhelm their meagre resources; the Apocalypse threatens if we don’t immediately return to indoor plastic face coverings.
If you look at hospitalisations, though, you’ll have a hard time finding any crisis at all. Here, for example, are hospitalisations for severe acute respiratory infections since 2017, as published last week by the Robert Koch Institut:
The red dot is where we are right now. Admissions are totally in line with the pre-pandemic era. The ICU admissions tell exactly the same story:
Nor is anybody really dying at the moment:
To the extent that there is any crisis at all here, it’s of our own making. Hospital patients with Corona diagnoses have to be treated according to strict isolation protocols, in special wards. These rituals are staff-intensive, and they effectively reduce across-the-board hospital capacity. It’s the same as our quarantine laws, which induce worker shortages by forcing millions of otherwise healthy Germans into isolation whenever they test positive. We could declare a rhinovirus pandemic tomorrow and suffer all the same problems from the common cold, and by the same token we could end all of this ourselves in an instant, by abolishing our foolishness and choosing to ignore SARS-2. Instead, we insist that this virus is dangerous and through our own behaviour we make it so.
The most onerous part of all this, is the inability of the German press to find a new narrative, ask new questions, or to change their reporting in any way at all — despite the totally different behaviour of Omicron and the near-universal levels of immune exposure to SARS-2. I know some of you complain that I repeat the same themes and arguments overmuch, but Germany has descended into some kind of purgatorial alternate reality, where it’s always March 2020, and our hospitals are always on the verge of melting down, and we never have enough information, so we just have to try masking and social distancing and hope for the best. They’re wrong about everything and they just keep telling the same lies over and over.
As the Climate Refuses to Break Down on Cue, the Pseudoscience of ‘Attribution Studies’ Rises Up to Plug the Holes
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | OCTOBER 14, 2022
The last few years have seen the climate alarmist industry go all in on ‘attributing’ bad weather to humans causing the climate to change. As global warming goes off the boil and the climate resolutely fails to break down on cue, an entire industry of pseudoscience has sprung up to scour the world and catastrophise every unusual natural weather event or disaster. It will not come as a surprise to discover that such attribution is based on climate models. As we shall see, the models do nothing more than produce worthless guesses.
When Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT noted that the current climate narrative is “absurd”, but trillions of dollars says it is not “absurd”, he was undoubtedly thinking of the product of climate models. Roger Pielke, a noted science writer and a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, is particularly scathing about attribution work: “I can think of no other area of research where the relaxing of rigour and standards has been encouraged by researchers in order to generate claims more friendly to headlines, political advocacy and even lawsuits. But there you go.”
It is simple to explain what ‘attribution’ models do. First they simulate a climate with no human involvement that does not exist, and then compare it with another simulation that is supposed to reflect the involvement of humans burning fossil fuel. Any weather event at a local level that is magnified in the second is, abracadabra, said to be due to human-caused climate change.
To take such results seriously it must be assumed that the models have correct information in the first place. An inability over 40 years for climate models to predict an accurate temperature would seem to indicate they are work in progress. Ignorance of the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) number – the amount the Earth will warm if carbon dioxide is doubled in the atmosphere – would be considered another handicap. In addition, it is interesting to observe some academics attempting to produce a perfect model capable of such precision when they are mapping a climate system that is non-linear with numerous, only partially understood, powerful forces at work. How anyone can take the results seriously, with all the inevitable ‘garbage in-garbage out’ possibilities, is a mystery. Measuring cats in a sack might be considered a marginally easier task.
Attribution studies fail the falsification principle outlined by the science philosopher Karl Popper. This is held to be the test that differentiates real science from pseudoscience. Any hypothesis must be testable and conceivably proved false. Unless a suggestion can be tested in this way, it is opinion, guesswork, or, more uncharitably, crystal ball-gazing. Stating, for instance, that a bad storm was caused by humans when a natural explanation is also available, or calculating that wildfires will consume so many more acres than before, is unprovable. It therefore fails the test to be termed science.
Of course, the attribution claims are all over the popular prints. Within just a few days of last July’s U.K. brief heatwave, the Guardian was reporting: “Climate breakdown made U.K. heatwave 10 times more likely, study finds.” Of course there was a natural explanation for the soaring summer temperature, caused by southern winds being supercharged by an adjacent intense low pressure system. Friederike Otto from the Grantham Institute at Imperial, an operation partly-funded by the green billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham, said the 10 times finding was worrying, and if carbon emissions were not rapidly cut it could be “even worse” than previously thought.
