Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Poland pays US influencers to further war support

Free West Media | November 29, 2022

Poland has hired two US PR companies for a pro-Ukraine campaign in the West. According to the official statement, Poland’s state bank has hired MikeWorldWide and AMW PR for “a global campaign to inform the general public about the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine”.

The PR company MikeWorldWide, is closely linked to the US Democratic Party, and was tasked in September with boosting Western support to Ukraine through influencers and social media.

The primary objective “is to raise awareness among at least 50 million people of the actual dimension of the war in Ukraine and the scale of the damages,” according to MikeWorldWide’s services agreement with Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego.

Poland’s national bank will be paying $3 million for media exposure, including advertisements on Facebook, Twitter, NPR, USA Today, Spotify and Vox, as well as for influencers.

In November Poland’s state bank hired AMW PR, a New York-based media relations company, to “pitch the refugee and humanitarian crisis brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”.

AMW will work with US and Canadian journalists, producers, bloggers, and podcasters.

November 29, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Ukraine to hike transit fees for Russian oil to EU

RT | November 22, 2022

Ukraine has announced plans to raise transit fees for Russian oil running through the Druzhba pipeline to the EU, due to higher costs resulting from Russian air and missile strikes targeting the country’s energy infrastructure.

Ukrtransnafta, the operator of Ukraine’s oil pipeline network, is expected to increase tariffs for transporting crude to Hungary and Slovakia by €2.10 per ton to €13.60 ($13.90) starting on January 1, according to a letter from the company seen by Bloomberg. Its Russian counterpart Transneft confirmed to RIA Novosti that it has received a letter and is studying it.

“We are studying these proposals, preparing relevant reports to the Federal Antimonopoly Service and the Energy Ministry,” Transneft spokesman Igor Demin told the agency.

The Ukrainian company has attributed the price hike to the “continued destruction of Ukrainian energy infrastructure” which has resulted in “a significant shortage of electricity, an increase in its costs, a shortage of fuel, spare parts.”

Ukrainian oil transit fees have already been raised twice this year. The last hike in April reportedly brought the total increase on an annualized basis to 51%.

Druzhba, one of the longest pipeline networks in the world, carries crude some 4,000km from Russia to refineries in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

November 22, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A False Flag over Poland?

Scott Ritter Extra | November 18, 2022

As the saga surrounding the arrival of a Ukrainian S-300 surface-to-air missile on the soil of Poland, tragically taking the lives of two Polish civilians, unfolds, several narratives emerge. First is the hair-trigger Pavlovian response on the part of certain NATO nations (Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and the Czech Republic) to jump to conclusions, announcing that this incident was a clear-cut case of Russian aggression against a NATO member requiring a NATO response inclusive of extending air defense coverage into Ukraine, as well as the establishment of a no-fly zone over parts of Ukraine. The second is the confusion that reigned at the highest levels in Ukraine regarding this incident, up to and including the refusal on the part of the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, to acknowledge that the missile in question was of Ukrainian origin.

It appears that those NATO nations calling for the invocation of Article 4 of the NATO charter in the aftermath of the missile incident were primed to do so ahead of the fact. It also appears as if the actual launch of the missile was done without the knowledge and authority of the Ukrainian high command, including Zelensky and his top military advisors.

This could lead one to assess that Ukraine’s northern European NATO allies are simply looking for a fight with Russia with the kind of focused intensity of a lemming running toward a cliff, jumping on any story line which can be twisted and distorted in a manner designed to make NATO intervention in Ukraine viable to other, less enthusiastic member states.

Such an assessment would square with the notion, currently in favor amongst most NATO members and their compliant western media stenographers, that the Ukrainian S-300 missile impact in Poland was a tragic accident, with the missile in question being launched in response to a Russian missile barrage before suffering some sort of malfunction which sent it flying off course, toward its tragic destiny in a Polish farmer’s field.

