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MH17 Probe – Perpetual Smear Job on Russia

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 22, 2019

The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) tasked with probing the Malaysian MH17 airliner disaster in 2014 is a travesty of legal due process and justice. It is a politically motivated vehicle for smearing Russia. A vehicle designed to run and run for years to come.

Despite its grand-sounding legal title, the JIT is a mockery of jurisprudence. It has, for example, included Ukrainian police in its “fact finding” while excluding Russia. That has ensured bias in the investigation in favor of a party – the Ukrainian state – which should have been treated as a suspect.

The Dutch-led investigation is also infused with a NATO bias which inherently blames Russia for the Ukraine conflict that began in 2014. It is a hopelessly flawed investigation based on prejudice and preconceived notions of guilt.

As with previous reports, the JIT has openly acknowledged cooperating with the private blog site Bellingcat for its purported evidence gathering. How can a supposed official investigation into a mass murder be taken seriously when it is relying on the “expertise” of a freelance blogger-sleuth? Moreover, Bellingcat is complicit in peddling NATO propaganda concerning chemical weapons false-flag attacks in Syria and the Skripal poisoning case.

The JIT report this week into the crash in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014 again draws on Bellingcat “information”. That information has been shown by other investigators to be based on fabricated video and audio material. Like previous JIT reports, the so-called “evidence” is vague and relies more on innuendo of guilt. The latest so-called report did not bring any new “evidence” to back up previous claims that Russia is culpable for the alleged shoot-down of the Boeing 777 over eastern Ukraine. The investigators claimed last year that a Russian anti-aircraft brigade based in Kursk entered Ukrainian territory with a Buk missile system. The munition was allegedly used by pro-Russian rebels fighting against Kiev-controlled military to blow the Boeing 777 from the sky.

The passenger jet was on its way from the Netherlands to Malaysia when it was apparently shot down by an anti-aircraft missile while traversing eastern Ukraine. All 298 onboard were killed in the crash.

Russia and the Ukrainian separatist militia have both denied any involvement. They reject the JIT claims as “baseless”.

The videos purportedly showing a Buk missile system being transported from Russia to eastern Ukraine – which Belllingcat and the JIT rely on as evidence – have long been exposed as doctored fakes.

What Dutch-led “investigators” did this week is more PR trick. They name four suspects ostensibly to prosecute for murder in a Dutch court next year. Three of the named persons are reportedly Russian nationals, while the fourth is Ukrainian. All are said to be located presently in the Russian Federation. The JIT will request Russia extradite the alleged suspects to face trial. The JIT investigators claim that the named individuals “prove” a link between Russian military and the Ukrainian rebels.

It is extremely unlikely that Russia will extradite the persons. That is because they will not receive a fair trial given the extreme prejudice of the prosecutors. And also because the Russian state has been continually refused participation in the investigation and fair access to investigation files. Russia’s own significant evidence into the air disaster – and what could have really happened – has also been continually and unreasonably repudiated by the JIT.

The Dutch-led investigators know full well that Russia will not cooperate with their extradition requests. What will happen therefore is that the “indictments” forever hang in the air and serve as a quasi-conviction. This is the same cynical technique of the Mueller Report into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections. Mueller indicted several Russian citizens for “meddling” in the elections, inferring they were serving a Kremlin-directed operation. Those accused citizens will never be extradited to face a trial in the US. Mueller knew that and didn’t expect it. The purpose was to let indictments hang in the air to serve as a perpetual smear against Russia.

Unlike the Mueller probe which wound up earlier this year after two years of meandering, empty-handed investigation into alleged “Russian collusion”, the MH17 investigation is set to trundle on for several years to come.

Wilbert Paulissen, head of the national investigative department of the Dutch police, said the investigation has much further to go, according to Radio Free Europe reporting.

“Today, we – the JIT – have taken an important step, but – as we said – our investigation will not end with the prosecution of those four people,” he said.

“There were more people who played a role in the downing of MH17. Investigation also continues into the personnel running the air-defense missile system Buk and into the people who were an important link in the Russian Federation’s decision-making process to provide military support to [separatists in] eastern Ukraine.”

Dutch chief prosecutor Fred Westerbeke was also quoted as saying that Russia was involved in the “crime in one way or another.” He added, the Kremlin is “in a position to tell us what happened… I’m sure they know what happened.”

For the head of Dutch police and the state attorney to make such prejudicial statements against Russia before a court case has even been opened is an astounding contempt of due process. Russia has been convicted and condemned for the Malaysian airliner disaster without even having a chance to present an alternative narrative, never mind defense.

Moscow’s response to the latest JIT accusations this week was one of dismay. The Kremlin said it was “regrettable” and “baseless” –unworthy of a substantial response.

Russia’s own significant evidence in the MH17 catastrophe has been repeatedly rebuffed by the JIT. That evidence reportedly includes radar and air traffic control data which puts the onus of responsibility for the crash on the Ukrainian authorities in Kiev. Why was the plane apparently directed by Kiev along an air route over a war zone?

Most revealing, however, is that Buk missile evidence presented last year by the JIT inadvertently showed that the casing of the projectile allegedly involved in downing the plane indicated it was a 1986 model of that munition. That strongly suggests that the missile did not come from Russia, but rather belonged to the Ukrainian armed forces dating from the Soviet era.

Incredibly, for a so-called international criminal investigation, such highly pertinent evidence from Russia has been shunned. However, this oversight is not incredible when one considers that the real purpose of the Dutch-led JIT is not to uncover the truth and guilt over the MH17 incident. The real purpose is to serve as a NATO vehicle to frame-up Russia for an atrocity. An atrocity which in all likelihood was perpetrated by one of the investigating parties – the NATO-backed Ukrainian regime in Kiev.

June 22, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Dutch-led investigators demand arrest of 4 people allegedly involved in MH17 downing

RT | June 19, 2019

International investigators have accused three Russians and one Ukrainian of shooting down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, with the trial to start next year. Moscow has repeatedly criticized “inconsistencies” in the probe.

The report by Joint Investigation Team (JIT) on Wednesday said they collected enough evidence for murder charges to be presented to the Dutch court. The latter will decide whether the four suspects are responsible for the incident that claimed 298 lives. The plane was shot down by a Buk surface-to-air missile over eastern Ukraine amid an armed conflict between government and rebel forces. Most of the victims were Dutch passengers.

The JIT accused a rebel of shooting down the civilian plane. The top suspect is Igor Girkin, a Russian national, who was a senior commander under the nom de guerre Igor Strelkov at the time. The other suspects are fellow anti-Kiev fighters and Russian nationals Sergey Dubinsky and Oleg Pulatov as well as Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian.

The investigators allege that the four people were responsible for bringing a Buk launcher into Ukraine from the Russian territory and using it to shoot down flight MH17. The probe noted that the tragedy may have happened by accident, with the rebels believing that they were targeting a Ukrainian warplane. That, JIT says, does not make the crime any less serious.

The JIT said three of the suspects are currently in Russia while the fourth is in Ukraine. The Netherlands will issue international arrest warrants for the four individuals, but won’t seek extraditions, since neither Ukraine nor Russia are allowed to extradite its citizens due to their respective constitutions. This makes it unlikely that any of the four individuals would stand before the court, once it begins in March 2020, the JIT said.

Girkin denies the allegations by reiterating that he and his men were not responsible for the downing of the ill-fated flight.

The JIT includes representatives from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, Ukraine and the Netherlands. Pointing out “inconsistencies” in the probe, Moscow said the Dutch-led team was reluctant to search or study evidence that contradicted the theory that rebels were responsible for the incident. Moscow stands accused of providing the Buk launcher and missile, an allegation that it denies.

Moscow also blamed the JIT of failing to pressure Ukraine into providing radar data for the day when MH17 was shot down. It published its own radar data as well as records related to production and transportation of Buk missiles in Soviet times. According to Moscow, they point to Ukraine as the culprit in the case. In particular, the warhead that destroyed the plane was of an older model that is no longer in use in Russia while its serial numbers, which were recovered at the crash site, point to a projectile that had been shipped to Ukraine.

Russia also criticized the JIT for relying on so-called ‘open source evidence’ like videos published on social media as well as opinions of ‘civilian journalists’ like the UK-based group Bellingcat in its reporting. Moscow says such evidence is not always reliable.

Bellingcat published its own report with a longer list of people, whom it accused of shooting down the airliner. The four suspects named by the JIT are on that list. Notably, the report was issued just hours before the JIT press conference.

Meanwhile, Russia is not the only country that has reservations about JIT’s work. Last month Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said his country was not convinced by the evidence uncovered about either Russia’s involvement or Ukraine’s innocence in the case.

June 19, 2019 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

‘Where is the evidence?’ Malaysian PM says attempts to pin MH17 downing on Russia lack proof

RT | May 30, 2019

Malaysia has accepted the Dutch report that a ‘Russian-made’ missile shot down its civilian airliner MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, but has yet to see evidence it was fired by Russia, said Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

“They are accusing Russia but where is the evidence?” Mahathir told reporters at the Japanese Foreign Correspondents Club (FCCJ) in Tokyo on Thursday.

“You need strong evidence to show it was fired by the Russians,” the prime minister went on, according to the Malaysian state news agency Bernama. “It could be by the rebels in Ukraine; it could be Ukrainian government because they too have the same missile.”

Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014 – amid heavy fighting between residents of two eastern regions who rejected the February coup in Kiev and troops dispatched by the Western-backed government to suppress them.

All 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board the Boeing-777 were killed. Kiev immediately blamed Russia for the incident, and most Western media uncritically agreed.

Mahathir was skeptical that anyone involved with the Russian military could have launched the missile that struck the plane, however, arguing that it would have been clear to professionals that the target was a civilian airliner.

“I don’t think a very highly disciplined party is responsible for launching the missile,” he said.

The Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT), whose report last year blamed Moscow for shooting down MH17, barred Russia from participating in the investigation, but involved the government of Ukraine. Although Malaysia is also a member of JIT, Mahathir revealed that his country’s officials have been blocked from examining the plane’s flight recorders.

“For some reason, Malaysia was not allowed to check the black box to see what happened,” he said. “We don’t know why we are excluded from the examination but from the very beginning, we see too much politics in it.”

“The idea was not to find out how this happened but seems to be concentrated on trying to pin it on the Russians.”

“This is not a neutral kind of examination,” Mahathir added.

Rejecting the JIT accusations, Russia made public the evidence the Dutch-led researchers refused to look into, including the serial number of the missile that allegedly struck MH17, showing that it was manufactured in the Soviet Union in 1986 and was in the arsenal of the Ukrainian army at the time of the tragedy.

May 31, 2019 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | | Leave a comment

Global Elites Started The Russia Nonsense

Ted Eytan (Flickr/CC)
By Thomas Farnan | Human Events | May 24, 2019

Attorney General William Barr has turned the attention of the Russia probe to its origin: who started this and why? The answer, as in all the best crime dramas, is probably hiding in plain sight.

On July 13, 2016, British academic Dr. Andrew Foxall penned an op-ed in the New York Times, “Why Putin Loves Brexit.” He blamed Russia for the previous month’s Brexit vote, adding in a little noted aside:

The United States is so concerned over Moscow’s determination to exploit European disunity that in January, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, began a review of Russia’s clandestine funding of European parties.

The British aristocracy has a condescending view of the hoi polloi who voted for Brexit, regarding them as easily manipulated Pygmalion-like by smarter people.

Bingo! The Obama administration was spying on conservative European political parties. Which means, almost necessarily under the Five Eyes Agreement, foreign agents were returning the favor and spying on the Trump campaign.

On August 11, 2018, I wrote:

The British aristocracy has a condescending view of the hoi polloi who voted for Brexit, regarding them as easily manipulated Pygmalion-like by smarter people. They assumed Vladimir Putin was somehow playing Professor Henry Higgins to the flower girls who voted to reject the EU, because that’s how they see the world. Among the Cambridge class, this simple prejudice renders Russian collusion a first principle with no need for supporting evidence….

Without supporting evidence to prove their fantastical worldview, the global elite set out to manufacture some.

First up was Christopher Steele, who hasn’t set foot in Russia since 2009. He wears as a badge the claim that Putin hates him which, if true, means he has no real Russian sources. Maybe because of that, Steele’s farcical dossier on Trump was not enough for the FBI to open an investigation, and these international men of mystery needed something more.

They invited George Papadopoulos to London, used a Maltese asset disguised as a Russian agent – Joseph Mifsud – to feed him a whopper about Hillary Clinton’s emails, then claimed he repeated the lie to Andrew Downer, an Australian diplomat with ties to the Clinton Foundation.

That was the final straw that caused lovestruck counterintelligence specialist Peter Strzok to open an FBI investigation into the Trump campaign which he called “Crossfire Hurricane.” Apropos, because when MI6 was joined on its flank by an FBI investigation, it was officially a crossfire: two rogue intelligence services raining fire upon Trump.

Conspiracies are mere abstractions unless they do something criminal. The Russian interference fantasy needed a crime. The DNC sold a doozy of an actus reus to the FBI after John Podesta’s negligent disclosure of damaging Clinton campaign emails: Putin did it.

Conveniently, the FBI delegated the inspection of the computer servers to CrowdStrike, an insider paid by the DNC. James Comey testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee in January 2017 that CrowdStrike was “a highly respected private company.”

What he failed to mention was that a month before his testimony, CrowdStrike had been caught falsely blaming Russia for a hack into a Ukrainian artillery computer app.

In other words, at the same time this “highly respected private company” was blaming the Russians for stealing the Clinton campaign’s emails, it was fabricating a different Russian hack to serve Ukrainian misinformation.

Why all the fuss about Russia? Liberal elites – who tended to love the Soviet Union – hate present day Russia, which dares to assert nationality and culture against the pieties of the one-world-order crowd.

The Patriarch of the Orthodox Church passes on all legislation in the country. Putin put the girl rock band Pussy Riot in prison for desecrating an altar, a crime that has not been punished since the 13th century. President Obama sent gay representatives to the Sochi Olympics on his behalf, in protest.

That explains the leftists, but how about Republican elites? Mitch McConnell recently took to the floor of the U.S. Senate to declare the “case closed” on collusion, urging republicans and democrats to unite against Putin’s election interference.

That’s a problem. If Trump was a product of KGB-esque intrigue, then Hillary is a victim of meddling. Trump is merely an un-indicted hapless beneficiary. The deplorables are not only racist, stupid losers, they are also Putin’s unwitting stooges.

The same non-evidence cited to show collusion, though, undergirds the “but Russia interfered” stupidity. It is a three-legged stool that teetered for a while upon Christopher Steele, Joseph Mifsud, and CrowdStrike, and has now crashed to the ground.

President Eisenhower – the furthest thing from a conspiracy theorist America has ever produced – famously warned in his farewell address to beware “the military industrial complex.”

The great funding pipeline that makes Washington D.C. the wealthiest region in America feeds mostly on military spending which still, nearly thirty years removed from the Cold War, requires a Russian enemy.

Unconventional candidate Donald Trump rattled Washington to its core in March 2016 when he wondered about NATO’s continued relevance and questioned America’s foreign policy in Ukraine.

That’s when this “Putin’s candidate” stuff started among both Republicans and Democrats, egged on by Ukrainians – who almost certainly fed Steele the fake kompromat in the dossier.

Russia may be a convenient boogeyman that serves as a necessary foil to both sides in the Washington establishment. But, for once, let’s fight the real enemy: the global elites who started this nonsense.

May 26, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

West-backed think tanks threaten new Ukrainian president with disturbing list of ‘RED LINES’

By Danielle Ryan | RT | May, 2019

When President Volodymyr Zelensky won a landslide victory in the free and undisputed April elections, most accepted that he was given a fairly strong mandate to lead Ukraine. But it seems not everyone is so democratically-minded.

Particularly unmoved by the democratic process are a collection of Ukrainian ‘civil society’ groups, who have just issued a lengthy list of “red lines not to be crossed” by the new president, lest he risk provoking a new wave of political instability – that they would presumably instigate.

Issuing their catalog of demands on Thursday, the groups claim to be “politically neutral” but “deeply concerned” about the first actions taken by the comedian-turned-politician Zelensky, including his decision to appoint members of former President Viktor Yanukovych’s government to positions within his own government.

A scan of the undersigned reveals that many of these “civil society groups” are anything but politically neutral. In fact, quite a few of them are partly funded by the US government, various EU governments (including the UK), the European Commission itself – and, of course, the omnipresent liberal billionaire George Soros.

The list includes the notorious Euromaidan Press, Stop Fake and Ukrainian Crisis Media Center, to name just a few. In their heyday, many of these groups acted as propaganda tools of the Western-backed government of Petro Poroshenko, rather than the watchdogs they claim to be. They now confirm that a pesky election isn’t going to stand in the way of their agenda, reaffirming that their own “principles and positions” on issues remain unchanged and warning:

Should [Zelensky] cross these red lines, such actions will inevitably lead to political instability in our country…

This statement, which precedes the wide-ranging list of red lines, reads like a threat: Do what we say, or there will be trouble. Isn’t that a strange, almost dictatorial approach for groups purporting to be interested in “democracy,” “freedom,” and “dignity”? Did we all miss the part where a group of think tanks were collectively elected president of Ukraine?

Of course, these groups do indeed represent various factions of Ukrainian society and many of them no doubt have worthy aims, and they should continue their work unimpeded. But they do not represent all of Ukrainian society and they certainly do not have the authority to set the political agenda and lay down the law to the incoming government – and that, quite literally, is what they are trying to do.

It’s such a gobsmackingly odd list of demands that even Western journalists who had a broadly friendly relationship with the Poroshenko government are aghast at their audacity. The list is broken down into issues of security, foreign policy, economy, national identity (language, education and culture), media and government functioning.

On security, the groups want to forbid Zelensky from “achieving compromise” with Russia in any manner that would be “to the detriment” of the national interest, presumably as defined by themselves. Inhibiting the implementation of security and defense policies outlined in a 2016 decree signed by Poroshenko is also forbidden, they say.

In the foreign policy realm, these audacious activists warn that democratically-elected Zelensky may not initiate any actions that could lead to the “reduction or lifting” of sanctions on Russia by Western powers. He may not take any action “delaying, sabotaging, or rejecting” the course for EU and NATO membership for Ukraine. Where the economy is concerned, he may not implement any policy that goes against existing agreements with “the IMF and other foreign partners.”

It’s on the national identity front that things get really sketchy, though. The groups would like to forbid any attempt whatsoever to even “review” multiple controversial laws signed by Poroshenko, including an anti-Russia language law (which effectively alienates the 30 percent of Ukrainians who speak Russian as their native tongue) and laws on contentious “de-communization” which banned Soviet symbols in the country.

Ironically, this push for de-communization coincided with a renewed glorification of Nazism that went almost unnoticed by Western media and officials, who have supported Poroshenko’s virulently anti-Russian government as it implemented laws better suited to George Orwell’s 1984 than a modern democracy. The “NGOs” insist that Zelensky may not implement any action to support the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, another ‘red line’ among their national identity demands.

Remember when Russian television channels and social networks like VKontakte were banned in Ukraine simply for the crime of being Russian? Well, Zelensky will also be in big trouble if he tries to restore them, the “civil society groups” say.

The most vague red line of all comes near the end of the list, when the new president is warned against “ignoring dialogue with civil society” – a command so vague that “almost anything” Zelensky does going forward could be interpreted as ignoring their wishes, France 24 correspondent Gulliver Cragg wrote on Twitter.

BBC correspondent Jonah Fisher tweeted that the groups themselves may have crossed a red line –  the red line of “what civil society groups can legitimately demand of a freshly elected government.”

Zelensky was elected to office with 73 percent of the vote – and let’s not forget, he won that election having campaigned against many of the policies these ‘civil society’ groups are aggressively demanding be kept in place.

He has been in office only a matter of days, and these Western-backed groups are threatening to instigate political unrest should he take any action that they don’t find acceptable to their political agenda. So who, exactly, poses the real threat to democracy?

Danielle Ryan is an Irish freelance writer based in Dublin. Follow her on Twitter @DanielleRyanJ

May 24, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

Two scenarios on Trump-Russia investigators — and neither is comforting

By Sharyl Attkisson – The Hill – 05/21/19

As the investigations into the Trump-Russia investigation proceed, it’s not too difficult to figure out a few of the theoretical starting points.

The first and most obvious theory is the one largely promulgated in the media for the better part of two years. It goes something like this: The sharp, super-sleuth investigative skills of top officials within the Justice Department and our intel community enabled them to identify Donald Trump and his campaign as treacherous conduits to Russian President Vladimir Putin himself.

That theory was summarily dismissed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s conclusion that there wasn’t so much as even coordination between Russia and Trump, or any American. So that leaves several other possibilities … and none of them is good:

They knew

One possibility to be considered is that top Obama administration officials knew all along there never was any real collusion or crime at play, but they manufactured the false Russia premise in order to justify their political spying.

Under this hypothetical scenario, they wanted to get inside information on the Trump campaign and, perhaps, gather dirt against the competition for blackmail or political purposes.

This effort included surveillance using paid spies and wiretaps on multiple Trump associates, as reported in the press.

The Obama officials had lots of help from foreign players such as the United Kingdom and Russia’s nemesis, Ukraine. Ukrainian-linked Democrats assisted with an early effort to gin up negative press coverage about key players, such as Trump associate Paul Manafort, who had been hired by the pro-Russian Ukrainian government prior to the anti-Russian Ukrainian government taking over in 2014. There were other Ukraine entanglements, such as the lucrative position earning millions of dollars that then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son got in 2015 to serve on the board of a Ukrainian energy company under the anti-Russia Ukraine regime.

Anyhow, under this scenario, after Trump defied all predictions and won the election, those who had conspired against him went into panic mode. They rightly worried that Trump, his national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and others outside the “establishment” would be able to see what Justice Department and intel officials had been up to in secret.

They were worried that not only would their furtive activities in 2016 be exposed but that their behavior during the past decade-plus, when there were many other documented surveillance and intel abuses. These abuses include improper surveillance of American citizens, political figures, journalists and other targets.

One can only imagine all the things they did that never became public. Whose communications did they pretend to capture accidentally? Whose bank records, photos, emails, text messages, internet history and keystrokes were monitored? What unverified or false evidence did intel officials present to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get wiretaps on political enemies? Who improperly “unmasked” whom?

Hypothetically, these government officials — desperate to keep their deeds in the dark — rushed to amplify the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Putting Trump under investigation, even if under false pretenses, would accomplish the goal of keeping him from poking around into their business and practices. Any attempts he’d make to find out what was going on inside his own Justice Department or intel agencies would automatically be declared “Obstruction!”

However, they were sloppy.

First, they were sloppy in the improper actions they undertook over a decade or more. They never imagined outsiders would ever really get a look at the evidence of their alleged wrongdoing. Then, they became sloppier in their panic-stricken attempts to cover up after Trump got elected.

As you can see, this scenario presumes a level of corruption.

For those who aren’t prepared to accept the possibility that some within our Justice Department and intel community would frame Trump and his associates to keep their own alleged crimes secret, there is at least one other possibility. But it may not be much more palatable.

They didn’t know

If Mueller is correct and there was no collusion or even coordination between Russia and Trump, or any American, and if the Obama administration officials who insisted that was the case are not corrupt, then they collectively suffered from one of the most historically monumental cases of poor judgment in U.S. intelligence history.

Under this scenario, the seasoned experts entrusted to protect our national security committed the kind of bush-league mistakes that few novice investigators would make. They jumped to conclusions with no evidence. They let their own biases lead them down trails in the wrong direction. They misinterpreted evidence, misread people’s actions and barked up the wrong trees. They misconstrued exceedingly common business and political contacts with Russians as deep, dark, dastardly plots. They wasted energy and resources chasing specters, ghosts and conspiracies where none existed.

Under this scenario, the misguided obsession over nonexistent treachery and enemies of the state caused the officials to underestimate or ignore the real threats that were right under their noses.

We do know this much: Only after Trump was elected did these officials ring major alarm bells about the Russians. It’s as if they are utterly unaware that the election interference they suspected and detected happened while they were in charge.

Or maybe they just hope to convince us to look the other way.

Instead of looking the other way, we might be well advised to open the books and examine how these officials were running their shops well before 2016. What does either scenario imply about how these operators behaved behind closed doors? How did they use their power and the powerful tools at their disposal? How well did they guard the nation’s interests and our deepest secrets?

Whether they were corrupt or inept, whether they knew or whether they didn’t know, the questions seem important to answer.

Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) is an Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist, author of best-sellers “The Smear” and “Stonewalled,” and host of Sinclair’s Sunday TV program, “Full Measure.”

May 21, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US, Russia engage on Venezuela

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | May 12, 2019

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov remarked last Thursday in Moscow that no contacts between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump are expected at the G20 summit in Japan on June 28-29. “An encounter is not planned so far and there is no talk about a meeting,” Peskov said.

This remark was made in the run-up to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s forthcoming visit to Russia on April 12-14. There has been much speculation in the US media that a summit meeting between Trump and Putin was likely among Pompeo’s talking points with the Russian leadership.

The ‘pull asides’ that Trump has been resorting to on the sidelines of international events to have a quick word with Putin have fallen into a pattern. Firstly, things remained strictly between the two statesmen at a personal level and secondly, Trump had to take care no feathers were ruffled back home while the Robert Mueller inquiry on ‘Russia collusion’ was going on. The arrangement left the Russian side unhappy, since the unstructured informal conversations eventually led to nothing. Russian-American relations continued to deteriorate.

Unsurprisingly, it has taken over one year for Pompeo to schedule his first visit to Moscow after he took over as state secretary in April 2018. (No US secretary of defence has yet visited Russia during the Trump presidency, either.) The proposal on Pompeo’s visit was hurriedly mooted by Washington just a few days ago, earlier this month. Therefore, if Pompeo’s visit is being treated on a low key, it could be that Moscow doesn’t expect anything much to come out of it.

The point is, although the Mueller inquiry could not prove any ‘collusion’ between Trump and the Kremlin, Russia still remains a toxic subject domestically in the US. For Trump’s detractors, he and Russia are often synonymous. The narrative that Trump and people around him were engaged in improper activities with Russia is not about to wither away and there are further moves likely in the Washington Beltway to find out about any other possible links between the Trump organisation and even his family and Russian entities or oligarchs.

Then, there is the vexed issue of the US sanctions against Russia, which inherently curb the scope for any meaningful expansion of ties. The post-2016 sanctions do not stem from executive orders but emanate out of laws passed by the US Congress, which takes away from Trump’s hands the powers to remove them — and, equally, they  are not even tied to specific Russian behaviours. The Russians understand well enough that the sanctions won’t be lifted for a long time.

Within such constraints, what is it that Pompeo’s visit hopes to achieve? At a state department briefing on May 10, an unnamed senior US official disclosed that arms control will top Pompeo’s agenda during the Russia visit. He said Trump seeks new agreements with Russia “that reflect modern reality. These agreements must include a broader range of countries and account for a broader range of weapon systems than our current bilateral treaties with Russia.” Besides, he said, “There will be a full range of global challenges to discuss, including Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, and North Korea.”

However, there are enough signs that the main thing to watch could be whether a US-Russia deal on Venezuela becomes possible. Three weeks back, Fiona Hill, senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council in the White House, had visited Moscow for consultations. Amongst others, she met Putin’s foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov. According to media reports, Hill prioritised Venezuela as the most important topic in the US-Russia relations at the moment.

Arguably, more than oil or the Monroe Doctrine, what motivates Trump could be the impact of a regime change in Venezuela on the Hispanic voters in the 2020 presidential race in Florida. This impression would only have been reinforced last week when Pompeo met Lavrov on the sidelines of the Arctic Council meeting in Helsinki when, again, Venezuela figured prominently in their discussion.

With the recent US-backed coup attempt in Venezuela on April 30 having failed spectacularly, the probability of an outright US intervention is low — almost non-existent.  Trump would be reaching out for Russian help for a constitutional transition in Caracas that he could project as a ‘win’. Both Washington and Moscow are highly experienced in adopting a transactional approach to their relationship.

For Russia, on the other hand, its support for the Maduro government in Caracas is driven as much by financial and energy interests as by Moscow’s vision of a multipolar world order that is based on international law. As the Moscow-based analyst Fred Weir wrote recently, “while it may look and sound like a Cold War standoff, for Russia it is really about the simpler issue of establishing rules for competing big powers in a post-Cold War world. In Venezuela, and between the US and Russia generally, there is no sharp ideological divide over world-shaping doctrines like communism versus capitalism.”

Simply put, the Russian-American discord over Venezuela boils down to this: Washington wants Russia to stop ‘meddling’ in the Western Hemisphere, while Moscow would expect that the US also should stop fomenting anti-Moscow revolutions in Russia’s backyard. Otherwise, Russian experts acknowledge, it matters little to Moscow who rules in Caracas.

The influential strategic thinker in Moscow Fyodor Lukyanov told Weir, “The relationship that emerged between Russia and Venezuela was an accident. It was mainly the initiative of Hugo Chávez, who was seeking counterbalances to his country’s dependence on the US. Of course this was enthusiastically supported in Moscow. But it should be pointed out that at that time, the early 2000s, Chávez was rich and could pay for Russian arms and advice. Since Chávez died, and his successor has not proven so adept or popular, many in Moscow have been worried about our heavy investments in a potentially unstable regime.”

It is entirely conceivable that this complicated Russian-American tango of ‘meddling’ in the other side’s region could be in the first instance what prompted Washington to schedule Pompeo’s hurried visit to Russia to meet Lavrov and Putin in Sochi on April 14. Evidently, the Trump administration’s resuscitation of the Monroe Doctrine provides a diplomatic opening to Moscow, which of course continues to cherish the territories of the former Soviet republics as its own ‘sphere of influence’, too.

To quote Lukyanov again, “This citing of the Monroe Doctrine is something quite intriguing, and it would be warmly welcomed in Moscow if we thought the Americans took it seriously.” Indeed, some reports on Fiona Hill’s talks in Moscow last month hinted that she made a proposal to what roughly involved Russia letting up on Venezuela in exchange for some US concessions on Ukraine.

Be that as it may, significantly, Russian and Venezuelan foreign ministers met in Moscow on the eve of Lavrov’s meeting with Pompeo in Helsinki last week. What needs to be factored in is that although the coup attempt of April 30 failed, the situation in Venezuela is fluid. According to the Russian media, President Maduro has expelled dozens of army officers for their involvement in the coup, including high ranking officers.

To be sure, Moscow would know that a political solution is needed. The good part is that regime change is off the table as of now, which gives the respite to negotiate. After the meeting with Pompeo in Helsinki, Lavrov told the media that he’d rule out any foreign military intervention in Venezuela.

But the problem is that trust is lacking between Washington and Moscow. Russia cannot be sure that the American side will keep its side of the bargain — that is, assuming there is a will to negotiate at all. Again, there is the issue of US sanctions, which has crippled the Venezuelan economy over recent years. This is important because Russia’s exposure to Venezuela is huge. At the very least, Russian investments (loans) to Venezuela since 2005 amount to $17 billion.

May 12, 2019 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine Tapped By Obama Admin To Hurt Trump, Help Clinton And Protect Bidens

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 04/27/2019

In January, 2016, the Obama White House summoned Ukrainian authorities to Washington to discuss several ongoing matters under the guise of coordinating “anti-corruption efforts,” reports The Hill’s John Solomon.

The January 2016 gathering, confirmed by multiple participants and contemporaneous memos, brought some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ).

The agenda suggested the purpose was training and coordination. But Ukrainian participants said it didn’t take long — during the meetings and afterward — to realize the Americans’ objectives included two politically hot investigations: one that touched Vice President Joe Biden’s family and one that involved a lobbying firm linked closely to then-candidate Trump. –The Hill

The Obama officials – likely knowing that lobbyist Paul Manafort was about to join President Trump’s campaign soon (he joined that March), were interested in reviving a closed investigation into payments to US figures from Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions – which both Paul Manafort and Tony Podesta did unregistered work for, according to former Ukrainian Embassy political officer Andrii Telizhenko.

The 2014 investigation focused heavily on Manafort, whose firm was tied to Trump through his longtime partner and Trump adviser, Roger Stone.

Agents interviewed Manafort in 2014 about whether he received undeclared payments from the party of ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and whether he engaged in improper foreign lobbying.

The FBI shut down the case without charging Manafort

Telizhenko and other attendees of the January, 2016 meeting recall DOJ employees asking Ukrainian investigators from their National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) if they could locate new evidence about the Party of Regions’ payments to Americans.

“It was definitely the case that led to the charges against Manafort and the leak to U.S. media during the 2016 election,” said Telizhenko – which makes the January 2016 gathering in DC one of the earliest documented efforts to compile a case against Trump and those in his orbit.

Nazar Kholodnytskyy, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told me he attended some but not all of the January 2016 Washington meetings and couldn’t remember the specific cases, if any, that were discussed.

But he said he soon saw evidence in Ukraine of political meddling in the U.S. election. Kholodnytskyy said the key evidence against Manafort — a ledger showing payments from the Party of Regions — was known to Ukrainian authorities since 2014 but was suddenly released in May 2016 by the U.S.-friendly NABU, after Manafort was named Trump’s campaign chairman.

“Somebody kept this black ledger secret for two years and then showed it to the public and the U.S. media. It was extremely suspicious,” said Kholodnytskyy – who specifically instructed NABU not to share the “black ledger” with the media.

“I ordered the detectives to give nothing to the mass media considering this case. Instead, they had broken my order and published themselves these one or two pages of this black ledger regarding Paul Manafort,” he added. “For me it was the first call that something was going wrong and that there is some external influence in this case. And there is some other interests in this case not in the interest of the investigation and a fair trial.”

Manafort joined Trump’s campaign on March 29, 2016 and became campaign manager on May 19, 2016. The ledger’s existence leaked on May 29, 2016, while Manafort would be fired from the Trump campaign that August.

NABU leaked the existence of the ledgers on May 29, 2016. Later that summer, it told U.S. media the ledgers showed payments to Manafort, a revelation that forced him to resign from the campaign in August 2016.

A Ukrainian court in December concluded NABU’s release of the ledger was an illegal attempt to influence the U.S. election. And a member of Ukraine’s parliament has released a recording of a NABU official saying the agency released the ledger to help Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Ignoring others, protecting Bidens

Kostiantyn Kulyk – deputy head of the Ukraine prosecutor general’s international affairs office, said that Ukraine also had evidence of other Western figures receiving money from Yanukovych’s party – such as former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig – but the Americans weren’t interested.

“They just discussed Manafort. This was all and only what they wanted. Nobody else,” said Kulyk.

Another case raised at the January 2016 meeting involved the Bidens – specifically Burisma Holdings; a Ukrainian energy company which was under investigation at the time for improper foreign transfers of money. Burisma allegedly paid then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter more than $3 million in 2014-15 as both a board member and a consultant, according to bank records.

According to Telizhenko, U.S. officials told the Ukrainians they would prefer that Kiev drop the Burisma probe and allow the FBI to take it over. The Ukrainians did not agree. But then Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Ukraine’s chief prosecutor in March 2016, as I previously reported. The Burisma case was transferred to NABU, then shut down.

The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington on Thursday confirmed the Obama administration requested the meetings in January 2016, but embassy representatives attended only some of the sessions.

Last Wednesday on Fox and Friends, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said “I ask you to keep your eye on Ukraine,” referring to collusion to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

What’s more, DOJ documents support Telizhenko’s claim that the DOJ reopened its Manafort case as the 2016 election ramped up – including communications between Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr, his wife, Nellie, and ex-British spy Christopher Steele, as Solomon writes.

Nellie Ohr and Steele worked in 2016 for the research firm, Fusion GPS, that was hired by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to find Russia dirt on Trump. Steele wrote the famous dossier for Fusion that the FBI used to gain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. Nellie Ohr admitted to Congress that she routed Russia dirt on Trump from Fusion to the DOJ through her husband during the election.

DOJ emails show Nellie Ohr on May 30, 2016, directly alerted her husband and two DOJ prosecutors specializing in international crimes to the discovery of the “black ledger” documents that led to Manafort’s prosecution.

“Reported Trove of documents on Ukrainian Party of Regions’ Black Cashbox,” Nellie Ohr wrote to her husband and federal prosecutors Lisa Holtyn and Joseph Wheatley, attaching a news article on the announcement of NABU’s release of the documents.

Politico reported previously that the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington assisted the Hillary Clinton campaign through a DNC contractor, while the Ukrainian Embassy acknowledges that it got requests from a DNC staffer to find dirt on Manafort (though it denies providing any improper assistance.”

As Solomon concludes: “what is already confirmed by Ukrainians looks a lot more like assertive collusion with a foreign power than anything detailed in the Mueller report.”

April 27, 2019 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Putin Open to Provocation-Free Dialogue With Ukraine’s Zelenskiy – Kremlin

Sputnik – 08.04.2019

MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to discuss any pressing issues with the Ukrainian presidential hopeful, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, if such a dialogue is free of provocations, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday.

“In general, Putin is always open for dialogue, except for the situations when [Kiev] is trying to couple this dialogue with various provocations, sabotage and so on. In such cases, Putin’s reaction is very clear, unequivocal and decisive,” Peskov said.

Ukrainian frontrunner Zelenskiy said Sunday he was ready for talks with Putin on the Donbass conflict in the presence of Western powers.

Ukrainian presidential hopeful Zelensky has won first election round with 30.24 percent of votes, final results of the ballot count revealed, while Poroshenko has gained 15.95 percent of votes.

April 8, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

US Ambassador to NATO: We Will Guarantee Passage of Ukrainian Warships Through Crimea Waters

If you want a war with Russia, that’s how you start one

By Marko Marjanović | Check Point Asia | April 4, 2019

The not-very-smart lady who last October put Russians “on notice” that US was looking at “taking out” Russian intermediate-range missiles in a pre-emptive strike, is at it again. This time she is promising NATO will guarantee Ukrainian Navy ships can pass through the Kerch Strait between mainland Russia and Crimea, which since 2014 Russia considers along with Crimea its own territory.

It is as much as saying NATO will guarantee Ukrainian army can return to Crimea. There isn’t any doubt either than Hutchinson is talking about Ukrainian warships (Russians do not interfere with the passage of merchant ships) seeing she says this is specifically in response to the November crisis where Russians prevented Ukrainian Navy vessels from making the passage:

“I think that we have been working on a package to present to the foreign ministers, and it is a package that beefs up the surveillance, both air surveillance as well as more of the NATO country ships going into the Black Sea to assure that there is safe passage from Ukrainian vessels through the Kerch Straits, the Sea of Azov,” she said.

The US representative commented that at present “more attention is needed to guarantee that these waters are liberated” and that the countries in the region are “free from Russian interference”.

“Russia has been deploying defensive weapons in Crimea, but Crimea is part of Ukraine,” Hutchison remarked.

“It is very important that the inhabitants of Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Georgia feel at home in the Black Sea zone, both in the water and on land,” she said, adding that the package of measures is a response to November’s Kerch Strait incident.

“It is unacceptable that Ukrainian sailors are being held in prison in Moscow. We must ensure that we have the ability to restrain Russia’s aggression,” she remarked.

The truth is that NATO can guarantee no such thing, if the Kiev government organizes another attempt to force the entry without filing a request with the Russians, the Russians will fire once again. But it is reckless to talk as if NATO intends to organize or back such an attempt.

The Russian reaction was sheer disbelief somebody could be so saying something so stupid and inflammatory:

“In a negative light,” he [Putin’s spokesman Peskov] said when asked how Kremlin viewed such statements. “We do not understand what that means.”

It is worrying that Americans have some many people in important positions who do not comprehend the consequences of what they are proposing.

April 4, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Joe Biden’s past strong-arming in Ukraine is coming back to haunt him

RT | April 2, 2019

It isn’t just unwanted kissing threatening Joe Biden’s bid for presidency, his past strong-arming of Ukraine to fire a prosecutor probing a company his son sits on the board of is also rearing its head again, the Hill reports.

The former vice president boasted at a January 2018 Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) meeting that he had threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk into firing prosecutor Viktor Shokin in March 2016. Biden said he gave them a six-hour deadline to fire him or he would pull $1 billion in US loan guarantees. “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired,” he said.

While Biden’s boast implied the US threatened the Ukrainian government in a single day, Ukrainian officials say the pressure was applied over months, starting in 2015.

The Hill reports that Ukrainian officials revealed that Shokin had been conducting a wide-ranging corruption probe into natural gas firm Burisma Holdings at the time. Biden’s son Hunter, a lawyer, former hedge fund president and Washington lobbyist, was a member of the board and, it has since been revealed, appeared to receive a series of payments from the gas company.

Shokin confirmed to the Hill that he had plans to conduct “interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden,” before he was fired.

The investigation into Burisma largely stopped when Shorkin was fired, but in 2018, after Biden had made his comments at the CFR, the current general prosecutor, Yury Lutsenko, started to look into the Burisma case again. He discovered members of the board and Rosemont Seneca Partners had obtained funds for “consulting services,” he told the Hill.

Lutsenko said some of the evidence he has could interest US authorities.

Burisma paid over $3 million to an account linked to Hunter Biden’s investment firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners, between April 2014 and October 2015, financial records filed in an unrelated Manhattan federal court file revealed.

Rosemont Seneca Partners usually received two transfers of $83,333 a month (amounting to $166,000) from Burisma, and on the same days, the account then paid Hunter one or more payments ranging from $5,000 to $25,000.

The Ukrainian probe into Burisma had identified Hunter and his business partner Devon Archer, who had also been appointed to Burisma’s board, as potential recipients of the money Burisma sent to Rosemont Seneca.

When Hunter was appointed to the board in 2014, some raised concerns of a conflict of interest, in light of Biden’s previous comments urging Ukraine to not be as dependent on Russia for gas. Burisma is a private company headed by former Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch banker Alan Apter. Former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski sits on the board.

April 2, 2019 Posted by | Corruption | , | Leave a comment

The Many Reasons to Believe Vasily Prozorov’s Testimony About Ukraine’s Role in Downing MH-17

Former Ukrainian intelligence officer Vasily Prozorov’s testimony will likely be dismissed by Western governments supporting Kiev, but there is plenty of evidence to back his claims.

By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | March 27, 2019

KIEV, UKRAINE — A former top official in Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), who recently fled the country, has given explosive testimony regarding the involvement of the Ukrainian government in the 2014 downing of the MH-17 passenger plane. The incident, which killed all 283 passengers and 15 flight crew members on board, had been blamed on Russia by Ukraine’s government, the United States and much of Western media.

In addition, the former official, Vasily Prozorov, told a group of international reporters that Ukraine’s controversial Azov Battalion, known for its Neo-Nazi ideology and symbolism, ran and maintained secret prisons in contested areas of Eastern Ukraine where there is fighting between pro-government forces and pro-Russian separatists. Prozorov, who has sought asylum in Russia, also accused the United States and the United Kingdom of training an SBU division that returned to Ukraine to conduct terrorist attacks in the Donbass region, which has been the site of a civil war since the overthrow of Ukraine’s government in 2014 in a U.S.-backed coup.

Prozorov’s identity was kept secret until the press conference began, in breaking with standard protocol. Prozorov then introduced himself, stating that he had been employed by the SBU from 1999 to 2018, but — after the U.S.-backed coup in 2014 — had contacted Russian intelligence and began working undercover in the central office of the SBU. He does not describe himself as a defector, as he stated that his allegiance remains with the Ukrainian people while the allegiance of those who came to power with U.S. assistance in 2014 has long been suspect.

Prozorov then noted that, soon after the coup and before the civil war between Western and Eastern Ukraine had begun, the SBU — at Kiev’s behest — had begun to plan combat operations in the East and that the government had requested that plans be made that would result in mass civilian deaths among ethnic Russian populations, who were to be labeled as “accomplices to terrorists.”

The former SBU officer also detailed how the post-coup SBU had established secret prisons where prominent dissidents of the U.S.-backed government were interrogated, tortured and even killed. One of those prisons, located at an airstrip in Mariupol, was nicknamed “the Library” and Prozorov compared it to a “concentration camp” and showed images of severely beaten detainees he claimed had been imprisoned at the site. The former SBU officer also stated that SBU’s decisions, in regards to the black-site prisons and other areas, were often “led” by foreign advisers from the United States and the United Kingdom. The SBU’s use of torture in Ukraine’s civil war has been well-documented even though the SBU blocked UN efforts to probe its extent.

In addition, Prozorov asserted that the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, a militia that was incorporated into Ukraine’s Interior Ministry as a component of the country’s National Guard, also operates its own prisons in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) zones in Eastern Ukraine. The Azov Battalion receives funding from the government of Ukraine as well as from the U.S. government and has also received weapons from the Israeli government.

Insights into the MH-17 downing

Prozorov’s most shocking statements were related to the 2014 downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, or MH-17, which was promptly blamed on Russia by the post-coup Ukrainian government, the United States and much of the Western world. Prozorov stated, noting first that it was his personal opinion based on his experiences, that the Ukrainian government had been an “accomplice to the Malaysian MH-17 flight disaster.”

He continued, stating:

The amazingly prompt reaction of the Ukrainian leadership was the first thing that made me feel suspicious. My unequivocal opinion was President Pyotr Poroshenko and his press-service had prior knowledge of the affair. Secondly, hostilities had been underway for several months by then, but the airspace over the area was not closed.”

He also noted that his efforts to learn more about the circumstances of the disaster within the SBU from a senior officer were met with the following reply: “Don’t poke your nose into this business, if you don’t wish to have problems.” However, Prozorov noted that “some information has leaked out in the end, though.”

He then concluded:

On the basis of my own analysis I can speculate who was an accomplice in the crime and who was involved in concealing evidence. In my opinion, there were two men involved – the current deputy chief of the Ukrainian presidential staff Valery Kondratyuk and chief of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s intelligence directorate, Vasyl Burba.”

Valery Kondratyuk, left and Vasily Burba, right

Prozorov’s full conference can be watched here (in Russian). A summary with English subtitles can be watched here.

Claims well-supported by independent reporting

Though some may be quick to dismiss Prozorov’s testimony as “Russian propaganda,” many of his claims fit with independent reporting on the Ukrainian conflict. For instance, in regard to Prozorov’s claim of “black site” prisons, the SBU denied the UN access in 2016 to many detention centers in Mariupol — where Prozorov says “the Library” prison is located — and Kramatorsk. The SBU claimed that it blocked the UN inspectors access in order to protect “government secrets.” The UN had first tried to access the areas after several human-rights groups had found credible evidence of torture taking place at facilities in the area.

Prozorov’s claims that the post-coup SBU had made plans to murder ethnic Russians in the Donbass are also supported by publicly available evidence. For instance, when the civil war began, the Kiev-based government stated its intention to specifically target civilians in order “to clean the cities.” In 2016, then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who has been called “Washington’s man in Ukraine,” called pro-Russian civilians in the region “subhumans.” In an interview aired by the U.S.-funded, pro-government Ukrainian news channel Hromadske TV, a Ukrainian journalist aligned with the government asserted that the contested region was home to 1.5 million people “who are superfluous” and “must be exterminated.” With such sentiments having been openly stated by prominent politicians and journalists aligned with the current government in Kiev, Prozorov’s assertions seem hardly unreasonable.

US Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Robert Ashley, right, meets with Vasyl Burba, Chief of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine. Photo | Defence Intelligence of Ukraine

In regard to Ukraine’s alleged role in the downing of MH-17, it is worth noting that past reports by late American investigative journalist Robert Parry described in detail how the “independent” MH-17 investigation was almost completely dependent on information from Ukraine’s SBU in piecing together the event. According to Parry:

[This control by the SBU, combined with its past obstruction of the UN torture probe],suggests that the SBU also would steer the JIT away from any evidence that might implicate a unit of the Ukrainian military in the shoot-down, a situation that would be regarded as a state secret which could severely undermine international support for the U.S.-backed regime in Kiev. Among the SBU’s official duties is the protection of Ukrainian government secrets.”

In addition, one of Parry’s sources maintained that the CIA had, like Prozorov, found evidence that Ukraine’s government had indeed been “an accomplice” to the MH-17 incident:

A source who was briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts told me that the CIA’s conclusion pointed toward a rogue Ukrainian operation involving a hard-line oligarch with the possible motive of shooting down Russian President Vladimir Putin’s official plane returning from South America that day, with similar markings as MH-17. The source said a Ukrainian warplane ascertained that the plane was not Putin’s but the attack went ahead anyway, with the assumption that the tragedy would be blamed on the pro-Russian rebels or on Russia directly.”

Another reason Prozorov’s testimony should not be outright dismissed as propaganda is the fact that he pushed back on previous Russian media reports involving U.S. infiltration of the SBU. When asked by a reporter if he could confirm reports that foreign military officials, including Americans, occupied their own floor at SBU headquarters, Prozorov adamantly denied those claims, stating that after 2005 there were CIA officials present in SBU headquarters but that the practice had been discontinued. He stated that U.S. intelligence officials regularly visited SBU headquarters after the 2014 coup but were not based in the building.

Thus, while Prozorov’s testimony will likely be dismissed by mainstream Western media outlets and Western governments that support Kiev, there is plenty of evidence suggesting that many of his claims — including his most shocking — deserve careful consideration, not outright dismissal. Indeed, were Prozorov a defector from a country currently at odds with the U.S. — be it Russia, Venezuela or Iran — it is highly likely that mainstream media would repeat and his promote his claims regardless of their veracity. However, because he has sought asylum in Russia, his recent statements are unlikely to gain international traction merely because of where he is now located, in spite of the evidence supporting many of those statements.

Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism

March 27, 2019 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

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