By Riley Waggaman, Substack, 2/23/24

Riley Waggaman is an American writer and journalist who has lived in Russia for close to a decade. He lives is a quiet Moscow suburb. He has contributed to many websites, including Anti-Empire, Russian Faith, Brownstone Institute, Unlimited Hangout, and Geopolitics & Empire. He worked for Press TV, Russia Insider, and RT before going solo.

Tomorrow [February 24, 2024] marks two years of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. My own assessment of what has been accomplished over the past 24 months differs a great deal from what we’ve been told by both mainstream and alternative media.

To put it simply, I contend that everyone is losing this war. Except for the space lizard oligarchs, of course. They are winning bigly.

I’ve been saying this since the first week of the SMO. And each time I make this argument, I receive messages (some more constructive and thoughtful than others) telling me that I am horribly mistaken and that I should listen to Scott Ritter.

I would like to take this opportunity to explain why I don’t agree with Scott Ritter’s assessment of the SMO.

You are welcome to agree with Mr. Ritter—that’s A-OK. I just want to explain why I do not agree with him.

Knocking on Kiev’s door

Like many analysts, Ritter described Russia’s semi-encirclement of Kiev in the opening days of the SMO as a “decapitation” operation.

“Ukraine is getting schooled in the art of Urban warfare. Russia is advancing inside Kiev, a city of 3 million. It took the US a week to take Fallujah, a city of 200,000,” Ritter wrote on February 25, 2022.

With each passing day, Ritter became more confident that Kiev would soon “fall”.

February 28: “Pro hint for the citizens of Kiev: if you have one of those free weapons your President handed out, are filling Molotov cocktails, or planning on using them…you’re not a civilian. You’re an unlawful combatant (franc tireur) subject to summary execution. Good luck!”

March 1: “All of the cable news military ‘experts’ are just now waking up to the fact that Russia’s ‘failed’ invasion is on the cusp of encircling the main Ukrainian military concentration in the east, and knocking at Kiev’s door. CIA propaganda can only be sustained for so long.”

March 4: “Lvov is the heart of this cancer. There cannot be de-Nazification without Russia taking that city and purging this poison. Just a heads up for those who think this ends when Kiev falls.”

When the knockout blow failed to materialize, Ritter began chastising anyone with the chutzpah to suggest that the Russian military had ever intended to take Kiev.

“What makes you think Russia wants to get involved in a street fight for Kiev? Maybe the strategy is to put enough pressure on Kiev to force Ukraine to fight on a fourth front, complicating an already difficult logistical and operational situation? But you’re the chess master…”, Ritter tweeted at historian Edward Luttwak on March 18.

“First it was ‘Russia doesn’t have enough troops to take Kiev.’ Then it was ‘Russia has failed because it didn’t take Kiev.’ Never ‘Russia conducted a successful strategic fixing operation around Kiev’,” Ritter opined on March 27.

Two days later, Ritter revealed that the encirclement of Kiev had been a masterfully executed “feint” designed to pin down Ukrainian forces as Russian troops swiftly liberated Donbass—what Ritter described as “big arrow” warfare.

The Big Arrow

Ritter began test-driving his “big arrow” theory in mid-March 2022 and at the end of the same month he published a 16-tweet thread explaining how Russia was executing an exemplary “Big Arrow War”:

Big Arrow War—a primer. For all those scratching their heads in confusion, or dusting off their dress uniforms for the Ukrainian victory parade in Kiev, over the news about Russia’s “strategic shift”, you might want to re-familiarize yourself with basic military concepts.

Using “feints, fixing operations, and deep attack”, Russia had out-maneuvered Ukraine’s numerically superior forces while avoiding a “classical attritional conflict”, Ritter explained. Russian troops around Kiev were now being “redeployed” to assist in the complete destruction of UAF in East Ukraine:

Russia is redeploying some of its premier units from where they had been engaged in feint operations in northern Kiev to where they can support the next phase of the operation, namely the liberation of the Donbas and the destruction of the main Ukrainian force in the east.

A week after Ritter published his Big Arrow treatise, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced on April 6 that Russian troops were pulling out from Kiev as a “gesture of goodwill” to create favorable conditions for peace talks with Zelensky.

Three days later, on April 9, Ritter said that Russia was weeks away from “strategic victory” in Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian conflict is a proxy war, but one which Russia is poised to win decisively. While there appears to be a NATO/western plan to embroil Russia in a ‘new Afghanistan’, I don’t see any risk of this conflict dragging on for more than a few more weeks at the most before Russia accomplishes a strategic victory over Ukraine,” Ritter said in an interview with Strategic Culture Foundation.

Almost two years have passed and the “liberation of Donbass” is still a work in progress. The Ukrainian military controls territory in Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye—the four regions incorporated into the Russian Federation in autumn 2022.

There was no “feint”. As Putin explained in his interview with Tucker Carlson, the Russian military left Kiev at the request of Moscow’s trusted Western partners—only to get rug-pulled, again.

Ritter was certainly not alone in believing that Russian troops encircled Kiev in order to force a quick capitulation. But when that plan ultimately failed, Ritter pretended that he never believed all the things he said he had believed, and then wagged his finger at anyone who didn’t understand the brilliance of the Kiev “feint”—which existed only in his mind.

Then something very curious happened. Ritter changed his mind.

Scott Ritter’s “Switcheroo”

In May 2022, Scott Ritter shocked independent media by claiming that Western military aid to Ukraine was a “game changer”.

Ritter explained that he had been operating under the assumption that Moscow would be able to “interdict the vast majority of this equipment, but Russia had shown itself unable or unwilling to do this and—as a result—the Ukrainians were having meaningful impact on the battlefield.” If Moscow can’t find a way to stop this, the conflict may never end, Ritter warned.