According to Roger Pielke, the rise of individual ‘event attribution’ studies coincides with frustration that the IPCC has not ”definitively concluded” that many types of extreme weather have become commonplace. In his view they offer “comfort and support” to those focused on climate advocacy. Since they fill a strong demand in politics, Pielke suggests they are “here to stay”.
Friederike Otto is at the forefront of such studies and is the co-lead of World Weather Attribution (WWA), a body that specialises in near-instant weather attributions. On her Grantham CV, Otto claims WWA provides “timely scientific evidence” on single events, “paving the way for new sustainability litigation”.
Meanwhile any scientific work that, by suggesting the climate is not breaking down, is inconvenient for those promoting the command-and-control Net Zero political project, is be suppressed. Otto was one of four “experts” used by state-owned Agence France-Presse in a footling ‘fact check’ of a recent paper from four leading Italian scientists. They argued that a climate emergency is not supported by the data. She said the authors, including two physics professors, were “of course” not writing in good faith. “If the journal cares about science they should withdraw it loudly and publicly, saying that it should never have been published,” she demanded.
Contacted by the Daily Sceptic, she added that the paper was “bad science”. She obviously feels able to try to cancel professorial physics authorities since she has a “diploma” in physics from the University of Potsdam. Otto’s doctorate was in the philosophy of science, and before joining Grantham she spent 10 years teaching in the School of Geography at Oxford University. “I am not trying to ban anyone and I do not think it is relevant whether their first degree is in art history or physics,” she explained
Otto is also behind a WWA guide for journalists titled: “Reporting extreme weather and climate change“. In a foreword, the former BBC Today editor Sarah Sands bemoans the time when the former U.K. Chancellor Nigel Lawson managed to suggest there had been no increase in what she called extreme weather. I wish we had this guide for journalists to help us mount a more effective challenge to his claim, wrote Sands. These days , she enthused, attribution studies have given us significant insight into the horsemen of the climate apocalypse.
“In this way we are able to move from anecdote and conjecture, from superstition and wishful thinking, to science. We have evidence and we have facts. They are a secure foundation for news,” she said.
Science? Unverified guesswork would be more accurate. Popper must be turning in his grave.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
Perfidious Putin!
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 4, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin has certainly been a naughty boy! The always unreliable and unofficial government-originating disinformation source The Hill is reporting that Moscow has spent the equivalent of $300,000,000 in an effort to “influence” world politics in its favor. The story relies on and follows a New York Times special report which again seeks to revive the claim that the Kremlin has been interfering effectively in American elections. Is it a coincidence that all the Russian bashing is surfacing right now before US elections at a time when the President Joe Biden Administration is agonizing over what it describes as sometimes “foreign supported” domestic extremists? I don’t think so.
The Hill report establishes the framework, claiming that “Russia has provided at least $300 million to political parties and political leaders since 2014 in a covert attempt to influence foreign politics, the US State Department alleges. Multiple news outlets reported that a cable released by the State Department reveals that Russia has likely spent at least hundreds of millions more on parties and officials who are sympathetic to Russia… According to the Associated Press… Russia used front organizations to send money to preferred causes or politicians. The organizations include think tanks in Europe and state-owned entities in Central America, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a press briefing on Tuesday that Russia’s election meddling is an ‘assault on sovereignty… It is an effort to chip away at the ability of people around the world to choose the government that they see best fit to represent them, to represent their interests, to represent their values.’”
And why is Russia behaving as it allegedly does? According to another State Department source who spoke to The Hill the Joe Biden Administration’s concern is not regarding any single country but the entire world as “we continue to face challenges against democratic societies.” Oddly enough, that Russia should be disinclined to waste its money and other resources on such a quixotic objective never appears to have occurred to the Department of State or to the editors at The Hill.
Typically, the State Department has shared information with select media but has refused to publicly release any parts of the cable which allegedly provide the intelligence-based evidence supporting the claims of Russian meddling. The Hill, perhaps inadvertently, reveals what the whole story really is about when it concludes its piece with “Intelligence assessments have determined that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election in spreading disinformation online that was designed to help then-candidate Donald Trump over his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Russia also tried to help Trump in his reelection battle against President Biden in 2020.” So yes, it’s all about Moscow helping Trump against the Democratic candidates. Interestingly, however, most non-Democratic Party aligned sources have come to agree that it was the Democrats who were trying to damage Trump in 2016 through use of a fabricated dossier that sought to impugn his character and portray him as a Russian stooge. Far worse, they also used the national security apparatus to “get Trump.”
