French Researchers Identify ‘Improbably High Rate of Deaths’ in Newborns Who Received New RSV Shot
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 2, 2024
French researchers identified possible safety signals in babies coinciding with the rollout of Beyfortus, a recently approved monoclonal antibody treatment for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in newborns.
The discovery comes as public health authorities ramp up warnings about the spread of respiratory viruses and step up their promotion of the drug.
In interviews with The Defender, the researchers — French independent scientist and author Hélène Banoun, Ph.D., and French statistician Christine Mackoi — explained that data from France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) indicates an improbably high rate of deaths of babies between 2 and 6 days old in France during September and October 2023.
INSEE is the authority that compiles official birth and death data in France.
This increase, the researchers said, coincides with the introduction of Beyfortus in French hospitals, which began on Sept. 15, 2023. In an interview with cardiologist Peter McCullough, M.D., MPH, Banoun said that over 200,000 newborn babies in France have been injected with Beyfortus since that date.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended Beyfortus in August 2023, while the European Medicines Agency (EMA) authorized the drug in September 2022.
Beyfortus was developed jointly by AstraZeneca and Sanofi.
The drug is offered as a “one-time shot for infants born just before or during the RSV season and for those less than 8 months old before the season starts,” and for some high-risk 8- to 19-month-old infants.
According to The Associated Press, “In the U.S., about 58,000 children younger than 5 are hospitalized for RSV each year and several hundred die.” CNBC reported that “RSV is the leading cause of hospitalization among infants in the U.S.” According to the CDC, nearly all children are infected with RSV before the age of 2.
But the French researchers and other medical experts who spoke with The Defender warned that no long-term studies have been conducted involving Beyfortus and newborns and that the administration of monoclonal antibodies on this population is unprecedented. They also pointed to data indicating RSV’s low risk to babies.
Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist, biological warfare epidemiologist and member of the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) scientific advisory committee, told The Defender, “Giving newborns any drug or biologic should be done with extreme caution, let alone a novel, injected monoclonal antibody. You cannot tell if the infant is damaged by the shot, when you don’t yet know how healthy the newborn is and how it normally behaves. This should be a huge red flag for manufacturers as well as parents.”
According to Banoun, “The French government is recommending that Beyfortus be injected into newborns before they leave the maternity ward, from Sept. 15, 2023, even though the product has not been tested on this age group,” Banoun said.
Nass pointed out that the CDC published a paper in 2021 on all U.S. RSV deaths over the preceding 12 years. The CDC reviewed death certificates, and found there were only 26 deaths per year with RSV, and only 17 deaths per year in the entire U.S. caused by RSV in babies under one year old.
According to McCullough, “Among the 22.4 million children under age 5 years, the annual risk of RSV hospitalization is well under 1%.”
Excess deaths among newborns ‘alarming,’ ‘disturbing’
Mackoi told The Defender, “There is an excess of deaths for the months of September and October. The excess deaths in October are very alarming. It is very worrisome that this happened in two consecutive months.”
According to Mackoi, the increase in these excess deaths coincides with the introduction of Beyfortus in France.
“There is a strong concomitance with the Beyfortus injection since Sept. 15, 2023,” she said. “In France, babies receive injections of Beyfortus before leaving the maternity hospital. They leave the maternity hospital three or four days after their birth … These excess deaths are abnormal.”
According to Mackoi, the data show “a 50% increase in deaths of babies between 2 and 6 days of life compared with what would be expected,” noting that “the reference is obtained by dividing the number of deaths by the total number of births in 2018 and 2019; the result is 0.69 deaths between 2 and 6 days per 1,000 births.”
In September, the observed mortality rate was 0.97 deaths per 1,000 births, and in October, it was 1.05 deaths per 1,000 births, Mackoi said. “It is anomalous that this very significant increase should be found two months in a row. It may well be due to the injection of Beyfortus since Sept. 15, 2023.”
“Although of no scientific value, I have received testimonials from relatives and via the internet from families of healthy babies who were hospitalized in intensive care with respiratory distress syndrome immediately after the injection,” Banoun added.
Mackoi said that using the official INSEE data, which she described as “reliable [but] underestimated,” she “calculated for each month, the rate of babies born the month in question and died between 2 and 6 days of life,” and used a Poisson distribution to identify abnormal mortality rates, compiling the findings on her website.
According to the INSEE data, 54 deaths were recorded for 55,489 births in France in September 2023, despite the average number of expected deaths being 38, based on historical averages.
For October 2023, the data showed 61 deaths out of 57,940 births, despite the average number of expected deaths being 40.
Mackoi said that the probability of the September 2023 death figure occurring by chance is 0.9%, while the probability of the increased mortality in newborns in October 2023 is even lower, at 0.1%. She also noted that “there are no excess deaths less than 48 hours after birth,” and that this is “one more indication” that Beyfortus is causing the deaths, because they are not receiving the monoclonal for the first 48 hours of life.
“The coincidence of Beyfortus injections with excess infant deaths is disturbing,” Mackoi said.
Monoclonal antibodies may exacerbate symptoms rather than prevent them
These revelations came as the White House announced on Dec. 14, 2023, that it would make 230,000 additional doses of Beyfortus available last month, in addition to 77,000 doses that were released in November 2023.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on Dec. 28 concluded, “Nirsevimab protected infants against hospitalization for RSV-associated lower respiratory tract infection and against very severe RSV-associated lower respiratory tract infection in conditions that approximated real-world settings.”
The study was funded by AstraZeneca and Sanofi.
According to Banoun, official data do not indicate that Beyfortus is effective. The data do, however, indicate a high prevalence of adverse reactions — including bronchiolitis — even though the treatment is supposed to protect recipients from respiratory illness.
“The most frequently reported adverse events are upper respiratory tract infections, including bronchiolitis,” she said.
Banoun added that data from the French National Authority for Health (HAS) do not “support a possible impact of Beyfortus in terms of reduced length of hospital stay, transfer to intensive care units, and mortality.”
“According to HAS, in the trials, the absolute risk of RSV infection was reduced by 3.8% in the five months following injection, and the absolute risk of hospitalization was reduced by 1% to 2% over the same period,” she said.
Banoun said the trials were not conducted on newborns, whereas the French government recommends injection from the first days of life in the maternity ward.
According to EudraVigilance, as of Dec. 24, 2023, there were 64 adverse events related to Beyfortus in those 1 month old or younger, and 68 for those between 2 months and 2 years of age. One death, that of a baby below 1 month old, was recorded, as were 60 records containing the word bronchiolitis. And according to VigiAccess, there were 104 adverse events reported, including 57 infections and respiratory disorders.
Another study, concerning premature babies and newborns suffering from heart or lung disease that compared Beyfortus with monoclonal antibodies previously used on high-risk babies, recorded six deaths — five due to bronchiolitis. Of the six babies that died, five had been treated with Beyfortus.
Yet, “these bronchiolitis cases are not attributed to the treatment by the investigator, who is also the manufacturer of the products,” Banoun said. “All this suggests that nirsevimab [generic name for Beyfortus] could facilitate and aggravate bronchiolitis: these injections take place during periods when the virus is circulating.”
“Let’s not forget that this whole bronchiolitis ‘prevention’ campaign is supposed to avoid overcrowding hospitals with babies suffering from the disease,” Banoun said. “If this product doesn’t significantly reduce hospital admissions, what’s the point?”
According to NTD, “Monoclonal antibodies are copies of an antibody that seek out foreign material to destroy them,” but the treatments come with a “risk that the body might trigger a strong reaction to the antibodies.”
Complications may be serious and can include “acute anaphylaxis or life-threatening massive allergic reactions and cytokine release syndrome that can result in organ damage.” This phenomenon is one of the adverse effects of Beyfortus.