But he didn’t stop there. In an op-ed published on May 18, 2022, Ritter wrote that “the failure of the invasion to deliver a knockout blow to the Ukrainian government has altered the political-military landscape”. The liberation of Donbass was inevitable and imminent, but “the stated Russian political objective—securing a neutral Ukraine—has not been accomplished,” Ritter noted. In fact, the conflict was bringing Ukraine and NATO closer together, a scenario that the SMO was supposed to prevent:

While it seems clear that Ukraine will not be formally joining Nato any time soon, if ever, the reality is that the war has reforged the relationship between Ukraine and the trans-Atlantic alliance in a way that transforms the way the two entities work together. Ukraine’s current status as a wartime non-Nato ally has strengthened a long-held goal of the US and Nato of neutralizing Russia as a long-term military threat to Europe—in short, by transforming Ukraine’s military into a de facto Nato proxy.

Ritter was even more explicit in an interview with Sputnik on May 22:

[W]hen Russia finishes phase two [the liberation of Donbass], they’re still going to be confronted with a hostile Ukraine that is more closely linked to NATO’s today than they were when the conflict started. And with a NATO that is not willing to roll over and accept Russia’s demands regarding a new European security framework where both sides can live in peace together, but rather which is focused on destroying Russia and Ukraine through continued nonstop combat operations. Which means that Russia better have a phase three in mind because this war isn’t over when they finish with phase two.

In an op-ed published by Consortium News on May 30, Ritter argued that even after Russia defeats the Ukrainian military in Donbass—which he said would happen “at some point soon”—Moscow would still be left with “a number of unfulfilled political objectives” in Ukraine:

[O]nce Russia has fulfilled its stated objective of liberating the breakaway republics, demilitarization will still not have taken place. Moreover, given the fact that demilitarization is premised on Ukraine being stripped of all NATO influence, including equipment, organization, and training, one can make a case that Russia’s invasion has succeeded in making Ukraine a closer partner of NATO than before it began. […]

At some point soon, Russia will announce that it has defeated the Ukrainian military forces arrayed in the east … But [this] will leave Russia with a number of unfulfilled political objectives, including denazification, demilitarization, permanent Ukrainian neutrality, and NATO concurrence with a new European security framework along the lines drawn up by Russia in its December 2021 treaty proposals. If Russia were to call a halt to its military operation at this juncture, it would be ceding political victory to Ukraine, which “wins” by not losing.

Russia has not defeated the UAF in East Ukraine and all of the unfulfilled political objectives of the SMO are still unfulfilled.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned about this exact scenario. In a 2018 interview, Lavrov said that a war to defend Donbass would result in Russia “losing the rest of Ukraine”. In other words, a war between Russia and Ukraine would cement Ukraine’s transformation into a NATO-backed anti-Russia. According to Putin, a key objective of the SMO was to prevent the formation of a “hostile anti-Russia” in Ukraine.

Ritter made an admirable attempt at focusing on whether or not the SMO’s stated goals were actually being achieved. But by doing so he ran afoul of the scientific consensus in alternative media (“whoever kills the most proles wins the war”). Within a month, Ritter was back to his old routine.

“To the extent Ukraine is seeking to delay the Russian advance, it is being done by the full-scale sacrifice of the soldiers at the front … This is the ugly truth about Ukraine today—the longer the war continues, the more Ukrainians will die, and the weaker NATO will become,” Ritter wrote for Consortium News on June 25, 2022.

A “strategic Russian victory” in Ukraine was just around the corner, again, he reassured his readers.

(Six months later, Ritter would offer a moral justification for keeping the bloodbath going: “[T]here is nothing nice about the people in Ukraine … They are either staunch supporters of the odious ideology of Stepan Bandera, and as such deserving of whatever fate befalls them, or pathologically indifferent cowards who have facilitated the horrific crimes of the Banderists.”)

“Russia has lost nothing more than some indefensible space”

Ritter scoffed at Ukraine’s counter-offensive in autumn 2022. In fact, Russia’s retreat from Kharkov and Kherson was actually a defeat for the UAF.

“It appears that Ukraine [will] exhaust its carefully gathered reserve forces before the bulk of Russia’s response engages,” Ritter wrote on September 9. He was convinced that the UAF had fallen into a deadly trap:

The Kherson offensive appears to have stalled, and whether by design or accident, the Kharkov offensive is shaping up to become a trap for the Ukrainian forces committed, who find themselves in danger of being cut off and destroyed.

At the end of the day, this counteroffensive will end in a strategic Ukrainian defeat. Russia will restore the front to its original positions and be able to resume offensive operations. The Ukrainians, meanwhile, will have squandered their reserves, limiting their ability to respond to a new Russian advance.

When it became clear that the UAF wouldn’t be boiled alive in a giant sneaky tactical cauldron, Ritter insisted that Kharkov was useless and Russia had actually gained the upper hand by retreating.

In Kharkov, Russia had “lost nothing more than some indefensible space. Russian casualties were minimal, and equipment losses readily replaced,” Ritter wrote on September 12. He explained:

Russia has actually strengthened its military posture by creating strong defensive lines in the north capable of withstanding any Ukrainian attack, while increasing combat power available to complete the task of liberating the remainder of the Donetsk People’s Republic under Ukrainian control.

A few days later, Ritter announced that the gloves were coming off: Putin’s decision to order partial mobilization on September 21, which coincided with referendums in East Ukraine, meant that the SMO had been upgraded from a “limited-scope operation” to one “linked to the existential survival of Russia”.

As Ritter explained on September 22, once East Ukraine was formally incorporated into the Russian Federation, an attack on Donetsk—or any of the other new regions—would mean an attack on Mother Russia:

All Ukrainian forces that are on the territory of the regions to be incorporated into Russia will be viewed as occupiers; and Ukrainian shelling of this territory will be treated as an attack on Russia, triggering a Russian response. Whereas the SMO had, by design, been implemented to preserve Ukrainian civil infrastructure and reduce civilian casualties, a post-SMO military operation will be one configured to destroy an active threat to Mother Russia itself. The gloves will come off.

It was all over. Speaking on a podcast on October 14, Ritter prophesied, again, that a decisive Russian victory in Ukraine was just a few months away:

This isn’t going to take another year-and-a-half. This is going to take at most several months. I said the last time we talked that Russia will wrap up this militarily by the end of summer, and that it will all be over by the fall of 2023. I stand by that. The only way I think I might be wrong is it might end a little bit sooner.