The Times adds more detail and serves inter alia as a puff piece for the Biden Administration’s foreign policy vis-à-vis Russia. It is based clearly on information provided by unnamed government sources and is largely devoid of any actual evidence, though it does cite some names of Russians to provide authenticity. This is a common trick used in the media and government, particularly by intelligence agencies, to make fabricated material look genuine. One giveaway that the reporting should be considered suspect occurs in the very first paragraph where it states that “Russia has covertly given at least $300 million to political parties, officials and politicians in more than two dozen countries since 2014, and plans to transfer hundreds of millions more, with the goal of exerting political influence and swaying elections.” If the New York Times is privy to Russian top-level planning, even via leaked information from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other government sources, it would be surprising to learn that the US has that capability. If the National Security Agency (NSA) has secretly broken Russian secure communications to obtain such information, it would be a major security breach and a violation of the Espionage Act of 1918 for any American news outlet to suggest that, indicating pari passu that the report is bogus.
And then there is the question of context. The United States has been routinely doing what is now being blamed on Russia ever since the conclusion of the Second World War. And it does it on a scale much larger than a paltry $300 million. The effort to bring about regime change in Ukraine alone cost something like $5 billion. Meddling in foreign elections and politics is, in fact, a major function of the CIA. It is called “covert action” or referred to in the trade as “CA.” Covert action is defined in the National Security Act of 1947 as “[a]n activity or activities of the United States Government to influence political, economic or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly. 50 U.S.C. § 3093(e).”
Most CIA Stations and even the larger Bases overseas have covert action capabilities and their activity is frequently governed by the operating directives that are applied to every country where the Agency operates. In practice, covert action most often consists of recruiting, paying and directing journalists and other opinion-shapers to write stories and support narratives favorable to US interests. In some cases, depending on circumstances, the CA officers will either directly or indirectly fund groups and individuals who are opponents of the established government. If there is a major operation, like Ukraine, success comes when there is regime change.
And what is the value for money with CA operations? It is hard to say but the official intelligence budget for the US government is $84.1 billion with additional sums hidden in other government funding, to include the Pentagon and Homeland Security. The CIA gets a large chunk of that, and, as covert operations are costly, much of the money goes in support of those activities. So, we are talking about the US spending multiple billions of dollars in support of “actions” analogous to those that Putin is being accused of carrying out over the course of a decade in more than two dozen countries worldwide with $300 million! Good luck Vlad!
I might reasonably conclude by observing that the United States government effort to hoodwink the American public into believing a lot of nonsense about what is going on in the world might itself be described as a covert action. And it is particularly interesting in that it is self-funded by the US taxpayer. Never before in history has a free or at least somewhat free people funded its own destruction, but there is always a first for everything.
Foreign Ministry spokesman: Reports about Iran delivering drones to Russia ‘baseless’
Press TV – October 3, 2022
The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman has rejected Western media reports about Iran sending combat drones to Russia to be used in the Ukraine war as “baseless.”
Nasser Kan’ani made the remark on Monday in reaction to Western media reports and statements by Ukrainian officials that Russian army is using Iranian drones in its war with Ukraine.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran considers reports about delivering drones to Russia for use in the Ukraine war ‘baseless’ and does not confirm them,” he said.
“Since the beginning of the conflict, we have voiced our principled and clear policy of active neutrality and opposition to war, while stressing the need for the two sides to solve their problems through political means free from violence,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
Kan’ani noted that during the past months and in numerous contacts and meetings with his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, the Iranian foreign minister has highlighted the necessity of settling differences through peaceful means and via dialogue, and has declared Tehran’s readiness to help with this process.
On Monday, the Ukrainian military repeated allegations that Russia has used Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones to attack the Mykolaiv region recently and claimed that its Air Force has shot down five out of seven unmanned aerial vehicles.
Iran has in the past rejected the claims about its plan to sell “hundreds” of the drones to Moscow and train Russian pilots on how to use them, saying the country will not assist either side of the war.
On July 11, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan claimed Washington had received “information” indicating that Iran was preparing to provide Russia with “up to several hundred UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), including weapons-capable UAVs on an expedited timeline” for use in the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Late last month, Ukraine announced that it would withdraw accreditation of the Iranian ambassador and significantly reduce the number of diplomatic staff at the Iranian embassy in Kiev over what it called Tehran’s “unfriendly” decision to supply Russian forces with drones.
In response to Ukraine’s decision, Kan’ani said the decision was “based on unconfirmed reports and resulted from media hype by foreign sides,” stressing that Iran would take a “proportional action” in this regard.
Russia began a “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, saying it was aimed at “demilitarizing” the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, which is made up of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics.
Back in 2014, the two republics broke away from Ukraine, refusing to recognize a Western-backed Ukrainian government there that had overthrown a democratically-elected Russia-friendly administration.