From an analysis of the basic geometry of the Ukrainian air defense battlefield, this narrative does not withstand scrutiny. Incoming Russian missiles approach Ukraine from roughly an east-to-west trajectory. As such, Ukrainian air defense is layered to protect from a west-to-east perspective, with detection radars set up to pick up incoming targets as far out as possible, allowing tracking radars to be cued as needed to guide the surface-to-air missiles to their designated targets. Any S-300 missile fired against an incoming Russian target would be fired from a roughly west to east direction, following the radar beam toward its target. In short—a Ukrainian S-300 would be launched in a direction which is pretty much 180 degrees away from the path flown by the missile that hit Poland.

Generally speaking, if a missile malfunctions or loses radar track, it will continue to fly roughly in the same direction of launch. Any major deviation from this rule would mean that the control surfaces of the missile were malfunctioning or damaged, which means the missile would not be able to sustain a consistent trajectory and would as such tumble out of control. For the Ukrainian S-300 missile to have reached Poland, it would have required a fully functioning aerodynamic control system. In short, the missile did not malfunction.

Scott Ritter Extra is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Air defense missiles have, over history, had an inherent surface-to-surface capability. The nuclear-capable Nike-Hercules missile could be used in a surface-to-surface role. The Iraqis used Soviet-made SA-2 and SA-3 missiles as surface-to-surface missiles. And the SM-6 missile used by the US Navy and Army can strike targets both in the air and on the ground. While the S-300 was purposely designed as an air defense weapon (its warhead is a relatively small one, between 100 and 143 kilograms of high explosive), it could be used in a surface-to-surface mode simply by using its tracking radar to orient a beam in the desired direction, at an altitude which would permit a ballistic trajectory to be obtained once the missile expends its fuel. The missile would fly in the direction of the beam, and then fall to the ground in the desired arc.

In order to do this, however, a tracking radar beam would have had to have been employed in a manner which oriented it in the exact opposite direction of the incoming Russian targets, toward Poland.

In short, the Ukrainian S-300 which landed on Poland was not the result of an accident, but rather a deliberate action designed to have the missile impact Polish soil.

The Polish are investigating the circumstances surrounding the deaths of their two citizens. If, as it logically appears, the launch of the S-300 missile was a deliberate act, then Poland must view the Ukrainians as the perpetrators of a crime. As such, Poland should be demanding that the launcher and associated radars be removed from service and all records and data associated with the launch in question treated as evidence and turned over to the appropriate Polish prosecution authority. Likewise, all personnel involved in the launch of this missile must be detained and subjected to interrogation by trained criminal investigators.

Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, denies that Ukraine launched the missile in question, basing his belief on information provided by his senior air force and military commanders. If Zelensky is telling the truth, then there is a conspiracy within the Ukrainian military establishment to instigate a false flag incident designed to draw NATO into the conflict. Any investigation into the command-and-control procedures used in the launching of the missile that struck Poland should be able to determine how high up the chain of command this conspiracy existed.

Likewise, the hair-trigger-like response of Poland and the Baltic states in jumping to conclusions that blamed Russia for the attack on Poland despite their respective militaries knowing that the missile in question was Ukrainian, suggests a certain level of prior coordination between the perpetrators of the attack and those who immediately pointed an accusatory finger at Russia.

Let there be no doubt—any direct NATO-Russian military confrontation over Poland has the real potential to devolve into a general nuclear exchange between the US and Russia. Anyone in Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics who are involved in a conspiracy to drag NATO into the Ukraine conflict by promoting a false-flag attack represents a direct threat against every human being on the planet.

The US and its more responsible NATO partners need to get to the bottom of what transpired regarding the Ukrainian S-300 attack on Poland. Any failure to identify this false-flag conspiracy, if it in fact exists, and to nip it in the bud, only raises the real probability that those involved in such a conspiracy will try again, and again, until they fulfill their suicidal objective of a NATO-Russian conflict.

November 19, 2022 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Poland and the Baltics plan to drag NATO into Ukrainian conflict – American military expert

By Lucas Leiroz | November 18, 2022

A deadly missile explosion in Przewodow, Poland, has recently raised fears about the possibility of NATO’s direct military involvement in the conflict. As the alliance’s norms provide that an attack on any of its members must be collectively responded to, debates began to arise around the possibility of calling NATO to respond militarily to the bombing on the border. Hours after the investigation began, the Polish and American governments concluded that the missile that hit Przewodow was of Ukrainian origin.