He was wrong.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/7szYS5ezjHU?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

When Russian forces withdrew from Kherson a month later, Ritter yawned. The UAF, which was now in control of the capital of a newly incorporated Russian region, had accomplished nothing more than a disastrous Pyrrhic victory.

“Russia … is in the process of finalizing the organization, training, and equipping of 200,000 fresh troops. When they arrive on the battlefield sometime in December, Ukraine will be hard pressed to respond in a meaningful fashion. Like Pyrrhus, Ukraine, in taking Kherson, has been ‘utterly ruined’,” Ritter wrote on November 10.

Five days later, Ritter said Russia’s patience had run out.

“Ukraine’s going to have to accept reality. It has permanently lost Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, the Donbass, and Crimea. You will never get it back, Ukraine. Never, ever, ever in a million years. And if you continue this fight, very soon you’re going to lose Odessa. You’re going to lose Kharkov, and you will never get them back. You will lose Mykolaiv, you’ll lose Dnipro­petrovsk, you’ll lose your very existence. You’ll never get it back, ever. Russia’s reached a point where it is not in a mood to negotiate,” Ritter told the Real News Network.

The gloves did not come off and Kherson is now a massive concrete fortress.

Contrary to what Ritter claimed, the withdrawal from Kharkov did not strengthen Russia’s military posture. Quite the opposite. The retreat allowed Ukrainian artillery to shell Belgorod and other Russian cities and towns located near the border.

Coincidentally, Scott Ritter’s popular Telegram channel returns zero results when you search for “Belgorod”.

ALERT MEMORANDUM

Final preparations were being made for Russia’s final victory, Ritter said in a video message published on January 16, 2023.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/2OvqDgc87Zs?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Ten days later, Ritter and his colleagues from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) warned US President Joe Biden that he wasn’t prepared for what was “coming” in Ukraine:

It has long been clear that you have not been adequately briefed on two issues of major importance: (1) the war in Ukraine, and (2) the strategic partnership between Russia and China. We chose this genre of “ALERT MEMORANDUM” because we want to prepare you for a major shock. Russia’s winter offensive is about to roll over the Ukrainian army. At that point, unwelcome choices will have to be made. Off-ramps must be sought – again, the sooner the better.

Your intelligence advisers seem blissfully unaware of what is coming.

Russia’s winter offensive ended in Bakhmut, the nine-month “meatgrinder” that was supposed to be the final nail in the UAF’s coffin. To Ritter’s credit, he demonstrated restraint by observing that it wasn’t yet clear how taking the city “fits into the overall pace of the conflict”.

Then Ritter suffered a serious relapse.

Ukraine risked losing up to 50% of its territory if Zelensky continued to refuse negotiations, Ritter said at the end of May 2023.

“Much will depend on when Ukraine starts negotiations. If it continues in the same spirit, it is difficult to say whether it will be able to maintain control over Odessa, Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk,” he noted.

It’ll all be over by the end of summer 2023 by the end of 2023 autumn 2024, according to Ritter.

January 14, 2023: “Russia will win this year. Of course, the Russian leadership does not make any commitments on the timing, but I am talking about this as an independent analyst.”

July 17, 2023: By the end of summer, the UAF will no longer be a functioning military force.

September 12, 2023: “There is a depletion of supplies along the entire front line, which could lead to the defeat of the Ukrainian army in the coming weeks or months.”

October 11, 2023: The Ukrainian military will collapse within the next twelve months.

January 6, 2024: “Everything will end by September. When everything is over, the map of Ukraine will not look like it does now. Odessa, Nikolaev, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov will also be territories of Russia.”

In recent weeks, Ritter and likeminded experts have pointed to the failed Ukrainian offensive, combined with the UAF’s withdrawal from Avdiivka, as evidence that Ukraine will soon be forced into an unconditional surrender.

Pushing the UAF out of Avdiivka is a positive step towards protecting Donetsk. But the operation was hardly a cakewalk (it took several months) and as Russell Bentley noted, the UAF is still able to shell Donetsk from other positions.

“[Taking Avdiivka] moves the front line away from the city limits; secondly, it opens up space for our fighters in the southwestern direction. Just don’t delude yourself. There is still a lot of work ahead,” Bentley wrote February 21.

The SMO is entering its third year and Ukrainian forces are still being dislodged from the suburbs of Donetsk. Is this what Imminent Total Victory looks like? I would say: no. But that’s just my opinion.

Here’s where things currently stand:

• The stated Russian political objective—securing a neutral Ukraine—has not been accomplished.
• Given the fact that demilitarization is premised on Ukraine being stripped of all NATO influence, including equipment, organization, and training, one can make a case that Russia’s invasion has succeeded in making Ukraine a closer partner of NATO than before it began.
• At some point soon, Russia will announce that it has defeated the Ukrainian military forces arrayed in the east. But this will leave Russia with a number of unfulfilled political objectives, including denazification, demilitarization, permanent Ukrainian neutrality.

Scott Ritter knows all of this because I copy-pasted those bullet points from articles written by Scott Ritter, who wrote those things even while under the assumption that Donbass would be 100% controlled by Russia by the end of 2022.

For mysterious reasons, Scott Ritter is now writing very different things: Killing Ukrainians makes NATO weak … Ukrainians aren’t even good people, anyway … Next stop: Odessa … Total Victory is close at hand … Just two more weeks … Just two more weeks…

Like I said: I don’t agree with Scott Ritter.

By Stephen Bryen, Asia Times, 2/25/24

Stephen Bryen served as staff director of the Near East Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as a deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.

Jens Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian Prime Minister and now Secretary General of NATO should be fired now, before it is too late. He announced he is giving Ukraine “permission” to use its soon to be delivered F-16s to launch attacks inside Russia.

This is equivalent to a NATO declaration of war. It is an irrational and dangerous move that needs to be quashed as soon as possible.