In his interview with Banoun, McCullough said, “Antibody-dependent enhancements [ADE] have always been something we’ve been worried about because if antibodies bind the virus but not very tightly, that means they don’t neutralize the virus. And then, [a] fragment [Fc] of the antibody binds to a cell receptor. In a sense, the antibody can bring the virus into the cell.”
McCullough told The Defender, “The antibodies will invariably affect the development of natural immunity with repeated exposures to RSV during childhood. Beyfortus-resistant strains can be expected with indiscriminate use.”
Banoun cited a study in which “two of the 25 subjects in the nirsevimab group with RSV … had an RSV isolate containing substitutions associated with resistance to nirsevimab,” while “No subject in the placebo group had an RSV isolate containing substitutions associated with resistance to nirsevimab.”
Banoun also referred to a September 2022 EMA report, which found that during failed RSV vaccine trials in the past, children died of severe bronchiolitis in the vaccinated groups, but none from the control groups died.
“This ADE is due to the deleterious effect of antibodies which, instead of neutralizing the virus, facilitate its entry into the cell via the receptor of the Fc fragment of immunoglobulins. And it’s precisely this Fc region of nirsevimab … that industry has seen fit to modify,” Banoun said.
“Manufacturers are looking for the beneficial effects of this phenomenon and are wary of deleterious effects, which is why they have investigated the risk of ADE with Beyfortus in animal models,” Banoun added. “They claim not to have detected it, but the EMA points out, unmoved, that no histopathological evaluation of rats was carried out after treatment and infection with RSV: This is the only recognized marker of ADE.”
On his Substack, McCullough wrote that this effect may be triggered by aerosolized RSV virions present in hospitals.
“This means as ambient aerosolized RSV virions are present in hospitals, clinics, and home, the monoclonal antibody may backfire and enable the inhaled virion to gain access to the bronchial epithelial lining and cause worse bronchiolitis than the baby would have with their own developing natural immunity,” he wrote.
Beyfortus administered on newborns despite being tested on older babies
During the clinical trial leading up to approval of Beyfortus by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a total of 12 infant deaths were recorded. However, the FDA claimed the deaths were “unrelated” to the antibody.
CNBC reported in June that of the 12 infants, “Four died from cardiac disease, two died from gastroenteritis, two died from unknown causes but were likely cases [of] sudden infant death syndrome, one died from a tumor, one died from COVID, one died from a skull fracture, and one died of pneumonia.”
“Fact-checkers” were quick to respond to any stories indicating that the infants’ deaths were related to Beyfortus, with factcheck.org writing in August 2023, “There isn’t evidence the [Beyfortus] shots have killed any babies, contrary to social media claims.”
But according to Banoun, “According to the HAS and EMA, 11 deaths were reported in the nirsevimab groups, one death in the pavilizumab (former equivalent drug) group and three deaths in the placebo groups. The FDA counted 12 deaths in all treated groups versus three in the placebo groups, not including the one that occurred after the follow-up period.”
“It should be noted that all deaths in the placebo groups concerned premature babies in the Griffin study,” Banoun said. “In trials involving full-term babies, all deaths involved treated subjects.”
Banoun said:
“The FDA has added one death in the placebo groups which occurred after the end of follow-up, but no mention is made of any deaths in the treated groups which occurred after this same period. Similarly, a significant number of babies are withdrawn from the trials and therefore no longer followed up after their withdrawal. This imbalance is therefore potentially more serious than published.”
Other studies also showed infant deaths connected to Beyfortus. McCullough told The Defender, “I am concerned about 3 versus 0 deaths with Beyfortus and placebo respectively in the MELODY trial published in NEJM, 2022.”
Nass pointed out another such anomaly in clinical trial results where “The deaths were said to be disproportionate between the placebo and nirsevimab groups.”
“I don’t trust the data as being reliable,” Nass said, “For instance, in this NEJM-published trial, 9.5% of babies who did not receive nirsevimab wound up with pneumonia and ‘lower respiratory tract’ RSV infections.”
“This seems awfully high,” Nass continued, “Especially when the CDC’s own study showed only 17 babies per year die from RSV. I find it hard to rely on the NEJM data.”
“The problem is that, with potentially billions of dollars riding on the outcome of a few clinical trials, there may be tremendous pressure to come up with the desired results. And there are many ways in which the desired results can be achieved,” she added.
Banoun also pointed out that while Beyfortus is administered to newborns, clinical studies tested the drug on older babies.
If we refer to the descriptions of the deceased babies, in the Domachowske study, “Only 1 was less than a month old at the time of injection (23 days), while all the others were between 1 and 7.5 months old,” she said. “We find the same panel of babies in all the other studies … in the Griffin study, the babies have a median age of over 6 months, in the Hammitt and Domachowske studies, only half the babies are under 3 months old … in the Hammitt study, the median age is 2.6 months (range 1.05 to 4.5 months).”
According to Banoun, public health authorities are aware of this discrepancy, noting that in the HAS Transparency Commission’s report on Beyfortus, Sylvie Chevret, M.D., Ph.D., professor of public health and biostatistics at France’s Université Paris Cité, said:
“In these trials, they included children who were essentially said to be in good health, so tomorrow, do you intend to give this drug to all newborns, bearing in mind that the studies did not include newborns?
“They included children who were less than three months old, of course, but up to more than 6 months.”
“The FDA and the American Association of Pediatrics jumped the gun in 2023 and were reckless in the approval and recommendation of Beyfortus for mass deployment in babies without carefully considering these issues,” McCullough told The Defender.
‘Expectant mothers should be prepared to resist’ Beyfortus for their babies
Despite these indications and possible safety signals, Banoun said that there has been no reaction so far from public health authorities in France or elsewhere.
“The only reaction to my posts was censorship and a video that was supposed to debunk my claims but actually confirmed them,” she said. “Like all critical scientists, I am censored: strict control over social networks, in particular Twitter, where we have been rendered virtually invisible since December 2023, when the European Digital Commissioner threatened Twitter with heavy fines.”
“When all debate is censored, all criticism discredited, even penalized and ostracized, can we still speak of ‘science’?” Banoun questioned, tying the censorship she’s experienced and the promotion of drugs such as Beyfortus to the concept of biopolitics.
Banoun explained that biopolitics was theorized by French philosopher Michel Foucault “to explain how power is exercised over human populations … on a global level” and “which, in our time, tends to impose health standards on all human populations [and] increasingly relies on vaccination as an alternative to care in infectiology.”
“Biopower today is exercised by an alliance of governments and health agencies with big industry. Biopolitics [also] concerns the control of populations in fields other than health: digital identity and climate,” she added.
For Banoun, financial interests are a key reason for this stance on the part of public health authorities and pharmaceutical companies.
“The market for bronchiolitis prevention will therefore represent several billion dollars for Big Pharma in the years to come. Why such a large market for a disease that is benign in the vast majority of cases? … The giants of the pharmaceutical industry are in permanent financial difficulty because of the fines and compensation they have to pay.”
“To compensate for these fines, manufacturers have to launch ‘blockbusters’ — highly profitable products that sell very well,” Banoun said, adding that the vaccine liability shield afforded to vaccines by laws such as the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 may be extended to treatments and drugs other than vaccines.
“It is feared that this exemption from liability will be extended to preventive therapies such as Beyfortus,” Banoun said, pointing out that U.S. and European authorities have mixed the classification of Beyfortus, considering it a vaccine in some instances and not in others.
In the U.S., the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended adding Beyfortus to the childhood vaccine schedule, providing its manufacturers with a waiver of liability, but also recommended coding it as a drug for insurance purposes and leaving it out of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP).