EU parliamentarian calls to sanction Vanessa Beeley and all observers of Donbass referendums
BY MAX BLUMENTHAL AND ANYA PARAMPIL · THE GRAYZONE · SEPTEMBER 29, 2022
MEP Nathalie Loiseau of France is lobbying for individual sanctions on all observers of the Russian-organized referendums in the Donbass region. She has singled out journalist Vanessa Beeley not only for her coverage of the vote, but for her reporting on the foreign-back war against Syria’s government.
A French Member of European Parliament (MEP), Natalie Loiseau, has delivered a letter to EU High Representative of Foreign Affairs, Joseph Borrell, demanding the European Union place personal sanctions on all international observers of the recent votes in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and certain Russian-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine.
Obtained by The Grayzone from an EU source, the letter is currently being circulated among European parliamentarians in hopes of securing a docket of supportive signatures.
“We, as elected members of the European Parliament, demand that all those who voluntarily assisted in any way the organization of these illegitimate referendums be individually targeted and sanctioned,” Loiseau declared.
The French MEP’s letter came after a group of formally Ukrainian territories held a vote on whether or not to officially incorporate themselves into the Russian Federation in late September. Through the popular referendum, the independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which announced their respective successions from Ukraine in 2014 following a foreign-backed coup against the government Kiev, as well as the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhia, voted overwhelmingly in favor of joining the Russian Federation.
Loiseau singled out Vanessa Beeley, a British journalist who traveled to the region to monitor the vote. Extending her complaint well beyond the referendum, the French MEP accused Beeley of “continuously spreading fake news about Syria and acting as a mouthpiece for Vladimir Putin and Bashar el [sic] Assad for years.”
Loiseau, a close ally of French President Emanuel Macron, specifically demanded Beeley be “included in the list of those sanctioned.”
Beeley responded to Loiseau’s letter in a statement to The Grayzone :
“Imposing sanctions on global citizens for bearing witness to a legal process that reflects the self-determination of the people of Donbass is fascism. Should the EU proceed with this campaign, I believe there will be serious consequences because the essence of freedom of speech and thought is under attack.”
Russia’s referendums: drawing a line with NATO
In mid-September 2022, Beeley and around 100 other international delegates traveled to eastern Europe in order to observe a vote to join the Russian Federation in the regions of Kherson, Zaporozhia, and the independent republics of Lugansk and Donetsk.
Why did their presence trigger such an outraged response from Western governments? The answer lies in the recent history of these heavily contested areas.
The formally Ukrainian territories of Kherson and Zaporozhia fell under Russian control earlier this year as a result of the military campaign launched by Moscow in February, while the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics declared their independence from the government in Kiev in 2014.
Russia began its special military campaign in Ukrainian territory on February 24. The operation followed Moscow’s decision that same week to formally recognize the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic (the Donbass Republics) in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region. Pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass have been embroiled in a bloody trench battle with the US-backed government in Kiev since 2014.
Ukraine’s civil conflict broke out in March 2014, after US and European forces sponsored a coup in the country that installed a decidedly pro-NATO nationalist regime in Kiev which proceeded to declare war on its minority, ethnically Russian population.
Following the 2014 putsch, Ukraine’s government officially marginalized the Russian language while extremist thugs backed by Kiev massacred and intimidated ethnic Russian citizens of Ukraine. In response, separatist protests swept Ukraine’s majority-Russian eastern regions.
The territory of Crimea formally voted to join Russia in March of that year, while the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region declared their unofficial independence from Kiev that same month. With support from the US military and NATO, Ukraine’s coup government officially declared war on the Donbass in April 2014, launching what it characterized as an “Anti-Terrorist Operation” in the region.
Russia trained and equipped separatist militias in Donetsk and Lugansk throughout the territories’ civil campaigns against Kiev, though Moscow did not officially recognize the independence of the Donbass republics until February 2022. By then, United Nations estimates placed the casualty count for Ukraine’s civil war at roughly 13,000 dead. While Moscow offered support to Donbass separatists throughout the 2014-2022 period, US and European governments invested billions to prop up a Ukrainian military that was heavily reliant on army and intelligence factions with direct links to the country’s historic anti-Soviet, pro-Nazi deep state born as a result of World War II.
Russia’s military formally entered the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, following Moscow’s recognition of the Donbass republics. While Russian President Vladimir Putin defined the liberation of the Donbass republics as the primary objective of the military operation, he also listed the “de-nazification” and “de-militarization” of Ukraine as a goals of the campaign. As such, Russian troops have since secured control of Ukrainian territories beyond the Donbass region, including the territories of Kherson and Zaporozhia.