Not only is Stoltenberg an uber hawk, but he totally misunderstands NATO’s purpose. If he is allowed to stay in office, he will lead NATO into a European war that might well include nuclear weapons. Above all, Stoltenberg doesn’t grasp that NATO is a defensive, not an offensive, alliance.

NATO has been drifting in the wrong direction for years. It has got involved in wars outside of NATO’s defensive domain, based on a rude sort of politics that gratifies the US and Europe’s otherwise inert and short sighted leaders. These wars, that now include Ukraine, are draining NATO’s defenses and weakening the core responsibility of the alliance, which is to protect the territory of its members.

There are no provisions in the NATO Treaty authorizing offensive, outside-the-boundary operations.

Now the Russians are saying that many of the so-called “mercenaries” in Ukraine are, in fact, highly trained NATO soldiers. They wear Ukrainian uniforms with national patches identifying them. They are “necessary” to operate the high tech weapons NATO has sent to Ukraine. When the Russians recently took over Avdiivka they found bodies of these mercenaries, some American and some Poles.

Earlier, they killed at least 60 French mercenaries in a hotel in Kharkiv. 

The French denounced the attack saying it was disinformation. But the French also called in the Russian ambassador to complain about French deaths in Ukraine.

The Ukraine war is being rapidly turned into a NATO war, not only through the supply of intelligence, troop training and armaments, but the supply of experienced technicians. It is simply impossible for Ukraine to operate air defense systems such as Patriot and NASAMs, rocket launching systems like HIMARS, or support British and French Storm Shadow cruise missiles, without considerable outside assistance.

Most of the deaths of NATO personnel are covered up. When they are reported at all, they generally say that the “volunteer” was providing medical assistance.

Now the Russians are starting to believe that the F-16s delivered to Ukraine (probably operational by early summer) will be operated by NATO pilots.

The Russians make this claim based on their own past performance. Russia dressed their pilots up in Chinese outfits to fly Mig-15s in the Korean war. In the war of attrition in 1970 between Egypt and Israel, Russian pilots flew missions, sometimes openly (as only Russians could fly the Mig-25) and sometimes pretending they were Egyptian pilots.

It is extremely dangerous to use NATO pilots in Ukraine. But now Stoltenberg has “given permission” to Ukraine to fly its F-16s over Russian territory. The war has already been expanded with NATO-made drones, cruise missiles and rockets attacking targets in Russia. Adding the F-16 is a qualitative expansion because F-16s can attack Russian cities.

Russia won’t content itself trying to shoot down F-16s flown in the name of Ukraine. They will, certainly, attack Ukrainian air fields (in fact they already are doing so). But will it stop there? Probably not: Russia will interpret the F-16s flying over its territory as a declaration of war against Russia, in fact Russia already is saying so.

The F-16 is an excellent aircraft, but the planes Ukraine is getting are around 20 years old and are not really front line. That’s why the countries supplying them have moved on. While they can be upgraded with newer weapons, better fire control computers, and maybe even better radars, they are not survivable against Russian air defenses and top of the line Russian aircraft such as the Su-35. Flying them over Russia is, therefore, only a provocation likely to result in a wider war spreading to Europe.

NATO has been playing chicken with Russia for some time, especially by supplying long range systems to Ukraine’s army. There is hardly any military justification, since harassing Russia only can lead to escalation and mostly does not strengthen Ukraine’s army, which is increasingly short of manpower and ammunition.

Zelensky probably hopes that he will be saved by a NATO intervention. But from Russia’s perspective, NATO has already intervened and things can only get worse.

It is not clear who, if anyone, told Stoltenberg to make such a reckless statement about the use of the F-16. What is clear is that the “permission” should be withdrawn and Stoltenberg fired.

By Ivan Katchanovski, Canadian Dimension, 2/20/24

Ivan Katchanovski teaches at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of Cleft Countries: Regional Political Divisions and Cultures in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova and co-author of Historical Dictionary of Ukraine (Second Edition) and The Paradox of American Unionism: Why Americans Like Unions More Than Canadians Do, But Join Much Less.

A nearly one-million-word verdict from Ukraine’s Maidan massacre trial has recently confirmed that many Maidan activists were shot not by members of Ukraine’s Berkut special police force or other law enforcement personnel but by snipers in the far-right-controlled Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled locations a decade ago today [February 20]. The verdict, handed down on October 18, 2023, states specifically that this hotel was controlled by Maidan activists and that an armed, far-right-linked Maidan group was in the hotel and fired from it. It also confirms that there was no Russian involvement in the massacre and that no massacre orders were issued by then President Viktor Yanukovych or his ministers. The verdict concludes that the Euromaidan was at the time of this massacre not a peaceful protest but a “rebellion” that involved the killing of Berkut and other police personnel.

This is an important official acknowledgement, not only because the violence represented the most significant case of mass murder, violent crime, and human rights violations in independent Ukraine to that point, but also because of the subsequent conflicts to which it has led or contributed. Notably, the massacre precipitated the violent overthrow of Yanukovych and his government, who were falsely blamed for carrying it out. It then spiralled into the Russian annexation of Crimea, the subsequent civil war and Russian interventions in the Donbas, and the conflicts between Ukraine and Russia, and between Russia and the Western powers, which Russia dramatically escalated with its illegal invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

There has been, however, a blackout of the verdict’s confirmation of the Maidan snipers in the Ukrainian media and, with a few notable exceptions, the Western mainstream media. Moreover, in an op-ed piece in The Bulwark, an online neoconservative magazine, author Cathy Young misrepresented the verdict, falsely claiming that it had found the Berkut police responsible for the deaths of 40 of the 48 protesters killed. Young also denied and openly whitewashed the existence of Maidan snipers and the far-right’s involvement in the Maidan massacre, labelling it a “conspiracy theory” despite clear and overwhelming evidence to the contrary in the verdict, the trial, and the investigation, as well as in academic studies of the event. Such deliberate omission and misrepresentation has been perpetrated in spite of the fact that the verdict’s Ukrainian text, as well as automatic English translation of the relevant excerpts, are publicly available, and in spite viral tweets describing and quoting from it.