In theory, this conclusion should be enough to discourage any form of NATO hostility to Russia. Either the alliance should unite against Ukraine itself, since it is the perpetrator of the attack, or it should simply refrain from military responses, in case it was proven that the bombing was unintentional. However, the attitude so far has been different: NATO continues to blame Russia, despite the Ukrainian origin of the equipment.

Some analysts believe that NATO’s credibility is being severely affected by this case. The Organization increasingly seems to want to escalate the war at any cost, which is why it would be seeking to attribute responsibility to Russia for something that it evidently cannot be blamed for. This bellicose and extremely irrational anti-Russian position is stronger in the eastern European countries that are part of the alliance, such as Poland itself and the Baltics. These states have embraced the anti-Russian paranoia more fervently than the US itself, which is why they have incessantly clamored for NATO intervention.

This is the opinion, for example, of military expert and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter, who spoke in an interview about the unjustifiable attempts by these countries to involve NATO in a direct war against Russia:

“Poland together with the Baltic states were screaming for NATO to consider Article 5 and Article 4 procedures – in effect asking, demanding that NATO interfere in the Ukraine conflict (…) This tells you that these nations, Poland and the Baltic states, are operating on a hair trigger, that they are leaning forward when it comes to seeking any excuse to escalate the conflict in Ukraine so that NATO gets involved (…) And indeed, it appears that even though it’s now acknowledged that the missiles that hit Poland were Ukrainian S-300 air defense missiles, the blame is being shifted to Russia by these and other NATO players who claim that these missiles would never have been fired if it were not for Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. Therefore, Russia is to blame. And now they’re using this as an excuse to begin a larger discussion about air defense in Poland, air defense capabilities that would have the potential of reaching into Ukraine. So this in itself is an escalation”.

Scott Ritter’s words seem very accurate, considering there has been – and is still happening – utterly irresponsible agitation to bring NATO into the conflict. The narrative that Russia is to blame for the mere fact of starting its special military operation in February is obviously stupid and should not be used to try to justify military operations that put international security at risk. However, for some countries, such as Poland and the Baltics, what seems to interest them is making war against Russia at any cost.

The analyst also stresses the destabilizing role of the Western media. According to him, the big Western outlets work together with NATO governments to produce narratives that contribute to escalations in the conflict against Russia. For him, the media does not act independently or committed to the truth, but as an industry of false information, focused on developing justifications for the West’s anti-Russian interests. The aim is to blame Russia for all war crimes, territorial violations, civilian deaths and accidents, thus demanding foreign intervention.

“The media has long ago stopped asking the relevant questions. It’s not up to the media to wait for Poland to make a decision about the kind of missile that struck. The media is supposed to be able to carry out [an] independent investigation. Any expert on Russian military hardware could have seen, simply by looking at the debris, that these were S-300 missiles that belonged to Ukraine. This is something that the media should have reported and could have reported, but instead they got involved in the hype blaming Russia. Blame Russia first and then help turn that blame into an argument for intervention. The media was literally working with the Polish and Baltic authorities to try and manufacture a case for NATO intervention. You can’t rehabilitate that”, he said.

In fact, once again, military experts analyze the conflict rationally and point out the obvious reality: the NATO-Kiev axis acts in a destabilizing manner and threatens global security. The attitude of Poland and the Baltics needs to be condemned by international society and all forms of warmongering speech based on hate and anti-Russian racism immediately repelled.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

November 18, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | 2 Comments

Russia blasts efforts to drag it into conflict with NATO

RT | November 17, 2022

The reactions of Poland and Ukraine to a deadly blast on the border between the two states can only be seen as an attempt to trigger a direct clash between Russia and NATO, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a session of the UN Security Council, the Russian envoy blasted what he called “irresponsible statements made by the leaders” of Poland and Ukraine over the missile strike.