In addition to this liability shield, Banoun said that, in France, midwives and nurses reportedly “receive a bonus for each injection — Sanofi pays a sum to each hospital, which is then redistributed to the injectors.”
Experts advised parents and physicians to be wary of Beyfortus.
“Physicians and parents should be conservative in deciding on Beyfortus. I do not recommend it for parents who are expecting healthy newborns or babies without severe pulmonary disease,” McCullough told The Defender.
Banoun said “Expectant mothers should be prepared to resist,” noting the White House’s and CDC’s efforts to promote Beyfortus and pressure placed on new mothers in French hospitals, where “nursing staff insist on giving it to the mother up to four or five times during her stay in the maternity ward.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
They Think We Are Stupid, Volume 4
By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | January 2, 2024
Happy New Year, dear readers! As always, this series of headlines is presented without commentary. It’s everything you need to know about our ruling class’s opinion of you.
Israel’s ‘unprecedented’ censorship regime targets Western media
MEMO | December 29, 2023
The Israeli army issued an unprecedented English-language censorship order banning media agencies from reporting without the prior approval of its propaganda unit in the military known as the Israeli Military Censor. Commanded by the chief censor, a military officer appointed by the defence minister, the unit is located within the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate.
The memo is titled “Operation Swords of Iron”, the same name Israel has given to its military campaign in Gaza where 21,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October. The high death toll and level of devastation makes Israel’s onslaught on the besieged population of Gaza the bloodiest military campaign in living memory.
Details of the memo obtained by the Intercept reveals how the Israeli army has taken extreme measures to control the narrative about its military campaign, widely considered to be a genocide. As many as eight critical subjects related to the conflict have been banned.
Among the prohibited topics are details about weapons used by the occupation army, security cabinet leaks and stories about individuals held as prisoners of war by Hamas. With the censorship memo written in English, it’s speculated that the directives are intended for Western media sympathetic to the apartheid regime.
According to Michael Omer-Man, former editor-in-chief of Israel’s +972 Magazine and director of research for Israel–Palestine at Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN), the instructions in the memo are unprecedented, emphasising the IDF’s efforts to control the narrative surrounding the ongoing conflict.
“I haven’t ever seen instructions like this sent from the censor aside from general notices broadly telling outlets to comply, and even then it was only sent to certain people,” said Omer-Man.
The document highlights the censorship’s focus on the activities of the occupation army and Israeli security forces, urging media outlets to submit materials for censorship before broadcast.
The Israeli Military Censor, located within the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate, has faced concerns about politicisation. Recent reports indicate that the censor complained about pressure from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to crack down on specific media outlets without legitimate reasons.
Since the commencement of Israel’s aggression, over 6,500 new items have faced censorship by the Israeli government, according to Guy Lurie, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. This figure is said to be approximately four times higher than before the conflict, highlighting the increased scrutiny.
Adding further weight to the claim that the directive is intended for the Western media is Israel’s treatment of foreign journalists. Foreign journalists working in Israel must obtain government permission, including a declaration that they will abide by the censor.
“In order to get a visa as a journalist, you have to get approval from GPO [Government Press Office,] and therefore you have to sign a document that says you will comply with the censor,” said Omer-Man. “That in itself is probably against the ethics guidelines at a bunch of papers.”
READ: Meta accused of ‘systemic censorship’ of pro-Palestine content
READ ALSO: Censoring Israeli violence: Western media outlets capitulate
Hamas: Meshaal did not say we will recognise Israel
MEMO | December 29, 2023
An official source in Hamas yesterday denied statements attributed to the movement’s former head, Khaled Meshaal, on the possibility of recognising Israel.
“The journalist in the French Le Figaro newspaper, Georges Malbrunot, included a set of his personal opinions and his own comments regarding the recognition of Israel, during an interview with Meshaal,” the source said in a statement on Wednesday.
The source added that Malbrunot’s article is far from Meshaal’s clear and specific statements, in which he affirmed “the refusal to recognise the Zionist entity”.
Hamas attached the text of Meshaal’s statements.
“Our clear position is not to recognise the legitimacy of the occupation; we took a lesson from the Oslo Accords,” Meshaal said in the text, adding: “In 1993, the PLO leadership recognised Israel, which did not give it anything in return.”
“Through the 2017 document, Hamas confirmed its position in national consensus with the Palestinian factions regarding the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital and the right of return and without us recognising Israel. As for the issue of the truce, it is negotiable,” he added.
India deploys warships to Arabian Sea following attack on Israeli-linked ship
The Cradle | December 26, 2023
The Indian Navy has deployed three guided missile destroyers to the Arabian Sea in response to an alleged drone attack on an Israeli-linked chemical tanker last week.
New Delhi also uses long-range maritime patrol aircraft for “domain awareness,” the defense ministry reported Monday night.
On Saturday, the Liberian-flagged MV Chem Pluto, a Japanese-owned tanker traveling 370km off the coast of India, was reportedly hit by a kamikaze drone, according to the Pentagon.
The Israeli-linked tanker had been on its way from Saudi Arabia to India, according to maritime security firm Ambrey.
The Indian Navy says they are examining the specifics of the attack on the MV Chem Puto, which managed to anchor in Mumbai on 26 December.
Although Indian officials say a preliminary evaluation suggests a drone strike, they emphasize that additional forensic and technical examinations are necessary to determine the exact method of attack.
Washington blamed the attack on Iran, saying the drone had been launched “directly” from the Islamic Republic.
“We declare these claims completely worthless,” said Nasser Kanaani, spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, on Monday.
“Such claims are aimed at projecting, distracting public attention, and covering up for the full support of the US government for the crimes of the Zionist regime in Gaza,” he added.
Saturday’s drone attack came less than a week after the US announced the formation of the so-called Operation Prosperity Guardian, described by US officials as a new “coalition of the willing” that seeks to counter the threat posed by Yemen in the Red Sea.
Although the Yemeni armed forces have been conducting the attacks against Israeli-linked vessels of their own accord, the Pentagon insists Iran is somehow involved.
“The [Yemeni] resistance has its own tools […] and acts by its own decisions and capabilities,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri told Mehr News Agency on Saturday.
“The fact that certain powers, such as the US and the Israelis, suffer strikes from the resistance movement […] should in no way call into question the reality of the strength of the resistance in the region,” he added.
Ukraine joins NATO’s Arctic projects against Russia
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | DECEMBER 19, 2023
In a plea earlier this month to Republicans not to block further military aid to Ukraine, US President Joe Biden warned that if Russia is victorious, then President Vladimir Putin will not stop and will attack a NATO country. Biden’s remark has drawn a sharp rebuke from Putin when he said, “This is absolutely absurd. I believe that President Biden is aware of this, this is merely a figure of speech to support his incorrect strategy against Russia.”
Putin added that Russia has no interest in fighting with NATO countries, as they “have no territorial claims against each other” and Russia does not want to “sour relations with them.” Moscow senses that a new US narrative is struggling to be born out of the debris of the old narrative on Ukraine war.
To jog memory, on 24 February, during a White House press conference on the first day of Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, Biden said western sanctions were designed not to prevent invasion but to punish Russia after invading “so the people of Russia know what he (Putin) has brought on them. That is what this is all about.”
A month later, on 26 March Biden, speaking in Warsaw, blurted out, “For God’s sake, this man (Putin) cannot remain in power.” These and similar remarks that followed, especially from Britain, reflected a US strategy for regime change in Moscow, with Ukraine as the pivot.
This strategy dates back to the 1990s and was actually at the core of the expansion of NATO along Russia’s borders, from the Baltics to Bulgaria. The Syrian conflict and covert activities of US NGOs to foment unrest in Russia were offshoots of the strategy. At least since 2015 after the coup in Kiev, CIA was overseeing a secret intensive training programme for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel. Succinctly put, the US set a trap for Russia to get it bogged down in a long insurgency, the presumption being the longer the Ukrainians can sustain the insurgency and keep Russian military bogged down, the more likely is the end of the Putin regime.