The verdict by the Ukrainian Sviatoshyn District Court in Kyiv, along with the findings of the investigation by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office (GPU), comprise a de facto official admission—on the part of Ukraine’s justice system no less, which cannot be called independent—that on February 20, 2014, at least 10 of the 48 Maidan activists killed, and 115 of the 172 wounded, were shot not by Berkut or other law enforcement personnel firing from government-controlled areas but by Maidan snipers operating in Maidan-controlled locations. The government investigation admitted that one dead protester and 77 wounded Maidan activists were not shot from Berkut-controlled sectors, and therefore did not charge anyone for those crimes. Of course, it stands to reason that if these activists were not shot by government personnel, they must have been shot by the Maidan snipers.

The verdict, issued by the Kyiv court shortly before the tenth anniversary of the Euromaidan, shows that the Maidan massacre narrative that has been propagated by governments, the mainstream media, and a variety of info-warriors in the West and in Ukraine is false. The proponents of this narrative have called the Maidan a peaceful protest and presented the massacre of the Maidan protesters as a crime perpetrated by government snipers on the orders of Yanukovych and his government. The prosecution, the victims’ lawyers, the New York Times and other mainstream media (with some notable exceptions), Wikipedia, self-proclaimed experts, and info-warriors denied the presence of snipers in the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings, the shooting of Maidan protesters by these snipers, and the far-right’s involvement in this mass killing, and claimed instead that such ideas comprise a “conspiracy theory” and “Russian disinformation.” The exceptions included reports by ARD, BBC, The Nation, Jacobin, Court House News, Ekathimerini (Greece), Jyllands-Posten (Denmark), Weltwoche (Switzerland), Il Fatto Quotidiano (Italy), and El Nacional (Spain)—in addition to Canadian Dimension, which has published some of my other writing on this subject.

Massacre of activists and shooting of journalists by snipers in the Hotel Ukraina

The verdict states that “based, even only on” 19 trial testimonies about the shooting from this hotel, including testimonies by victims who stated that they were wounded “from the area of the ‘Ukraine hotel’” and “objective data on gunshot wounds from the side of the hotel” of one killed and one wounded protester there was enough data to make “a categorical conclusion that on the morning of February 20, 2014, persons with weapons, from which the shots were fired, were in the premises of the Hotel Ukraina.” The trial decision specifies that nine Maidan protesters were killed and 23 wounded by “unknown persons” who were not “law enforcement officers,” and that there exists a lack of evidence for the involvement of the Berkut police (five of whom were charged for the crimes) in these killings and woundings. The decision also states explicitly that at least six specific protesters were killed and many others wounded by shots fired from the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled locations, and that this was “the territory that was not controlled by law enforcement agencies at that time.”

This means that the victims were instead shot by snipers firing from Maidan-controlled locations, since the verdict confirms the findings of existing academic studies and the government investigation, specifying that Russian agents, whose presence in Ukraine was investigated and tracked, “did not have any participation” in the massacre. In the verdict, the trial judges and jury stated explicitly that during the massacre of the protesters, the Hotel Ukraina was “controlled by the activists,” that the Maidan activists in the hotel were armed with hunting rifles and a Kalashnikov-type assault rifle, that these activists shot from the hotel specifically targeting a BBC TV crew, and that at least three Maidan activists were deliberately killed by shots fired from the hotel.

The verdict confirms that a former member of the Ukrainian parliament, who is also a far-right activist, was filmed by a French TV crew in the Hotel Ukraina as he “provide[d] passage for activists” who were holding firearms that looked like “a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a hunting rifle.” A statement by the far-right Svoboda party asserts that it took control of the Hotel Ukraina, while videos and testimony by the head of the Maidan group guarding the hotel before, during, and after the massacre, as well as testimony by the hotel staff, indicate that this far-right group controlled and defended the hotel. Videos and trial testimony by Spilno TV, a pro-Maidan Ukrainian streaming group, show that a far-right-linked group of Maidan snipers was on the upper floors of the hotel and shot at the protesters.

The verdict states that a BBC video “captures the shelling from the side of the Ukraina Hotel building of the camera crew of BBC journalists (a single shot is heard) … and in the premises of the Ukraina Hotel, an activist is recorded with … [a] pistol-type firearm.” The decision by the judges and jury evaluated this video “as documented data from the activist-controlled building of the Ukraina Hotel in Kyiv about the targeted use by the activists of objects that, by their external features, are clearly similar to firearms, weapons of the type of hunting weapons.” The Ukrainian government investigation revealed that a deputy of the far-right Svoboda party was living in a Hotel Ukraina room from which the BBC crew was shot. ICTV had filmed from the massacre site on the ground snipers in the same hotel room shooting Maidan protesters in the back. A Maidan activist testified at the trial that following this shooting, protesters told him that these were “our snipers.”

According to the verdict, a gunshot from the Hotel Ukraina hit a tree behind a group of Maidan activists, and two activists were killed and one wounded by shots fired from the hotel. An edited Belgian TV video of this massacre, and the luring of two Maidan activists to the site where they would be murdered, was presented by major TV networks in the Western countries and Ukraine as a massacre committed by government snipers or Berkut police.

The verdict notes that the victim, “who was also in the mentioned group of activists,” “was wounded in the back from the hotel,” as he himself testified, and that another victim from the same group was fatally wounded “from the upper floors of the ‘Ukraine’ hotel.” It specifies further that “within the scope of this court proceeding, data on the involvement of law enforcement officers in such an injury to the victim, and even more so the accused, have not been established” and that “the gunshot wound was inflicted on PERSON_1852 [a man named Volodymyr Zherebnyi] from the direction of the ‘Ukraine’ hotel, that is, from the territory that was not controlled by law enforcement agencies at that time.” As the verdict states, “this shot was aimed at a crowd of people.”