Facing increased Western investment in the Kiev-aligned bloc of Ukraine’s civil war, authorities in the Donbass republics announced a referendum on membership in the Russian Federation in late September 2022, with Moscow-aligned officials in Kherson and Zaporozhia announcing similar ballot initiatives. Citizens in each territory proceeded to approve Russian membership by overwhelming majorities.
The results of the referendum not only threatened the government in Kiev, but its European and US backers. Western-aligned media leapt to characterize the votes as a sham, claiming Moscow’s troops had coerced citizens into joining the Russian Federation at the barrel of a gun. Their narrative would have reigned supreme if not for the hundred or so international observers who physically traveled to the regions in question to observe the referendum process.
Observers like Vanessa Beeley now face the threat of returning home to the West as wanted outlaws. But as Loiseau’s letter made clear, the British journalist was in the crosshairs long before the escalation in Ukraine.
Beeley among European journalists targeted and prosecuted for reporting from Donetsk
Vanessa Beeley was among the first independent journalists to expose the US and UK governments’ sponsorship of the Syrian White Helmets, a so-called “volunteer organization” that played frontline role in promoting the foreign-backed dirty war against Syria’s government through its coordination with Western and Gulf-sponsored media. Beeley also played an instrumental role in revealing the White Helmets’ strong ties to Al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, as well as its members’ involvement in atrocities committed by Western-backed insurgents.
Beeley’s work on Syria drew harsh attacks from an array of NATO and arms industry-funded think tanks. In June 2022, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which receives funding from a variety of NATO states, corporations and billionaires, labeled Beeley “the most prolific spreader of disinformation” on Syria prior to 2020. (According to ISD, Beeley was somehow “overtaken” by The Grayzone’s Aaron Mate that year). The group did not provide a single piece of evidence to support its assertions.
Though Beeley has endured waves of smears, French MEP Natalie Loiseau’s call for the EU to sanction the journalist represents the first time a Western official has moved to formally criminalize her work. Indeed, Loiseau made no secret that she is targeting Beeley not only for her role as an observer of the referendum votes, but also on the basis of her opinions and reporting on Sy on the heels of the German government’s prosecution of independent journalist Alina Lipp. In March 2020, Berlin launched a formal case against Lipp, who is a German citizen, claiming her reporting from the Donetsk People’s Republic violated newly authorized state speech codes.
Prior to Lipp’s prosecution, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue launched a media campaign portraying her as a disseminator of “disinformation” and “pro-Kremlin content.”
In London, meanwhile, the UK government has imposed individual sanctions on Graham Philips, a British citizen and independent journalist, for his reporting from Donetsk.
And in Brussels, Loiseau’s campaign against Beeley appears to have emerged from a deeply personal vendetta.
Nathalie Loiseau and French Pres. Macron
Who is Natalie Loiseau?
In April 2021, Beeley published a detailed profile of Loiseau at her personal blog, The Wall Will Fall, painting the French MEP as a regime change ideologue committed to “defending global insecurity and perpetual war.” Beeley noted that Loiseau served as a minister in the government of French President Emanuel Macron when it authorized airstrikes in response to dubious allegations of a Syrian government chemical attack in Douma in April 2018.
Beeley also reported that Loiseau has enjoyed a close relationship with the Syria Campaign, the public relations arm of the White Helmets operation. This same organization, which is backed by British-Syrian billionaire Ayman Asfari, was the sponsor of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue report which branded Beeley a “top propagator of disinformation” on Syria.
Loiseau has taken her activism into the heart of the European parliament, using her position as chair of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Security and Defense to silence colleagues who ask to many questions about the Western campaign for regime change in Syria.
During an April 2021 hearing, MEP Mick Wallace attempted to question Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Director General Fernando Arias about allegations he personally aided the censorship of an OPCW investigation which concluded no chemical attack took place in Douma, Syria in April 2018.
Loiseau immediately descended into a fit of rage, interrupting Wallace and preventing him from speaking.
“I cannot accept that you can call into question the work of an international organization, and that you would call into question the word of the victims in the way you have just done,” Loiseau fulminated.
Wallace responded with indignation, asking, “Is there no freedom of speech being allowed in the European Parliament any more? Today you are denying me my opinion!”
A year later, Wallace and fellow Irish MEP Clare Daly sued the Irish network RTE for defamation after it broadcast an interview with Loiseau during which she baselessly branded them as liars who spread disinformation about Syria in parliament.
Now, Loiseau appears to be seeking revenge against Beeley, demanding that she be criminally prosecuted not just for serving as a referendum observer, but for her journalistic output.