He noted that it did not take long for Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to blame the explosion in a Polish village on Moscow and to call for NATO to retaliate.

“I underscore that such claims are made by the person who cannot but be well aware that it had been Ukrainian air defense missiles that hit the territory of Poland,” Nebenzia stated. According to the diplomat, this was a “conscious attempt to drag NATO, which is waging ‘a war by proxy’ on Russia in Ukraine, into a direct confrontation with our country.”

He added that the response of the Polish government to the incident was not much better, as they “stated unapologetically from the very start that they had suffered an attack by Russia.”

Had it not been for evidence in the form of photos from the scene of the blast, “all facts would have been concealed from the public, and Russia would have been proclaimed the guilty side,” the diplomat said.

On Tuesday, two civilians were killed in a blast in the Polish village of Przewodow near the Ukrainian border. The Polish Foreign Ministry initially claimed that a “Russian-made missile” was behind the incident. Later, however, Polish President Andrzej Duda indicated that the projectile was probably a Ukrainian air defense missile.

The Russian Defense Ministry denied any involvement, saying its military experts had analyzed the photos from the scene and identified parts of the projectile “as elements of a missile from the S-300 air defense system used by the Air Force of Ukraine.”

While Western officials admitted that the missile was Ukraine’s, they claimed that ultimate responsibility rests with Russia, as the incident only took place due to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine.

November 17, 2022 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

NATO Reaction to Explosion in Poland Shows Member States Can Act With Impunity – Expert

Samizdat – 16.11.2022

WASHINGTON – NATO’s reaction to the explosion on Polish territory near the border with Ukraine shows that member states can act with impunity, Washington-based Eurasia Center Executive Vice President Earl Rasmussen told Sputnik.

On Tuesday evening, Polish media reported that two missiles had fallen on the country’s territory, in the Lublin Voivodeship on the border with Ukraine. As a result of the incident, two people were reportedly killed. However, the Polish Foreign Ministry said that only one missile, allegedly Russian-made, had fallen on Poland’s territory.

At the time, Polish President Andrzej Duda said that Warsaw had no accurate information about the origin of the missile, but the next day he stated it most likely belonged to Ukraine.

The Russian Defense Ministry also said Russian forces had launched no strikes on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish border on Tuesday, and that the released photos of the missile’s debris indicated it was not Russian. According to Moscow, media reports of the alleged Russian origin of the missiles are a deliberate provocation aimed at escalating the situation around Ukraine.

“It does show that certain member states have specific privileges than others and can act with impunity. Hence, the reaction or non-action to the internal terrorist attack on the pipelines and most likely with any actions following this missile strike by Ukraine in Poland,” said Rasmussen, a retired Lieutenant Colonel with over 20 years in the US Army.

Rasmussen expressed his personal opinion, that despite accusations against Russia in this incident, the West knew about the origin of the missile.

“NATO, as a result of tracking systems, most likely knew immediately that the strike inside of Poland was not a Russian missile and most likely Ukrainian. This includes officials from Poland and the Baltic States who immediately blindly started screaming for Article 4 or Article 5 actions against Russia,” he said.

He also emphasized that the West, particularly mainstream media, and Ukraine will blame Russia in any case, saying that Kiev fired its defense missile because of Moscow’s attack.

“The explanation is entirely unjustified and merely shows the Russo-phobic nature of current western political leadership,” Rasmussen noted, adding that Russia clearly has no intent on attacking any NATO country.

On Wednesday morning, US President Joe Biden called an emergency meeting of the G7 and NATO leaders participating in the G20 summit in Bali. Based on preliminary information, the meeting concluded that the missile that fell in Poland was not fired from Russia.

The Pentagon announced its intention to rely on facts, not speculation, in examining the missile incident. Moreover, until the necessary information is received, Washington will not support invoking Article 5 of the NATO Charter, according to which an armed attack on one NATO member state is considered an attack on all, Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder said.