The verdict also states that “fatal gunshot wounds to the body (chest and abdomen) were received by PERSON_1770 [Oleh Ushnevych] from the side of the hotel ‘INFORMATION_161’ [the Hotel Ukraina] and the area in front of it, which were not under the control of law enforcement agencies, and hence the involvement of the accused and RSP [Berkut special company] fighters in them, and as a result, the victim’s death, is excluded” (because the verdict claimed, bizarrely, that he was also then wounded in the leg by a Berkut officer, Ushnevych was not included in a list of slain protesters whose killings showed no evidence of involvement by the Berkut or other government forces).

Massacre of protesters and police, and shooting at German journalists by snipers in Maidan-controlled areas

The verdict also confirms that the Maidan massacre on February 20 began with the killing of three and wounding of 39 Berkut and Internal Troops officers (the latter was a uniformed gendarmerie under the control of Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry), none of whom were armed. It refers to those who shot these officers as “unknown persons,” but the presiding judge admitted in an interview with Ukrainian media that the verdict is referring to members of the far-right-linked group of Maidan snipers. A few of the snipers also admitted, in Ukrainian media interviews, to shooting and killing the police officers from the Music Conservatory building.

The verdict specifies that there is evidence for the killings of at least three other Maidan activists from Maidan-controlled locations, while involvement by the Berkut and other law enforcement has either been ruled out or remains unproven. It cites evidence for the killing of one activist from the Music Conservatory, which was the headquarters of a group of Maidan snipers linked to the Right Sector, a Ukrainian far-right organization, and which included Svoboda activists. The trial decision confirms that the Music Conservatory was then occupied by Maidan “activists” led by the commander of this far-right group, who subsequently became a member of the Ukrainian parliament following the Maidan events. The verdict also indicates that two rooms in the Hotel Ukraina were shot at from the Music Conservatory and the neighbouring Central Post Office, but omits the facts that these rooms were occupied by German ARD TV journalists and that the Central Post Office was then serving as the Right Sector headquarters.

The trial decision also cites evidence that Ihor Kostenko was killed neither by the Berkut nor other law enforcement agents, but from a Maidan-controlled location. The decision notes that Kostenko, “a few seconds before his fatal wound, together with other bystanders, watched the windows of the Hotel Ukraina … and this attention, united by joint observation of the source of possible danger, did not stop on the part of all observers even after the injury of PERSON_1708 [Kostenko], when he was already lying on the asphalt.”

Besides being a Maidan activist, Kostenko was a Wikipedia author and editor. It is revealing that Wikipedia deliberately omits that he was killed by sniper fire from the Maidan-controlled area. It is hardly coincidental that the same Wikipedia editors who deliberately and literally misrepresent and whitewash the false-flag Maidan massacre also systematically misrepresent and whitewash the far-right in Ukraine and its involvement in the Holocaust. These editors include Wise2, also known as Prohoshka, who has also propagated “scientific anti-Semitism” and whitewashed the involvement of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the 1941 Lviv pogroms during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, justifying it on the basis of “Jewish collaboration.” Another Wikipedia editor, who uses the handle My Very Best Wishes, brazenly whitewashed the fact that monuments in Canada to the Galicia Division and Roman Shukhevych are in fact commemorating a division of the Waffen-SS and a Nazi collaborator. A scholarly article by a noted historian at the University of Ottawa also listed My Very Best Wishes as one of the editors involved in an intentional distortion of Wikipedia’s history of the Holocaust in Poland. This editor also recently wrote, falsely, on Wikipedia’s biographical page on Elon Musk about the latter’s supposed “involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Various publications and websites have identified Wise2/Prohoshka as a far-right Svoboda activist named Svyatoslav Gut, and My Very Best Wishes as Andrei Lomize, a biophysics researcher at the University of Michigan.

The verdict also confirms that the first three activists killed were shot with pellets of a type used for hunting, at a time before the Berkut unit, whose five members were falsely charged with the killings, had even been deployed. It explicitly states that at least one of these activists was shot from the Maidan-controlled area by one of the Maidan shooters using a hunting rifle.

Fabricated evidence against Berkut, no massacre order by Yanukovych

The trial verdict also confirms the absence of evidence for any order by Yanukovych or his government to massacre the Maidan protesters. This is a crucial official acknowledgment, since Yanukovych and his government were overthrown on the basis of accusations of having ordered the massacre. Joe Biden, then US vice-president, wrote in his memoirs that during the Maidan massacre, he called Yanukovych and told him that “it was over; time for him to call off his gunmen and walk away,” that he “had lost the confidence of the Ukrainian people … and he was going to be judged harshly by history if he kept killing them.”

In addition to acquitting two Berkut policemen for killing and wounding the Maidan activists, the verdict states that all five accused Berkut officers had been blamed, baselessly, for killing 13 Maidan protesters and wounding another 29. This is further evidence of trumped-up, politically motivated charges.

The decision to convict in absentia three Berkut officers, who had been transferred by Zelensky to the Donbas separatists in a 2019 exchange, is a political one. The charging of these officers for the murders of 31 of 48 Maidan protesters killed, and the attempted murders of another 44 of 80, was based on a single, fabricated forensic examination, not to mention posited on the notion of collective responsibility. This single forensic examination of bullets, undertaken five years after the massacre, reversed the results of some 40 earlier forensic bullet examinations, including a computer-based examination which showed that bullets taken from the bodies of killed Maidan protesters did not match the Berkut Kalashnikov rifles. The recent Maidan massacre trial verdict has dismissed the single bullet match from the fraudulent forensic examination, supposed to have linked a convicted Berkut officer to a killed protester, as it was based on a bullet fragment that had appeared on the scene without any trace of corresponding pieces from the same bullet—a sign of evidence tampering. Nonetheless, on the basis of such forensic “evidence,” the decision to convict the Berkut officers had been taken.

The three Berkut policemen were convicted in absentia based on this single, fabricated forensic examination as well as on their presumed collective responsibility for the murders of 31 protesters and the attempted murders of 44 more. On the same basis and contrary to all other evidence, a Berkut commander was also convicted of the manslaughter of four protesters and the wounding of another eight, for supposedly having ordered his officers to fire indiscriminately during the evacuation of internal troops by the Berkut company, and its subsequent retreat after one Berkut officer was killed and another wounded. The decision attributes the killings and woundings of most of these protesters to Berkut or unidentified police officers, even in cases without bullet-to-gun matches, simply because these protesters were killed in the same group and in approximately the same time and place. This was done even though the trial verdict convicting the officers admitted that people in the same groups of protesters had been killed and wounded, at about the same time and place, not by law enforcement but by “unknown persons” located in the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings and areas.

