One Western Official Finally Comes Clean About NATO Expansion
By Ted Galen Carpenter | The Libertarian Institute | September 21, 2023
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg likely surprised both factions in the ongoing debate about NATO expansion and its role in triggering the Russia-Ukraine War. He also undermined (perhaps fatally) the official cover story about the reasons for the Ukraine war. Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, Western officials and their allies in the corporate media have insisted vehemently that the alliance’s addition of Eastern European nations after the Cold War and giving a pledge to Ukraine that it would become a member someday had nothing to do with Vladimir Putin’s decision to attack his neighbor. Indeed, anyone who argued otherwise risked being accused of echoing Russian propaganda and being “Putin’s puppet.”
Both the official explanation and the pervasive narrative regarding the war were unequivocal. Putin was power-hungry and unwilling to tolerate an independent, pro-Western Ukraine on Russia’s border. Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Steven Pifer’s interpretation was typical; “For the Kremlin, a democratic, Western-oriented, economically successful Ukraine poses a nightmare, because that Ukraine would cause Russians to question why they cannot have the same political voice and democratic rights that Ukrainians do.” Even when Pifer published his piece in July 2022, that explanation was extremely weak, given Ukraine’s own corruption and authoritarianism. Volodymyr Zelensky’s subsequent systematic assault on civil liberties makes the notion that Putin felt threatened by Ukraine as an irresistible democratic magnet patently absurd. Ukraine is not a democratic country by any reasonable definition of the term.
Nevertheless, other analysts made arguments similar to Pifer’s thesis. That Russian grievances over NATO helped spark the war “makes no sense,” wrote Rutgers professor Alexander Motyl. “NATO cannot have been the issue,” historian Timothy Snyder insists; Putin “simply wants to conquer Ukraine, and a reference to NATO was one form of rhetorical cover for his colonial venture.” Such comments matched the official positions that the U.S. and other NATO governments adopted. Interventionist opponent Caitlin Johnstone was accurate that “arguably the single most egregious display of war propaganda in the 21st century occurred last year, when the entire western political/media class began uniformly bleating the word ‘unprovoked’ in reference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
In a September 6, 2023 speech to the European Union Parliament, Secretary General Stoltenberg contradicted the entrenched official narrative, most likely inadvertently. “President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade (sic) Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.”
Stoltenberg emphasized, “He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.” Consequently, “he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.” [Emphasis added]
Several scholars and former officials had warned for years that NATO’s expansion to Russia’s border would end badly, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine confirmed those predictions. George Kennan, the intellectual father of America’s containment policy during the Cold War, perceptively warned in a May 1998 New York Times interview about what the Senate’s ratification of NATO’s first round of expansion would set in motion. “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” Kennan stated. ”I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake.”
NATO’s attempt to make Ukraine a full-fledged military asset was especially provocative. Kremlin leaders regarded Ukraine as not only being in Moscow’s rightful sphere of influence, but in Russia’s core security zone. Putin made that point clear on numerous occasions at least as far back as his speech to the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Instead of taking those warnings seriously, Western leaders blew through one red light after another. NATO’s leader, the United States, especially worked to forge ever-closer military ties with Ukraine. In essence, the Trump and Biden administrations began to treat Ukraine as a NATO member in all but name.
Extensive arms shipments to Kiev along with U.S. and NATO joint military exercises constituted the centerpiece of that policy. But that was not the extent of Washington’s provocations. Shortly after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the CIA initiated secret paramilitary training programs for Ukrainian special operations personnel in the United States and in Ukraine. Massive arms shipments to Kiev along with joint U.S. and NATO military exercises with Ukrainian forces constituted the centerpiece of that policy. Yahoo national security correspondent Dan Dorfman noted that “U.S. and Ukrainian intelligence have even participated in joint offensive cyber operations against Russian government targets, according to former officials.”
Such actions make a mockery of the argument that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. That assertion is convenient propaganda, but it was always devoid of both facts and logic. Stoltenberg’s comments merely confirm what should have been obvious to both the foreign policy community and the news media from the beginning.
Polish Politician Reveals Why Warsaw Changed Its Tone on Ukraine
By Andrei Dergalin – Sputnik – 21.09.2023
Having acted as one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters since the escalation of the conflict last year, Poland has now changed its tone in the dialogue with the Kiev regime over what appears to be a trade dispute.
Relations between Warsaw and Kiev have soured recently after Polish authorities, along with their Hungarian and Slovakian counterparts, moved to restrict imports of cheap Ukrainian grain in a bid to protect local farmers.
Kiev promptly retaliated by filing a complaint with the World Trade Organization against all three countries and even threatened to block certain agricultural imports from Poland and Hungary if the ban on Ukrainian grain was not lifted.
Many prominent Polish politicians appeared unamused by this turn of events, with Poland’s Minister of Defense Marius Blaszczak insisting that Warsaw essentially protects Polish farmers from the schemes of “Ukrainian oligarchs” who want to sell Ukrainian grain in Poland.
Polish politician and independent commentator Konrad Rekas, however, argued that Warsaw’s rhetoric is all about the upcoming parliamentary elections, “which the ruling Law and Justice party would lose by continuing to uncritically support Kiev.”
“Of course, Ukraine does not intend to make the internal games easier for its Polish allies, fully understanding that it will receive everything it demands from the next Polish government, regardless of which party forms the government,” Rekas told Sputnik.
He claimed that the spat between Ukraine and Poland is not really related to the matter of Ukrainian grain exports or Warsaw’s alleged intent to occupy certain Ukrainian territories and that it is unlikely to affect the course of the Ukrainian conflict.
“Poland will still be a hub for the Western military aid for the Kiev regime. Poles will continue to pay millions for the Ukrainian resettlement to Poland,” Rekas surmised.
Since the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict in February 2022, Poland supplied large quantities of military hardware to the regime in Kiev, including battle tanks and warplanes, and helped accommodate tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees on Polish soil.
This week, however, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced that his country now focuses on arming itself with modern weapons and no longer transfers armaments to Kiev, while Polish government Press Secretary Piotr Muller said that Warsaw apparently has not got plans to continue supporting Ukrainian refugees in Poland next year.
These statements come ahead of the parliamentary election in Poland slated to take place on October 15, and it remains unclear whether Polish politicians are going to fulfill their promises or if it is all merely an attempt to sway voters.
Meanwhile, Slovakia, another prominent backer of the Kiev regime, may change its stance on the Ukrainian conflict after the September 30 election in the country.
Former Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, whose social-democratic Smer (Direction) party dominates the recent polls, has already stated that Slovakia will no longer “send any arms or ammunition to Ukraine” should his party form part of a new government.
G7 believes Ukraine conflict will last until end of decade – Bloomberg
RT | September 20, 2023
The Russia-Ukraine conflict may extend for another six to seven years, according to a senior G7 official who spoke with Bloomberg. The official emphasized that Kiev’s allies will confront various challenges as they endeavor to sustain their support for Ukraine.
In an article released on Tuesday, multiple officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, indicated that the prolonged timeline resulted from Ukraine’s much-heralded counteroffensive progressing slowly, which has led to “tempered expectations.”
Continuing to provide military and financial aid to Kiev for such a long conflict “won’t be easy,” said Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky. “It’ll put a lot of pressure on societies, on governments, through different elections in Europe,” he added, stressing that there has to be a “midterm strategy of long-term support to Ukraine.”
One top European official informed Bloomberg that even with the support provided, Ukraine will likely grapple with challenges stemming from insufficient Western weapons supplies and the escalating toll of manpower losses.
Regardless of this dire outlook, Kiev and its allies remain opposed to negotiations and are unwilling to accept any resolution that does not include the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from territories Ukraine claims as its own, the officials told the outlet.