The crux of the matter today is that Russia defeated the US strategy and not only seized the initiative in the war but also rubbished the sanctions regime. The dilemma in the Beltway narrows down to how to keep Russia as an external enemy so that the West’s often fractious member states will continue to rally under US leadership.
What comes to mind is a sardonic remark by Soviet Academician Georgy Arbatov who was advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev, to an elite group of senior US officials even as the curtain was coming down on the Cold War in 1987: “We are going to do a terrible thing to you -– we are going to deprive you of an enemy.”
Unless black humour in this cardinal truth is properly understood, the entire US strategy since the 1990s to rebuff the efforts of Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and early Putin to establish non-adversarial relations with the West cannot be grasped.
Put differently, if the US’ post-cold war Russia strategy has not worked, it is because of a fundamental contradiction: on the one hand, Washington needs Russia as an enemy to provide internal unity within the western alliance, while on the other hand, it also needs Russia as a cooperative, subservient junior partner in the struggle against China.
The US hopes to draw down in Ukraine and stave off defeat by leaving behind a “frozen conflict” which it’s free to revisit later at a time of its choice, but in the meanwhile, is increasingly eyeing the Arctic lately as the new theatre to entrap Russia in a quagmire. The induction of Finland into NATO (and Sweden to follow) means that the unfinished business of Ukraine’s membership, which Russia thwarted, can be fulfilled by other means.
After meeting Biden at the White House last Tuesday, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky headed for Oslo on October 13 on a fateful visit to forge his country’s partnership in NATO projects to counter Russia in the Arctic. In Oslo, Zelensky participated in a summit of the 5 Nordic countries to discuss “issues of cooperation in the field of defence and security.” The summit took place against the backdrop of the US reaching agreements with Finland and Sweden on the use of their military infrastructure by the Pentagon.
The big picture is that the US is encouraging Nordic countries to get Ukraine to participate in strengthening NATO’s Arctic borders. One may wonder what is the “additionality” that a decrepit military like Ukraine’s can bring into NATO. Herein hangs a tale. Simply put, although Ukraine has no direct access to the Arctic, it can potentially bring in an impressive capability to undertake subversive activities inside Russian territory in a hybrid war against Russia.
In a strange coincidence, the Pentagon recently prepared the Starlink satellite system for use in the Arctic, which was used by Ukrainian military for staging attacks on the Crimean Bridge, Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and strategic assets on Russian territory. The US’ agreement with Finland and Sweden would give the Pentagon access to a string of naval and air bases and airfields as well as training and testing grounds along the Russian border.
Several hundred thousand Ukrainian citizens are presently domiciled in the Nordic countries who are open to recruitment for “an entire army of saboteurs like the one that Germany collected during the war between Finland and the USSR in 1939-1940 on the islands of Lake Ladoga,” as a Russian military expert told Nezavisimaya Gazeta recently.
Russia’s naval chief Admiral Nikolai Evmenov also pointed out recently that “the strengthening of the military presence of the united NATO armed forces in the Arctic is already an established fact, which indicates the bloc’s transition to practical actions to form military force instruments to deter Russia in the region.” In fact, Russia’s Northern Fleet is forming a marine brigade tasked with the fight against saboteurs to ensure the safety of the new Northern Sea Route, coastal military and industrial infrastructure in the Arctic.
Suffice to say, no matter Ukraine’s defeat in the US’ proxy war with Russia, Zelensky’s use for the US’ geo-strategy remains. From Oslo, Zelensky made an unannounced visit on December 14 to a US Army base in Germany. Analysts who see Zelensky as a spent force had better revise their opinion — that is, unless the power struggle in Kiev exacerbates and Zelensky gets overthrown in a coup or a colour revolution, which seems improbable so long as Biden is in the White House and Hunter Biden is on trial.
The bottom line is that Biden’s new narrative demonising Russia for planning an attack on NATO can be seen from multiple angles. At the most obvious level, it aims to hustle the Congress on the pending bill for $61 billion military aid to Ukraine. Of course, it also distracts attention from the defeat in the war. But, most important, the new narrative is intended to rally the US’ transatlantic allies who are increasingly disillusioned with the outcome of the war and nervous that US involvement in Europe may dwindle as it turns to Indo-Pacific.
When Putin reacts harshly that Biden’s new narrative is “absurd”, he is absolutely right insofar as Russia’s focus is on things far more important than waging a senseless continental war in Europe. After all, it was one of the founding fathers of the USA, James Monroe who said that a king without power is an absurdity.
Joe Biden’s World War III Fantasy
By Scott Ritter – Sputnik – 16.12.2023
On July 13, 2023, US President Joe Biden confidently announced to the world that “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin has already lost the war.”
The “war” Biden spoke of was Russia’s Special Military Operation against Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022.
Biden’s bold statement was made during a press conference with Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto, following a meeting with Nordic leaders that came on the heels of the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Biden declared that the US and its NATO allies had, through their decision to commit to the military victory of Ukraine over Russia, reached “an inflection point in history,” adding that “This fight is not only a fight for the future of Ukraine, it is about sovereignty, security and freedom itself.”
The American president’s pronouncements followed similarly themed rhetoric spoken in Vilnius a day prior, where he announced to his NATO colleagues, “Our commitment to Ukraine will not weaken,” adding that “We will stand for liberty and freedom today, tomorrow, and for as long as it takes.”
“As long as it takes,” it turns out, isn’t the same as “long as needed.”
Confronted with a trifecta of bad news—the calamitous defeat of the NATO-trained and equipped Ukrainian military in the much-hyped summer counteroffensive, a Russian Army that is growing stronger by the day, and the collapse of political will and fiscal ability on the part of Ukraine’s erstwhile allies in the US and Europe to continue funding Ukraine’s flagging war effort—Joe Biden was compelled to alter his pledge to the cause of Ukrainian and European liberty and freedom to “as long as we can,” with the modifier contingent upon the US Congress’ willingness to throw another $60 billion into the $120 billion in aid the US has provided Ukraine since May 2022.
To intimidate Congress into yielding to his demands regarding money for Ukraine, Biden undertook a campaign of terror. “Frankly,” Biden said in a statement delivered at the White House in early December, “I think it’s stunning we have gotten to this point in the first place. Republicans in Congress are willing to give Putin the greatest gift he could hope for and abandon our global leadership.”
While many Republicans support continued funding of the Ukraine war effort, the issue has become politicized in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election, where domestic issues tend to trump foreign affairs. And, currently, there is no more high-profile domestic policy issue than border security and immigration reform. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who has been a vociferous supporter of Ukraine, noted that while he would support continued funding of Ukraine’s war effort, he could not return to his home state of South Carolina to “try to explain why I helped Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel and did nothing to secure our own border. I will help all of our allies, but we have got to help ourselves first.”
Mike Johnson, the new Republican speaker of the House and a hardline conservative, indicated that the objection to continued funding for Ukraine went beyond simply funding issues. “What is the objective?” Johnson said to reporters after meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky earlier this month. “What is the endgame in Ukraine? How are we going to have proper oversight of the funds?”
Russian servicemen fire a BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher towards Ukrainian positions in the course of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, at the unknown location in the
Both Graham and Johnson had been subjected to a full-court press by Joe Biden and the White House in an effort for the recalcitrant Republicans to reverse course on their objections. “We can’t let Putin win,” Biden pleaded. “If Putin takes Ukraine,” Biden noted, “he won’t stop there.” The US president said an emboldened Putin would move on to threaten his NATO neighbors. And then, Biden stated, “We’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops.”