The fabricated forensic bullet examination also contradicts synchronized videos which clearly show that Berkut officers had not been shooting at the specific times when almost all of the Maidan activists were killed. It also contradicts on-site investigations by government ballistics experts, pointing to bullet trajectories originating from Maidan-controlled areas; as well as the results of forensic medical examinations tracking bullet trajectories based on the victims’ wounds as seen from the top, back, and side; and the testimonies of the great majority of the wounded Maidan protesters, and of several hundred prosecution and defence witnesses and other witnesses, concerning snipers in the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled locations. All this evidence demonstrates clearly that the Berkut policemen could not physically have shot these protesters. Indeed, these Berkut policemen were filmed shooting neither at the specific time the protesters were killed nor in their specific direction. Bullet-hole locations and wound trajectories showed that the protesters had been shot not at low angles, which would have been consistent with the Berkut barricade positions on the ground in front of the protesters, but at steep angles and from areas to the side or the rear, corresponding to the Maidan-controlled buildings or other buildings in Maidan-controlled areas.

Synchronized videos reveal that the single match in this forensic examination—a bullet taken from the body of a wounded Maidan activist linked to the Kalashnikov of a convicted Berkut member—was clearly fabricated, since the convicted policeman was filmed not shooting at the time when this protester (who himself testified that he had been shot from the Hotel Ukraina) was wounded. A government forensic expert determined that the protester had been shot from the top of the hotel, based both on the position of bullet holes in the chair he had been using to shield himself from the Hotel Ukraina snipers, and on the steep angle of his wound trajectory. Synchronized video shows that at the very time of his wounding while on a pedestrian bridge, protesters hiding beneath the bridge were pointing toward snipers in the Hotel Ukraina as the latter shot at protesters on the bridge.

The difference between those times when Berkut officers were shooting and those when specific protesters were killed has also been confirmed by video synchronizations produced by an anonymous group funded by the prosecutor general’s office (GPU), with the involvement of a propaganda outlet of Maidan politicians accused of organizing the massacre, as well as by Carnegie Mellon University researchers working on the model produced by SITU, a New York City-based research group. But during the trial, these synchronized videos—depicting the times when Berkut officers were shooting and those when protesters were killed—were shown either separately or as a not-easily-discernable combination of 12 videos on a single screen, thereby obscuring the fact that these events took place at different times. In a few cases where gunfire by Berkut officers coincided with killings of protesters, these moments also coincided with the sound of other gunshots, i.e., by the Maidan snipers. But the verdict from the Berkut officers’ trial used this deliberately misleading compilation, devised by an anonymous group linked to accused organizers of the massacre, as a proof of the Berkut officers’ guilt, even though, in fact, it constitutes clear proof that the officers were not guilty in the absolute majority of these cases (although in a few cases, shootings of protesters by Berkut officers engaged in a crossfire with Maidan snipers, or as result of ricochets, cannot be excluded).

The recent Maidan trial verdict has also revealed that the Maidan lawyers, in the end, did not present the SITU 3D model during the recent trial, even after wasting court and jury time by introducing it. This confirms again the fact that the model was unreliable, having been based on a primitive fraud in which the victims’ wound locations, which in fact accorded with the direction of gunfire from Maidan-controlled buildings, were altered to accord instead with Berkut positions on the ground. The SITU model, which was produced for the trial by a New York architectural research group by order of the Maidan lawyers at a cost of nearly $100,000, was used to propagate disinformation in articles published in the New York Times and other Western and Ukrainian media. This 3D model, like the salaries of the Maidan lawyers and even prosecutors’ visits, was paid for by billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations in Ukraine.

The official admission that the great majority of Maidan activists were not killed or wounded by government forces is evidence, in and of itself, to suggest that the majority of the protesters shot were instead killed or wounded by Maidan snipers, since they were shot at the same time and in the same place. To falsely blame the Berkut for these killings is easy, because murdered people cannot testify. Of those wounded, however, the overwhelming majority testified to witnessing snipers and/or being shot by snipers operating in the Maidan-controlled buildings and areas.

The verdict means that a decade since this crucial massacre—one of the most documented cases of mass killing in history—nobody is in prison for the murders and attempted murders of Maidan activists and police officers, or for shooting at foreign journalists. The silence on the part of those who deny the false-flag Maidan massacre, who call these claims a “conspiracy theory” and thereby whitewash the mass murderers of the far-right, is both deafening and revealing.

Media blackout and whitewash

All Ukrainian media reports omitted the verdict’s confirmations of the false-flag massacre. The Western media (with a few notable exceptions) also omitted this information. Moreover, writer Cathy Young, mentioned above, deliberately misrepresented the Maidan massacre trial verdict, branding the revelations about Maidan snipers operating in the Hotel Ukraina a “conspiracy theory” and claiming, falsely, that the verdict did not indicate that Maidan protesters were shot from the hotel or other Maidan-controlled locations, and that it did not disprove involvement by Russian snipers. Young has further falsely claimed that the Hotel Ukraina was not controlled by the Maidan activists and has propagated instead an actual conspiracy theory that police in the hotel could have shot the protesters. Her claims in these regards are contrary not only to the verdict but also to a statement from the far-right Svoboda party about taking control of the hotel prior to the massacre, to videos of Maidan snipers shooting at protesters and a BBC crew from the hotel, to testimonies both by hotel staff and by the Maidan unit commander in charge of guarding the hotel, and to other evidence presented in scholarly publications.