November 17, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Missile incident was Ukrainian ‘provocation’ – Polish politician

Lublin, Poland ©  Getty Images / Aleksander Glowacki / EyeEm
RT | November 16, 2022

Poland should rethink its position towards the conflict in Ukraine after a “provocation” on the part of Kiev that cost two villagers their lives, a former city councilman in Lublin said on Wednesday. Jaroslaw Pakula, whose term ended four days before the incident, said the missile that struck Przewodow was obviously Ukrainian and that the government in Warsaw needed to send a message to Kiev instead of telling “fairy tales” to its citizens.

“Of course, this is a Ukrainian rocket. Of course, this is a provocation on the part of the Ukrainian authorities,” Pakula posted on his Facebook page. “The rocket could not be fired 100km in the opposite direction by mistake.”

The purpose of the provocation was to scare the EU and get civil society support for sending even more weapons to Ukraine, Pakula added. Instead of telling “fairy tales” about the missile, the Polish president should tell Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky that Warsaw “will no longer put up with this behavior” by Kiev.

“I urge you to rethink Poland’s position [regarding] this war in the event that the red line is crossed again!” Pakula concluded.

Pakula’s Facebook page still has a Ukrainian flag over his portrait photo, and lists him as chairman of the city council of Lublin, the seat of the region where Przewodow is located. The official city website, however, notes that he was no longer in office as of November 11.

Zelensky was quick to accuse Russia of attacking Poland and the entire NATO after a missile exploded in Przewodow on Tuesday afternoon, killing two people. The government in Kiev said the incident showed the need for NATO to “close the sky” over Ukraine, as they have demanded since February.

While Zelensky continues to insist the missile was Russian, Warsaw and Moscow have both identified it as a S-300 air defense missile, with Poland calling it “Russian-made” and Russia pointing out it was in Ukrainian service. The US and NATO have also described the missile as an air defense rocket that strayed, seeking to minimize the incident while also arguing that Russia was the ultimate culprit for bombing Ukraine in the first place.

The Russian military has pointed out that Tuesday’s missile strikes on Ukrainian military and energy infrastructure targets came nowhere close to the Polish border.

November 16, 2022 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism | , , | 1 Comment

Missile strike on Poland

By Gilbert Doctorow | November 16, 2022

Yesterday’s incident of missile strikes on the Polish side of the border with Ukraine which killed two has been denounced by the Russians as a ‘provocation.’ The logic of such an incident would be for Poland and its NATO allies to denounce Russia as the culprit, as the violator of the sanctity of NATO territory, and to threaten Russia with the invocation of Article Five of the Alliance, a declaration of war in all but name. Indeed, that is precisely what we heard from President Zelensky in his first statements about the incident, and he was seconded by leaders of the war-mongering jackal states in the Baltics.

In fact, so far the Polish reaction appears to be restrained. Their president, Duda, has called upon his compatriots to remain calm while an investigation is underway. Polish authorities would say only that fragments of the missiles recovered at the site show that they were “Russian made,” which by itself means very little since both sides to the conflict use “Russian made” military hardware.  Meanwhile, in far off Bali, Joe Biden responded to journalists’ queries, saying that examination of the trajectory of the missiles which struck farmland on the Polish side of the border with Ukraine made it ‘unlikely’ that they were launched from Russia. Of course, journalists did not ask the necessary follow-up question: so what does this known trajectory tell us about where in fact these missiles were fired from? And who is likely then to have fired them?

This morning’s Financial Times article on the subject adds speculation that possibly the missiles were part of the Ukrainian air defense system and were fired to bring down Russian cruise missiles attacking their energy infrastructure but “went astray.” In this same reporting, they do not bother to ask whether the fragments truly indicate ‘air defense’ projectiles or ground to ground missiles, which presumably would be manifestly evident from the large fragments seen in photographs from the site.

All of this prevarication and hesitancy on the part of the U.S. and Polish authorities in pointing fingers at the culprit for the attack in Poland is in direct contradiction with the longstanding pattern of U.S. and Western behavior in what we know were false flag incidents directed from Washington or London. In such cases, accusations against the Russia over the downing of Flight MH17, or against the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria over alleged chemical attacks on his own civilian population followed within minutes of the given incidents.