If the threat of a Third World War in the face of Congressional inaction wasn’t enough, Biden authorized the Pentagon to declassify and release to CNN an intelligence report that claimed that Russia had suffered enormous casualties in its war with Ukraine, with some 315,000 of an estimated 360,000 troops that made up Russia’s pre-conflict ground force, having been killed or wounded. The declassified intelligence report also claimed that 2,200 of Russia’s 3,500 tanks have been lost, along with 4,400 of 13,600 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers.
The release of the declassified report was clearly timed to influence the US Congress by emphasizing the very talking points that have been repeatedly made by Senator Graham and others that the US aid was “Best money we’ve ever spent” because “the Russians are dying.”
Given the history of the US intelligence community of declassifying intelligence reports for the specific purpose of releasing the information to mainstream media outlets to shape public opinion—even if the intelligence community knows the information contained in the report is wrong—one must take the report regarding Russian casualties with a heavy grain of salt. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia currently has some 617,000 troops deployed in the Special Military Operation zone. These forces are on the offensive, actively advancing on several fronts against a Ukrainian Army which is rapidly losing its ability to sustain large-scale ground combat operations. This doesn’t sound like the performance of an organization that suffered some 87% casualties, a figure which would make the survivors combat ineffective.
The fact is, US and European support for Ukraine is flagging, and Ukraine is facing an existential crisis in the coming weeks and months that it most likely will not be able to resolve in its favor.
While Russian troops are taking casualties, it is far more likely than not that the real Russian casualty figures are significantly less than the number reported in the declassified US intelligence report, spread out over the original force and the hundreds of thousands of mobilized reservists and volunteers who have entered the fighting since. These losses pale in comparison to the more than 400,000 dead and nearly one million wounded Ukraine has suffered.
Russia’s combat power grows every day, with fresh troops and equipment being made available for the war effort. Ukraine, on the other hand, has exhausted its reserves, and is left scraping the bottom of its human resources barrel to man whatever units it is able to organize from what is left of Ukraine’s diminished, and diminishing, arsenal.
While the Russian Army is indeed large, and growing, and its capabilities expanding as it becomes more combat experienced, it is an army with a very specific mission—the defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Russian force structure is currently more than sufficient to defeat the Ukrainians on a frontage that stretches some 2,000 kilometers in length. It is even large enough to secure some additional Ukrainian territory, in addition to liberating the newly absorbed Russian territories of the Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, and Lugansk regions still held by Ukraine. But there are physical limitations as to what one can accomplish with 617,000 troops and occupying all of Ukraine before invading Poland and/or the Baltics is well beyond the capacity of the Russian forces currently deployed in the Special Military Operation.
Moreover, Russian President Vladimir Putin has never intimated that Russia had any intention to either occupy all of Ukraine or seek to attack NATO — just the opposite. The Russian goals and objectives of the Special Military Operation are spelled out very clearly — demilitarization (the destruction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces), de-Nazification (the elimination of the regime of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the pro-Nazi political element inside Ukraine), and permanent neutrality for Ukraine (i.e., Ukraine will never join NATO). There is no intent to take the war to NATO. Such thinking is a fear-based construct of the Biden administration that is inaccurate and far removed from reality, little more than a fantasy which the sober-minded Russian government, ever mindful of the need to carefully manage escalation because of the Special Military Operation, will pay scant attention to.
Joe Biden and his national security team are scrambling to manage the consequences of policy failure. Putin, it seems, has not lost the war with Ukraine. Russia is winning, something no amount of funding by either the US, the Europeans, or both, can reverse. The best thing that could happen to Ukraine is for the congressional Republicans to hold steadfast to their objections and allow Ukraine to be taken off the life support that US funding provides. Ukraine is a terminal case. Continuing to underwrite its failed war effort simply prolongs the agony of its people.
Mainstream propaganda machine doubles down on ‘Russia losing’ fantasies
By Drago Bosnic | December 13, 2023
Even before the start of the special military operation (SMO), the mainstream media had been running several propaganda narratives, almost simultaneously. Shortly before the SMO and in the first few days, there was the claim that Russia would take Kiev in three days and most of Ukraine in a week. However, as this didn’t happen (nor was it ever planned to unfold this way in the Kremlin), the mainstream propaganda machine went full afterburner in the opposite direction. Now, Moscow was suddenly losing, the Kiev regime forces are unbeatable, the Russians are suffering from extremely low morale due to massive losses, they’re running out of missiles, shells, fuel and so on, and so forth.
These ludicrous myths never stopped and continued until the failure of the much-touted counteroffensive. That was when many in the political West adopted a somewhat less propagandistic tone and tried mixing in some “realism”. However, this didn’t have the desired effect on the populace in Western Europe and North America. Thus, there’s a slow return to the most ridiculous propaganda one could possibly imagine. For instance, the Wall Street Journal claims that the Neo-Nazi junta will be “able to seize the initiative on the battlefield in 2025 if it can hold out against Russia until the end of next year”. This narrative is being pushed despite the fact that the United States, its primary backer, is about to stop the money flow.
The report initially doesn’t come off as propagandistic as one would expect, but towards the end, the authors still tried pushing debunked propaganda narratives. There are several instances of somewhat unexpected admissions, such as the obvious failure of the Kiev regime’s counteroffensive, as well as the dwindling financial support from the political West. The report also touched upon the growing divisions within the Neo-Nazi junta and the fact that its battered military will need time to recover. However, in a response to the WSJ, its Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba challenged this with a claim that “any pause in the fighting now would allow Russia to regroup and prepare for large-scale offensive operations”.
Kuleba even stated that the Kiev regime forces are preparing fresh brigades for “new counteroffensive and defensive operations”. The WSJ supported the idea and even went as far as to claim that “2024 will be the year of the recovery [for the Neo-Nazi junta troops]”. However, the authors admit that this comes with an important caveat, as the Kiev regime and its NATO overlords will need to “work through their current adversities and continue delivering supplies to troops, an emerging best-case scenario among Western strategists is that next year becomes a year of rebuilding for Kiev’s military“, adding that “the hope would be that a limited number of Ukrainian soldiers can hold Russian forces at bay”.
This would supposedly “allow NATO countries time to train fresh Ukrainian troops, expand armament production and restock Ukraine’s arsenals”. As indicated during a recent NATO meeting, the political West hopes that Russia’s incremental offensive operations will fail, “resulting in a depletion of its manpower and munitions, potentially offering Ukraine better prospects to retake the battlefield initiative in the spring of 2025, if it gets through next year”. However, the WSJ concluded the report with a not-so-optimistic remark of a Ukrainian infantry sergeant who said that when he talks to people at home he tells them that “everything is going well” and doesn’t describe what he sees or feels, which isn’t so upbeat.
“What is the point?”, the WSJ quoted the Ukrainian sergeant.
While the WSJ certainly is part of the mainstream, it’s still a bit more reputable than many other outlets of America’s massive propaganda machine. For instance, the infamous CNN is beating its own records in laughable claims by publishing that “Russia has lost a staggering 87% of the total number of active-duty ground troops it had prior to launching its invasion of Ukraine and two-thirds of its pre-invasion tanks”. Of course, this information came from “a source familiar with a declassified US intelligence assessment provided to Congress”. The assessment was sent on December 11, as the Republican-dominated Congress was in the middle of effectively canceling the “Ukraine aid”.