Kiev, for its part, has consistently emphasized its unwillingness to make any territorial concessions to Russia as part of potential peace agreements. In an interview with CBS News on Sunday, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky affirmed that despite the counteroffensive’s slow pace, Ukraine remains committed to it regardless of adverse weather conditions or other factors.
Ukraine initiated its offensive in June; however, territorial gains have proven elusive, with heavy casualties being the predominant outcome. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine has incurred substantial losses during this push, including over 71,000 troops, 543 tanks, and nearly 18,000 armored vehicles.
Last year, four former Ukrainian territories – the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions – voted to join Moscow after holding public referendums. Kiev and its allies have refused to recognize the votes, while Zelensky has signed a decree banning any negotiations with the current Russian leadership.
Moscow, meanwhile, has repeatedly said that it has not closed the door on negotiations with Kiev but has urged the Ukrainian leadership to recognize the “realities on the ground.”
Lavrov’s claim that America is at war with Russia is no ‘exaggeration’
By Drago Bosnic | September 20, 2023
Since the start of Russia’s special military operation (SMO) against NATO’s crawling encroachment on its borders, the United States has been adamant that it’s “not a party to the conflict” and that it supposedly “doesn’t want escalation with Moscow“. However, time proved both of these statements to be patently false. According to the claims of the Neo-Nazi junta itself, the US controls the targeting of every long-range weapon deployed by the Kiev regime forces. On the other hand, the falsehood of the laughable claim that Washington DC “doesn’t want war” is painfully obvious to anyone remotely familiar with its neverending escalation aimed against Russia.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is certainly aware of all this, although basic diplomatic etiquette prevented him from stating the obvious in the past. And yet, after well over a year and a half of being exposed to the blatant hypocrisy of the political West, it seems that even the usually reserved Lavrov has stopped holding back, as trying to follow diplomatic protocols when dealing with someone who openly breaks them is simply futile and ultimately self-defeating. Namely, in recent remarks for the press, the Russian Foreign Minister said that the US is waging war against Russia. Strong statement, one might say, but who could possibly refute it given the ongoing events?
Even if we don’t count statements made by top-level US officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin’s admission that Washington DC wants to see a “strategic defeat” inflicted on Russia and President Joe Biden’s Freudian slip that “Putin cannot stay in power“, the evidence that supports Lavrov’s claim is simply overwhelming and we’re seeing it every single day. He also pointed out the fact that the US is not only transferring enormous amounts of so-called “lethal aid” to the Neo-Nazi junta (worth hundreds of billions at this point), but is actually controlling these weapons through direct decision-making while maintaining plausible deniability.
Lavrov himself also reiterated Austin’s admission that this is because the belligerent thalassocracy wants to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. The statements about US belligerence were given while he was speaking on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum on the morning of September 17, where he pointed out that “no matter what it says, it [the US] controls this war, it supplies weapons, munitions, intelligence information, data from satellites, it is pursuing a war against us”. Lavrov also stated that Ukraine is simply being used as a springboard to achieve American strategic goals, as it was being prepared for the ongoing conflict years in advance.
“There is a real plot around the topic of the so-called (peace) negotiations, as well as attempts to turn everything upside down through pseudo diplomacy,” he said just two days prior, adding: “The West has been saying for months that this ‘peace formula’ is the only basis for negotiations. It starts from innocent topics … and then comes to the purpose for which it was concocted – inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, to restore the borders of Ukraine as they were in 1991, court-martial the Russian leadership, force Russia to pay reparations, and then ‘mercifully’ agree to sign a peace agreement.”
Lavrov made the said comments on September 15, referring to the abortive Saudi-hosted “peace talks” and added that this pattern of double standards and hypocrisy is also used when dealing with most other countries.
“These are exactly the dirty methods that the West uses not only in relation to Ukraine but in many other areas of global politics,” he stated.
The recent direct endorsement US Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave for the Kiev regime’s long-range strikes on targets within Russia is yet another proof of Lavrov’s claims. Namely, during an interview with ABC News on September 10, Blinken stated that it was supposedly “up to Ukraine” whether or not it should target Russia proper with US-made long-range weapons. The idea that the Kiev regime could ever make such a decision on its own is beyond laughable, which means that it’s the belligerent thalassocracy itself that ordered the Neo-Nazi junta to target areas deeper within Russia in order to inflict maximum damage with minimal investment or risk for itself.
Blinken’s statement came only a day after ABC News reported that the US would provide the ATACMS to the Kiev regime. The range of these missiles, while hardly groundbreaking, is enough to jeopardize not only Russian supply lines, but also civilian infrastructure hundreds of kilometers behind the frontlines. And yet, this isn’t the only danger Lavrov pointed out thus far, as back in early June, he warned that nuclear-capable F-16 fighter jets could lead to an uncontrollable escalation that Russia will certainly not tolerate. He stressed that Moscow would be forced to respond militarily, meaning that NATO would also be held directly responsible in that case.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Ukrainian Buk Missile Caused DPR Market Tragedy, US Media Report Affirms
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 19.09.2023
As Volodymyr Zelensky arrives in the United States for a second time to plead for more aid, a US media report has unveiled a detailed investigation that debunks vehement assertions made by Ukraine’s President a few weeks ago.
Ukrainian President Zelensky’s visit to the US to attend the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, visit the White House, and meet with congressional leaders, comes against a sobering backdrop. Ukraine’s much-hyped counteroffensive has been stuttering, while skepticism is mounting over endlessly propping up the Kiev regime among some Republican lawmakers.
On the eve of Zelensky’s arrival, the New York Times published an investigative piece into a missile strike on a marketplace in the town of Konstantinovka, in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), that occurred earlier in the month.
The strike on September 6 had killed 15 people and left over 30 people wounded, according to Ukrainian officials. Zelensky was quick to describe it as a “Russian” attack on “a regular market and shops,” with numerous Western media outlets parroting the claim and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal vowing “fair retribution” for it. The strike occurred on the same day when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a surprise visit to Ukraine, announcing millions in new aid to Kiev.
However, evidence suggests it was a Ukrainian missile released from a Buk surface-to-air system that caused the market tragedy, as per the US report. A long hard look at eyewitness accounts, social media posts, analysis of video and weapon fragments, along with satellite imagery, “strongly suggests the catastrophic strike was the result of an errant Ukrainian air defense missile fired by a Buk launch system,” write the journalists.
Ukraine’s authorities had initially tried “to prevent journalists with the Times from accessing the missile debris and impact area in the strike’s immediate aftermath,” according to the report. However, they subsequently managed to reach the scene of the strike, talk to witnesses, and gather fragments of the projectile itself.
Ukrainian artillery fire had been reported in the area, according to a local Telegram group, minutes before the strike on the marketplace, the media report underscored. The missile strike on Konstantinovka came from the direction of Ukrainian-held territory, not from Russian lines, according to security camera footage seen by the journalists.
Furthermore, they claim that “at least four pedestrians appear to simultaneously turn their heads toward the incoming sound” – in the direction of Ukrainian-held territory – when the missile approached. A reflection of the missile itself, coming in from the northwest, is visible in the cited footage, passing over parked cars.
Further analysis shows that the crater and point of detonation are also “consistent” with a missile traveling from the northwest. According to the media outlet’s reporters who were in the nearby town of Druzhkovka at the time of the missile strike on Konstantinovka, minutes before the attack, Ukraine’s military had launched two surface-to-air missiles toward the Russian front line.
The Ukrainian missile launches were also purportedly mentioned by the residents of Druzhkovka at the specified time in a local social media group. Witnesses that reporters interviewed also confirmed they saw the missiles being fired, and traveling in the direction of Konstantinovka.