So I ask again, what happened yesterday in Poland and who is to blame?  To find a plausible answer, I suggest applying the time proven Roman guiding principle of investigation and ask cui bono, whose interests are served by what has happened? This is a simple, reasonable approach which regrettably has gone out of style in our days of Information Wars.

Cui bono points to the Kiev regime as responsible for the missile attacks on Poland, for the sake of finally bringing NATO openly into the fight on their side against Russia. Poland is not yet ready for war against Russia, and will be ready only many months from now when it receives major arms deliveries from the United States. The USA does not want an unplanned escalation from proxy war to war of the principals that could easily lead to a Russian nuclear attack on the homeland. It is only Mr. Zelensky’s regime that can hope for total chaos in order to survive the destruction of his country’s core infrastructure that is now well on the way, at last.

Of course, in Washington, in Brussels these considerations must be well understood by key personnel. The coming consultations over activating Article 4 of the Alliance treaty, officially recognizing a threat to their territorial integrity, revolve around formulating a determination of responsibility for the incident that avoids blaming the present darling of our solicitude, Ukraine, for attacking a NATO country.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

Postscript:

16 November afternoon. The latest statements from Poland and the U.S. in the past hour or so are saying the missiles which landed in Poland were Ukrainian air defense missiles, not downed Russian cruise missiles. It is of course possible they were Ukrainian ground to air missiles (S300), but it is also possible they were ground to ground missiles (Tochka) fired by Ukrainian units for the reasons I mention in this article; both missile systems are “Russian,” that is to say they come from the common Soviet past of the two countries. Since the US has recorded the trajectory of the missiles by one of its spy planes on location near the border, they know from where the missiles were launched and whether air defense units were there. They also have the missile fragments from the crash site and can identify exactly what type they were if they so wish. No one from NATO is going to look into these matters, or announce their findings if they do; you can be sure of that.

For their part, the Poles are indicating that they will not activate Article 4 provisions of the Alliance after all. We may assume that knowing what they do, they would prefer to remove this whole incident from public discussion as quickly as possible.

The Russians say their attack on infrastructure came nowhere near the Ukrainian border with Poland, and that is completely believable: they want to avoid precisely what happened yesterday.

November 16, 2022 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , | 1 Comment

Russia denies striking Poland

RT | November 15, 2022

Russia has not carried out any strikes against targets near the Polish-Ukrainian border, the defense ministry in Moscow said on Tuesday, following reports of a missile striking the village of Przewodow and killing two civilians.

Some Western media outlets and politicians have claimed that Russia is responsible for the incident. However, no evidence has been provided to support such assertions.

Missile fragments, photos of which were published by Polish media outlets on the scene, “have nothing to do with Russian weapons,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Statements by the Polish media and officials about the alleged ‘Russian’ missiles falling in the area of the village of Przewodow are “a deliberate provocation in order to escalate the situation,” the Russian military added.

Poland convened an emergency meeting of its national security council on Tuesday evening, after reports that at least two civilians were killed when one or more missiles struck the village in the Lublin region, just across the border with Ukraine.

While the AP reported that Russian missiles had crossed into Poland, citing an unnamed “senior US intelligence official,” the Pentagon declined to corroborate the claim.

“I can tell you that we don’t have any information at this time to corroborate those reports and are looking into this further,” Air Force Brigadier General Patrick Ryder told reporters, when asked about the Przewodow incident.

Polish government spokesman Piotr Mueller called on the media and the public “not to publish unconfirmed information.”

Officials from the Baltic states blamed Russia and claimed that Poland should invoke NATO’s Article 5 in retaliation. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky accused Russia of “terrorism” and said NATO needed to “act” against this “attack on collective security.”

November 15, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 2 Comments

Biden administration sponsors yet another campaign against Orbán

Free West Media | November 3, 2022

The US government has opened a new chapter in the propaganda and disinformation war against Hungary. It now supports an allegedly “independent” media portal, whose sponsors, however, make it quite easy to see the goals which are being pursued against the country.

According to its own statements, the Internews platform focuses “on promoting a strong independent media sector” in Hungary. There will be further activities in Armenia, Georgia, Poland, Romania and the Ukraine. The aim is to “resist powerful interests trying to manipulate, isolate or control the press”.

The US embassy recently even produced a video listing Hungarian politicians and journalists who have allegedly made “anti-American” statements by name. Essentially these voices either criticized globalist policies to foment the Ukraine war or spoke out against the futility of sanctions.

The list of sponsors for the news portal is revealing. On it one will find, among other things, the well-known Open Society Foundations (OSF) by George Soros, the Rockefeller Foundation and Freedom House, which is financed by the US government. US-based global tech giants like Facebook and Google are also among the backers.

Those in the know recall that Internews is not the US government’s first attempt to reshape the Hungarian media scene. As early as 2017, the US State Department launched a support program right before the elections for “independent Hungarian media in the countryside”. At the time, the government in Budapest accused the US State Department of interfering in Hungarian domestic politics. The programme was later de facto scrapped, presumably because ex-President Donald Trump valued good relations with Hungary.

Under the Biden administration, however, “democracy” exports are back in fashion. Just a few months ago, the Hungarian opposition’s prime ministerial candidate caused a scandal when he admitted that he had received a substantial sum of money for his election campaign from a US foundation.

November 3, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Roger Waters says he’s on Ukrainian ‘kill list’

Samizdat – October 4, 2022

British rock star Roger Waters, a co-founder of Pink Floyd, has allegedly been placed on a Ukrainian “kill list” after speaking out against Western military meddling and calling on Kiev to make peace with Russia.

In an interview with Rolling Stone published on Tuesday, the 79-year-old pushed back against accusations that he’s been repeating Russian talking points about the conflict in Ukraine. “Don’t forget, I’m on a kill list that is supported by the Ukrainian government. I’m on the fu**ing list, and they’ve killed people recently… When they kill you, they write ‘liquidated’ across your picture. Well, I’m one of those fu**ing pictures.”

Waters gave the example of Darya Dugina, the Russian journalist murdered in August after appearing on the Ukrainian Mirotvorets list. As the musician noted, her entry on the list was marked “liquidated” after she was killed in a car-bombing. Others who have questioned or criticized the Kiev regime, such as photojournalists Andrea Rocchelli of Italy and Andrei Stenin of Russia, have also been killed after appearing on the Mirotvorets list. The site lists personal information on its blacklist targets, which also include politicians and NGO activists.

Mirotvorets, or “Peacemaker,” is an independent database of individuals whom anonymous moderators consider to be threats to Ukrainian national security. The site denies being a kill list; rather, it claims to be a source of information for law-enforcement agencies and “special services” about pro-Russian terrorists, separatists and war criminals, among others. It allegedly has links to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry.

Waters stirred backlash earlier this year, when he suggested that US President Joe Biden was a “war criminal” for fueling the Ukraine crisis and sent an open letter to the wife of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, urging her to help “stop the slaughter” by pushing for a negotiated peace deal with Russia. He later sent an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking for guarantees that Russia wouldn’t expand beyond Crimea and the Donbass region.

Pressed by Rolling Stone on why he isn’t supportive of Ukraine’s resistance against Russian forces, Waters said, “Because it’s an unnecessary war, and those people should not be dying. And Russia should not have been encouraged to invade Ukraine.” He also dismissed reports of Russian war crimes in Ukraine as Western propaganda.

Two concerts that Waters had scheduled for next April in Krakow, Poland, may be canceled because of his push for a negotiated peace in Ukraine, the musician said late last month. “Draconian censoring of my work will deny them the opportunity to make up their own minds,” he said of his Polish audiences.

The wide-ranging Mirotvorets kill list also includes Faina Savenkova, a 13-year-old girl in the Lugansk People’s Republic who called for the United Nations to end the fighting that has dragged on in her region since 2014.

October 4, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

Western withdrawal of citizens from Russia may be a provocation

This act looks like a threat of attack and could generate responses. 