The “intelligence” assessment supposedly found that “the war has sharply set back 15 years of Russian effort to modernize its ground force”. Then came the numbers game, where CNN claims that “of the 360,000 troops that entered Ukraine, including contract and conscript personnel, Russia has lost 315,000 on the battlefield, 2,200 of 3,500 tanks and 4,400 of 13,600 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers have also been destroyed, a 32% loss rate”. CNN says it reached out to the Russian Embassy for comment, which is yet to respond. The most likely scenario is that His Excellency Ambassador Anatoly Antonov is still laughing uncontrollably after reading all this. And he certainly isn’t the only one.
“The idea that Ukraine was going to throw Russia back to the 1991 borders was preposterous,” Sen. J.D. Vance, a Republican from Ohio, said on CNN’s State of the Union on December 10, adding: “So what we’re saying to the president and really to the entire world is, you need to articulate what the ambition is. What is $61 billion going to accomplish that $100 billion hasn’t?”
Even CNN had to admit that “Ukraine remains deeply vulnerable”, as its “highly anticipated counteroffensive stagnated through the fall”, and that “US officials believe that Kiev is unlikely to make any major gains over the coming months”. As for the alleged “staggering losses” of the Russian military, the truth is that Moscow hasn’t been this strong militarily since at least the 1980s. In addition, the Kremlin is effectively returning to a Soviet superpower level with its latest military strategy shift. The very idea that Russia lost well over 300,000 soldiers is beyond ludicrous, as the country would be littered with new military cemeteries in virtually every major settlement. On the contrary, it’s precisely Ukraine that looks like that thanks to the NATO-backed Neo-Nazi junta.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Ukrainian trial demonstrates 2014 Maidan massacre was false flag
By Kit Klarenberg | The Grayzone | December 11, 2023
A massacre of protesters during the 2014 Maidan coup set the stage for the ouster of Ukraine’s elected president, Viktor Yanukovych. Now, an explosive trial in Kiev has produced evidence the killings were a false flag designed to trigger regime change.
Two police officers charged with the mass shooting of opposition protesters in Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2014 have been released after a Ukrainian court determined the fatal shots in the infamous massacre were fired from an opposition-controlled building.
On October 18 2023, Ukraine’s Sviatoshyn District Court determined that of the five officers on trial, one would be acquitted outright, while another was sentenced to time served for alleged “abuse of power.”
The remaining three, who no longer live in Ukraine, were convicted in absentia on 31 counts of murder and 44 counts of attempted murder. This, under a Supreme Court opinion stipulating suspects can be held collectively responsible for the actions of a group deemed criminal.
The verdict means no one will face jail time, or be in any way punished for their alleged role in the infamous Maidan massacre, which saw over 100 protesters killed, triggered an avalanche of international condemnation and led directly to the downfall of President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the country mere days later.
The trial began in Kiev in 2016, but the case languished for years. Matters were further complicated in 2019, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traded all five of the accused for prisoners held by Donbas separatists. Two subsequently returned on a voluntary basis to have their day in court.
Unsurprisingly, the verdict has triggered outrage among victims’ families, and prosecution lawyers say they plan to appeal. By contrast, the mainstream media has so far remained eerily indifferent. In an apparent attempt to distort the trial’s outcome, several outlets — including Reuters — simply referred to the court “sentencing” the officers in their headlines. The Kyiv Post went as far as falsely claiming all five had been found “guilty” of “Maidan crimes.”
But there is more to the story than these outlets have let on. As even the Western-funded Kyiv Independent acknowledged, “a former top investigator” previously tasked with probing the massacre said the verdict followed years of deliberate sabotage by Ukrainian authorities, who “have done their best to make sure there are no real results.”
The question of why officials in Kiev would seek to sabotage the probe has been largely ignored by legacy media outlets. But the verdict offers some highly revealing clues.
‘Unknown persons’ behind killing
Littered throughout the 1,000,000 word document are passages demonstrating conclusively that the sniper fire emanated from buildings controlled by the opposition to Yanukovych. Collectively, these excerpts strongly suggest the Maidan massacre was a false flag carried out by nationalist elements who aimed to ensure the president’s ouster.
The evidence “was quite sufficient to conclude categorically that on the morning of February 20, 2014, persons with weapons, from which the shots were fired, were in the premises of the Hotel Ukraina,” the court found.
Another section reveals “Hotel Ukraina” was “territory… not controlled by law enforcement agencies at that time.” Numerous video recordings show that before, during, and after the massacre, the building was overrun by the far-right opposition party Svoboda, whose leaders used the premises to coordinate their anti-Yanukovych activities on the streets below.
In at least 28 of the 128 shootings considered during the trial, the court ruled that whether “due to the lack of information, the incompleteness or contradictory nature of the submitted data,” the “involvement of law enforcement officers has not been proven,” and that “other unknown persons cannot be ruled out.”
Furthermore, the verdict effectively ruled out any involvement of Russian security and intelligence services in the massacre, a conspiracy theory promoted heavily by pro-Maidan elements.
“The ‘Russian trace’ was not confirmed after examining the relevant documents,” the court found. It concluded that those individuals who were suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence, and were being “constantly monitored,” did not have “any participation in the events on the street.”
For Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, a University of Ottawa political science professor who has spent years documenting overwhelming evidence of opposition responsibility for the massacre, such findings are a long-overdue vindication of his research. In comments to The Grayzone, he explained that the conviction of three police officers in absentia for the murder of 28 Maidan protesters and attempted murder of 36 was “based on a single fabricated forensic ballistic examination.”
The flawed “forensic examination of bullets reversed [the] results of 40 other ballistic examinations” taken previously — every one of which, Katchanovski notes, “showed bullets of Berkut police Kalashnikovs did not match those retrieved from bodies of killed Maidan protesters.”
In the end, “the trial produced an extraordinary volume of evidence proving protesters were shot at from various buildings controlled by pro-Maidan elements,” he says, pointing to the “over 100 witnesses, including 51 anti-government activists injured during the shooting, [who] testified to having been shot from these areas, or seeing snipers located there.”
Elsewhere, the verdict rejected a 3D-model reconstruction of the shooting of three Maidan activists, produced by a New York City-based “unconventional architecture practice” named SITU. This bogus analysis, which was financed to the tune of $100,000 by the Kiev branch of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, was heavily promoted by The New York Times and other Western media outlets and held up as definitive proof that Ukrainian security forces were responsible for the deaths. But the SITU model changed the location of victim’s wounds — from the side or back of their body to the front — and altered the angles of the bullets’ trajectory to fraudulently convict police for their murders.
As Katchanovski explains, “This is deliberate fraud and disinformation.”
“SITU’s bogus modeling allowed The New York Times and many others to deny the existence of Maidan snipers, and brand as ‘conspiracy theory’ any suggestion the massacre was a ‘false flag,’” he says.
But if the Berkhut officers were not responsible for the dozens of deaths that day, the question remains: who was?
Maidan killers move to Odessa
In August 2023, the New York Times revealed that the Ukrainian gunrunner Serhiy Pashinksy, once openly condemned by Zelensky himself as a “criminal,” had become the top private supplier of arms to Ukraine. Pashinsky sourced grenades, artillery shells and rockets “through a trans-European network of middlemen,” then sold, bought and resold the arms “until the final buyer, Ukraine’s military, pays the most.” The hustle has enriched him to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Pashinsky, a former Ukrainian parliamentarian, was a central figure in the Maidan coup. As The Grayzone subsequently revealed, he has been accused by three Georgian mercenaries of personally orchestrating the February 2014 massacre, supplying the weapons used and personally picking targets to be shot. When Israeli journalists confronted Pashinsky about these allegations, he threatened to have his associates track them down at home and “tear them apart.”
During the Maidan trial, defense lawyers made prominent mention of those same Georgian mercenary snipers. Along with Maidan leaders, and Western-backed fascist paramilitary Right Sector, the snipers were also implicated in the May 2014 Odessa massacre, a gruesome incident in which scores of Russian-speaking anti-Maidan protesters were forcibly herded into the city’s Trade Unions House, which was then set alight. In all, 46 died due to burn injuries, carbon monoxide poisoning, and attempts to escape the horrors by jumping out of windows. Non-fatal casualties reportedly totaled around 200.