How Fauci Channeled Cheney 20 Years After Dick Cheney Lied the US into Invading Iraq
By Sam Husseini | September 7, 2022
Twenty years ago, the “Cheney-Bush junta” — as Gore Vidal called it — launched its propaganda campaign to invade Iraq, effectively casting the dye for much of the historic period since.
On Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002, the New York Times ran on its front page the story “U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts” by Michael Gordon and Judith Miller.
The same day, then Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, hyping the New York Times story as evidence that Hussein was attempting to acquire “the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge and the centrifuge is required to take low-grade uranium and enhance it into highly-enriched uranium which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb.” Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice followed Cheney’s lead on other shows.
In 2005, I confronted Miller about her reporting, asking her at if she would name the anonymous lying source who she allegedly relied on to falsely report “the best technical experts and nuclear scientists at laboratories like Oak Ridge supported” the CIA claim that the tubes were for a nuclear weapons program. In fact, it would later be established, the nuclear scientists did not support such an assessment and were effectively muzzled. When I questioned her, Miller refused to name the source that fed her this false information and Marvin Kalb, the moderator of the event, see video, ran interference, stopping further follow-ups. (See my piece “Should Media Expose Sources Who Lied to Them?”)
Many serious analysts early on deduced that the source was Cheney himself, likely through his chief of staff, Scooter Libby.
Even the mainstream Bob Simon of CBS would later remark to Bill Moyers about Cheney: “You leak a story, and then you quote the story. I mean, that’s a remarkable thing to do.”
Remarkable is actually an understatement. It’s engaging in a de facto conspiracy to deceive the U.S. public into war.
In April of 2020, a journalist asked at the daily White House press briefing: “Mr. President, I wanted to ask Dr. Fauci: Could you address these suggestions or concerns that this virus was somehow manmade, possibly came out of a laboratory in China?”
Anthony Fauci replied: “There was a study recently that we can make available to you, where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve. And the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.”
What Fauci was talking about was the piece “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” in Nature Medicine.
That article was widely accepted by the major media as eviscerating the possibility of lab origin of Covid, shutting down debate at that critical time and continuing to hinder it to this day.
The thing is, Fauci seems to have had a serious role in that article’s appearing.
One of the few people objecting to the piece when it was first published, in the Spring of 2020 was Meryl Nass, who asked: “Why are some of the US’s top scientists making a specious argument about the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2?” She would go on to argue that the signers of the Nature Medicine article were pushed to write it.
In 2021, limited Freedom of Information Act findings showed that Fauci had at minimum effectively coordinated with the named authors of the Nature Medicine article. See Nass’ write-up and subsequent reporting by some mainstream outlets such as USA Today.
Thus, this insidious tactic of helping to plant a story pushing the line you want in a media outlet and then citing it as evidence for your case was employed by both longtime creatures of Washington at historic junctures.
There are other notable parallels. Both Fauci and Cheney have also both been leading beneficiaries of Trumpwashing.
Ashley Rindsberg makes some serious arguments in his piece, “How Dick Cheney created Anthony Fauci,” including about the buildup of US bio“defense” after 9/11 (actually the anthrax attacks) — a trend several observers have noted. Alexis Baden-Mayer traces such arguments back to 1976, when Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld apparently pressured President Ford to order massive inoculations in the Swine Flu scare, which he would be widely mocked for.
While the antiwar forces and “left” criticism of the Iraq WMD propaganda were wholly inadequate, they at least manifested themselves on the national stage to some extent. Covid origins has hardly been recognized as an antiwar issue by most and the “left” at times has actually played a detrimental role, explicitly doing the establishment’s bidding in irrationally denying or minimizing the possibility of lab origin of the pandemic.
One thing that should be kept in mind as one parses through the claims and “exposés” is that some are de facto cover stories.
The Bush administration ramped up their propaganda campaign for the Iraq invasion, as noted at the beginning of this article, in September of 2002.
Why then? Sophisticates at the time would quote Andrew Card: “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August” said Bush’s chief of staff.
With the Bush administration cynically using the one year anniversary of 9/11 as a backdrop to launch their push for invading Iraq, the rationale articulated by Card was actually a remarkably benign motivation, a likely cover, in comparison to the war makers actual thinking.
North Korea responds to Russian arms sales claims
Samizdat | September 22, 2022
North Korea has said it has no plans to sell arms to Russia, calling the idea a “conspiracy theory” after US officials claimed that a deal is in the works involving “millions” of artillery shells and rockets.
