godot

It is somewhat useless to make comparisons between leaders of whatever human endeavours, through out history, unless you an angry ignoramus. Hitler was seeking revenge. The US leaders since Truman have sought “CONTROL” of the planet. This is why Joe Biden-the-Ditherer beat Bernie Sanders or Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii for the top job. If you think the choice was fair and above board, think again. DEALS WERE MADE to make sure Biden got the gig, because the other two were not on the page of conquering and controlling the world. 

Obama helped the NATO push “towards” Ukraine and Georgia (2008). Despite what the leaders of the “free world” are saying today that Ukraine was not on NATO’s present menu, it is nonetheless on the back-burner. The US financed the Nazis in Ukraine. 

I am thus surprised to read Eric Campbell piece, made for the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) send via “AppleNews”… Yes, Apple has joined the propaganda networks, those with more subtle serious undertones… It's shown here in italics...

Inside Donetsk, the separatist republic that triggered the war in Ukraine

Foreign Correspondent / 

By Eric Campbell

Posted Wed 2 Mar 2022

Alexandra Lygina is a 20-year-old student on a mission to fight Nazis.

"We can't live in the same country as the Nazis," she tells me. "We can't forgive all that we experienced through the years. How can I live in one country with those who killed my loved ones?"

It's a week before the Russian invasion of Ukraine begins and Alexandra is speaking to me from her shabby apartment in the city of Donetsk, capital of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic (DPR).

Please, Eric… Shabby? Have you see some of the Westies’ abodes in Sydney? Hold the colour. It’s not important. It could be relevant if you try to light lanterns on how the West has no “shabby” lodgings (See the poor in all the US cities)… Anyway, carry on...

The DPR, in Ukraine's east, split from the rest of the country eight years ago and has a so-called "people's militia" to keep Ukrainian government forces out. In the rest of Ukraine, most see it as Russian-occupied territory. Alexandra says it's an independent country that will probably one day join Russia.

So-called? It’s a bit demeaning… isn’t it?

"I feel myself Russian despite the fact that my mum is Ukrainian," she tells me. "We will never be part of Ukraine again."

So far so good-ish…

Some Australians know the DPR as the rebel enclave from where MH17 was shot down in 2014, after missile system controllers mistook the passenger jet for a Ukrainian warplane.

Slightly biased unverified info here, but acceptable...

Last week the DPR became the pretext for Russia invading Ukraine, with President Vladimir Putin declaring his "military operation" was to "protect people who have been bullied and subjected to genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years”.

Pretext? Hey, Eric, the difference between pretext and reason is that pretext is a false, contrived, or assumed purpose — while reason is a cause… Use the word REASON, PLEASE.

"For that, we will strive to de-militarise and de-Nazify Ukraine and will bring to justice those who committed multiple bloody crimes against civilians, including Russian citizens," Putin said.

It's been all but impossible for foreign media to enter the DPR for some time. But as Ukraine counted down to war, Foreign Correspondent gained permission to send a crew from Moscow in the days leading up to the invasion, as this forgotten statelet suddenly changed history.

Almost Russian

It doesn't take long to see who the real power in the DPR is. Russian flags adorn the city centre, cars have Russian number plates, cinemas show patriotic Russian films.

Alexandra Lygina is a member of a staunchly patriotic pro-Russian youth group. She grew up in Russia but chose to move to Donetsk to attend university, where she is studying to become a diplomat. She spends her spare time delivering humanitarian aid from Russia to struggling locals.

"[The DPR] feels Russian because people speak Russian," she tells me, a week before the invasion begins. "People have Russian money, Russian documents. So we are almost Russian."

So far so good-ish again…

She says people here are feeling reassured by the build-up of Russian troops on the border. "We have Russian passports, so Russia must protect us," she says. "And Russia is not an aggressive country because Russia doesn't want the invasion that Western media talks about.”

Many Russians moved into the area after a devastating famine in the 1930s, when Stalin's disastrous economic policies saw millions of Ukrainians starve to death. Ethnic Russians were resettled into empty towns and villages to replace them.

In Soviet times, being Russian or Ukrainian didn't matter. They were all part of one country, the Soviet Union. But independence and the rise of Ukrainian nationalism made many Russians nervous.

After seizing Crimea, Russia encouraged and armed hard-line separatists in the east to rise up against Ukraine. Eight years of fighting the Ukrainian military has forced people in these regions to choose sides.

"I think some people, maybe, want to join Ukraine," Alexandra tells us. "But it's not very many people because most of such people have moved to Ukraine."

Certainly nobody in the city's crowded open-air food market expresses any sympathy for Ukraine.

"I don't want gay prides here like they have in Kyiv," one woman says.

"Why should I run away from my territory?" asks another. "So that Nazis can live here?"

That word Nazi again.

Hello? Eric… You don’t like the word? NAZI NAZI NAZI….

A 'Nazi' state

A short distance from the centre, signs of conflict are everywhere. Buildings are pockmarked with bullets. An unexploded shell lies in a suburban front yard.

Military journalist and commentator Dmitry Astrakhan, a former spokesperson for the Donetsk People's Militia, takes our cameraman on a tour of the city outskirts.

"You can see that nearly all the buildings are destroyed by Ukrainian shelling," he says.

"That's how it goes here. Right now, the Ukrainian military struck today 10 villages and cities of Donbas. We just heard the shelling, and nobody knows what happens next.”

Donbas is the term for the mainly Russian-speaking south-east of Ukraine, where the DPR sits alongside another self-declared independent statelet, the People's Republic of Luhansk. Dmitry tells us they share a common fight — against Nazis.

"That's why they had to make the militia and had to defend themselves," he says.

"They were under attack both from the Ukrainian army and from Nazi battalions and Nazi paramilitary units."

He singles out a particular paramilitary group, the Azov Regiment.

"They began as Nazi paramilitary groups, they are formed from skinheads and from white supremacist groups and from Nazis.

"They are far-right extremists who are legal in Ukraine, that have heavy weapons in Ukraine and that they can do whatever they want fighting against people of Donbas."

It's a line the Kremlin has been pushing since Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. And it's not subtle.

That year, ahead of a referendum to join Russia, I saw authorities erect giant billboards across Crimea showing maps of Ukraine covered in swastikas. Other billboards showed a giant Mother Russia pushing back a Nazi stormtrooper.

In part, it was a reference to World War II, when Ukrainian extremists led by Stepan Bandera sided with Nazi Germany to try to win independence from the Soviet Union. But the Azov Regiment has been a handy update for the narrative.

HANDY UPDATE? Shit! I though you would more subtle, Eric...

Azov emerged in 2014 from a collection of often violent ultranationalists who joined peaceful democrats in the Maidan protests against the pro-Russian government. Russia portrayed the uprising as a Nazi coup and armed and supported separatists in Donbas.

YES, no mention of the $5 billion dollars gifted to the long-existing “Nazis” in Ukraine by the USA via Victoria Nuland (F..K Europe”)… to help the “revolution”. Nor the follow up $1 billion by Joe Biden after Ukraine fired the prosecutor that was investigating a crooked company on which Joe's son was a “director”… Please!

Eric continues:

The Azov battalion – mainly drawn from local Russian speakers – threw itself into the fighting with separatists, helping to wrest back the eastern port of Mariupol. Its success endeared it to a new Ukrainian government desperate to not lose more territory.

Politicians ignored or played down Azov's Neo-Nazi ideology and symbols, like the Sonnenrad (sun wheel) displayed on its insignia. Some far-right figures were given senior positions in the civil administration.

In November 2014, Azov was expanded from a battalion into a regiment and absorbed into the Ukrainian National Guard.

It was a propaganda gift for Russia...

"Propaganda gift?” Fuck! People are being killed. Russians are being killed! come on, Eric, you can do better than this? The CIA does million times more propaganda than this “gift”...

… especially after the Christchurch massacre of 2019, when the shooter was found to have a Sonnenrad emblem on his backpack.

While there is little evidence he travelled to Ukraine, some Russian media have linked him to the Azov battalion. 

"He was one of the people who were trained by Azov, who got his leadership and ideas from Azov website," Dmitry tells us.

Today, Azov is a tiny part of the Ukrainian military with fewer than 1,000 soldiers out of a Defence Force of nearly a quarter of a million. Azov's new commanders deny any links to Nazism.

A tiny part? Yes the Azov is small, but the Ukrainian army is also full of Nazis who don’t belong to the Azov. Think about this...

There is an ocean of competing claims on the far right's influence in Ukraine, but what is clear is that it has almost no public support.

In the 2019 election, far-right parties including Right Sector, which absorbed many Azov leaders, received less than 3 per cent of the vote, below the threshold to enter parliament. Ukraine elected a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who appointed a Jewish prime minister, Denis Shmyhal.

So that’s Okay… The "Nazis in Ukraine" is no more than Kremlin propaganda…

This is why Zelensky has appointed the former commandant of the Azov Brigade as the head “influencer" to the Ukrainian military. 

Or that Stepan Bandera has been made a Ukrainian national hero. 

Meanwhile it is the Azov regiments, now with American advisors — also complemented with Al Qaeda terrorists retrained at the US Al Tanf camp in Syria — that are bombing the Donbass. So far some say 13,000 innocent people have been killed, some say 15,000, but the fact is that the Donbass region, under the protection of the Minsk agreements, have suffered from the Ukrainians — the Prime Minister, Volodymyr Zelensky vowing not to respect these agreements (possibly under influences from the US and NATO — and Israel). Eight years of bombing and of assassinations, including the former president of the Donbass region.

Alexander Vladimirovich Zakharchenko (26 June 1976 – 31 August 2018) was a separatist leader who was the head of state and Prime Minister of the Donetsk People's Republic, a self-proclaimed state and rebel group which declared independence from Ukraine on 11 May 2014. Zakharchenko was appointed Prime Minister in August 2014 after his predecessor, Alexander Borodai, resigned, and went on to win the early November 2014 election for the position. Zakharchenko was killed in 2018 when a bomb was planted in a café that he visited.

Of course while we mention three assassination attempts on Zelensky, we say that Zakharchenko was “killed”… Note the not so subtly different vernacular. 

But still, the Kremlin insists, Ukraine is a Nazi state. Russian politicians can barely mention Ukraine without saying the word. Russian state television reports are full of stories of alleged Nazi atrocities.

Alexandra Lygina is a true believer.

''Ukraine is not a part of the Russian world anymore because Ukraine chose its way to the West," she says.

"It became a Nazi country. And the Russian world is against such things.”

The 'special military operation’  (no need for quote mark, Eric..)

We weren't able to film the Donetsk frontline. Authorities say an upsurge in shelling makes it too dangerous to visit. But on the ground, those we speak with welcome the Russian forces massing on the borders as a deterrent to Ukrainian aggression.

"The war has been going for almost eight years, and I don't believe that something will change dramatically," Alexandra says.

The military commentator Dmitry Astrakhan gives our crew the same assessment.

"If we are talking about the big war between Russia and Ukraine, I don't think it's really possible," he says. "The next days I don't think this will happen."

Within hours, everything changes.

On February 18, the leaders of both separatist republics release simultaneous video statements on the messaging app Telegram claiming Ukraine is mounting concerted attacks and sending saboteurs. All men are to be mobilised and women and children evacuated.

Whether Ukraine is a Nazi state or not can be debated by its actions: 

"I have relatives and friends in Ukraine in Kyiv, in Odessa, in Mariupol," Alexandra tells me. (Mariupol was taken by the Azov Nazi Brigades…)

"Of course I feel sad for them and hope they will be safe. But Russia bombs only military facilities, not houses or schools or hospitals as Ukraine did."

None of what has happened has shaken her faith in what she sees as Putin's quest to save the innocent from Nazis.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-03/inside-the-separatist-republic-that-triggered-the-war-in-ukraine/100871262

Borderline article so far… But we have to remember a sad episode in Eric Campbell’s life…:

Eric Campbell, the Iraq correspondent for Australia's ABC network, yesterday [24 Mar 2003] paid tribute to Paul Moran, the freelance cameraman killed in a suicide car bombing in northern Iraq on Saturday.

Campbell, who survived the attack, said the 39-year-old Australian was filming some final shots for a story, 50 metres away, when a taxi sped up beside him and exploded.

"A taxi just screamed up beside him and exploded and we were thrown back, and Paul was dead," Campbell told ABC radio in Australia.

Campbell, who suffered shrapnel injuries and shock, said the pair had travelled to the northern town of Sayed Sadiq, where there had been skirmishes between the Kurds and Iraqi militants.

"He knew this area backwards. He's been here many times before [and] had very good contacts. He was just a great resource for being here and for working around the clock in this coverage we were doing," Campbell said.

"After we'd finished filming up at the base, we just looked at each other and thought 'great story', we've got some fantastic material and we were looking forward to going back to Sulaymaniyah and putting it together and this just happened."

Islamic militant group Ansar al-Islam, which has alleged links to Al-Qaida, is being blamed for the attack, which injured nine others. The veteran journalist insisted he and Moran were vigilant about safety, having done everything possible to protect themselves in Iraq.

"Both Paul and I have newborn babies and we sort of decided when we came across the border we'd be as careful as we could and we were," Campbell said.

"We always wore flak jackets and checked where everyone else had been and where was safe, and we just thought we were okay and out of the blue this awful thing happened."

Describing his injuries as superficial, Campbell plans to leave Iraq and return to his home in Melbourne.

"Hopefully, I'll get across to the Iranian border tomorrow and then back to my family in Melbourne," he said.

Campbell said Paris-based Moran was widely respected and a great colleague.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/mar/24/tvnews.iraqandthemedia1

This was a very sad story…

But what Eric had not realised is that the "great story and the fantastic material" may have come from a CIA “front shop”. How do you spread disinformation about "Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction”? Get a trusted journalist to interview a “genuine” Iraqi defector with “proofs” of WMDs in Iraq. It’s elaborate, though not too hard to organise, and the CIA does this all the time. Including on the Ukraine moment...

Eric had been taken for a ride…

At the time, Gus had direct information from a "European Spy Agency", that the Weapons of mass destruction mantra was a fake. I knew Eric was spreading the misinformation from the CIA. On the ABC.

We all know (we all should) that the WMD story/legend/bullshit had been manufactured for the Bush US administration to suit an “invasion” of Iraq. The fake story had been MOSTLY “fabricated” by the CIA. If you accept the “intelligence failure” theory, you are a dope. The CIA was paying Ahmed Challabi a lot of money to “recruit” and pay Iraqi defectors to brief them about the “narrative” — to mention a word used by Eric, in regard to the Nazis in Ukraine. 

So, is Eric Campbell scepticism about the Nazis in Ukraine warranted?… 

On this, it is likely that the Ukrainian population, like the German population under Hitler, has no idea about what’s going on. Or don’t want to see. All they see is the tinsel lights coming from the West, with Joe Biden disguised as Santa Claus. The Ukrainian military is overlyingly Nazi. 

But any question of the righteousness of the West is like treason.

Putin is (not) mad. Full stop. In fact, I would propose that Joe Biden’s administration is full of madder people, including the Jewish Blinken who could be more Nazi than an entire Azov battalion. This is why Israel keeps punishing the Palestinians. And why we help them.

PLEASE, LET NO-ONE IN AMERICA DECIDE TO GO TO WAR… Let the Ukrainians deal with their Russian problem. 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOWWWWWWWWWWW!!!