“The timing of these launches is consistent with the time frame for the missile that struck the market in Kostiantyn[o]vka, around 2:04 p.m. [local time]” say the outlet.
Missiles had been launched from fields outside Druzhkovka, another witness stated, adding that it had been used by the Ukrainian military to station air defense systems. After reporters themselves visited the site in question, they “saw indications that it had recently been used by the military, including trenches, trash pits and wide tracks consistent with a large military vehicle.” Satellite imagery showed fresh scorch marks around the trenches on the day of the missile strike, in an indication the area could have been used to launch missiles, the investigation revealed.
While the Ukrainian authorities have claimed that Russia had fired a missile from an S-300 air defense system at Konstantinovka, such a missile has a “different warhead” from the one that exploded in the market on September 6, the report pointed out. It added that the measurements of the holes in the facades of the buildings closest to the strike are “consistent in size and shape” with a 9M38 missile, fired by a Buk antiaircraft vehicle, used by Ukraine. The same conclusions were reportedly made by independent military bomb-disposal experts: damage at the missile strike site in Konstantinovka was “most consistent with an 9M38.”
The Kiev regime staged a false flag in the DPR’s Konstantinovka based on the same scheme as in Bucha, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said at a meeting of the UN Security Council on September 8. Referring to the strike on the town in the part of the DPR controlled by Ukraine’s forces, he called it a terrible tragedy, adding:
“It’s just that, we are sure you’ll soon forget and cover up this incident, as in the case of the attack on Kramatorsk in April last year.”
Western mainstream media has been eager to echo the Kiev regime’s falsehoods, such as accusing Russia of deliberately striking civilian targets. The developments in the city of Kramatorsk, and in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), are another case in point.
As for Bucha, the Ukrainian authorities and Western media had spread gruesome footage purportedly showing murdered civilians lying along a road in the suburb of Kiev, citing it as evidence of “Russian war crimes.” Moscow dismissed the footage as a false flag provocation, pointing out that the bodies appeared days after Russian troops had withdrawn.
Russia has repeatedly reiterated that its armed forces do not attack civilian facilities.
‘Of Course He Was Paying’: Former Ukrainian Business Leader Accuses Top Zelensky Adviser of Bribery
By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 19.09.2023
A top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is facing renewed corruption allegations after an exiled Ukrainian business leader claimed the man worked for him for years as a go-between handling payments to Ukrainian officials.
“Tatarov used to solve all issues with law enforcement” – that’s what Oleh Maiboroda, the former executive director of Ukrbud Development, one of Ukraine’s largest construction companies, told Western media on Tuesday about Oleh Tatarov.
Once a lawyer, Tatarov now serves as Zelensky’s top adviser on law enforcement and security agencies, a position he’s held since 2020. However, according to Maiboroda, Tatarov was running bribes for him for the five years before he took the job for Zelensky.
The lawyer’s connections across the Ukrainian legal system, from police officials to judges and prosecutors, made him the perfect man to smooth over the approval processes for Ukrbud’s many promising construction projects.
“Of course he was paying,” Maiboroda said. “He was giving them money so these arrangements were done … He knew about law enforcement and warned us to be careful about saying almost anything on the phone.”
The former Ukrainian business leader showed to Western media a list of bribes allegedly paid by Tatarov, totaling some $1.8 million.
Maiboroda has himself fled Ukraine and currently lives in Vienna, where he hopes to stay safe from corruption charges against him in Kiev.
Tatarov is no stranger to such accusations, either: a previous case, brought by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and Anti-Corruption Action Center’s (AntAC), claimed he had bribed a forensic expert on behalf of Ukrbud, even going so far as to publish the WhatsApp conversation in which Tatarov agreed to the bribe. However, the case was closed in April 2022 on procedural grounds.
“The discussion on the incumbent president’s values is over,” Vitaly Shabunin, the head of AntAC’s executive board, said in 2021. “Volodymyr Zelensky shares Tatarov’s values. This means that Zelensky … doesn’t see any problems in Tatarov’s corruption-related crimes.”
Zelensky has stood by his man through the tribulations, refusing to fire or even to condemn Tatarov despite citizen petitions like the one AntAC organized, with more than 25,000 signatories.
Kiev, which hopes to join the European Union and NATO, has struggled with endemic corruption that promises to not just frustrate its admission hopes, but which endangers the flow of Western weapons and financing to Ukraine as well. To that end, Zelensky has made statements condemning corruption and pledging to crack down, and sweeping firings have “cleaned house” across bureaus such as the Defense Ministry, where the firings have reached the highest ranks.
Last month, Zelensky fired all 24 of Ukraine’s regional military recruitment offices, which are awash with accusations of corruption, including that dozens of recruitment officers have accepted bribes to exempt eligible men from being drafted into the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Earlier this month, Oleksiy Reznikov was fired as defense minister, and on Monday, Zelensky fired all six deputy defense ministers. Reznkov’s replacement, Rustem Umerov, is himself under investigation for what NABU calls “gross violation of labor laws” and that he and his deputies “took actions aimed at concealing the facts of theft of state property” while he was head of the State Property Fund (SPF).
No accusations of corruption have been brought against any of the former ministers, but the AntAC spoke of the terminations as a “positive step” toward cracking down on corruption and improving accountability.
“The ministry of defense is one of the least reformed ministries in our country, and it is not able to cope with the challenges of the war,” AntAC executive director Daria Kalenyuk told a US newspaper on Monday, adding it was timed to coincide with Zelensky’s trip to Washington, DC, where the president hopes to shore up US support for his government.
A small but growing faction of the Republican Party is openly questioning US support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. While some have demanded audits and better accountability for the tens of billions of dollars in aid flowing to Kiev, others have demanded the support halt entirely, especially in light of the disastrous Ukrainian counteroffensive this past summer.
“Many countries are sending major resources to Ukraine, and rightly so, but governments and populations will soon lose patience for that if there are not signs that the government is serious about fighting corruption,” an anonymous Western diplomat in Kiev told British media.
Emails Show Decade of Hunter Biden Spinning Journalists on Foreign Business Deals
The Hunter Biden laptop archive shows years of careful efforts to manipulate media outlets, a rare window into the DC spin cycle.
BY LEE FANG | SEPTEMBER 19, 2023
Speaker Kevin McCarthy, announcing that the House of Representatives will pursue an impeachment inquiry, suggested that the probe will hinge in part on deceiving the American public about Hunter Biden’s foreign business ventures.
“President Biden did lie to the American people about his own knowledge of his family’s foreign business deals,” McCarthy said at a press conference. GOP lawmakers, he added, have “uncovered credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct.”
Such an investigation will likely force an examination of the public narrative regarding Hunter Biden’s consulting deals that go back at least a decade. During President Obama’s second term, then-Vice President Joe Biden was the administration’s point man on the nation’s policy toward Ukraine, a perch he used to urge the country to adopt sweeping ethics reforms to resist “the cancer of corruption” and enact sweeping ethics reforms.
At the time, some American journalists began to question whether the vice president’s stern message was undermined by his son Hunter Biden’s employment at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, which was owned by a notorious local oligarch.
Emails on Hunter’s laptop reveal that the inquiries sparked an internal debate within his team of consultants and public relations agents. Ultimately, they devised a series of responses about Hunter’s work with Burisma that were, at best, misleading and, at worst, outright falsehoods.
The Biden team has constructed a careful image of Hunter Biden’s business ventures, sometimes employing a sophisticated myth-making operation aided by allies in the media who rarely challenged or investigated their false claims. The laptop emails show that the team closely monitored critical reporting and pushed to shape coverage with reporters from the New York Times, Time magazine, Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press.