Katchanovski says that as with Maidan, evidence points to the role of an extremely well-organized plot to carry out the Odessa killings:
“A Georgian sniper who confessed their Maidan massacre role in an Israeli documentary also revealed one of the massacre’s organizers dispatched them to Odessa right before the attack on separatists there.”
Post-coup, coverup after coverup
From the beginning of the Maidan trial, witnesses and prosecutors were subjected by far-right Ukrainian figures to a campaign of intimidation. During proceedings, Neo-Nazi C14 and Azov activists stormed the courtroom, attacked defendants, and placed tires outside the court in an apparent threat to burn the building down. The presiding judge was even beaten by a Maidan activist.
“Covert pressure from Zelensky’s administration and the far-right is likely much greater than what we have seen publicly,” Katchanovski commented to The Grayzone. “Ukraine’s judiciary isn’t independent. Zelensky’s administration routinely and openly interferes in proceedings, and even dismissed the entire Constitutional Court. It’s a very difficult situation for the judges and jury. There were direct threats from the far-right to convict the accused.”
Accordingly, some wounded protesters who initially testified to the presence of snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings later revoked their accounts. They subsequently admitted the prosecution met with them privately, to discuss what they’d said on the witness stand. For Katchanovski, “this is proof the coverup goes to the top of the Ukrainian government.”
Many Ukrainians, especially in the East, have held this same suspicion since Ukraine’s post-Maidan nationalist coup government adopted a wide-ranging amnesty law in 2014. That legislation granted Maidan protesters blanket immunity from prosecution for every serious crime imaginable, including murder, terrorism, and seizure of power. The law also prohibited official investigation of any anti-government agitator for these crimes, and ordered the destruction of all relevant evidence that had previously been collected.
A high-ranking official within Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Office has since admitted that prosecutors handling the Maidan massacre investigation and trial were covertly selected and appointed by none other than Pashinsky. Efforts to conduct a parliamentary commission to probe the killings were blocked by Petro Poroshenko, the rabidly anti-Russian President of Ukraine who succeeded the ousted Yanukovych in 2014.
The official tampering was understandable, Katchanovski argues, given how fundamental Kiev’s narrative of the Maidan massacre is to the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government. The false flag mass murder led directly to Yanukovych, justifying the withdrawal of government forces from downtown Kiev, the seizure of government buildings by Maidan activists, and the president’s unconstitutional removal by the Ukrainian legislature.
All these developments paved a path to the eight-year-long civil war in Donbas, which claimed the lives of over 14,000 and precipitated Russia’s invasion in February 2022. For Katchanovski, the link between the false flag massacre and ongoing war in Ukraine is obvious. The verdict, he says, makes that even more clear.
As retaliation for his groundbreaking investigations into the Maidan massacre, Katchanovski’s home and property were illegally seized by local courts in 2014 “with the involvement of senior officials.” Yet the professor remains more determined than ever to get to the bottom of the story.
“One day, the truth of what happened will be officially acknowledged — the only question is when,” he vowed. “Delayed acknowledgment and lack of justice in this case has already cost Ukraine very dearly. There are many conflicts, including the ongoing war, which spiraled from the Maidan massacre. Countless people have suffered needlessly as a result. The time for truth and reconciliation is well overdue.”
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
FOI Request Reveals Bellingcat Collusion With Western Intelligence
By Kit Klarenberg | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 12, 2023
An email sent on November 12 2020 by an officer within Amsterdam’s National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) shows a Bellingcat investigation was intentionally shared with the agency prior to publication, so as to assist the Dutch spooks in shaping media strategies and messaging following its release. The revealing communication is irrefutable proof of the cozy relationship the self-styled “independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists” enjoys with Western intelligence services.
In the message, marked “high importance,” the undisclosed author explained that Bellingcat would soon publish research amounting to a deeply libelous attack on independent journalists and researchers, who challenged the mainstream narrative surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. As such, the Dutch intelligence officer wrote, “it is probably smart to put together interdepartmental wording for this already”:
“Because the article highlights several sides (MH17 but also COVID19) it is probably wise to wait a while and see if; a. the mainstream media pick it up; b. from which angle the media pick up and highlight it (MH17 or COVID); c. from this angle to determine the wording and therefore which department is in the lead; d. coordinate the language as much as possible interdepartmentally.”
A ‘bonanza’ of Western intel propaganda
The article in question, entitled “The GRU’s MH17 Disinformation Operations Part 1: The Bonanza Media Project,” was framed as an investigation into a now-defunct independent media venture named Bonanza Media which was established by Russian journalist Yana Yerlashova with the help of freelance Dutch researcher Max Van der Werff.
Much of Bonanza’s work challenged Western assertions that separatist fighters in Donbass shot down MH17 with a Buk surface-to-air missile system provided to them by the Russian military. Ukrainian officials began pushing that narrative, citing audio recordings they claimed to have intercepted alongside material purportedly found on social media implicating the separatists, even before Malaysia Airlines publicly announced it had lost contact with the plane.
Bellingcat, which serendipitously launched just days before the downing of MH17, came to prominence by immediately seizing on this deluge of carefully-curated and potentially falsified information. With amazing speed, the organization claimed to have precisely mapped out what happened that fateful day, and exactly how it occurred. Despite its relative inexperience and opaque organizational structure, its findings were accepted without a shred of scrutiny by Western journalists, lawmakers, pundits, and the official Dutch MH17 tribunal, which concluded in November 2022.
Bonanza Media’s film, “MH17 – Call for Justice”, features interviews with witnesses on-the-ground that day and Malaysian government officials who did not accept the official story, but doesn’t rule out the possibility of Russian culpability altogether. However, the documentary presented a substantial challenge to Bellingcat’s version of events – which also happened to align neatly with the official narrative. In 2020, Bonanza also published leaked documents confidentially submitted to the tribunal. This included Dutch intelligence files recording that while many Ukrainian Buk systems had been spotted in eastern Ukraine, Russian equivalents were nowhere to be seen.
Evidently, Bellingcat and its founder, Eliot Higgins, were displeased with their results. As Dutch freelance journalist Eric van de Beek wrote in 2020, “because it was impossible for Bellingcat to discredit Van der Werff on the basis of the well-researched content featured on his blog and in his recent documentary, Eliot Higgins opted to wage a campaign of misinformation.”
Bellingcat’s 2020 investigation into the group strongly insinuated Bonanza was being run by Russia’s GRU, heavily implied their investigations were edited by the agency’s operatives before publication, and suggested its contributors were on the Kremlin’s payroll. The group claimed their conclusions were “based on emails from the mailboxes of two senior GRU officers obtained by a Russian hacktivist group and independently authenticated by us.”
Strict British libel laws may have prevented the group from making direct allegations to this effect, but the Dutch media had no such qualms, and the investigation triggered a wave of smears in major local publications. One daily newspaper headlined as fact: “Dutch MH17-blogger directed by Russian secret service.” Another, which directly asserted that “Van der Werff worked on the orders of the Russian military intelligence service GRU,” is currently being sued by the researcher regarding the unproven claim.
Strikingly, throughout this period not a single mainstream journalist questioned how Bellingcat acquired the highly sensitive trove of documents upon which its investigation depended. On top of confidential GRU emails, Bellingcat somehow apparently acquired phone data showing calls between purported Russian intelligence officials and cell tower data tracking their movements, which it claimed pinpointed their locations to GRU headquarters in Moscow. None of this information is remotely “open source,” and since it wasn’t shared publicly, it can’t be independently verified.