Pyongyang’s Ministry of Defense released a statement on Wednesday responding to the claims, saying that while it does not accept United Nations penalties prohibiting all arms sales by North Korea, it also has no intention of transferring weapons to Russia.
“We have never exported weapons or ammunition to Russia in the past, and we have no plans to do so in the future,” an unnamed military official said, as cited in state media, adding, “We strongly condemn and sternly warn the United States to stop recklessly spreading anti-DPRK conspiracy theories in order to pursue vicious political and military atrocities.”
First noted in a New York Times report citing “declassified” US intelligence materials, the purported arms deal was later given official credence by State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel, who told reporters that Russia “is in the process of purchasing millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea for use in Ukraine” earlier this month.
However, the White House walked back the charge soon afterwards, with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby stating that there are “no indications that that purchase has been completed and certainly no indications that those weapons are being used inside of Ukraine.”
Moscow’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, had previously dismissed the claim as “another fake being circulated around.”
The alleged weapons sale by Pyongyang mirrors similar allegations from US officials about an upcoming drone transfer from Iran to Russia. A little more than two weeks after National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Washington had clear evidence that Iran was preparing to deliver “several hundred” armed UAVs to Russia, Kirby again clarified that the US had “seen no indications of any sort of actual delivery and/or purchase of Iranian drones by the Russian Ministry of Defense.” Tehran initially denied any plans to share drone technology with Moscow, though the Pentagon has continued to claim the sales are taking place, alleging a “first shipment” of drones in late August.
DID YOU KNOW THAT UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS ARE “ROUTING RUSSIAN FORCES AND COLLAPSING RUSSIA’S NORTHERN DONBAS AXIS?”
By Larry Johnson | A Son Of The New American Revplution | September 19, 2022
Nope, I did not know that. But thank God we have retired General Dave Petraeus to clue us in. He wrote the following 10 days ago:
- A successful encirclement of Russian forces fleeing Izyum would result in the destruction or capture of significant Russian forces and exacerbate Russian manpower and morale issues.
- The Russian MoD’s inability to admit Russian failures in Kharkiv Oblast and effectively set information conditions is collapsing the Russian information space. Kremlin-sponsored TV propagandists offered a wide range of confused explanations for Ukrainian successes ranging from justifications that Russian forces are fighting against the entire Western Bloc, to downplaying the importance of Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCS) in Kupyansk.
- The withdrawal announcement further alienated the Russian milblogger and Russian nationalist communities that support the Kremlin’s grandiose vision for capturing the entirety of Ukraine. Russian milbloggers condemned the Russian MoD for remaining quiet, choosing self-isolation, and distorting situational awareness in Russia.
Turns out that General Dave experienced premature military orgasm. It is true that the Russians retreated from Izyum, but they were not surrounded. Putin has never claimed the “grandiose vision for capturing the entirety of Ukraine.” He has been quite clear–as recently as the press conference this week at the SCO–Russia is going to secure the Donbas. What about growing dissent in Russia about the SMO? Putin, based on his recent news conference at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, could give two shits about the feelings of “the Russian milblogger and Russian nationalist communities.”
I am citing Petraeus not because I respect his alleged military “genius.” I do not not. General Dave had the reputation at West Point as the consummate sychophant. The other cadets said he would marry the Commandant’s homely daughter just to get ahead. Guess what? He did. I cite Petraeus because his views are emblematic of the Washington national security establishment who are totally committed to lying about the reality in Ukraine. No matter what the actual situation is on the ground, Ukraine is winning, Russia is losing and it is just a matter of time before Russia implodes. This theme has been trotted out and paraded around the internet almost every month since March by Ukraine’s western enablers.
The Hill just published another installment of this delusional analysis by Mark Toth and Jonathan Sweet. Let’s meet the boys:
Mark Toth is a retired economist, historian and entrepreneur who has worked in banking, insurance, publishing and global commerce. He is a former board member of the World Trade Center, St. Louis, and has lived in U.S. diplomatic and military communities around the world, including London, Tel Aviv, Augsburg and Nagoya.
https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2752375324738/hey-russia-it-s-putin-stupid?noAds=1&_f=app_share&s=i3
Jonathan Sweet, a retired Army colonel, served 30 years as a military intelligence officer. His background includes tours of duty with the 101st Airborne Division and the Intelligence and Security Command. He led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012-14, working with NATO partners in the Black Sea and Baltics.
https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2752375324738/hey-russia-it-s-putin-stupid?noAds=1&_f=app_share&s=i3
I do not know if their article is the result of ignorance, willful blindness or if they were paid to push propaganda. Regardless of the motive, Toth and Sweet join the Petraeus club and push the objective lie that the tenacious Ukrainians are defeating the Russian army:
it is Ukrainian soldiers, equipped and trained by English-speaking countries, alongside their allies who have opened fresh cans of whoop-ass and are inflicting a beatdown of Putin’s military forces in the Donbas. . . .