Their spin informed much of the ensuing coverage in the mainstream press, defusing the issue, even as President Trump and other Republicans insisted that Ukraine was a hotbed of Biden family corruption. Although he had no background in the energy field and little experience in corporate governance, Hunter Biden, who had a law degree, was appointed to the board of Burisma in May 2014.
It was revealed later that he was paid about $1 million per year – as was his business partner Devon Archer. In a press release announcing his appointment, Hunter Biden is quoted as saying, “I believe that my assistance in consulting the Company on matters of transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion and other priorities will contribute to the economy and benefit the people of Ukraine.”
That same month, journalist Michael Scherer reached out with questions about the arrangement.
Several consultants employed by Burisma, including Ryan Toohey of FTI Consulting and Heather King, a partner at the law firm Boies, Schiller, & Flexner, where Hunter worked as counsel, strategized over how to respond to Scherer, a reporter then with Time magazine who has since joined the Washington Post.
For the Scherer inquiry, laptop emails show, Hunter’s business associates settled on a strategy to deflect the most direct questions and obfuscate the true intent of Burisma’s attempts to sway U.S. government officials.
One of Hunter’s associates noted that they planned to respond to Scherer’s attempts to reach David Leiter, a former aide to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, hired to work for Burisma. The plan was to use an assistant to make Leiter “unavailable to comment, as opposed to some sort of statement that made it seem like we were unwilling or refusing to engage with the reporter.” Leiter, the emails show, was in fact available, but the public relations team wanted to keep him out of reach.
Scherer wanted to know why Burisma was on a hiring spree of well-connected American lobbyists, including Leiter and others. In response, Toohey planned to tell Scherer that the hired guns were simply working on issues related to energy independence, economic growth, as well as “transparency and good governance.”
In response to other questions posed by Scherer, Toohey prepared a statement claiming that Hunter Biden will “not be engaged with the U.S. government” on anything related to Burisma.
The response belied a detailed lobbying agenda spelled out in other emails.
Burisma had made clear that the company had hired Leiter, Hunter Biden, and other political operatives as part of a focused plan to obtain Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky a U.S. visa as well as to persuade American officials to intervene with Ukrainian government officials to drop an investigation of his business interests.
In a May 2014 email, Vadim Pozharskyi, a close adviser to Zlochevsky, explained to Hunter that he needed his “advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message/signal, etc. to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions,” a reference to an ongoing investigation of Zlochevsky by Ukrainian prosecutors.
That month, Pozharskyi again wrote to Hunter, spelling out the “working plan for both FTI and David,” reiterating that he wanted the lobbyists to intervene against the “politically motivated proceedings initiated against us in Ukraine” and to overcome the “US entry ban” for the Burisma owner.
“The immediate plan is to reach out to the Energy and Ukraine desks, respectively, at State Dept,” wrote Heather King, the attorney working closely with Hunter Biden at the time. “That will include outreach to Carlos Pascual, he is the top US energy diplomat,” she added.
Scherer printed the denials, but to his credit, reported on the odd circumstances surrounding Biden’s hiring, at a time when Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point person for Ukraine, with a special focus on energy policy in the region.
In many cases, Hunter Biden’s associates cast him as simply an auditor with a special focus on renewable energy sourced from geothermal vents. That was the strategy in response to an inquiry from Stephen Braun, a reporter for the Associated Press. “Mr. Biden will not lobby on behalf of Burisma. His role is to advise the company’s legal and compliance unit, including guidance on corporate governance standards.”
Behind the scenes, Hunter Biden’s team knew otherwise. In emails conferring over how to deal with Braun’s questions, Pozharskyi reiterated the plan to provide Braun with “minimum information.”
Like many other articles from this time, the AP story focused on the conflict of interest issues, noting the denials around any lobbying with a degree of skepticism:
A former Washington lobbyist, the vice president’s son is effectively exempt from most rules that would require him to describe publicly the legal work he does on behalf of Burisma.
Hunter Biden will not lobby for the company, said Lawrence Pacheco, an official with FTI Consulting, a Washington government affairs company recently hired by Burisma.
Pacheco did not say whether Biden might oversee or advise on any future Burisma lobbying strategy in the U.S. Pacheco said the company “does not take positions on political matters.”
Braun could not be reached for comment. Scherer declined an opportunity to comment on the Hunter Biden emails. Biden, Toohey, and King did not respond to a request for comment.
However, the emails clearly indicate that substantial resources were allocated to managing both Burisma and Hunter’s personal image. Pozharskyi pointed out that Burisma had retained American consultants to reach out to “the most reputable European and American journalists/newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs,” while assistance was required to handle Wikipedia, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other online platforms. Burisma, wrote Pozharskyi, sought a “detailed algorithm on how the Company should act in case of bad publicity.” The effort included scrubbing negative details from Hunter Biden’s Wikipedia, while bolstering the online credentials of Burisma, emails show.
A highly focused effort to monitor and shape news media coverage helped maintain the public profile. Even with relatively low visibility, independent media were closely watched. Hunter and his team monitored Vice News as well as the gadfly website ZeroHedge. In response to critical reporting from Vice, one colleague noted approvingly that the article was not being “reposted or republished” in Ukrainian media.
In July 2014, Toohey circulated an investigative piece I wrote for Salon about Hunter Biden’s hiring at Burisma, which noted that the vice president’s son had been retained amid a string of nepotistic hires likely aimed at influencing natural gas and energy policy.
In the article, I noted that Joe Biden had traveled to Ukraine to “announce a $50 million aid package that included technical support for increasing the country’s natural gas production – an investment that could bolster profits at Burisma Holdings, where his son is a director.” What was not known at the time, however, was that Hunter Biden was already working with a team of public affairs consultants to channel U.S. government technical assistance to his client.
The laptop emails show that even this relatively brief mention of Hunter Biden and a potential conflict of interest with his father raised concerns.
“All, please see below a piece that mentions Hunter’s appointment as part of a broader trend, mostly within the context of relatives of eleceds [sic] engaged to lobby for the energy industry,” wrote Toohey, attaching a copy of the text of my piece. But, he added, “This was a freelanced piece picked up in a number of web-based outlets including Salon, but nothing with significant reach.”
Pozharskyi replied that he had seen the piece earlier and “wanted to have a discussion in this regard.”
In some cases, the team celebrated media coverage that elevated its desired narrative. Politico reported Hunter’s hiring at Burisma and simply printed quotes from the company’s official statements:
“The company’s strategy is aimed at the strongest concentration of professional staff and the introduction of best corporate practices, and we’re delighted that Mr. Biden is joining us to help us achieve these goals,” Alan Apter, Burisma Holdings’ chairman of the board of directors, said in a statement, which was reported by The Moscow Times on Tuesday.
Biden, joining the board, will be in charge of the legal unit, the company said. He will also provide support for Burisma Holdings “among international organizations.”
Biden said the company will help strengthen Ukraine’s economy.
Pozharskyi circulated a link to the Politico article to Hunter and his associates, noting the “positive coverage.”
Hunter’s membership on the Burisma board received renewed attention in late 2015, as then-Vice President Biden was set to visit Ukraine where he planned to address the parliament on the need to adopt new reforms against a culture of corruption in the country. James Risen of the Times, among others, renewed inquiries directed toward Hunter and his associates about the rationale behind his appointment to the company, Burisma, and why the company appeared to be buying access to high levels of government.
In one email found on Hunter’s laptop, Risen asked, “What lobbying activities is the company engaged in the US?” among other questions to Hunter Biden. In response, a Burisma spokesperson straightforwardly claimed that “no one is lobbying on their behalf.”
