Biden’s Mammoth $33BN Ukraine Package Includes Help With Wartime Propaganda
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | April 28, 2022
Politico’s Christopher Miller noted earlier that the record-smashing $33 billion spending package that the White House is proposing for Ukraine actually “dwarfs the annual defense budgets of most nations.” To which we naturally asked: how many billions of dollars does it take to turn a ‘proxy’ war into a ‘direct conflict’?
For starters it’s clear that such a massive amount of taxpayer money means that Washington clearly doesn’t expect that the war will end anytime soon, as multiple US defense and intelligence officials have recently testified. In fact General Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee during the first week of this month that he sees this as a “very protracted conflict” to come that will be “at least measured in years.”
Biden in his Thursday rollout remarks described that the new aid package “begins the transition to longer-term security assistance.” But interestingly as part of this assistance, a key area that the US will fund is what’s essentially information warfare…
Independent journalist and media commentator Michael Tracey has pointed out…
White House fact-sheet says part of the mammoth $33 billion spending package it’s requesting for Ukraine will be to “support independent media.” Because nothing screams “independent” like being directly funded by the US Government as part of its “information warfare” initiative.
Of course, going back to at least 2014 the US government has funded such Ukraine initiatives as “citizen journalism” to push back against ‘Russian influence’ in the country.
As WikiLeaks has documented long ago, there was similarly heavy State Department and US intelligence funding of “independent” and “opposition” media in Syria in the lead-up to and during the decade-long war to try and overthrow Assad.
But this marks a huge expansion of the United States much more directly assisting Ukraine in its media and wartime propaganda efforts. The White House fact sheet detailing the scope of the security aid package spells out in a bullet point:
- Counter Russian disinformation and propaganda narratives, promote accountability for Russian human rights violation, and support activists, journalists, and independent media to defend freedom of expression.
This as “freedom of expression” is often suppressed at home, ironically enough especially targeting independent media outlets.
Also of little comfort to the US taxpayer in terms of a potential eventual path to WW3 between two nuclear armed powers is this section under a header titled Help Ukraine Defend Itself Over the Long-Term…
- A stronger NATO security posture through support for U.S. troop deployments on NATO territory, including transportation of U.S. personnel and equipment, temporary duty, special pay, airlift, weapons system sustainment, and medical support.
Ultimately this means hundreds of millions will go toward propping up “independent media” which will actually in truth be US-state funded pro-NATO information efforts.
Here’s what I found at the reported ‘mass grave’ near Mariupol
A first-hand look at the location where Kiev claims trenches hold thousands of bodies

© Eva Bartlett
By Eva Bartlett | Samizdat | April 28, 2022
According to recent Western media, Russian forces have buried up to 9,000 Mariupol civilians in “mass graves” in a town just west of the Ukrainian city. These reports use satellite imagery as supposed evidence and repeat the claims of officials loyal to Kiev that “the bodies may have been buried in layers” and “the Russians dug trenches and filled them with corpses every day throughout April.”
I went to the site in question and found no mass graves.
On April 23, I joined RT journalist Roman Kosarev on a visit to the location, in the town of Mangush. What I saw were new, orderly grave plots including some still empty ones – an extension of a cemetery that already exists at the spot. No mass pit. Many of the graves have placards with the names and dates of birth of the deceased when available, and the remaining plots were numbered according to burial.
Since the media is essentially copy-pasting from the same source – the former mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boichenko (who seems to be far from the city now) – I’ll cite from the Washington Post’s article.
Boichenko, the article notes, “called the site the ‘new Babyn Yar,’ referring to one the largest mass graves in Europe located in the outskirts of Kyiv, where 33,000 Jews where killed by Nazis in 1941 during World War II.”
This is ironic on several levels. A mayor who is whitewashing the neo-Nazis who have run amuck in his city – notably those from the Azov Battalion, who have used civilians as human shields, occupied and militarized civilian infrastructure, point-blank executed civilians – is comparing an alleged (non-existent) mass grave to a Nazi massacre of WWII.
Meanwhile, the Kiev regime has re-written history, making WW2 Nazis and their collaborators heroes of the nation. The most notorious example being the WWII figure Stepan Bandera.
Boichenko’s other alarming claim was that the alleged “mass grave” was “the biggest war crime of the 21st century.” We are only 22 years into it, but we’ve already seen the US-led invasion and destruction of Iraq, the levelling of Syria’s Raqqa, Saudi Arabia’s ongoing war in Yemen – all of which are much stronger contenders than the nowhere-to-be-found “mass graves” of Mangush.
In reality, the site has around 400 individual plots, including nearly 100 empty ones. The 9,000 bodies and “biggest war crime of the 21st century” were unverified claims made by a mayor who fled his city, promoted by media which down the page admitted they could independently verify the claims – but by then, the damage had been done.
Gravediggers disprove mass grave claims
While walking around the site, two men responsible for burials arrived, and when presented with the former mayor’s accusations of mass graves they vehemently rejected the claims.
“This is not a mass grave and no one is throwing bodies into a pit,” one told me.

© Eva Bartlett
According to them, they bury each person in a coffin and separate grave, details are logged in the morgue, and when any documents regarding name and age are given, the plot is marked with a placard containing those details. Otherwise a number is used.
Interestingly, they also noted that a section of the new graves included buried Ukrainian soldiers. “They’re human, too” one of the men said.
For those in doubt as to the location, see Roman’s report: his drone footage shows that it’s precisely the same location as shown in the satellite images used by Western media.
Meanwhile, as Roman noted while walking, mass graves is something Ukraine has previously been accused of. He cited DPR leader Denis Pushilin as having stated that at least 300 such sites have been discovered since 2014.
He also spoke of what he witnessed. “In 2014 or 2015, mass graves were discovered as Azov or Aidar fighters retreated from the Donetsk region. I even saw a woman, she was dug up, she had her arms tied behind her back, she was in the late stages of pregnancy and she had a hole in her head, so that means she was executed.”
American journalist George Eliason, who has lived in Lugansk for many years, has written about these alleged atrocities. In a documentary on the issue, he said: “I’m here for five minutes and then I’m told the first five people they found, it was five decapitated heads. They were all civilians. Who does this to people?”
This story of a mass grave in Mangush is another fake from the Western corporate media, which previously pushed incubator babies being thrown on the floor by Iraqi soldiers, pushed lies about WMDs in Iraq, and carried reports of a chemical attack in Douma that never happened, to name but a few of their litany of hoaxes.
Meanwhile, when I was in Mariupol on April 21 and 22, yes there was destruction – thanks to those Neo-Nazi & regular Ukrainian forces occupying upper floors of residential buildings and using them as military positions, thus drawing return fire on the buildings – but I also saw people in the streets, and the beginning of the cleaning up process before rebuilding can occur.
I’ll repeat what I’ve said on Western media reporting on Syria (which in my experience, from on the ground in that country, is largely dishonest): those who promote these hoaxes and war propaganda have blood on their hands.
After the countless lies emanating from Western corporate media, I would hope people would exercise critical thinking whenever a new claim is pushed, particularly when it is repeated in chorus by the usual suspects.
The Guardian inadvertently shakes up Bucha narrative
By Drago Bosnic | April 28, 2022
When the events in Bucha were first reported, Ukrainian and Western mainstream media were unanimous – Russian Armed Forces were the alleged “perpetrators of the Bucha massacre”, while some even called it a “genocide”. The Ukrainian side claims Russian troops killed at least 412 people, while so-called “independent” sources state there were 50 victims. The peculiar claims were completely unsupported by any actual official investigation by any neutral side. The Kiev regime and their Western sponsors flatly refused to allow an international investigation, while any claims contrary to the official narrative were immediately suppressed. If anyone dared to question the narrative, they would be labeled “conspiracy theorists”, “genocide deniers” and “Putin’s propagandists”.
It is more than clear that such a blunt approach to the events in Bucha is designed to silence not just those opposing the official narrative, but even those who are not invested with either side and simply want answers to legitimate questions regarding the veracity of mainstream media reports. This completely removes any sort of public debate, limiting it to one-sided talkshows where so-called “pundits” are called to brainwash the public into thinking that the Russian military is entirely composed of alleged rapists, murderers, alcoholics, drug addicts, etc. By pushing this narrative, the mainstream media are “normalizing” Russophobia and anyone trying to denounce it is promptly silenced.
However, lies are still lies. And they are significantly harder to sustain than the truth. The truth is just truth, it stands by itself. Lies require the liar to circumvent and twist facts. In other words, more lies are necessary to sustain just one. It’s a neverending rabbit hole which inevitably spirals out of control. And precisely this happened on 24 April, when The Guardian published an article about new findings regarding the events in Bucha. According to the UK-based daily, “independent” investigators found evidence of fléchettes used by artillery (supposedly Russian) in Bucha.
“Independent” pathologists and coroners who are carrying out postmortems on bodies found in mass graves in the region north of Kyiv, where “occupying” Russian forces have been accused of alleged atrocities, said they had found small metal darts, called fléchettes, embedded in people’s heads and chests, the report stated.
“We found several really thin, nail-like objects in the bodies of men and women and so did others of my colleagues in the region,” Vladyslav Pirovskyi, a Ukrainian forensic doctor, told The Guardian. “It is very hard to find those in the body, they are too thin. The majority of these bodies come from the Bucha-Irpin region.”
“Independent” weapons experts who reviewed pictures of the metal arrows found in the bodies, seen by The Guardian, confirmed that they were fléchettes, an anti-personnel weapon widely used during the First World War.
These small metal darts are contained in tank or field gun shells. Each shell can contain up to 8,000 fléchettes. Once fired, shells burst when a timed fuse detonates and explodes above the ground. Fléchettes, typically between 3cm and 4cm in length, release from the shell and disperse in a conical arch about 300m wide and 100m long. On impact with a victim’s body, the dart can lose rigidity, bending into a hook, while the arrow’s rear, made of four fins, often breaks away causing a second wound.
“According to a number of witnesses in Bucha, fléchette rounds were fired by Russian artillery a few days before forces withdrew from the area at the end of March,” the report added.
As with all cases of Western-reported alleged crimes, there are always numerous witnesses, independent international experts, anonymous whistleblowers, etc. We just never get to see them. Which means we should simply take the claims of these people, whose very existence we cannot verify, at face value. And any sort of view opposing this narrative is immediately shut down.
According to Neil Gibson, another “Independent” weapons expert at the UK-based Fenix Insight group, who has reviewed the photos of the projectiles seen, they include the 122mm 3Sh1 artillery round, in use by Russian artillery and which are filled with fléchettes. What Mr. Gibson conveniently “forgot” to mention is that these same shells are used in all post-Soviet countries, including Ukraine. More specifically, the shells fit the D-30 howitzers, which are in service with both Russia and Ukraine, as well as dozens of other countries.
A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Ground Forces was quick to state that Ukraine’s military “does not use shells with fléchettes”. However, facts beg to differ, as surgeons in eastern Ukraine have reported the use of fléchettes by Ukrainian artillery in Donbass warzone since at least 2014. It’s obvious the Ukrainian and Western media find it convenient to use Soviet-era weapons as “proof” of alleged Russian war crimes, while ignoring the fact that these same weapons are used by Ukraine. What’s more, Ukraine is more likely to use them, since they have produced little to no new weapons and munitions since the collapse of the USSR.
Russian forces left Bucha on March 30. It took only a few days for the “independent” pathologists and coroners to file the reports from Bucha. At first, the reports claimed Russian forces allegedly shot civilians at point-blank range. Satellite image company Maxar Technologies claimed its photos provided “critical evidence that mass killings of civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha must have occurred when Russian forces were occupying the territory in mid to late March”. Combined with the report about fléchettes, this would mean the Russian artillery fired at the city while Russian troops were there, which defies any military logic.
If the reports about the usage of fléchettes are true, the only logical conclusion is that the Ukrainian military shelled Russian positions after the decision to withdraw from the Kiev and Chernigov regions. Russian forces deployed in Bucha certainly didn’t shell their own positions. Since we now know that the Ukrainian forces have and use fléchettes in their artillery shells, what conclusion can we draw except that the civilians were killed by the side which shelled the city while Russian troops were there?
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
As jabbed athletes collapse, the authorities look the other way
By Guy Hatchard | TCW Defending Freedom | April 21, 2022
THROUGHOUT 2021, attempts were made to debunk persistent reports that an unusual number of athletes were suffering cardiac events which might be related to mRNA Covid vaccination. The main theme of these fact-checking efforts was denial – athletes were not at risk and cardiac events were not happening.
In 2022 this dialogue is evolving because the numbers are growing and harder to ignore. According to an investigative report by OAN, a pro-Trump online US news site, 769 athletes suffered sudden health events between March 2021 and March 2022 with an average age of 23 years. In February, 15 top tennis players were unable to complete their matches in the Miami Open tournament.
Of necessity in the face of mounting numbers of injury reports, the fact-checking dialogue has hesitated on the brink, but on February 1 this year, the Washington Post still labelled stories of adverse effects of mRNA vaccines on athletes FALSE. Its story relied heavily on a discussion of the Danish footballer Christian Eriksen, who suffered a cardiac arrest on June 12 2021 just before half time in a match against Finland. The circulation of the apparently false story that Eriksen had been vaccinated was attributed by the Washington Post to a shady far-Right group in Austria seeking to influence their upcoming election.
Dig deeper and the story gets more murky. Few if any of the participants in this argument on both sides have verified hard facts to hand. The Washington Post, which had probably realised by February that it was quite possible that an unusual number of athletes were unexpectedly falling to the ground, decided to finish its article by asserting that the sporting collapses must be down to Covid, not Covid vaccination. Again no hard facts about actual athletes, just a polarised muck-throwing event.
As a scientist I realise that what is lacking here is reliable data. Why is it lacking? Here is the nub – the authorities are so sure they are right about the safety of vaccines that they are refusing to collect data. New Zealand has refused to institute mandatory reporting of adverse events following mRNA vaccination and other countries are in the same boat. We don’t have a lot of data to go on because it is not being collected. Sporting bodies are not counting either, or perhaps they have lost count or looked the other way.
Delving into the world of psychology, I find this unsettling. Why wouldn’t we collect data? Why aren’t we allowed to ask questions? Why isn’t the Ministry of Health counting and publishing up-to-date medical data on the frequency of cardiac and thrombotic events of all types?
There are stories in the popular press (actually not so popular these days) reporting recent excess cardiac events as due to ‘holiday heart syndrome’ or the need for young people ‘to avoid strenuous exercise’. Neither of these had been a thing until 2021. Why hasn’t the MoH quashed these speculative sallies into obfuscation by publishing data? You tell me.
The finger-pointing gets worse. One particular ‘whack-an-antivaxxer’ sport recently originated at Otago Medical School in New Zealand. A popular digest of a study of 1,000 people born in Dunedin in 1972 was reprinted in leading publications around the world. The article implied that anti-vaxxers suffered from sexual abuse, maltreatment, deprivation or neglect, or having an alcoholic parent as they were growing up. They were also described as low educational achievers likely to suffer from mental illness.
I am a little sceptical by nature, so I noticed that the reports were based on an article in a publication called The Conversation, which has received support during the pandemic from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Conversation describes itself as both devoted to academic rigour and seeking to explain science to the general public. Curiously its article about the Dunedin survey contained only one quantitative piece of information – 13 per cent of the respondents were vaccine resistant. No other quantitative information was provided to support the extreme characterisation of the vaccine hesitant in the article.
I tracked down the actual study entitled ‘Deep-seated psychological histories of COVID-19 vaccine hesitance and resistance’. Seven of the ten authors were based in the USA. One of the authors disclosed that he is funded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The survey completed in April 2021 actually found that 13 per cent of the respondents were vaccine resistant and 12 per cent were vaccine hesitant. So fully 25 per cent of the respondents were vaccine hesitant to varying degrees.
I then rapidly came across an old friend used to distort information: absolute differences versus relative differences.
Of those willing to vaccinate (note the word used is willing, not necessarily keen), 62 per cent had at least one Adverse Childhood Event (ACE). Of those hesitant or resistant to vaccination 73 per cent had at least one ACE. The difference between 62 and 73 per cent is not large in absolute terms.
Based on this small difference, Professor Richie Poulton, a Dunedin-based co-author of the study, was quoted in the Otago Daily Times as saying about the vaccine hesitant and resistant responders:
‘The childhood experiences of those surveyed ranged from sexual abuse, parental neglect, poverty, to isolation and lack of achievement in school. They covered the whole suite of difficulties you can think of that might impinge on a person’s good development. Their personality became very stress reactive – they saw danger or threat where there essentially was none.’
Now you probably did percentages at school, so do you think Professor Poulton’s comments accurately reflect the difference between 62 per cent and 73 per cent exposures to at least one ACE? Because I certainly don’t. A significant percentage of both groups experienced ACEs growing up, but they had different opinions about vaccination.
Wouldn’t it be more productive to ask: why do we have such a high rate of ACEs in New Zealand? Is our mental health service under-funded? Is our education system failing us? Is support for families sufficient?
I went further down the pages examining results of a battery of ‘questionnaires’. I found that although there were measurable differences between the two groups: ‘vaccine willing’ and ‘vaccine hesitant and resistant’, their average scores were well within the standard deviation of the mean standardised score for each test.
This means most of those responding to the survey were relatively average people. The vaccine hesitant and resistant were being falsely characterised as ill-educated social deviants. This sounds like victim blaming. So much for the academic rigour and capacity to explain science to which The Conversation proudly aspires.
Were the media comments about the study an unsupported and false attempt to discredit the unvaccinated and categorise them as outcasts and misfits without the necessary intelligence to think for themselves? The small differences between the two groups were insufficient to justify this black-and-white condemnation widely shared around the world’s media.
There were some differences in educational attainment. Some 35 per cent of the vaccine willing had a BA degree or higher, while 15 per cent of the vaccine hesitant or resistant had a BA or higher. However the Dunedin results may be misleading regarding the influence of education. A study in the USA found that people with a PhD were more likely to be vaccine hesitant, implying that a decision not to vaccinate may possibly be encouraged by the development of high level critical thinking.
In the mainstream media articles, Professor Poulton pleaded with us to feel pity for the unvaccinated, because of their supposed difficult childhood (which was in fact not so different from that of the vaccinated). Was he simply lowering our opinion of the unvaccinated by playing upon stereotypes? Subtly hammering home the current mainstream media messaging that only Right-wing extremists and selfish antisocials remain unvaccinated.
Did he realise that the unvaccinated are legitimately concerned about the vaccinated because they have been unwittingly exposed to serious but as yet unquantified medical risk?
As I am aware that Covid mRNA vaccine adverse events are running at 30-50 times higher than any previous vaccine, I would ask different questions of the data:
- Were those willing to be vaccinated being misled by the inadequate content of their education?
- Do prior adverse experiences provide good reason to be more cautious in future?
The Immunisation Advisory Centre at the respected University of Auckland (incidentally partly funded by pro-vaccine interests) reassuringly says:
‘Confirmed cases of myocarditis are rare. More than 80 per cent of reported cases of myocarditis following mRNA Covid vaccination have recovered quickly with rest and commonly used oral anti-inflammatory medications such as ibuprofen.’
Are you reassured by this, or have you looked at the Medsafe adverse event data where 18,000 mRNA vaccine recipients reported chest pain and shortness of breath – symptoms admitted by the Immunisation Advisory Centre to be indicative of myocarditis?
Have you concluded, like me, that as many as 80 per cent of cases of myocarditis among the vaccinated remain unreported and untreated? A ticking time bomb, of which professional athletes represent only the tip of the iceberg.
The question is, how long are our health authorities going to continue to look the other way and refuse to start counting accurately, appropriately, and retrospectively?
CNN’s US Intel Source Just Admitted That Everything Zelensky Says Is Propaganda

By Andrew Korybko | One World Press | April 20, 2022
Ukrainian President Zelensky has been accused by his many critics across the world of spewing propaganda in every one of his many appearances, yet up until CNN’s surprising publication of an article on Tuesday, the US-led West condemned any such suspicions as so-called “Russian propaganda”. The “politically correct” narrative has suddenly changed, however, due to that outlet’s piece titled “What happens to weapons sent to Ukraine? The US doesn’t really know”. Partway through the text, CNN reported the following about US suspicions that Ukraine isn’t telling the whole truth about anything:
“’It’s a war — everything they do and say publicly is designed to help them win the war. Every public statement is an information operation, every interview, every Zelensky appearance broadcast is an information operation,’ said another source familiar with western intelligence. ‘It doesn’t mean they’re wrong to do it in any way.’”
This jaw-dropping disclosure amounts to a complete reversal of the prior narrative whereby it’s no longer so-called “Russian propaganda” to accuse Zelensky of spewing propaganda but is now reportedly the unofficial position of none other than the US government itself. Not only that, but this is supposedly something that should even be praised, not condemned. That new narrative builds upon the one introduced by NBC News earlier this month when it quoted unnamed US spies who openly admitted to waging information warfare against Russia, including through the spread of fake news speculation.
All of this might understandably be too much for the average Western information consumer to process, which is why the purpose of this piece is to explain the emerging cognitive warfare trend that’s on display in this context. The US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) is clearly on the defensive after it became impossible to deny that Zelensky is spewing propaganda in literally every one of his many appearances according to CNN’s own US intel source on the matter. Doubling down on the false narrative that he’s an “innocent truth-teller” is counterproductive since folks don’t trust him anymore.
For that reason, the US’ permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) felt compelled to enact a drastic change in the official narrative by allowing some of these shadowy officials to anonymously speak to CNN in order to recalibrate their perception management operations. Instead of desperately clinging to their discredited narrative, they sought to radically change it through the so-called “limited hangout” tactic of admitting something unsavory (in this case that all the Ukrainian leader does is spew propaganda) but then spinning it into something positive.
By giving some credence to the suspicions of their increasingly skeptical audience who’ve largely realized by now that Zelensky can’t be trusted after he’s gone so overboard with his rhetoric during his many appearances as of late, they hope to strategically disarm their target by getting their guard down so that they swallow the second part of the “deep state’s” amended narrative related to why “it doesn’t mean that [he’s] wrong to do it in any way.” This conforms to the trend first introduced by NBC News whereby Americans are now supposed to expect propaganda in the media, not condemn it.
The unofficial acknowledgement of “deep state” meddling in the US media from NBC News’ sources and the praise that CNN’s intel source just lavished upon Zelensky for the lies that this individual candidly admitted he spews during all of his appearances are meant to precondition the targeted Western audience into appreciating that which they’d otherwise have condemned as contrary to their country’s values, especially that which concerns the supposed integrity of their media. That said integrity has long been gone, however, which is why it was way overdue for the “deep state” to finally flip the narrative.
Observers should remember that this is only being done because the population at large is awakening to how maliciously they’ve been misled by the so-called “fourth estate” through its collusion with the “deep state” and foreign officials like Zelensky, whose words they hitherto passed off as truth without any second thought and condemned those who questioned him as “Russian propagandists”. Big data analytics have evolved to the point where “deep state” structures can very easily assess the pulse of their targeted audience and thus get a sense of their true sentiments towards whatever it might be.
Considering the radical revision of the official narrative that just took place in less than a few weeks’ time through NBC News and CNN’s seemingly coordinated “revelations” about media meddling, it can confidently be concluded that this was done in response to the “deep state” realizing that it absolutely had to undertake this course of action lest its targeted audience soon lose all trust in its media proxies. For that reason, this should be seen as an unprecedentedly desperate move that has no precedent in American history, which speaks to the population’s similarly unprecedented distrust of the media.
Lavrov responds to nuclear weapons claim
Samizdat | April 19, 2022
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has rejected claims that Moscow could resort to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.Lavrov was questioned on the issue during an extensive interview with India Today in Moscow on Tuesday.
When the journalist mentioned that “President Zelensky said that Russia plans to use tactical weapons,” the foreign minister didn’t even let her finish the question. “He says many things,” Lavrov said.
He reminded that Russia had never mentioned the use of nuclear weapons as an option during its military operation in the neighboring country, and the Ukrainian leader was the only one to speak about this.
Lavrov reiterated the notion that “there could be no winners in a nuclear war,” and assured that Russia would only rely on conventional weapons in Ukraine.
Zelensky claimed that Moscow could use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine during his interview with CNN on Friday.
Rallying Round the False Flags
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 12, 2022
Another day, another provocation, and Western leaders are frothing at the mouth with denunciations of Russian “barbarity”. U.S. President Joe Biden signs off on more weapons to Ukraine while European counterparts slap more economic warfare sanctions on Russia.
Just when the Western media had saturated “reports” of Russian troops executing civilians and leaving their bodies to rot on the streets of Bucha, then we read of more horror from accusations that Russian forces fired a missile at a train station in Kramatorsk killing over 50 people, including women and children.
Last week the Western media were telling us about Russian forces bombing a theatre in Mariupol and killing people sheltering in the basement. The week before it was an alleged Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital in the same city.
The onslaught of the reports of these alleged atrocities is itself telling. There is hardly any time for the Western public to think critically about the reports and whether they are credible. We are being bombarded with sensation and disgust and forced to rally around the flag of supposed Western values such as democracy and morality. That means sending more weapons to Ukraine to “defend” that country from Russian “barbarity”.
Let’s take the latest incident in Kramatorsk on April 8. The New York Times and other Western media reported that a Russian missile hit a train station and killed at least 50 people who were trying to evacuate the city. The impression conveyed in the reporting is that civilians are fleeing as Russian troops advance on more of the Donbass territory.
Russia denied that its forces fired on Kramatorsk. It described the incident as a provocation, or what others would call a false flag operation. The Russians said the missile was fired by the NATO-backed Ukrainian military some 45 kilometres from Kramatorsk.
So, who’s right?
One important fact that all media reported, including the New York Times, is that the explosion was caused by a Tockha-U short-range ballistic missile. Fragments of the munition were identified and photographed near the scene of carnage at the train station.
The Soviet-era weapon is no longer used by the Russian military as of 2019. It is, however, widely used by the Ukrainian military.
Indeed, the Ukrainian military has been firing Tockha-U missiles into the pro-Russian Donbass territory for years, killing civilians indiscriminately. Last month, a missile killed over 20 people when it struck Donetsk city.
Western media have not been reporting that. They have hardly reported that the NATO-backed Kiev Ukrainian forces have been waging a war on the pro-Russian people of Donbass for eight years since the CIA-sponsored coup in Kiev in 2014. The Western media don’t tell you that the NATO bloc has been weaponizing and training Ukrainian regiments like the Azov Battalion that are infested with Nazi supporters who view the killing of Russians as a noble mission. The Western media don’t tell you why Russia views Ukraine and its NATO ambitions as a national security threat and that Moscow went into Ukraine on February 24 because of mounting attacks on civilians in the Donbass.
The Kramatorsk “crime against humanity” that Biden, Johnson, Macron and Von Der Leyen have been denouncing as “cynical” and “abominable” was in all probability carried out by the Ukrainian military that the United States, NATO and the European Union are supporting and sending weapons to.
The same goes for the reported killings in Bucha. Western media and leaders have roundly condemned Russia for allegedly carrying out the atrocity. The Western media have relied totally on Ukrainian claims concerning Bucha, as they have for Kramatorsk and other alleged atrocities.
But if you can withstand the hype and hyperbole, the shock and awe of the media blitz, the claims don’t stand up to scrutiny. The alleged Bucha atrocity came to light in Western media four days after Russian troops withdrew from that city on March 30, and the freshly dead corpses on the streets were filmed by the Ukrainian military. The alleged Russian atrocity has been convincingly debunked, just as Moscow has been saying, blaming it on a provocation.
The earlier bombing of the maternity hospital and the theater in Mariupol were also false-flag attacks carried out by the NATO-backed Ukrainian military. So too was the alleged killing of dozens of Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island. Remember how Western media reported Ukrainian defenders on the island radioing the Russian forces to “go fuck themselves” before they were blasted to death. Turns out the Russians safely evacuated the surrendering Ukrainians under normal laws of war having afforded them safe passage from the island.
The Western media are playing the public like an organ-grinder. The U.S. media have even admitted to spinning false information in the cause of an “information war” against Russia.
And so we see people like Pope Francis kissing the flag and praying for Ukraine and condemning Russia, we see Biden and European leaders calling for war crimes prosecution of Russian President Vladimir Putin and ordering up more weapons to Ukraine. We see American actors like Sean Penn going into hysterics threatening to “melt down” his Academy Awards in protest over Russian barbarity. Maybe Sean’s next project will be starring in a movie about fighting to the death to defend Snake Island!
Ukrainian comedian-actor-president Vladimir Zelensky (a Jewish frontman for a Nazi regime) said of the Kramatorsk atrocity – and it was an atrocity, but one carried out by his military: “Lacking the strength and the courage to stand up to us on the battlefield, they [Russia] are cynically destroying the civilian population. This evil knows no limits. And if it is not punished it will never stop.”
Cue the anguished tears, condemnations, and billions of dollars/euros of taxpayer-funded aid and lethal weapons to the Ukrainian regime – because we are all supposed to rally around the flag of Western democratic and moral virtue. Even that latter claim is one big false flag.
Landmines and disinformation for me, but not for thee
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos | Responsible Statecraft | April 8, 2022
Two stories snuck below the radar this week: the U.S. admitted to deploying what up until now has been deplorable and downright wretched “disinformation” in the Ukraine crisis. Furthermore, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs boasted about the effective use of landmines against the Russians — a week after headlines conflated their use by the Russians with civilian atrocities.
First, the disinfo. This week the leading lights of our mainstream media sat on a stage and lectured Americans in front of a banner reading “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy.” They must’ve been too busy to give this stunner from NBC News the treatment it deserves:
It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine.
President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions.
It’s one of a string of examples of the Biden administration’s breaking with recent precedent by deploying declassified intelligence as part of an information war against Russia. The administration has done so even when the intelligence wasn’t rock solid, officials said, to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin off balance. …
…“It doesn’t have to be solid intelligence when we talk about it,” a U.S. official said. “It’s more important to get out ahead of them — Putin specifically — before they do something. It’s preventative. We don’t always want to wait until the intelligence is 100 percent certainty that they are going to do something. We want to get out ahead to stop them.”
Headlined as a “break from the past” — truly? — the piece is actually a glowing tribute to the administration’s gambit to throw Putin off his game. The only break from the past here is near-past. Aside from the self-serving gasbaggery coming from the aforementioned stage at the University of Chicago this week, the mainstream media has been screeching about disinformation in a sort of trance-like mantra for more than four years. Most recently it has been used to smear critics of a more escalatory policy in Ukraine. Now, according to this NBC News report, it is:
“the most amazing display of intelligence as an instrument of state power that I have seen or that I’ve heard of since the Cuban Missile Crisis,” said Tim Weiner, the author of a 2006 history of the CIA and 2020’s “The Folly and the Glory,” a look at the U.S.-Russia rivalry over decades. “It has certainly blunted and defused the disinformation weaponry of the Kremlin.”
Get it? The U.S. must use “good” disinformation to combat the “bad” disinformation by the Russians. Just like we engage in “good” military invasions (Iraq, Libya) to overthrow the “bad” guys (Hussein, Qaddafi).
Which brings us to landmines. The U.S. never signed the international ban on landmines, which have a pesky habit of lying around for decades after wars and blowing civilians’ limbs off. We know this. But as always, the Americans want it both ways, pointing to their “desperate” use by bad guys, like the Russians, as akin to atrocities. Like these headlines last week, here and here.
But then it turns out the Ukrainians are using them too, but their use is “effective” and “strategic” and important to the mission. Here’s Joint Chiefs Chair, Gen. Mark Milley, testifying yesterday.
“Land mines are being effectively used by the Ukrainian forces to shape the avenues of approach by Russian armored forces, which puts them into engagement areas and makes them vulnerable to the 60,000 anti-tank weapons systems that we’re providing to the Ukrainians,” Milley said. “That’s one of the reasons why you see column after column of Russian vehicles that are destroyed.”
This reminds us of course of the incident earlier in the invasion when Linda Greenfield, our UN ambassador, tried to rip the Russians for what appeared to be cluster munitions in their convoys marching toward Kyiv. Her statement had to be edited, however, because the U.S. still has such weapons — which too leave little bomblets behind that tend to kill and main unsuspecting civilians — in its own arsenal.
Like the contradictions in Greenfield’s story, Milley’s will no doubt be met by mainstream crickets, too. These threads just don’t fit the proscribed narrative, which at its worst, promulgates a “fine for me, but not for thee” hypocrisy.
MSM’s Bucha Tall Tale

BY NICK GRIFFIN | SAMIZDAT | APRIL 5, 2022
“The Bucha Massacre” has now become the driving force for the propaganda push for even more NATO involvement in the conflict in Ukraine.
Yet the claim that this is a Russian war crime is so patently false that a rational observer can only be left astounded by the combination of bare-faced nerve and slapdash incompetence displayed by the media outlets and politicians pushing this disgusting smear.
The latest effort of the Western media to deny Russian rebuttals is the claim that satellite photos show the bodies were there for weeks. Far from ‘proving’ the case against Russian troops, however, this new assertion in fact raises yet more questions which undermine the Western story.
The satellite photos certainly appear to show bodies, but they also show no sign at all of the burnt out cars which are such a prominent feature of the ground photos and videos. Are we supposed to believe that these vehicles were carefully driven in and positioned between the corpses after the shooting spree?
A similar suspension of belief is required when considering the dates involved. The ‘Bucha Massacre’ entry in Wiki (accessed 09.25 on 5th April 2022) reads as follows:
‘On 4 April, satellite images were provided to The New York Times by Maxar Technologies. The Times compared images to video evidence and concluded: “many of the civilians were killed more than three weeks ago, when Russia’s military was in control of the town.” The images of Yablonska Street show at least 11 “dark objects of similar size to a human body” appearing between 9 March and 11 March”.’
Wiki also tells us that Ukrainian troops re-entered Bucha on April 1st, following the redeployment of the Russian force to south eastern Ukraine.
Maxar Technologies, as a major contractor for NASA, is of course an integral part of the NATO military-industrial complex. As such its assertions with regards to the conduct of the conflict in Ukraine have to be regarded with caution. That said, Maxar’s dates of 9th– 11th March seem to be causing some concern in mainstream media outlets promoting the Russian massacre claim.
The Maxar dates should indeed raise eyebrows. The idea that bodies could lie in the open air for three whole weeks without undergoing massive decay is only remotely credible because the average Westerner thinks that Ukraine is in some kind of winter weather deep-freeze in late March.