There has been one constant since Putin’s illegal invasion began in February: Russia’s military forces have been forced to retreat and regroup, time and time again. . . .
Putin has been exposed as an “emperor with no clothes,” forced to rely upon haggling with Iranian and North Korean surrogates to purchase drones and, according to the New York Times, “millions of artillery shells and rockets.” Saturating social media with disinformation and excuses about why Russian ground forces are failing cannot mask the images of abandoned equipment and reports of Russian soldiers surrendering.
https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2752375324738/hey-russia-it-s-putin-stupid?noAds=1&_f=app_share&s=i3
Do you remember that incredible defeat of the Russian army in Mariupol when the Ukrainians surrounded the Russian troops and forced the surrender of 2500 combatants? Neither do I. That is what Russia did to the Ukrainian AZOV battalion.
How about the Russians fleeing in terror ahead of the Ukrainian blitzkrieg around Kherson? Nope. Another dry hole. The Russians pushed that attack back and inflicted catastrophic casualties on the Ukrainians.
What about the Luhansk People’s Republic? Ukraine held on to that and crushed the Russian backed militia. Right? Wrong!! Luhansk was secured and the same process is underway now in the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Why do western political, military and media leaders embrace demonstrable lies? I think it reflects a deeper sickness that afflicts the west. This self-delusion is not an isolated phenomena. Biden, his military commanders and the mainstream media also insist that men can be women and become pregnant, that inflation is zero, that Biden is popular, and that pedophiles are not bad people. Oh yeah, one more–the southern border of the United States is secure.
The time is coming when reality will intrude and destroy the fantasies. It happened to Baghdad Bob, who insisted there were no U.S. tanks in Baghdad in March 2003, and will happen to General Dave, Mark Toth and Jonathan Sweet. Seven months into the Russian “Special Military Operation,” Putin and his Generals have committed only a small fraction of their military forces to the conflict. They seem content to destroy Ukrainian units and equipment with artillery, missiles and mortars and force NATO to keep supplying Ukraine so that it can send its troops, armed with new equipment, to the front to be destroyed.
Yet NATO’s European members do not have the industrial capacity to replace the donated military equipment and are facing a bleak winter with scant energy resources needed to power manufacturing plants. The United States also is depleting its stockpile of weapons. Raheem Kassam has provided a very useful summary of what the United States has sent to Ukraine (read here). For example, the United States has provided Ukraine in six months more Javelins than it can produce in one year. So far the number stands at more than 8500, which is more than one-third of the U.S. total arsenal.
And how many Russian tanks have the Ukrainians destroyed with these Javelins? We do not know. The U.S. intelligence community does not know. U.S. intelligence is relying on Ukraine to report the good news and the Ukrainians simply say, “lots.” In theory, U.S. intelligence analysts have the ability to use satellite imagery to count disabled and destroyed tanks. But I am told that has not happened.
What we do have is a lot of social media video showing the Russians capturing hundreds, if not thousands, of javelin ATGMs. And we have videos of Russian tanks being hit with a javelin but continuing to operate. The javelin is not turning out to be the wonder weapon it was promised to be.
Let me reiterate one very important point–the so-called intelligence on Russian casualties in terms of personnel and equipment, is being provided solely by the Ukrainians. The United States has not taken any steps to independently verify the Ukrainian “intelligence.” That is a recipe for disappointment once the truth comes out that Ukraine is guilty of exaggerating.
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Kiev intends to kill as many Russians as possible – top Zelensky aide
RT | June 15, 2023
Ukraine currently has only one plan, which is a campaign to kill the maximum number of Russians, Mikhail Podoliak, an advisor to the chief of President Vladimir Zelensky’s office, said on the air during a telemarathon on Thursday.
“There is only one plan: the most brutal advance with the maximum killing of Russians on this route,” he said, noting that Kiev “can’t just stop somewhere and say ‘alright, let’s think and talk about something now.’”
“The only possible scenario for Ukraine is to reach its 1991 borders,” he said.
Back in May, Podoliak also proclaimed that his country hates Russia and those who represent it and vowed to “persecute” Russians “always and everywhere.” That followed comments by Kirill Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, who boasted that his agents had murdered Russian public figures and pledged that Kiev will “keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world.”
Earlier this week, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov revealed that Kiev had been instructed by its Western backers in the early days of the conflict to “kill as many Russians” as it could before surrendering. … continue
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