The company’s lobbying efforts were not covered in the story ultimately published by the New York Times, which featured Risen’s piece on Dec. 8, 2015. The article included a statement from the Hunter Biden team, crafted by the strategy firm FTI Consulting, asserting that the company’s focus was on “corporate governance and transparency.”
Risen’s article did not address whether Hunter’s business career demonstrated such expertise or his lack of experience in the energy field. Although Risen identified Hunter as “a former Washington lobbyist,” he accepted the denial that no lobbying was involved.
In reality, just a month prior to the email exchange with the Times, Burisma, following Hunter Biden’s advice, had hired Blue Star Strategies, a Democratic lobbying firm, to influence the Obama administration. A copy of the agreement, belatedly filed with the Justice Department, reveals that the firm, which aided in lobbying State Department officials on Ukrainian energy policy, received a monthly retainer of $30,000.
Blue Star Strategies was even copied on the emails with the Hunter Biden team on its response plan to Risen.
Risen also allowed a Burisma spokesman to decline to state Hunter’s compensation while claiming it was “not out of the ordinary” for such board positions. It was later disclosed that he was paid about $1 million per year, which is far higher than the typical compensation. As a point of comparison, median annual compensation of board members at Fortune 500 companies is around $110,000.
Risen, now with The Intercept, did not respond to a request for comment.
Political operatives of all ideological backgrounds frequently manipulate public perception – often employing specialized “crisis communication” firms to suppress negative coverage and shape desired narratives. What is remarkable about the Hunter Biden episode is how successful it was, and how uncritically most media organizations treated this unorthodox relationship between a president’s son and a controversial foreign corporation.
In response to the Wall Street Journal, Toohey worked closely with Blue Star Strategies’ Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano to craft a message defusing questions around a conflicting message between Hunter and his father. They settled on a strategy of presenting the Ukrainian gig as perfectly “aligned” with an anti-corruption agenda, laptop emails show. The lobbyists suggested that they release a statement to the Journal claiming that Hunter’s work for the Ukrainian energy giant, to supposedly strengthen corporate governance, are “also goals the United States.”
The Journal printed the statement, attributing it to a spokesperson.
Such coverage – which suggested Hunter Biden had engaged in questionable but ultimately harmless behavior that did not involve, much less implicate, his father – set the narrative for most coverage in mainstream outlets. When President Trump told Ukraine’s president in 2018 that “there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son” and asked him to look into Joe Biden’s demand that the prosecutor looking into Burisma be fired, Democrats moved to impeach him.
The Biden spin continued even after the New York Post published the first articles based on material from Hunter’s laptop in October 2020. The Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, sought to discredit the New York Post’s reporting that Hunter Biden had arranged a dinner meeting between his Ukrainian associates at Burisma and his father when he served as vice president. At the time, the Biden presidential campaign claimed that it “reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time, and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.” Kessler reiterated this denial as though it were an established fact.
It turned out to be false. The July testimony by former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer confirmed that Hunter Biden had arranged a secret dinner with his Ukrainian business partner and his father, as the New York Post had originally reported. The ongoing saga over the Washington Post’s role in covering up the Biden revelations was detailed last month by RealClearInvestigation’s Paul Sperry.
Last month, Kessler “updated” his article to acknowledge this.
Also last month, Washington Post columnist Philip Bump, who has dismissed any hint of scandal regarding Biden business dealings, appeared on Live at the Table, a podcast hosted by Noam Dworman, the owner of New York City’s Comedy Cellar. The show went viral as Dworman challenged Bump’s claims that there was “no evidence” of wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
In a heated exchange, Bump conceded that Hunter Biden’s text messages that claim, “unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary,” was one form of “evidence.” Moments later, Bump ended the interview and walked off the set.
The interaction provided a rare moment of visible accountability for the establishment press, which has largely followed the Biden spin for an entire decade on this issue.
Yet the White House is still hoping it can still instruct journalists on how to cover the story. Shortly after McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry announcement, President Biden’s White House staff circulated a memo, instructing media outlets on how to cover the news. In bold type, the memo claimed that the entire Hunter Biden conflict of interest scandal had been “refuted” and “debunked” – language that was adopted in media reports about the inquiry in Vox, NBC News and CNN.
News relating to missiles used or about to be used in Ukraine and about “Russian” ICBMs in North Korea
By Gilbert Doctorow | September 17, 2023
It is widely expected that in the coming week American president Joe Biden will announce the decision to ship American medium range missiles ATACMS to Ukraine. Discussions of this subject have been widespread in both US and European media. The focus has been on the range of missiles and whether their delivery will enable Ukraine to attack across the border into the Russian Federation itself for the purpose of destroying supplies and command centers there. Of course, the issue is complicated by what is meant by RF territory. In the language of the West, all of the Ukrainian territory which has been captured by Russia since 2014 is considered to be fair game for military attack. From the perspective of Russia, any attacks on Crimea, in particular, may be justification for major escalation of the war into a direct fight with the NATO country or countries supplying the given missiles. That said, there is reason to believe that Storm Shadows were used to hit Sevastopol on 13 September, without any sign yet of Russia’s intention to escalate.
The advocates of shipping ATACMSs to Ukraine point out that its range, 190 miles or 300 km, is no greater than that of the Storm Shadow missiles which Britain and France have sent to Ukraine without prompting escalatory actions by Russia. However, that is to overlook the other side of the issue, namely the method of launch. Storm Shadow is an air to ground missile. It is launched from Soviet-era Ukrainian jet fighters which have been especially modified for this purpose. Since the Storm Shadow is devilishly difficult for any air defense system to destroy in flight, the Russians have focused attention on destroying Ukrainian planes that are part of the launch operation. Just this past week, on 11 September a Russian missile attack on the Dolgintsevo air base near Krivoy Rog in the Dnepropetrovsk region of Ukraine destroyed 5 Ukrainian fighters, two MiG-29s and three SU-25s. The MiGs are said to either carry the Storm Shadow or to provide cover for SU-24s which carry them.
The logic of supplying ATCSMs is precisely in the launch mode, not the attack radius of these missiles. They are ground to ground missiles which are launched from mobile platforms similar in principle to the multiple rocket launchers HIMARS. In that sense, they are more difficult to find and destroy than a jet fighter.
In the meantime, in Europe, German Chancellor Scholz has made it plain that he will not approve sending Germany’s long range missiles, the TAURUS, to Kiev until the United States makes a first move by shipping its own missiles. The TAURUS falls into the same launch category as the Storm Shadow; it is sent on its way to target by a jet fighter. Its distinction is only one of distance, at 500 km range. If Ukraine has a fast diminishing or fully destroyed air force, the TAURUS will not be of much use.
*****
Otherwise, over this past week, the interest of major Western media in missiles has focused on what North Korea owns and how it got them. The interest came about as journalists followed the course of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s tour of the Russian Far East.
It has occurred to our journalists that North Korea presently possesses ICBMs capable of reaching the North American heartland, and as they pored over the technical characteristics of these missiles they noted that one seems to be very close in design to Soviet era missiles that were once the mainstay of the Russian strategic arsenal. I am speaking of the Korean rebranded Topol-M.
It is not surprising, therefore, that some folks in the States are wondering how is it that the Russians were able to get away with supplying the designs of the Topol-M to Pongyang without the United States raising a hullaballoo.
The answer, my friends, is in the inconvenient fact that those responsible for providing North Korea with production plans and technology for manufacturing the Topol-M were not Russians; they were Ukrainians. This story is discussed in an article on a Russian news portal a couple of days ago. According to the authors, the Ukrainians sold to the North Koreans part of the technology but not all. For example, they held back the secrets of the solid fuel used in this missile, which the Koreans had to develop on their own. Moreover, for the guidance system, the Koreans were assisted or copied a system developed by the Chinese. What this tells us is that if the Koreans should agree with the Kremlin on the purchase of one or another missile-related technology, its integration into their own production will be done by the Koreans themselves. The same may be said of technologies for construction and operation of nuclear powered submarines which the North Koreans are said to be looking for abroad.
*****
Before closing, I use this opportunity to sum up the Russian visit of Comrade Kim after he spent that first day in talks with Vladimir Putin at the Vostochny Cosmodrome about which I wrote earlier in the week. His next stop was Komsomolsk on Amur, where he was shown the Yuri Gagarin factory complex producing Russian military and civilian aircraft, including the “Alligator” multifunctional attack helicopters that have been so effective in the Ukraine war against tanks, armored personnel carriers and other military hardware. The top Russian official with Kim for the day was Minister of Trade and Industry Denis Manturov.
From Komsomolsk, Kim went next to the Knevichi air base in the Amur region, where he was shown the massive turboprop Tupolev Tu-95 and the sleek Tu-160 “White Swan,” both mainstays of the nuclear triad as bombers and missile platforms. Considerable attention was given to an assortment of the most modern fighter jets in the Su family, as well as to MiGs equipped with the hypersonic Kinzhal missile. The Russian hosts were headed by Minister of Defense Shoigu.
Kim’s tour ended in Vladivostok where he was taken aboard the frigate Marshal Shaposhnikov of the Pacific fleet, which is typical of the latest Russian vessels in having an important complement of hypersonic missiles with 1500 km range as well as weaponry for anti-submarine warfare.
When in Vladivostik, Kim visited the Far Eastern Federal University on Russky Island in the Vladivostok harbor, where the Eastern Economic Forum had been held at the start of the week. Kim met with university students. Lastly, there was a typically Russian cultural note to round out Kim’s program: a performance of Swan Lake by the Vladivostok affiliate of the Mariinsky Theater (St Petersburg). I mention parenthetically, that the Russian Federation from coast to coast is looked after culturally by its musical and museum powerhouses: Moscow’s Bolshoi theater maintains a similar performance and training outpost in Kaliningrad.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
Hyping Ukraine Counteroffensive, US Press Chose Propaganda Over Journalism
By Bryce Greene | FAIR | September 15, 2023
It has been clear for some time that US corporate news media have explicitly taken a side on the Ukraine War. This role includes suppressing relevant history of the lead-up to the war (FAIR.org, 3/4/22), attacking people who bring up that history as “conspiracy theorists” (FAIR.org, 5/18/22), accepting official government pronouncements at face value (FAIR.org, 12/2/22) and promoting an overly rosy picture of the conflict in order to boost morale.
For most of the war, most of the US coverage has been as pro-Ukrainian as Ukraine’s own media, now consolidated under the Zelenskyy government (FAIR.org, 5/9/23).
Dire predictions sporadically appeared, but were drowned out by drumbeat coverage portraying a Ukrainian army on the cusp of victory, and the Russian army as incompetent and on the verge of collapse.
Triumphalist rhetoric soared in early 2023, as optimistic talk of a game-changing “spring offensive” dominated Ukraine coverage. Apparently delayed, the Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in June. While even US officials did not believe that it would amount to much, US media papered over these doubts in the runup to the campaign.
Over the last three months, it has become clear that the Ukrainian military operation will not be the game-changer it was sold as; namely, it will not significantly roll back the Russian occupation and obviate the need for a negotiated settlement. Only after this became undeniable did media report on the true costs of war to the Ukrainian people.
Overwhelming optimism
In the runup to the counteroffensive, US media were full of excited conversation about how it would reshape the nature of the conflict. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told Radio Free Europe (4/21/23) he was “confident Ukraine will be successful.” Sen. Lindsey Graham assured Politico (5/30/23), “In the coming days, you’re going to see a pretty impressive display of power by the Ukrainians.” Asked for his predictions about Ukraine’s plans, retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges told NPR (5/12/23), “I actually expect… they will be quite successful.”
Former CIA Director David Patraeus, author of the overhyped “surge” strategy in Iraq, told CNN (5/23/23):
I personally think that this is going to be really quite successful…. And [the Russians] are going to have to withdraw under pressure of this Ukrainian offensive, the most difficult possible tactical maneuver, and I don’t think they’re going to do well at that.
The Washington Post’s David Ignatius (4/15/23) acknowledged that “hope is not a strategy,” but still insisted that “Ukraine’s will to win—its determination to expel Russian invaders from its territory at whatever cost—might be the X-factor in the decisive season of conflict ahead.”
The New York Times (6/2/23) ran a story praising recruits who signed up for the Ukrainian pushback, even though it “promises to be deadly.” Times columnist Paul Krugman (6/5/23) declared we were witnessing “the moral equivalent of D-Day.” CNN (5/30/23) reported that Ukrainians were “unfazed” as they “gear up for a counteroffensive.”
Cable news was replete with buzz about how the counteroffensive, couched with modifiers like “long-awaited” or “highly anticipated,” could turn the tide in the war. Nightly news shows (e.g., NBC, 6/15/23, 6/16/23) presented audiences with optimistic statements from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other figures talking about the imminent success.
Downplaying reality
The Washington Post (4/10/23) noted that pessimistic leaked assessments were “a marked departure from the Biden administration’s public statements about the vitality of Ukraine’s military.”
Despite the soaring rhetoric presented to audiences, Western officials understood that the counteroffensive was all but doomed to fail. This had been known long before the above comments were reported, but media failed to include that fact as prominently as the predictions for success.
On April 10, as part of the Discord leaks story, the Washington Post (4/10/23) reported that top secret documents showed that Ukraine’s drive would fall “well short” of its objectives, due to equipment, ammunition and conscription problems. The document predicted “sustainment shortfalls” and only “modest territorial gains.”
The Post additionally cited anonymous officials who claimed that the documents’ conclusions were corroborated by a classified National Intelligence Council assessment, shown only to a select few in Congress. The Post spoke to a Ukrainian official who “did not dispute the revelations,” and acknowledged that it was “partially true.”
While the Post has yet to publish the documents in full, the leaks and the other sources clearly painted a picture of a potentially disastrous counteroffensive. Fear was so palpable that the Biden administration privately worried about how he could keep up support for the war when the widely hyped offensive sputtered. In the midst of this, Blinken continued to dismiss the idea of a ceasefire, opting instead to pursue further escalating the conflict.
Despite the importance of these facts, they were hardly reported on by the rest of corporate media, and dropped from subsequent war coverage. When the Post (6/14/23) published a long article citing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s cautious optimism about the campaign, it neglected to mention its earlier reporting about the government’s privately gloomier assessments. The documents only started appearing again in the press after thousands were dead, and the campaign’s failure undeniable.
In an honest press, excited comments from politicians and commentators would be published alongside reports about how even our highest-level officials did not believe that the counteroffensive would amount to much. Instead, anticipation was allowed to build while doubts were set to the side.
Too ‘casualty-averse’?
By July, Ukrainian casualties were mounting, and it became clearer and clearer that the counteroffensive would fail to recapture significant amounts of Ukrainian territory. Reporting grew more realistic, and we were given insights into conditions on the ground in Ukraine, as well as what was in the minds of US officials.
According to the Washington Post (8/17/23), US and Ukrainian militaries had conducted war games and had anticipated that an advance would be accompanied by heavy losses. But when the real-world fatalities mounted, the Post reported, “Ukraine chose to stem the losses on the battlefield.”
This caused a rift between the Ukrainians and their Western backers, who were frustrated at Ukrainians’ desire to keep their people alive. A mid-July New York Times article (7/14/23) reported that US officials were privately frustrated that Ukraine had become too afraid of dying to fight effectively. The officials worried that Ukrainian commanders “fear[ed] casualties among their ranks,” and had “reverted to old habits” rather than “pressing harder.”
After noting estimates that 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died and as many as 120,000 wounded, the New York Times (8/18/23) reported that “American officials say they fear that Ukraine has become casualty averse.”
Acknowledging failure
After it became undeniable that Ukraine’s military action was going nowhere, a Wall Street Journal report (7/23/23) raised some of the doubts that had been invisible in the press on the offensive’s eve. The report’s opening lines say it all:
When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces.
The Journal acknowledged that Western officials simply “hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day.”
One Post column (7/26/23) asked, “Was Gen. Mark Milley Right Last Year About the War in Ukraine?” Columnist Jason Willick acknowledged that “Milley’s skepticism about Ukraine’s ability to achieve total victory appears to have been widespread within the Biden administration before the counteroffensive began.”
And when one official told Politico (8/18/23), “Milley had a point,” acknowledging the former military head’s November suggestion for negotiations. The quote was so telling that Politico made it the headline of the article.
Even Rep. Andy Harris (D-Md.), co-chair of the congressional Ukraine Caucus, publicly questioned whether or not the war was “winnable” (Politico, 8/17/23). Speaking on the counteroffensive’s status, he said, “I’ll be blunt, it’s failed.”
Newsweek (8/16/23) reported on a Ukrainian leadership divided over how to handle the “underwhelming” counteroffensive. The Washington Post (8/17/23) reported that the US intelligence community assessed that the offensive would fail to fulfill its key objective of severing the land bridge between Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
As the triumphalism ebbed, outlets began reporting on scenes that were almost certainly common before the spring push but had gone unpublished. One piece from the Post (8/10/23) outlined a “darken[ed] mood in Ukraine,” in which the nation was “worn out.” The piece acknowledged that “Ukrainian officials and their Western partners hyped up a coming counteroffensive,” but there was “little visible progress.”
The Wall Street Journal (8/1/23) published a devastating piece about the massive number of amputees returning home from the mine-laden battlefield. They reported that between 20,000 and 50,000 Ukrainians had lost one or more limbs as a result of the war—numbers that are comparable to those seen during World War I.
Rather than dwelling on the stalled campaign, the New York Times and other outlets focused on the drone war against Russia, even while acknowledging that the remote strikes were largely an exercise in public relations. The Times (8/25/23) declared that the strikes had “little significant damage to Russia’s overall military might” and were primarily “a message for [Ukraine’s] own people,” citing US officials who noted that they “intended to demonstrate to the Ukrainian public that Kyiv can still strike back.” Looking at the quantity of Times coverage (8/30/23, 8/30/23, 8/23/23, 8/22/23, 8/22/23, 8/21/23, 8/18/23), the drone strikes were apparently aimed at an increasingly war-weary US public as well.
War as desirable outcome
The Army War College’s John Deni (Wall Street Journal, 12/22/21) urged the US to take “a hard-line stance in diplomatic discussions,” because “if Mr. Putin’s forces invade, Russia is likely to suffer long-term, serious and even debilitating strategic costs.”
The fact that US officials pushed for a Ukrainian counteroffensive that all but expected would fail raises an important question: Why would they do this? Sending thousands of young people to be maimed and killed does nothing to advance Ukrainian territorial integrity, and actively hinders the war effort.
The answer has been clear since before the war. Despite the high-minded rhetoric about support for democracy, this has never been the goal of pushing for war in Ukraine. Though it often goes unacknowledged in the US press, policymakers saw a war in Ukraine as a desirable outcome. One 2019 study from the RAND Corporation—a think tank with close ties to the Pentagon—suggested that an effective way to overextend and unbalance Russia would be to increase military support for Ukraine, arguing that this could lead to a Russian invasion.
In December 2021, as Russian President Vladimir Putin began to mass troops at Ukraine’s border while demanding negotiations, John Deni of the Atlantic Council published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (12/22/21) headlined “The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine,” which laid out the US logic explicitly: Provoking a war would allow the US to impose sanctions and fight a proxy war that would grind Russia down. Additionally, the anti-Russian sentiment that resulted from a war would strengthen NATO’s resolve.
All of this came to pass as Washington’s stance of non-negotiation successfully provoked a Russian invasion. Even as Ukraine and Russia sat at the negotiation table early in the war, the US made it clear that it wanted the war to continue and escalate. The US’s objective was, in the words of Raytheon boardmember–turned–Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, “to see Russia weakened.” Despite stated commitments to Ukrainian democracy, US policies have instead severely damaged it.
NATO’s ‘strategic windfall’
In the wake of the stalled counteroffensive, the US interest in sacrificing Ukraine to bleed Russia was put on display again. In July, the Post‘s Ignatius declared that the West shouldn’t be so “gloomy” about Ukraine, since the war had been a “strategic windfall” for NATO and its allies. Echoing two of Deni’s objectives, Ignatius asserted that “the West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked,” and “NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland.”
In the starkest demonstration of the lack of concern for Ukraine or its people, he also wrote that these strategic successes came “at relatively low cost,” adding, in a parenthetical aside, “(other than for the Ukrainians).”
Ignatius is far from alone. Hawkish Sen. Mitt Romney (R–Utah) explained why US funding for the proxy war was “about the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done”: “We’re losing no lives in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians, they’re fighting heroically against Russia.”
The consensus among policymakers in Washington is to push for endless conflict, no matter how many Ukrainians die in the process. As long as Russia loses men and material, the effect on Ukraine is irrelevant. Ukrainian victory was never the goal.
‘Fears of peace talks’
Polls show that support for increased US involvement in Ukraine is rapidly declining. The recent Republican presidential debate demonstrated clear fractures within the right wing of the US power structure. Politico (8/18/23) reported that some US officials are regretting potential lost opportunities for negotiations. Unfortunately, this minority dissent has yet to affect the dominant consensus.
The failure of the counteroffensive has not caused Washington to rethink its strategy of attempting to bleed Russia. The flow of US military hardware to Ukraine is likely to continue so long as this remains the goal. The Hill (9/5/23) gave the game away about NATO’s commitment to escalation with a piece titled “Fears of Peace Talks With Putin Rise Amid US Squabbling.”
But even within the Biden administration, the Pentagon appears to be at odds with the State Department and National Security Council over the Ukraine conflict. Contrary to what may be expected, the civilian officials like Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland and Antony Blinken are taking a harder line on perpetuating this conflict than the professional soldiers in the Pentagon. The media’s sharp change of tone may both signify and fuel the doubts gaining traction within the US political class.
House Republicans Fed Up With Biden’s Ukraine Aid Requests
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 18.09.2023
As the US government’s September 30 funding deadline nears, the Biden administration is seeking to ram a $24 billion Ukraine package through the US Congress. Not so fast, say House Republicans.
House Republicans and Democrats have locked horns again over federal budget spending. At midnight on September 30, the US government may shut down unless Congress passes spending legislation.
Each party appears to be trying to capitalize on the urgency of the moment. The White House and Democratic Party want to swiftly pass $44 billion in emergency funding, which includes a $24 billion package for the Kiev regime, requested by President Joe Biden in early August. A lesser amount, $16 billion, has been requested by the White House to replenish FEMA’s depleted Disaster Relief Fund and to cope with the consequences of the wildfires on Maui and in Louisiana, flooding in Vermont, and a major hurricane in Florida.
House Republicans believe that it’s not fair to wrap up domestic aid and aid to Ukraine in one bill and insist that they should be separated.
“This needs to get done. It needs to get done separately. It needs to get done in a bipartisan manner,” GOP Senator Rick Scott told the press.
For his part, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has repeatedly made it clear that he does not want to throw US taxpayer dollars into the black hole of the Ukraine conflict, has proposed a compromise solution: pass a stopgap measure first to give them more time to negotiate on further government funding.
“We’re going to get this done, nobody wins in a government shutdown,” McCarthy told reporters last week.
“I think it does reflect a certain part of American society,” James George Jatras, retired US diplomat and adviser to the US Senate Republican leadership, told Sputnik. “The question is how much of the American establishment does it reflect? And that is very unclear. All the indications I’ve gotten from people with informants inside the government indicate that they still want to win this war and still believe that they are able to do so, but that it’s necessary to freeze the war or to arrange some kind of a phony Minsk-3 kind of ceasefire.”
McCarthy is backed by members of the Republican Main Street Caucus and House Freedom Caucus. The proposed bill would extend the government funding through October 31, impose an almost 8% spending cut on most of the federal agencies (excluding the Pentagon), and, importantly, it would not include additional aid to Ukraine.
The US press reports that supporting Ukraine is becoming “more controversial” among US lawmakers. “I’m a no on any spending for Ukraine, that’s one of my red lines,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia told the media earlier this month. The House Freedom Caucus shares a similar stance. So does a majority of the US public, who tell pollsters that the United States has already provided Kiev with enough funding.
Ukraine’s botched counteroffensive has added to doubts, along with soaring prices and borrowing costs, economic slowdown, and inflation. An August survey found that 55% of Americans thought lawmakers should not authorize additional funding to support Ukraine.
“There is a growing rift perhaps among the public, who realizes how corrupt the Ukrainian regime is, how much all of this is a waste, how, even to some extent, it’s a danger of a broader war if it continues,” Jatras said.
Still, some Senate Republicans seem to be fine with more military assistance to Kiev. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas shared a letter in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) insisting that not sending weapons to the Kiev regime would “prolong the war and cost lives.” Senators Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C) share Cotton’s stance.
Having realized that Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive has failed, the bipartisan establishment is drumming up support for more weapons to Kiev no matter what.
“There is, you might say, a rift in terms of strategy, about how to accomplish the goal of defeating Russia in Ukraine, but there is no rift on that question,” Jatras said. “The establishment is still virtually 100% anti-Russian. They want to blame any failure so far on the Ukrainians, especially this idea that the Ukrainians are casualty-averse and they’re not willing to throw enough men into the meat grinder, and that they need to listen to people from Washington about how to run the war. But nonetheless, the fundamental question of how to proceed in Ukraine, there is no rift.”
“The signals I read are that they realize that this so-called counteroffensive is not going to succeed on its own terms, and they have to switch to a different strategy. And that different strategy is to force Moscow into a disadvantage, a frozen conflict. And they think they can succeed in that and that they’re preparing for a longer-term conflict,” he continued.
Even though the public discontent in the US is growing against funding Kiev, the White House and the “war party” in Congress don’t give “a damn,” according to the expert. The question is to what extent the US elites could push ahead with the unpopular measure as domestic problems continue to mount.
American biological male spokesperson for Kiev threatens journalists, and now, election observers also
By Lucas Leiroz | September 18, 2023
Sarah Ashton Cirillo – also known as “Michael John”, an American biological male transgender citizen who works as spokesperson for Kiev, has made public threats on social media, promising to attack Russian and foreign civilian citizens who work as journalists and international observers. The case clearly shows the neo-Nazi and anti-humanitarian mentality of the Ukrainian regime, which openly states its intention to kill civilian and strategically irrelevant people.
In recent days, Sarah has threatened civilians several times. The first public statement of this kind was made on September 13, when the spokesperson promised to “hunt down” all Russian “propagandists” and punish them for the “war crimes” allegedly committed by Moscow. On that occasion, Sarah mentioned that in the “next week” – in this case the current one – “justice” would be “served” in Ukraine, suggesting that attacks against pro-Russian journalists could be close to happening.
“Next week, the teeth of the Russian devils will gnash ever harder, and their rabid mouths will foam in uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes (…) Russia’s war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down, and justice will be served as we in Ukraine are led on this mission by faith in God, liberty and complete liberation,” Sarah said at the time.
The case generated outrage among the Russians, who correctly interpreted Sarah’s threat as a risk to their lives. Officials reported the American-Ukrainian spokesperson’s words to international organizations and NGOs, in addition to calling on Russian security authorities to keep an eye on the case and avoid attacks on civilians.
However, as if threatening journalists were not enough, Sarah published on her social networks a few days later a list with the names of several foreign citizens who participated as observers in the recent elections in the four new Russian regions. According to Sarah, the list is made up of “of vultures feeding off the suffering of Ukrainians in temporarily occupied Ukraine.”
Considering the previously made threat to “hunt” journalists, it is possible to interpret the list of names as a true “hit-list”. Sarah appears to be creating her own “Myrotvorets”, exposing names and details of civilians so that Ukrainian intelligence and allied terrorists can find and kill them. This might seem “shocking” in other countries, but it already seems to be commonplace in Ukraine, as the neo-Nazi regime openly maintains a strategy of killing civilians.
Moscow reported the situation to the UN, with the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation in New York trying to draw the attention of diplomats from other countries to the serious threats made by the American citizen on behalf of the Ukrainian state. It is not yet known how the other diplomatic delegations will react to the case, but, considering that on previous occasions Russian reports had little effect, it is expected that the situation will not be resolved through diplomatic means.
Commenting on the case, Dutch journalist Sonja van den Ende, who also worked as an observer in the elections, stated that Sarah is practicing terrorism by putting the names of civilians on death lists. As a European-born citizen exiled in Russia, Sonja says Western Europeans do not care about what happens to Russian civilians. According to her, if something similar had happened in Europe, those responsible would certainly be punished appropriately.
“It’s a threat to us all, to Western journalists, and all who are already on the Peacekeeper list (Myrotvorets), which is actually a kill list (…) [If something like this were happening in Europe] it would be terrorism. They would say ‘this is a crazy guy, or a woman.’ She’d be jailed or at least tried”, Sonja told journalists during an interview.
In fact, considering Ukraine’s terrorist past and the murders of Daria Dugina, Maxim Fomin (“Vladlen Tatarsky”) and Rostilav Zhuravlev, as well as several failed attempts to kill other civilians, it is very likely that Kiev’s intelligence services are planning something against Russian journalists and international observers in the near future. In addition to Sarah’s words, this is also in line with the promise made by Ukrainian military intelligence chief General Kirill Budanov, who stated in May:
“We’ve been killing Russians and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine (…) We have already gotten many, including public and media personalities.”
Clearly, for Kiev there are no ethical or humanitarian limits. All Russian citizens – or simply foreigners who dialogue with the Russian side – are “legitimate” targets for the regime. The terrorist and neo-Nazi mentality of the Kiev Junta allows it to target people without military involvement, which drives the Russian forces to seek more incisive means to protect their citizens.
Given the West’s connivance with these crimes and the omission on the part of the international organizations, the Russian side will have to defend its people through military means.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.
Update:
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Jewish Guilt is the Discourse of The Goyim
By Gilad Atzmon | April 24, 2018
For quite some time the British have accepted that British Jewish organizations have hijacked the political discourse. As has happened in other Western countries, the British political establishment has engaged is a relentless rant against antisemitsm. Sometime the focus drifts for a day or two. An alleged ‘Russian nerve gas attack’ provided a 48 hour pause. Occasionally we bomb Arabs in the name of ‘human intervention’ only to realize a day or two later that we have, once again, followed a premeditated foreign agenda. But, somehow, we always return to the antisemitism debate, as if our media and politicians are a herd of flies gravitating to a pile of poop. … continue
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