Yet a look at the weather data for Kiev for March 2022 reveals that there has not been one single day in the city (of which Bucha is a suburb) with temperatures below freezing since March 11th. The average daily temperature in the last few days of the month was 6 degrees centigrade – the same as the English city of Leeds. That average in turn of course includes highs in the spring sunshine. The weather graph for Kiev for the last week in March shows the situation very clearly, with temperatures up to 15 and 17 degrees:

March weather in Kiev
Anyone who has walked past an animal killed and left on the road for a few days under such conditions will be able to imagine the appalling stench which would come from so many human bodies left in the spring sunshine for three weeks, yet not one of the Ukrainian soldiers or police shown examine the bodies can be seen wearing a mask, making any expression of revulsion or mentioning the smell.
As more graphic images have emerged of the victims, the evident freshness of the corpses seems to have prompted a revision of the dates of the alleged ‘Russian massacre’. By 5th April, for example, the UK Daily Mail’s lead story was claiming that the satellite photos showing the bodies on the road were taken on 19th March. No explanation was given for the ten-day change.
But even accepting the revised time-line, there is still the problem that none of the bodies shown in videos or photos has any sign of decay or damage from carrion-eaters. In order to believe the accounts and videos put out by Kiev and the Western media, it is also necessary to believe that Ukraine has no stray dogs, no rats and not one single crow or other carnivorous bird.
Look again at the video footage of the Ukrainian troops driving along the corpse-lined road. Do you see any carrion-eating birds flying up from any of the bodies?
For that matter, why were some of the bodies not crushed by the Russian tanks which withdrew from and through the town? Do you really believe that soldiers brutal enough to slaughter dozens of defenceless civilians would then be considerate enough to slow down their withdrawal from the area by carefully weaving their heavy armour around each corpse?
Returning to the weather, there was of course rain during the three weeks the bodies are supposed to have laid (not) rotting in the road. Looking at the cardboard of the green boxes of the food aid packages lying near some of the (clearly fresh) corpses, it is clear that they have not been subjected to bad weather. The presence of those packages is also, of course, another important pointer as to the truth in this matter – for they are Russian.

Thus, in order to believe the Western propaganda narrative, we must swallow yet another ridiculous tall tale: The ‘analysts’ have spent the last month repeatedly telling us that the Russian army cannot even supply its own troops with fuel or food; but now they would have us believe that the Russians went to all the trouble of taking vast quantities of emergency food parcels to the occupied suburbs of Kiev, handed them out to civilians – and then promptly shot them.

On top of all this, there are four key facts which have already received considerable attention on Telegram (the last uncensored social media platform of any size in the West), though which have predictably enough been routinely ignored by the warmongering mainstream media.
The first of these is the video of the Mayor of Bucha speaking about how the Russian troops have left and that a ‘clean-up’ is now underway. As a non-Russian speaker I cannot judge for myself, but the comments by Russian-speakers accompanying this video on Telegram say that he does not mention the bodies of civilians.
The second fact, closely related to this, is the video which shows a detachment of the paramilitary Ukrainian National Police clearing the roads of burnt out and abandoned vehicles. Again, there is no sign of the bodies which appeared on the streets the following day.
Third, and perhaps most devastating of all, are the white armbands on a number of the bodies. These are clearly shown in the main video of Ukrainian troops driving along the corpse-strewn road, and they are also visible on several of the bodies of victims of torture and murder in cellars in Bucha.
The fact that Ukrainian forces wear blue armbands, while Russian troops wear white ones, is universally accepted. A number of videos from various parts of the conflict zone also show civilians wearing white armbands, as a sign either of sympathy with the Russians or at least neutrality.

Situation in Ukraine
Video: Kiev Territorial Defence in Bucha Given Green Light to Shoot Those Not Wearing Blue Armband 3 April, 16:38 GMT
Thus the appearance of white armbands on the victims of ‘the Bucha Massacre’ is overwhelming evidence that the victims were ethnic Russians. They were murdered not by Russian troops – who were of course sent in with a key aim of stopping the persecution of Russian-speakers by racist neo-Nazis – but by Ukrainians.
This should come as no surprise, for the whole history of Ukrainian nationalism is based on the mass murder of ‘unclean’ and ‘sub-human’ civilians from other ethnic groups, most notably the Poles of Wolyn and Eastern Galicia, Jews, Hungarians, Romanians and, of course, Russians.
Finally, we come to the video clip from the streets of Bucha, which was posted and then removed from the social media account of the known Ukrainian neo-Nazi ‘Botman’: “There are guys without blue armbands. Can we shoot them?” “F**k, yeah!”
The truth of the massacre is so clear that we can see why Western leaders such as Boris Johnson are so adamant that there should not be a proper international investigation into the crime.
Instead, they are using the most blatant fake news to justify imposing another round of sanctions pain on their own people, and to excuse the sending of billions of pounds, dollars and euros worth of high-tech weapons in order to prolong the war. One has to wonder about the scale of the kick-backs these real war criminals are getting from their military-industrial complex cronies!