Oligarchic and far-right leaders and organizations, including neo-Nazis, who were involved in this false-flag mass killing to seize power in Ukraine, were hailed by Western and Ukrainian politicians, media, and even many academics as heroes and defenders of democracy. They were invited for government visits and talks at universities, including in Canada. Government leaders, journalists, investigators, Maidan lawyers, NGO activists, partisan researchers, and info-warriors who branded the reports of the Maidan snipers and their false-flag massacre a conspiracy theory and propaganda were hailed as defenders of justice and human rights, and given grants by Western governments, foundations, and universities, including even a Nobel Peace Prize.

It is doubtful that any of the above parties will suffer any consequences for such fraud and whitewashing of mass murderers, in particular those of the far-right. Ukraine and Ukrainians continue to suffer the consequences of this massacre, which has spiralled into major conflicts, including the ongoing and devastating Russia-Ukraine war, which is also a dangerous, unwinnable proxy war undertaken by the West against Russia.

By Sarah Lindemann-Komarova, Website, 2/15/24

Lindemann-Komarova has lived in Siberia since 1992. Was a community development activist for 20 years. Currently, focuses on research and writing.

Russia made it through year two of the SMO intact and with a new sense of confidence. 2023 was the year of moving on. The geopolitical dimensions of this have been well documented. Equally notable is how the year required people in Russia to move on within the context of the SMO that is never really out of sight or out of mind regardless of its relationship to an individual.

In a December 28 article, Denis Volkov of the Levada Center quantified this mood, “More than half (57%) are looking at their own future “with confidence” for the first time in 10 years.” He provided two options for the root of this confidence, “self-hypnosis and complacency or signs that people are gradually learning to navigate even in a poorly predictable situation.” Out here in a Siberia, the Village of Manzherok and Novosibirsk, the third largest City in Russia, with an added glimpse of Kaliningrad, the farthest Western tip of Russia, all evidence points towards the latter, improved navigation. Once again in Russia, the boom has come crashing overhead and it is “ready about hard a’ lee!”.

The last time there was such a wholesale transition was in the 90s. Back then, most people were incapable of thinking, assessing, and adapting. They settled into a crash position waiting for the next hit. This transition was the kick in the ass people needed to challenge themselves and move on to the next phase of their lives. Life during SMO time, everything is different and still in motion. Moving on went in a myriad of directions from leaving or returning to Russia (done quietly this year without any social media fanfare), a career change, stopping drinking etc. This was the year of committing and taking responsibility for your choices.

Thus, the long Russian New Year/Christmas holiday (December 31-January 9) ended with a sigh of relief in the Village of Manzherok for everything except the weird weather and ongoing bloodshed. A neighbor praised the new Sber Bank 5 star ski resort opening festivities raving about how beautiful it was and how great it was to see so many families enjoying it, “but then there is Belgorod, AWFUL!!! Not Russki this or Ukrainski that, just awful for mankind”.

The next day several posts on the Village chat criticized the dazzling drone show as an “excess during active hostilities”. The drones were of particular offense considering a local Soldier’s Mothers group recently raised 15,400 rubles for drone parts and honey containers to support the SMO. The discussion went on to consider what is an appropriate way to celebrate the upcoming New Year landing on, “This is a matter of everyone’s conscience, we are on the side of modesty”. There were no official fireworks or drone displays.

The SMO is part of the background for everyday life with soldiers at the airport, recruitment posters dotting the roads, Z’s on cars and walls. There are school bake sales and other fundraisers soliciting money or home-grown canned goods. Women in various villages in the Republic meet for a couple of hours a day to make camouflage netting. One village documented the smooth shift from the spring, summer, fall khaki/green netting to winter white. In my village, the volunteers celebrated the New Year with their 11th net while another neighbor was busy making bed mats out of donated coats and other garments. RIA News posted a story about a medical soldier from another district who requested a van to evacuate the wounded where he is serving. The Regional Dermatological Dispensary responded by sending an UAZ van.

Social networks, What’s App group chats, Telegram, VK etc. play an important role in information exchange. Two types of videos appear on the chats. The first is forwarded patriotic messages or songs. Less often are videos targeted at people in Altai, sending thanks for donations or just saying “hi”. Our Village has not suffered a loss but occasionally memorials to those lost in other villages are posted on our chats. Deaths are covered in Telegram news channels and in the regional press often with photos and heart-breaking detail: village, family, education, interests etc. In October, one year after the mobilized soldiers departed, an article appeared covering the opening of a Memorial Book at the Polytechnical College to memorialize 21 of their graduates killed in the SMO.

As we neared the end of year two there was freakishly little snow, temperatures even reaching +10 and rain. This turned the bi-annual Katun River ice parade into a majestic daily event. Non-Siberian winter weather slowed down the construction of the ice sculpture exhibition, but overall the virtues of the new ski resort were not thwarted as snow making machines blanketed the 30 km of downhill trails.

The only thing everyone wants is an end to the killing but that sentiment, even when colored with a desire for negotiations, is still rooted for most in the belief that “something had to be done” after 8 years of fighting in the Donbass. You don’t get a sense of war weariness, just a desire for it to be over.

Thanks to the unexpected success on the economic front government, “to do” lists have morphed into action plans yielding such things as long promised bicycle paths in Akademgorodok. This does not diminish the anguish associated with the kinetic aspect of the conflict with the West. What it has done is provide economic opportunities that go beyond what would have been available if the SMO had not happened. Some of this is related to the enhanced salaries offered to volunteers and military factories working overtime. More notable where I live, is the impact of investments turned inward now that they are no longer welcomed in the West. Whether or not government and the people will take full advantage of these opportunities is not clear but among those opportunities is the possibility of renegotiating the social contract.

Stay tuned for Part Two: “It’s the economy stupid”

By Jack Matlock, Website, 2/23/24

Yesterday President Biden announced extensive economic sanctions against firms and individuals in Russia and in countries trading with them. The cited reason was Alexei Navalny’s death in prison. As of yesterday 29,708 persons have been killed in Gaza with munitions supplied by the United States and the United States has repeatedly vetoed calls by the vast majority of UN members for a cease-fire in Gaza.

Stalin once remarked that a single death is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic. Apparently, President Biden shares that view.