Oddly, in one passage, Bellingcat stated “it is not clear who requested or suggested” changes to a Bonanza article it alleged were made after the piece was submitted to the GRU, before publication. One might think ascertaining this would be simple, given the vast amount of highly incriminating evidence to which Bellingcat had exclusive access. Perhaps British libel laws were a deterrent to accusing the GRU — but why would this be the case if the material was authentic, and defending it in court was no issue?
MH17 verdict undermines Bellingcat
The newly-released NCTV email strongly suggests Bellingcat’s investigation into Bonanza was the product of a Western intelligence information operation, intended to steer the MH17 tribunal in a very specific direction — namely, towards the defendants’ guilt. Sure enough, Russian nationals Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Donbas separatist Leonid Kharchenko, were convicted in absentia for the murder of MH17’s 283 passengers and 15 crew members, the court ruling they arranged the transfer of the Buk surface-to-air missile system that reportedly struck the plane.
Meanwhile, the only defendant to seek legal representation and give testimony during the trial, Oleg Pulatov, was acquitted on all charges. The court found there was “no indication” he was involved in obtaining the missile system, that he could have prevented its use, or that he was involved in transporting it to another location after the incident. Prosecutors announced they will not appeal the verdict.
The response by the normally brash Higgins to the Dutch court’s judgment was uncharacteristically muted. In an otherwise self-congratulatory Twitter thread, he merely noted that “Pulatov is acquitted, the rest are found guilty.” There was no explanation for why the defendant was found innocent, nor any analysis of the ruling’s potential implications for Bellingcat’s MH17 investigations.
This defence at the MH17 trial is a total car crash, the JIT has had 5 and a half years to prepare for this nonsense, and it’s just recycling MH17 truther nonsense.
— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) June 22, 2020
Higgins and his crack squad of laptop jockeys were understandably embarrassed on these counts. Not least because the Bellingcat chief repeatedly mocked Pulatov and his lawyers during the tribunal, suggesting his conviction was a fait accompli, and sneering when the defendant testified accusations of responsibility for MH17 resulted in adverse personal consequences for him. A June 2020 Bellingcat investigation lambasted Pulatov’s testimony, suggesting his defense strategy was “unlikely to win Mr. Pulatov the court’s sympathies.”
We detail the role that each of these four men had in the downing with our new report. Girkin was the Minister of Defense of the DNR in July 2014, Dubinsky was the head of the GRU DNR, the Pulatov/Kharchenko were his underlings. https://t.co/2cVjK2RCPj pic.twitter.com/wjHwBqpzrP
— Bellingcat (@bellingcat) June 19, 2019
A sordid history of smears
Bellingcat’s confirmed collusion with NCTV raises obvious questions about whether the organization’s relentless attacks on journalists and researchers who do not toe the official national security line are also directly coordinated with, and on behalf of, Western intelligence agencies. In many cases, Bellingcat’s attacks have had real-world consequences for its targets.
For example, Bellingcat has over many years attempted to destroy the career of MIT emeritus professor Theodore Postol, who questioned official investigations into alleged chemical strikes in Syria. In 2019, Bellingcat pressured a science journal to prevent Postol from publishing an academic paper challenging the results of a UN probe into the alleged 2017 Khan Sheikhoun sarin attack which blamed the Syrian government on the basis of supposed “computational forensic analysis.”
Throughout the Syrian conflict, Bellingcat published investigations blaming government forces for chemical weapons attacks, typically within hours of them allegedly happening. These findings were invariably based in part on material provided to the organization by British intelligence constructs on-the-ground, such as the bogus humanitarian group known as the White Helmets. In the immediate aftermath of the notorious April 2018 Douma incident, which OPCW whistleblowers suggest was staged, Higgins tweeted an exclusive photo of one of the cylinders purportedly used in the strike.
The post was abruptly deleted though, perhaps because the White Helmets subsequently shared a photo of the same site in which the same cylinder was in a different position. Proof positive the scene had been manipulated by those staging it. Dissident British academics who have helped expose Douma and other chemical weapons strikes in Syria as opposition-executed false flags – in which British intelligence was frequently complicit – have likewise been relentlessly targeted by Bellingcat.
Elsewhere, Bellingcat fabricated and misrepresented evidence to smear independent Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva as a potential GRU asset. Meanwhile, the organization has played a lead role in disseminating and “verifying” dubious, if not outright fraudulent, material and claims related to the Ukraine conflict throughout its duration. Investigations by The Grayzone strongly suggest Bellingcat operatives were directly implicated in a Ukrainian intelligence operation gone wrong, which got Kiev’s forces killed.
CIA veterans have openly praised Bellingcat for stating publicly what spy agencies cannot. In a December 2020 Foreign Policy article entitled, “Bellingcat Can Say What U.S. Intelligence Can’t,” the CIA’s former deputy chief of operations for Europe and Eurasia was quoted as saying:
“I don’t want to be too dramatic, but we love this. Whenever we had to talk to our liaison partners… instead of trying to have things cleared or worry about classification issues, you could just reference their work.”
Accordingly, leaked files exposing the internal workings of Integrity Initiative, a British intelligence black propaganda operation tasked with ginning up conflict with Russia to pad the UK’s defense budget, were rife with references to Bellingcat. As an internal document which describes one of the group’s goals as “increasing the impact of effective organisations currently analysing Russian activities” notes, “we already do this [emphasis added] with… Bellingcat.”
As a result of such excerpts, this journalist repeatedly asked Higgins about the nature of his and his organization’s relationship with the Integrity Initiative. Though initially evasive, in March 2020 Higgins finally denied any association in an email that concluded with an ominous threat:
“The funny thing is your shitty reporting on the matter had [sic] proven quite useful to us, looking forward to you finding out how, try not to feel too bad.”
Almost four years later, this journalist is still waiting to learn what Higgins and his collaborators in Western spy agencies have cooked up to make me “feel bad.” Given the confirmed interest of British intelligence in sabotaging this outlet, and the crazed allegations put to me by the counter-terror police who detained me in London this May, he may have already made good on his threat.
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Israel Would Have No Qualms About USS Liberty-Style FALSE FLAG If Iran Campaign Falters – Analysts
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 18.06.2025
Donald Trump is mulling whether or not to join Israel’s aggression against Iran as Tel Aviv faces problems sustaining its defenses against growing counterstrikes, and apparently lacks a realistic game plan for an end to hostilities after failing to achieve its goals. Analysts told Sputnik how the US could be ‘nudged’ into the conflict.
“The US is already assisting Israel with supplies, intel, refueling support, etc. One of the many US posts in the region could be attacked for a casus belli,” former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski explained.
“If Trump doesn’t comply with Israel’s demand” and join its aggression voluntarily, “a false flag may be needed” to drag the US in, Kwiatkowski, retired US Air Force Lt. Col.-turned Iraq War whistleblower, fears.
Netanyahu has a diverse array of options at his disposal, according to the observer, including:
- a false flag against US assets abroad blamed on Iran or one of its Axis of Resistance allies, like the Houthis
- a US domestic attack or assassination blamed on Iran
- Iranian air defenses ‘accidentally’ hitting a civilian jetliner carrying Americans
- use of a dirty bomb or nuclear contamination somewhere in the region blamed on Iran
- even blackmailing by threatening to use nukes against Iran if the US doesn’t join the fight
Kwiatkowski estimates that Israel probably has “enough blackmail power” against President Trump and Congress to avoid the necessity of a false flag operation, but a “USS Liberty-style” attack, targeting the soon-to-be-retired USS Nimitz supercarrier that’s heading to the Middle East, for example, nevertheless cannot be ruled out entirely, she says. … continue
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