By Lucas Leiroz | September 29, 2022

The US and some other Western countries announced the evacuation of their citizens from the Russian territory. In a context of tensions between Moscow and NATO, this type of attitude sounds like a threat, further worsening the scenario of global security crisis.

The US State Department has asked Russia-based American citizens to leave the country immediately. The appeal was posted on the website of the US Embassy in Russia. The justification for the advice was that Moscow could mobilize citizens who have dual nationality, which is why foreigners based in Russia should flee as quickly as possible, before they are mobilized for combat on Ukrainian soil. The statement also highlights that there are currently a limited number of flights from Russia to other countries, and tickets for the next dates may not be available, so US citizens residing in Russia should hurry to leave.

It is interesting to analyze the communiqué issued by the Embassy when the reality of the mobilization promoted by Russia is not only partial but also absolutely moderate. The call-up of combatants has been promoted in a balanced way, with no urgency for foreign citizens to flee in a hurry to avoid being mobilized. Moscow has shown no interest in forcing foreign nationals with Russian passports to serve in the special military operation, which makes the American narrative weak and unsubstantiated. 

However, some other countries also took measures similar to the one of the US. Poland and Bulgaria, for example, called on their citizens to leave Russia immediately. Commenting on the matter, spokespersons for the Polish Foreign Ministry released a note stating: “In case of a drastic deterioration of the security situation, the closure of borders or other unforeseen circumstances, evacuation may prove significantly impeded or even impossible (…) We recommend that the citizens of the Republic of Poland who remain on the territory of the Russian Federation leave its territory using the available commercial and private means”. 

Also, Poland’s foreign minister Zbigniew Rau was more explicit in his words and stated that if Russia uses nuclear weapons against Ukraine, NATO’s response will be “devastating”, which is why Polish citizens should leave Russian territory as soon as possible. In fact, his words were just an endorsement of what had already been previously announced by the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who threatened Moscow by stating that “if Russia crosses this line (the use of nuclear weapons], there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia”, adding that “the United States will respond decisively”.

In fact, evacuating citizens is an elementary measure usually taken by states that are planning some kind of attack or invasion. It is the most direct and simplest way to prevent putting the lives of innocent citizens on enemy soil at risk when a war is breaking out. In this sense, any attempt at a massive withdrawal of Western citizens from Russia sounds like a threat to the Eurasian country at this point, as the Western military alliance has constantly warned of “consequences” against Moscow in the event of an escalation in Ukraine.

The problem is that the situation in Ukraine only tends to escalate because of the attitudes of the western countries themselves, which continue with their provocative military programs against Russia, supporting the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev with lethal weapons and large amounts of money. Moscow has already issued communiqués warning of what it considers a “red line” in the Ukrainian conflict, which is Russia’s sovereign territory. Russian forces are unwilling to tolerate attacks on the Federation’s territory and make it clear that they will respond harshly if such attacks occur.

With the positive result for the integration of the liberated territories into Russia, the new oblasts will become part of the Federation and thus will be under direct protection of Moscow, not being tolerable Ukrainian attacks in these regions. The West, however, insists on not recognizing the referendums and encourages Kiev to attack these regions. This is precisely where an eventual nuclear escalation could happen. Russian military doctrine establishes that nuclear weapons should only be used as a last resort in the event of an existential threat to the Russian state. Moscow may consider Western-funded attacks an existential threat if the targets are within the Federation – including the new territories – which is why there is currently a nuclear danger.

So, it is the West itself that fosters the conditions for a nuclear escalation. And it is also the West that threatens to react to such an escalation by directly attacking Russia and starting a third world war. By evacuating its citizens, the US and its allies are once again provoking and threatening Russia, sending “red alerts” that something is “about to happen”. The objective is to act preemptively and justify a Western response.

In fact, the West seems to be acting in an anti-strategic manner. There no longer seems to be any military realism in the thinking of NATO leaders, who are willing to escalate tensions more and more, even though there are no winners in a possible scenario of world war.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant. 

September 29, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries