Russian Disinformation
Russian “disinformation” is the current go to villain for everything. It’s causing people to turn against the war in Ukraine, not to mention the 2024 election is imminent in the US and if Trump wins they need to have someone else (an outside bogey man) to blame it on.
In a recent article in the New York Times “officials say” – always a signifier of propaganda – that Putin’s next target is US and European support for Ukraine. Stating;
Russian spies and new technologies could be used to push conspiracy theories…
The article insinuates that the reason support for the war is declining is entirely due to Putin’s manipulation of “disinformation”.
The “disinformation” card was used by Trudeau when he apologised for giving a former member of the SS a standing ovation in Canadian parliament commenting that it was really important to push back against Russian propaganda and “disinformation”.
Hilary Clinton continues to spout that “there isn’t any doubt that he [Putin] interfered in our election”, to explain why she lost to Trump. That it isn’t talked about enough and there is a threat to the 2024 election. By telling the US population they are being manipulated by Russian “disinformation” sets the stage for them to censor information to protect US citizens during the election.
Hilary Clinton repeatedly blames Trump for Ukraine chaos
On Fox, a news segment discusses the unfathomable reason why some people don’t support Ukraine in this war. The only way they can understand this is that Russian “disinformation” has been able to mold some aspects of the information flow, like that Ukraine is a corrupt country. That Putin’s been laying the groundwork for this for a long time. Like this article from The Guardian I suppose back in 2015.
Of course one of the biggest items of Russian “disinformation” in regards to the war, is that there is a significant presence of Neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
The Azov volunteer battalion is run by an extremist group and sports a modified neo-Nazi Wolf's Hook
John Sipher, a clandestine CIA operative, has spent a lot of his recent time on Twitter making remarks against Donald Trump and has become a liberal media star. He tweeted an article recently entitled ‘Fighting against the USSR didn’t necessarily make you a Nazi’ from Politico magazine.
The article is an out and out defence of the Nazi SS following the Canadian incident.
The reason behind this is that it is extremely important for Ukraine to praise the Azov Battalion, (amongst others like the Aidar, the Donbas and the Carpathian Sith) and to justify feeding weapons to a country that has all kinds of officials that worship Stepan Bandera, national hero and Nazi collaborator. So what we are seeing is apology for Nazism.
The Azov battalion enjoys the support of several top officials
The author of the article, Keir Giles. Who describes themselves as striving to drive forward progressive social change. Passionate about diversity, equality and inclusion. Pronoun advocate. “Woke” just isn’t enough. He wrote;
...when history is complicated, it can be a gift to propagandists who exploit the appeal of simplicity.
When did volunteering to be part of the SS and pledging allegiance to Adolf Hitler become complicated?
This ongoing rewriting of the history of WW2 now poses the conflict as;
...[you] had an excruciating choice over which of these two terror regimes to resist.
Further that;
[this] is a hard sell for audiences conditioned to believe the SS’s primary task was genocide.
It goes on to tell us that;
Russia feels comfortable shouting about “Nazis”, real or imaginary, in Ukraine, because unlike Nazi Germany, leaders and soldiers of the Soviet Union were never put on trial for their war crimes. Russia clings to the Nuremberg trials as a benchmark of legitimacy…
The implication is that of course the presence of Nazis is in fact imaginary – or is it?
There are no Nazis here
Meanwhile in Ukraine itself Zelensky named the 131st separate reconnaissance battalion of the ground forces after the leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, Yevgeny Konovalets, a colonel known for his connections to Hitler.
Zelensky names battalion after 1930s fascist sympathizer
He then went to visit the HQ of the 103rd seperate territorial defense brigade where he was presented with a flag with the emblem of the SS division to which Hunka had belonged.
The stock response from media across the political spectrum was to repeatedly state Zelensky’s Jewish ancestry—as if that made the very question of Ukrainian Naziism absurd. The implied “logic” of this dodge was—“Zelenskyy is Jewish. It is impossible for a Jew to support Nazis. Therefore, there are no Nazis in Ukraine.” Zelensky was bulletproof—no talk about Nazis could touch him. In fact, since he was president, Nazis in Ukraine couldn’t even exist.
Zelensky wasn’t the first rich and powerful Ukrainian Jew to support the Nazis. Ihor Kolomoyskyi is the Jewish Ukrainian billionaire oligarch and original financial sponsor of the Azov and Aidar Battalions. He also bankrolls other Nazi militias. Kolomoyskyi was Zelenskyy’s principal financial backer for president. And as owner of Burisma Holdings, he was Hunter Biden’s boss.
In mid September members of the Azov battalion re-enacted pictures from WW2 portraying Nazi collaborators. In occupied Kharkiv they have proposed to rename one of it’s streets after Nazi collaborator Cardinal Joseph Sipy.
All the way back in January Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, angrily denounced Ukraine’s continued “glorification of the Nazis”. Whilst most of the world celebrated New Years Day, in Ukraine January 1 marks the birthday of Stepan Bandera Ukraine’s national hero.
Under Zelensky’s control he has outlawed 11 independent and opposition political parties, except the parties and organsiations of his Nazi partners and allies who have been left intact. Explaining why the parliament erupted into wild cheers on January 1st. Later General Valery Zaluzhny, military commander in chief, posted a photo of himself proudly posing in front of Bandera’s portrait.
With the whitewashing of history currently occurring we should bear in mind that Bandera’s forces set themselves to ethnically cleanse western Ukraine of Poles in 1943 and 1944. In the process they killed over 90,000 Poles and many Jews. Bandera held fast to fascist ideology in the years after the war, advocating a totalitarian, ethnically pure Europe.
Poles being taken away during the Ukrainian Insurgent Army's 1943–45 campaign of mass killings.
In the West we are unaware of the type of announcements made on Ukrainian TV. For example, 20 May intelligence chief, Kirill Budanov said;
After victory I will go to Sevastopol. There will be a lot of work. We got 3 million people who lived under Russian propaganda. They are deformed people who will be physically annihilated for their actions.
Speaking of the various iconography sported by the various Neo-Nazi supporters has left Western journalists in a difficult position according to the New York Times. This iconography includes flags that openly display the SS insignia, and the Black Sun, a skull and crossbones patch worn by concentration camp guards.
Every year these groups are allowed to parade openly through the capital and other cities and call the SS Galicia division heroes. They even name the streets after Nazi heroes. In Warsaw large groups of Ukrainian immigrants gather to chant “Cherovona Kalyna” which was the anthem of the Ukrainian Insurgence Army that operated under the command of the SS and massacred over 100,000 Poles in the Volhyn massacre.
Caitlin Johnston’s newsletter on the subject says how last year liberals were calling opponents Nazis and comparing Putin to Hitler. This year they’re defending Nazis and saying you can’t hate someone just because he swore an allegiance to Hitler. For generations WW2 has been framed as good guys v Hitler guys, and all following wars approached in that context. However, now that framework doesn’t apply any more it’s become “Actually the Nazis weren’t all that bad if you think about it”.
Sources
Inside the Nazi Whitewash of Ukraine
This site also provides a number of links to further information such as from before the war you can find uncensored information from the likes of the BBC about the Nazis in Ukraine:
