By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, 8/30/23

The whitewashing of the historical context for the war in Ukraine has resulted in a profoundly embarrassing episode for the United States embassy in Prague.  

An Aug. 21 Tweet from the embassy with a message roughly translated from Czech to mean “Aggression always comes from the Kremlin,” showed two photographs: the first displayed Soviet tanks in the streets of Prague in 1968.  The second showed fire burning in front of a building and was marked “Odesa 2023.”  

Twitter users were quick to point out the embassy’s error. “The bottom photo is from 2014 Odessa Clashes where pro federalism (mostly pro Russian) got burned alive in clash with Ukrainian nationalist(s) while police and fireman stood watching. To this day no one was jailed,” wrote one commenter.  

Someone else wrote: “You vile people, twisting the history to whitewash the crimes of the Ukrainian far-right against peaceful Ukrainians, and in fact using their crimes with the diametrically opposite meaning!”

The embassy got the message. “Thanks for the heads up and apologies for the incorrect use of the graphic. We wanted to illustrate the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine and we chose the wrong photo,”  it wrote.

That prompted another Twitter user to sarcastically respond: “You wanted to illustrate the Ukrainian aggression against the Russian people and you chose the right photo.”

The embassy then deleted the Tweet.  It never acknowledged the event depicted in the bottom photo. That signifies either ignorance of the event or intentional suppression of it. The massacre in Odessa is a key point in understanding the cause of the war and has been buried by the West, creating a propagandized narrative about Russia’s intervention.

May 2, 2014

Demonstrators in Odessa on May 2, 2014 were protesting the violent overthrow two and a half months earlier on Feb. 21, 2014 of the democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych. U.S. involvement in the coup is revealed in a leaked telephone conversation between Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine at the time. 

On May 2, football hooligans and far-right groups deliberately set fire to a labor union building in Odessa where protestors against the coup had taken refuge.  As many as 48 people were killed. Police did not intervene. Video footage shows at least one police officer and others firing their guns into the building. The crowd is cheering as many of the people trapped inside jumped to their deaths.

Pleas at the time from the United Nations and the European Union for Ukraine to investigate were ignored. Three Ukrainian local government probes were stymied by the withholding of secret documents.

Click on photo for video showing atack against pro-Russian protestors on May 2, 2014, including policeman firing on them.

A report on the incident from the European Council (EC) at the time makes clear it did not conduct its own investigation but relied on local probes, especially by the Verkhovna Rada’s Temporary Investigation Commission.

The EC complains in its reports that it too was barred from viewing classified information. The EC said the Ukrainian government probes “failed to comply with the requirements of the European Human Rights Convention.”

Relying only on the flawed local inquiries, the EC reports that pro-Russian, or pro-federalist, protestors attacked a pro-unity march in the afternoon, prompting street battles. Then:

“At around 6.50 p.m. pro-federalists broke down the door [of the trade union building] and brought inside various materials, including boxes containing Molotov cocktails and the products needed to make them. Using wooden pallets which had supported tents in the square, they blocked the entrances to the building from the inside and erected barricades. When they arrived at the square at around 7.20 p.m., the pro-unity protesters destroyed and set fire to the tents of the Anti-Maidan camp. The remaining pro-federalism protesters entered the Trade Union Building, from where they exchanged shots and Molotov cocktails with their opponents outside. …

At about 7.45 p.m. a fire broke out in the Trade Union Building. Forensic examinations subsequently indicated that the fire had started in five places, namely the lobby, on the staircases to the left and right of the building between the ground and first floors, in a room on the first floor and on the landing between the second and third floors.

Other than the fire in the lobby, the fires could only have been started by the acts of those inside the building. The forensic reports did not find any evidence to suggest that the fire had been preplanned. The closed doors and the chimney effect caused by the stairwell resulted in the fire’s rapid spread to the upper floors and a fast and extreme rise in the temperature inside the building.”

The local investigation thus blamed the anti-Maidan protestors for starting the fire throughout the building. But this video, which shows events on that day leading to the fire, depicts the main blaze in the lobby. It shows Right Sector extremists lobbing Molotov cocktails into the building and a policeman firing his gun at it.

It does not show any cocktails thrown from the building. It doesn’t show clashes earlier in the day, though one pro-unity protestor says they were attacked at Cathedral Square and they’ve come to burn the anti-Maidan protestors in the building for revenge.  

The Fallout

Eight days after the Odessa massacre, coup resisters in the far eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk, bordering on Russia, voted in a referendum to become independent from Ukraine. 

The U.S.-backed coup government had launched a military attack two weeks earlier, on April 15, 2014 against ethnic Russians in Donbass protesting against the coup, including seizing government buildings, in defense of a democratic election. This phase of the war continued for nearly eight years, killing thousands of people before prompting Russian intervention in the civil war on Feb. 24, 2022.

Russia says it had proof that the Ukrainian military, which had amassed 60,000 of its troops at the line of contact, was on the verge of an offensive to retake the Donbass provinces. OSCE maps showed a dramatic increase of shelling from the government side into the rebel areas in February last year.

Russia invaded Ukraine with the stated purpose of “de-Nazifying” and “de-militarizing” Ukraine to protect Russian-speakers and the people of Donbass. The events in Odessa on May 2, 2014 played a role. In a televised address three days before the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin said: 

“One shudders at the memories of the terrible tragedy in Odessa, where peaceful protesters were brutally murdered, burned alive in the House of Trade Unions. The criminals who committed that atrocity have never been punished, and no one is even looking for them. But we know their names and we will do everything to punish them, find them and bring them to justice.”

Western Media Coverage

Entrance to The New York Times. (Niall Kennedy, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)

The New York Times buried the first news of the massacre in a May 2, 2014 story, saying “dozens of people died in a fire related to clashes that broke out between protesters holding a march for Ukrainian unity and pro-Russian activists.”

The Times then published a video report that said dozens were killed in a fire, “and others were shot dead when fighting between pro- and anti-Russian groups broke out on the streets of Odessa.” The video narrator says “crowds did their best to save lives.” It quotes Ukrainian police saying a “pro-Kiev march was ambushed … petrol bombs were thrown” and gun battles erupted on the streets. 

The late Robert Parry, who founded Consortium News, reported on Aug. 10, 2014:

“The brutality of these neo-Nazis surfaced again on May 2 when right-wing toughs in Odessa attacked an encampment of ethnic Russian protesters driving them into a trade union building which was then set on fire with Molotov cocktails. As the building was engulfed in flames, some people who tried to flee were chased and beaten, while those trapped inside heard the Ukrainian nationalists liken them to black-and-red-striped potato beetles called Colorados, because those colors are used in pro-Russian ribbons.

‘Burn, Colorado, burn’ went the chant.

As the fire worsened, those dying inside were serenaded with the taunting singing of the Ukrainian national anthem. The building also was spray-painted with Swastika-like symbols and graffiti reading ‘Galician SS,’ a reference to the Ukrainian nationalist army that fought alongside the German Nazi SS in World War II, killing Russians on the eastern front.”

Consequences of Suppressing Information

Though they were reported at the time, the events of May 2, 2014 have virtually vanished from Western media. It was one of the seminal events that led to Russia’s eventual intervention in the Ukrainian civil war.  

Similarly the role Ukrainian neo-Nazis played in the 2014 coup and the 8-year war on Donbass — which had been widely reported on at the time in Western mainstream media — disappeared, erasing the context of Russia’s invasion. The December 2021 Russian offer of treaties with the U.S. and NATO to avoid war was forgotten too. After Russian intervention, a campaign was launched by so-called disinformation monitors to try to suppress alternative media from reporting on these facts.  

The consequences of these efforts is clear. The aggression of Kiev’s coup regime against ethnic Russians in Ukraine, which led to Russia’s intervention, has been airbrushed from history.  

What’s left is a cartoon version that says the conflict began, not in 2014, but in February 2022 when Putin woke up one morning and decided to invade Ukraine. There was no other cause, according to this version, other than unprovoked, Russian aggression against an innocent country.

Thus the U.S. Embassy in Prague either deceptively used that photo, or more likely, had no idea what happened in Odessa in 2014, as it has hardly been reported on since, thinking that a prime example of Ukrainian aggression against ethnic Russians was instead a photo showing Russian aggression against Ukrainians.  

This is what happens when you believe your own propaganda. 

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe

By Edward Lozansky, Antiwar.com, 8/9/23

For the record: I was born in Ukraine, studied in Russia, and worked in America as a laser fusion researcher and Professor of Mathematics and Physics. I have relatives and friends in all three countries, and for the last 35 years, I have been trying to do my best to make them friends, partners, or even allies. Instead, all three are now at war, even if some call the U.S. war only a war “by proxy.”

This looks like a total failure of my efforts, but I hope this short summary clears a bit the fog of war, which might help in the search for avoiding a worst-case scenario.

I think I was the first one to recognize the independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union back in December 1976, i.e., 15 years before Ukraine got its actual independence after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. This happened at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Austria during my application for an entrance visa. Vienna was my first stop after expulsion from the Soviet Union for dissident activities. My major “crime” was the distribution of the underground literary magazine “Kontinent,”  which was a leading publication of Russian pro-democracy forces. It was founded by Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn, edited by writer Vladimir Maximov, and both had been expelled earlier. Magazine was printed by German publisher Axel Springer, and then smuggled into the USSR where at that time distribution of such literature could get you thrown in prison, mental institution or out of the country. In my case it was the latter, due to high-level family connections — but this is another story.

The visa application form included a question about my place of birth, to which I answered “Kiev, Ukraine.” Embassy officials didn’t object, and this information was later used in all subsequent documents, including my first U.S. passport after I got my citizenship.

The end of the Soviet Union also ended the Cold War, the smell of freedom could be felt all over the new Russia. But in my case, it happened even a few years earlier, when in October 1988 I got a call from Soviet President Gorbachev’s science advisor Yuri Ossipyan, who was also a Vice-President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and Member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. Yuri and I knew each other back in Moscow, where I was working as a nuclear physicist. He invited me to discuss various ideas for improving relations between the two countries. Taking into account my background, including TV interviews and publications in the U.S. media highly critical of the Soviet Union, this was quite unexpected. Nevertheless, I decided to accept, and in Moscow, I was introduced to many Soviet VIPs, and later to Gorbachev himself. The summary of these meetings can be expressed as follows: Moscow is constantly sending proposals to Washington asking to significantly expand the agenda for cooperation beyond arms control, but it doesn’t get an adequate response, only bureaucratic verbiage. Therefore, they made a decision to engage in what is called two-track diplomacy, sometimes called “people’s diplomacy” or “back channels.”

I liked the idea, and we agreed to exchange visits by Russian and American delegations to formulate concrete proposals. It was a huge effort that included many back and forth trips, exploring areas starting from business, science, education, culture, medicine, agriculture to space, security, military, etc.

The mayor of Moscow provided a downtown mansion for our office, while in Washington money was raised to buy a townhouse in Dupont Circle area for the same purpose.  Both buildings placed American and Russian flags on their outside walls, and in Washington it was named “Russia House” where we installed on its front a bust of Andrei Sakharov, the famous Russian nuclear physicist, Nobel Peace Laureate who was praised in the West but persecuted by the Soviet authorities until pardoned by Gorbachev.

Drafts of our “Track Two” proposals were discussed during regular U.S.-Russia forums on Capitol Hill and at the Russian Academy of Sciences, with participation of Members of Congress and the Russian Duma deputies, as well as with government officials, and experts in particular fields of both countries.

Some of us had direct talks in the White House with President George Bush, Sr., his Vice President, Dan Quayle, and in the Kremlin with Gorbachev and Yeltsin, who became Russian President after Gorby resigned on December 25, 1991.  Even the U.S. mainstream media, including the New York Times and the Washington Post wrote laudatory articles about our activities at the time,

To celebrate 1992 New Year’s Eve, we brought about 300 American businessmen, some with their families, to the Kremlin where they were joined by the Russians Who’s Who and U.S. Ambassador James Collins. The following day the Americans were invited to different Russian homes to continue our celebrations and pledge friendship and cooperation.  U.S. ratings among Russians at that time were well over 80%. In a symbolic gesture, Moscow State University transferred their Communist Party office to the recently registered American University in Moscow (AUM). Moreover, the mayor of Moscow transferred to AUM a downtown mansion which had previously housed the Communist Party’s young leaders’ school, plus a 200-acre estate that held previously country houses (dachas) of Members of Politburo, including Brezhnev’s, for our future campus.

Vice-President Quayle sent me a personal congratulation letter on behalf of President Bush, and in Congress a large bipartisan coalition was working on a bill to fund this university. I didn’t forget my home country, and at the same time, was working on the establishment of American University in Ukraine as well.

The good times had arrived, the sky was the limit, and my dreams were coming true. Many exiles, including Solzhenitsyn and Maximov were returning to Russia, so did magazine “Kontinent”, where it got direct financial support from both, Moscow Citi government, and the U.S. Embassy.  My wife and I were placed on the Embassy’s receptions guest list.

As it turned out – whoops, not so fast. While some Americans, whom I shall call the “good guys,” were ready to turn former foes into friends, partners, and allies, the “bad guys” from other powerful groups had different ideas, which had been described a few years earlier by a less naive and more realistic thinker, a distinguished American diplomat, and former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow George Kennan: “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy,” – said Kennan.

Still, with George H.W. Bush in the White House the “good guys” had some leverage, but after Bill Clinton won the 1992 elections the Washington foreign policy establishment, sometimes called the “deep state,” was not interested in our work. The euphoria about winning the Cold War, and the dawning of what they saw as an era of a unipolar world under total American leadership, some called it hegemony, made them believe that Russia and her interests were no longer relevant.  In their calculations, from now on, Moscow would have no choice but to obey orders from Washington since it had nowhere else to go. As Kennan predicted, our ideas of mutually beneficial business and security cooperation were largely ignored.

Worse than that, under the leadership of Clinton-Gore and their top Russian advisor, Strobe Talbott, the greatest robbery of the 20th Century under the “Bandit Capitalism” system had begun. There are many stories with the details of this robbery, including Congressional Report “Russia’s Road to corruption,” prepared by a group of Members of Congress.   This is what one of the most outspoken critics of Russia, who can be hardly called a Putin apologist, said in his article titled “Who Robbed Russia?”: “What makes the Russian case so sad is that the Clinton administration may have squandered one of the most precious assets imaginable — which is the idealism and goodwill of the Russian people as they emerged from 70 years of Communist rule. The Russia debacle may haunt us for generations.”

Even worse than that, at the same time, Clinton and Talbott also started the push for NATO expansion, including Ukraine, to which many strategically thinking Americans strongly objected. Among them was the above-mentioned George Kennan, who called it a “fatal foreign policy mistake,” majority of members of the Arms Control Association, 19 U.S. Senators, and many others. New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that “NATO expansion would open the door to future nuclear war.”

Our Ukrainian friends had a different agenda which we’ve been trying to publicize in Washington. The summary of this agenda is as follows: Free from the communist yoke, having strong industrial and agricultural sectors, a favorable climate and fertile land, Ukraine had great potential to become one of the most prosperous European countries.  Effective anti-corruption reforms, a certain level of autonomy for the regions with large Russian ethnic population, and neutral status with no membership in any military blocs would have made Ukraine definitely a happy and prosperous state.

In May 1993 we organized a trilateral meeting on Capitol Hill with legislators from the U.S. Congress, Russia’s Duma, and Ukraine’s Rada to discuss what the U.S. were prepared to do to help Russia and Ukraine in their difficult transition from communism to democracy thus bringing them to our fold.

Congressman Tom Lantos of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who chaired this meeting, said that had Gorbachev told us in 1989 that he was prepared to dissolve USSR and the Warsaw Pact – and requested a trillion dollars to do it – Congress would most likely have agreed, authorizing 100 billion annually for a period of 10 years. However, as it turned out, the Russians did it all by themselves. So why spend U.S. taxpayers’ money when the job is already being done? “You are on your own, guys,” said Lantos. CIA director James Woolsey and other Members of Congress who spoke afterward more or less repeated the same lines.

If that message sounded cynical, well, foreign politics always is.  But it was also a bit misleading since the U.S. did not leave Russia and Ukraine alone, Yankees didn’t go home. Billions of American tax dollars were poured in Ukraine, not to boost its economy but to reformat public opinion that was predominantly in favor of neutral status and against joining NATO.

It was Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland who admitted that “We have invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.” In reality the purpose of this money was to drive a wedge between the two Slavic nations, and push Ukraine into NATO.

This money, plus funding from George Soros, Canada, and other Western countries, helped to instigate the “Orange” color revolution in 2004 to bring a pro-NATO government into power. They succeeded but the anti-NATO mood in the country remained strong. Therefore, a second revolution was needed. This time its name was “Maidan,” and it was Victoria Nuland who coordinated it on location in Kiev while constantly reporting and getting input from then-Vice President Joe Biden, to whom Obama gave the Ukrainian portfolio.

All the media attention in her leaked phone call with the U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing the details of the coup two weeks before it actually happened on February 22, 2014, was concentrated on her expletive language insulting the EU. However, almost totally ignored is that a few seconds later she also mentioned that she is constantly discussing her work with Sullivan, and added that “Biden willing.”

Needless to say, that the new Ukrainian government that was selected by Washington immediately declared its intention to join NATO.

There is no doubt, that if not for this coup, there would be no war in Ukraine today but in line with the disgraced “Russiagate” narrative it’s no surprise that the White House, a bipartisan majority in Congress, and think tanks that are funded by the military-industrial complex are blaming it all on Russia.

One should note that the position of the U.S. mainstream media is especially disgraceful. Ashley Rindsberg in “The Spectator” called the anti-Russian hysteria the “media’s Vietnam.” She bitterly writes that the crusade against Russia has become “the raison d’etre of the mainstream, so important that it has forced some of the most famous publications in the country to openly renounce cherished journalistic values such as objectivity and neutrality.”

I think that what is happening now in Ukraine is worse than American wars in Vietnam and the Middle East, starting with Iraq and on. At that time, one at least could use a fight with communism or terror as a pretext. Here we see a policy of provoking, funding, and prolonging a war between two Christian nations that lived together for over three centuries and are bound together by close historical, religious, economic, cultural, and family ties.

If not for the Biden-Nuland coordinated coup to remove the democratically elected Ukrainian president in February 2014, that country would still retain its full territory, including Crimea.

Despite constant use of the word “unprovoked” the current war was indeed provoked by the U.S. and NATO. It denigrates not only the principles of a democratic country but contradicts the basic spirit and soul of America itself.  There is no democracy in Ukraine, which Washington pledges to protect as long as it takes, and Russia is not planning to invade any other country. As any other nation, it does want to take its security interests seriously. In this particular case to insist that the pledge given to Gorbachev “not to expand NATO one inch East” is honored.

One phone call from Biden to Putin prior to February 24, 2022, with a pledge to guarantee Ukraine’s neutral status would have ensured there would be no war. Russia’s other security concerns could be then negotiated in a calm working atmosphere.

It is obvious, and no one is hiding the fact that collective West under current U.S. leadership wants to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia without going to war directly but rather by using Ukrainians as cannon fodder. How all this corresponds to Western, or in broader terms Judeo-Christian, values are hard to explain. Besides, according to Russian military doctrine, in case of the approaching of such a defeat Moscow would use nuclear weapons.

Frankly, being an optimist by nature, in this case I don’t feel too many glimpses of hope in avoiding what Senator Sam Nunn, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, along with many other leading American experts, the process of “sleepwalking into nuclear catastrophe”

All of the above might be viewed as “voice in the bewilderment” but I hope it will at least add a few new folks to the “good guys” list, and this subject will take precedent in the upcoming presidential campaign.

Edward Lozansky is President of the American University in Moscow.

By Caitlin Johnstone, Website, 8/19/23

Amid continuous news that the Ukrainian counteroffensive which began in June is not going as hoped, The New York Times has published an article titled “Troop Deaths and Injuries in Ukraine War Near 500,000, U.S. Officials Say.” 

Reporting that Ukrainian efforts to retake Russia-occupied territory have been “bogged down in dense Russian minefields under constant fire from artillery and helicopter gunships,” The New York Times reports that Ukrainian forces have switched tactics to using “artillery and long-range missiles instead of plunging into minefields under fire.”

Then the article gets really freaky:

“American officials are worried that Ukraine’s adjustments will race through precious ammunition supplies, which could benefit President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and disadvantage Ukraine in a war of attrition. But Ukrainian commanders decided the pivot reduced casualties and preserved their frontline fighting force.

“American officials say they fear that Ukraine has become casualty averse, one reason it has been cautious about pressing ahead with the counteroffensive. Almost any big push against dug-in Russian defenders protected by minefields would result in huge numbers of losses.”

I’m sorry, US officials “fear” that Ukraine is becoming “casualty averse”? Because safer battlefield tactics that burn through a lot of ammunition don’t chew through lives like charging through a minefield under heavy artillery fire?

What are the Ukrainians supposed to be? Casualty amenable? If Ukraine was more casualty amenable, would it be more willing to throw young bodies into the gears of this proxy war that the US empire actively provoked and killed peace deals to maintain?

Something tells me that the US officials speaking to The New York Times about their “fear” of Ukrainian casualty aversiveness do not know what real fear is. Something tells me that if you marched these US officials through Russian minefields under constant fire from artillery and helicopter gunships, then they would understand fear.

Western officials have been spending the last few weeks whining to the media that Ukraine’s inability to gain ground is due to an irrational aversion to being killed. They’ve been decrying Ukrainian cowardice to the press under cover of anonymity, from behind the safety of their office desks.

In an article published Thursday titled “U.S. intelligence says Ukraine will fail to meet offensive’s key goal,” The Washington Post cited anonymous “U.S. and Western officials” to report that the massive losses Ukraine has been suffering in this counteroffensive had been “anticipated” in war games ahead of time, but that they had “envisioned Kyiv accepting the casualties as the cost of piercing through Russia’s main defensive line.”

The same article quotes Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba telling critics of the counteroffensive to “go and join the foreign legion” if they don’t like the results so far, adding, “It’s easy to say that you want everything to be faster when you are not there.”

In an article published last month titled “U.S. Cluster Munitions Arrive in Ukraine, but Impact on Battlefield Remains Unclear,” The New York Times reported unnamed senior US officials had “privately expressed frustration” that Ukrainian commanders “fearing increased casualties among their ranks” were switching to artillery barrages, “rather than sticking with the Western tactics and pressing harder to breach the Russian defenses.”

“Why don’t they come and do it themselves?” a former Ukrainian defense minister told The New York Times in response to the American criticism.

In an article last month titled “Ukraine’s Lack of Weaponry and Training Risks Stalemate in Fight With Russia,” The Wall Street Journal reported that unnamed western military officials “knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons” needed to dislodge Russia, but that they had “hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day” anyway. 

“It didn’t,” Wall Street Journal added.

In the same article, The Wall Street Journal cited a US Army War College professor named John Nagle admitting that the US itself would never attempt the kind of counteroffensive it’s been pushing Ukrainians into attempting.

“America would never attempt to defeat a prepared defense without air superiority, but they [Ukrainians] don’t have air superiority,” Nagl said, adding, “It’s impossible to overstate how important air superiority is for fighting a ground fight at a reasonable cost in casualties.”

And now we’re seeing reports in the mass media that US officials — still under cover of anonymity of course — are beginning to wonder if perhaps it might have been better to try to negotiate peace instead of launching this counteroffensive that they knew was doomed from the beginning. 

In an article titled “Milley had a point,” Politico cites multiple anonymous US officials saying that as “the realities of the counteroffensive are sinking in around Washington,” empire managers are beginning to wonder if they should have heeded outgoing Joint Chiefs chair Mark Milley’s suggestion back in November that it was a good time to consider peace talks.

“We may have missed a window to push for earlier talks,” one anonymous official says, adding, “Milley had a point.”

Oops. Oops they made a little oopsie poopsie. Oh well, it’s only Ukrainian lives.

Imagine reading through all this as a Ukrainian, especially a Ukrainian who’s lost a home or a loved one to this war. I imagine white hot tears pouring down my face. I imagine rage, and I imagine overwhelming frustration.

This whole war could have been avoided with a little diplomacy and a few mild concessions to Moscow. It could have been stopped in the early weeks of the conflict back when a tentative peace agreement had been struck. It could have been stopped back in November before this catastrophic counteroffensive.

But it wasn’t. The US had an agenda to lock Moscow into a costly military quagmire with the goal of weakening Russia, and to this day US officials openly boast about all this war is doing to advance US interests. So they’ve kept it going, using Ukrainian bodies as a giant sponge to soak up as many expensive military explosives as possible to drain Russian coffers while advancing US energy interests in Europe and keeping Moscow preoccupied while the empire orchestrates its next move against China.

Last month The Washington Post’s David Ignatius wrote an article explaining why westerners shouldn’t “feel gloomy” about how things are going in Ukraine, writing the following about how much this war is doing to benefit US interests overseas:

“Meanwhile, for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians). The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked. NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values. NATO squabbles make headlines, but overall, this has been a triumphal summer for the alliance.”

“Other than for the Ukrainians” he says, as a parenthetical aside.

Everyone who supported this horrifying proxy war should have that paragraph tattooed on their fucking forehead.

By Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor, 8/18/23

When it got out that a new Russian think tank focused on understanding the fast-growing Moscow-Beijing axis might be called the “Xi Jinping Thought Laboratory,” eyebrows were raised in the Russian media.

Later, the new center was given the more inclusive title of the Laboratory of Modern Ideology of China.

But Kirill Babaev, director of the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, which hosts the new center, says that the galloping ideological convergence between Russia and China requires close attention since it drives the rapid growth of relations in what may be the most important emerging bloc on earth. At least the Chinese side of it, he says, largely boils down to the speeches and ideas of Mr. Xi, who seems likely to remain at the helm in Beijing for a long time to come.

“Interest toward our eastern partner is really great and growing,” he says. “More and more people want to study Chinese, are interested in Chinese movies or literature, are keen to visit China as tourists, or start up a business with Chinese partners. … The more we know about our partners, the more objective and correct this knowledge will be, the better it is for the development of friendly and mutually beneficial relations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mr. Xi have met over 40 times in the past decade, and experts say that they tend to agree on most things, especially the joint urge to curb U.S. hegemony and establish a multipolar world order in its place.

“Both countries feel alienated by the outside world,” says Alexei Maslov, a China expert with Moscow State University. “Russia and China feel that the present world order is not fair toward them, and both want to play a greater role in global affairs. … Though they are very different historically and culturally, both countries are based on the same foundation of a strong state and personal leadership. Hence we see an affinity not just between Putin and Xi, but all the way down the chain of officials and business leaders.”

A common vision for the future?

The evolving relationship between Moscow and Beijing has invited skepticism, in part because the record of Russia-China friendship is dismal.

There is a long history of animosity between the two countries, mutual suspicion continues to run deep, and previous attempts to establish an alliance have ended very badly. Critics point to continued competition between the two in areas like Africa and Central Asia, and the fact that relations with the West remain more important for both, especially China, than relations with one another.

Optimists point to the potential synergies between a vast but largely empty Russia, with a cornucopia of raw materials and immense tracts of unused agricultural land, and the teeming workshop of China next door, still in the throes of urbanization.

A survey conducted by the state-funded Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) earlier this year found that 77% of Russians regard China as a “friendly” power, and 78% think cooperation between the two countries will bring “more good than harm.” Another poll, carried out in March by the state-funded VTsIOM agency, found that 56% of Russians consider China a “strategic and economic partner” and that 53% think this is the right direction to go.

The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, began the long process of rapprochement with China with a visit to Beijing in 1989 after decades of hostility between the two communist powers. But subsequent Russian leaders, primarily Mr. Putin, made substantive progress by resolving outstanding territorial disputes along their common 2,500 mile frontier, signing major trade deals, and forging what increasingly looks like a powerful new geopolitical compact.

“Russia and China share a common vision on the future of international relations, which includes fair treatment for all, respect for all types of government and social structures, no hegemony, and no imposing of anyone’s political principles,” says Mr. Babaev. “This is an ideological alliance, which is much stronger than any military one.”

Potential, but not boundless

Russia’s turn toward Asia, and China in particular, has been greatly accelerated by souring relations with the West since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The barrage of Western sanctions since Russia invaded Ukraine last year has made it a matter of urgent necessity for Moscow. China’s own disputes and tariff wars, especially with the U.S., have boosted the tendency for the two Asian giants to seek common ground and joint solutions.

At least on paper, the results are impressive. In the first half of this year alone, trade turnover increased by almost 40% with Russia redirecting to Asia energy exports that formerly went to Europe, and buying much more from China, including consumer goods such as household appliances, automobiles, and textiles.

The list of long-term joint ventures, largely an outgrowth of agreements at the highest level, looks substantial, including space, aviation, energy infrastructure, and nuclear engineering.

But, beneath the hype, some of those deals are reportedly troubled. A $50 billion venture to build a new passenger jet to compete in global markets has run into hot water over Chinese insistence on bringing in Western aviation companies according to media reports. Likewise the much discussed Power of Siberia II gas pipeline project, which Russia hopes would replace the now-defunct Nordstream pipelines to Europe, remains mired in red tape and a Chinese reluctance to commit.

“Even if China grants permission [for the new pipeline], it will take up to 15 years to put the necessary infrastructure into place,” says Mikhail Krutikhin, an independent energy consultant. “It’s not going to be possible for Russia to replace its former European gas markets for many years to come.”

Experts also point out that the impressive influx of Chinese consumer products into the Russian market, replacing the exodus of Western companies in the wake of the Ukraine war, comes at a price. For example, Chinese automobile sales in Russia have tripled, but it mostly involves finished products from China that take the market share of Western brands that were formerly assembled in Russia.

“Russian authorities used to insist on the localization of production, but now they are in no position to make the rules,” says Natalia Zubarevich, an expert with Moscow State University. “Russian industry has refocused on supplies from China, which is critical to survival. But it comes at the expense of diversified markets and supply chains, which is always better than dependence on one partner.”

One overriding question concerns China’s support for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. A Chinese peace plan floated earlier this year seems to have fizzled. There are also conflicting reports about the firmness of Chinese backing and whether it is prepared to help Russia with lethal military aid.

That’s one of the questions that Mr. Babaev, of the China Institute, hears frequently.

“While China definitely wants peace in Europe as soon as possible, it will never allow Russia to lose,” he says. “Russia does not seem to need much help today, but in case Russia needs something tomorrow I am pretty sure China will help.”

By John Solomon and Steven Richards, Just the News, 8/21/23

Just weeks before then-Vice President Joe Biden took the opposite action in late 2015, a task force of State, Treasury and Justice Department officials declared that Ukraine had made adequate progress on anti-corruption reforms and deserved a new $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee, according to government memos that conflict with the narrative Democrats have sustained since the 2019 impeachment scandal.

“Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee,” reads an Oct. 1, 2015, memo summarizing the recommendation of the Interagency Policy Committee (IPC) – a task force created to advise the Obama White House on whether Ukraine was cleaning up its endemic corruption and deserved more Western foreign aid.

The recommendation is one of several U.S. government memos gathered by Just the News over the last 36 months from Freedom of Information Act litigation, congressional inquiries and government agency sources that directly conflict with the long-held narrative that Biden was conducting official U.S. policy when he threatened to withhold a $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee to force Ukraine to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, the country’s equivalent of the American attorney general.

At the time the threat was made in December 2015, Shokin’s office was conducting an increasingly aggressive corruption investigation into Burisma Holdings, an energy firm the State Department deemed to have been engaged in bribery and that employed Hunter Biden and paid him millions while his father was vice president.

New details on the impact of that probe have emerged in recent days.

Shokin’s pursuit was rattling Burisma, and the firm was putting pressure on Hunter Biden to deal with it, according to recent testimony and interviews with Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner and fellow Burisma board member.

The memos obtained by Just the News show:

-Senior State Department officials sent a conflicting message to Shokin before he was fired, inviting his staff to Washington for a January 2016 strategy session and sent him a personal note saying they were “impressed” with his office’s work.

-U.S. officials faced pressure from Burisma emissaries in the United States to make the corruption allegations go away and feared the energy firm had made two bribery payments in Ukraine as part of an effort to get cases settled.

-A top U.S. official in Kyiv blamed Hunter Biden for undercutting U.S. anticorruption policy in Ukraine through his dealings with Burisma.

During Trump’s first impeachment in late 2019, State officials testified that Hunter Biden’s acceptance of a job at Burisma at a time when his father was vice president created the appearance of a conflict of interest but did not materially impact U.S. policy in Ukraine.

But in a private, classified email shared with Just the News, one of the top U.S. officials in the Kyiv embassy told then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch at the end of the Obama administration that Hunter Biden had, in fact, impacted the U.S. anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine.

“The real issue to my mind was that someone in Washington needed to engage VP Biden quietly and say that his son Hunter’s presence on the Burisma board undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing in Ukraine b/c Ukrainians heard one message from us and then saw another set of behavior with the family association with a known corrupt figure whose company was known for not playing by the rules,” embassy official George Kent wrote to Yovanovitch in the Nov. 22, 2016, email marked “confidential.”

Joe Biden’s role in pressuring then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in December 2015 to fire Shokin has been a searing controversy since April 2019, when the lead author on this story, as a columnist for The Hill, unearthed a 2018 videotape of the former vice president bragging about his role to a foreign policy think tank.

At the time Shokin was investigating Burisma for corruption, the company was paying Hunter Biden and Archer, $83,333 a month as board members.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recounted in the speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

The disclosure prompted then-President Donald Trump to ask Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate.

Democrats howled and eventually impeached Trump in late 2019. The Senate acquitted the former president. Today, the original column that prompted the controversy is preserved in the official records of Congress.

Evidence would show during impeachment and afterward that Biden’s conversation with Poroshenko occurred during a trip to Kyiv in December 2015. Under withering pressure from U.S. and Western officials, the Ukrainian president eventually buckled and persuaded Shokin to resign a few months later in March 2016. Poroshenko would tell Biden there was no evidence Shokin had done anything wrong but he forced the resignation anyway to appease the president.

“Despite of the fact that we didn’t have any corruption charges, we don’t have any information about him doing something wrong, I especially asked him … No, it was the day before yesterday. I especially asked him to resign,” Poroshenko told Biden in an audio tape call from March 2016 that was eventually released by a Ukrainian lawmaker in 2020.

The narrative from Biden’s defenders and government officials who testified at Trump’s first impeachment was that Biden’s action in withholding the U.S. loan guarantees had nothing to do with his son’s role at Burisma and that officials across the West and inside the U.S. government were clamoring to fire Shokin because he was deemed corrupt.

Kent, for instance, answered “he did” when he was asked during his impeachment testimony whether Biden acted consistent with U.S. policy when he used the loan guarantee as leverage to force Shokin’s firing.

“I did nothing wrong,” Biden said during 2019 CNN-New York Times debate. “I carried out the policy of the United States government in rooting out corruption in Ukraine. And that’s what we should be focusing on.”

Multiple lawyers who worked on Trump’s impeachment defense as well as some of the GOP House impeachment members told Just the News they did not recall ever seeing the documents unearthed by Just the News and said they would have made a significant difference to the impeachment case.

“This new evidence being uncovered and reported by Just The News is incredibly significant,” said former New York Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin. “It directly undercuts multiple false narratives that were being pushed by Congressional Democrats, some of their key impeachment witnesses, and Democrat allies in the media.”

Jay Sekulow, a lawyer who helped lead Trump’s legal team during the impeachment, said he did not believe the defense had access to such memos.

“The fact of the matter is none of these documents were handed over to us,” he said. “Our legal team never received documents from the House impeachment. So of course, they’re not obligated to in the sense of like in a courtroom. But when you have exculpatory documents, you would think that under just a good faith standards of the House of Representatives would have said, ‘You know, here’s what we’ve got.'”

Sekulow continued: “But of course, they weren’t going to do that. Because as soon as they did that, everyone knew their narrative was false.”

Some, but not all, of the memos were turned over in late 2020 to the Senate Homeland Security Committee during its probe of the Biden family finances, but they arrived too late to impact most of the interview the panel did or to make it into the panel’s final report, Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson’s office said.

In 2020, current Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, then State’s top expert on Ukraine, gave Johnson’s investigators a more specific timetable on when her department determined Shokin had to go, saying the concerns dated to summer of 2015 and involved the failure of Shokin’s office to prosecute former members of ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

“The initial expectation, when we began talking about the third loan guarantee, which I believe was in the summer of 2015, was that Prosecutor General Shokin make more progress than we had seen to clean up corruption inside the Prosecutor General’s Office itself – I’ll now refer to that as the PGO – and that he make more progress in mounting big corruption cases, including against Yanukovych cronies, that he make more progress in investigating the hundred dead on the Maidan by snipers during 2013-2014,” she told Senate investigators in the deposition.

“So the first press was to see him make the Prosecutor General’s Office, the PGO, clean and effective, so that’s what we started pressing in August, September, October.

“You see that pressed in the speech that Ambassador Pyatt gives in Odessa. You see it in my testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in October of 2015. … It was a policy that was coordinated tightly with the Europeans, with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank. But not only did we not see progress, we saw the PGO go backward in this period,” she also said.

Another element of the Democrat-fed, media-driven narrative was that Shokin wasn’t really investigating Burisma and there was no threat to the company.

But key elements of that narrative have now been challenged since Archer told Congress that Burisma hired Hunter Biden in 2014 to gain access to a family “brand,” including his father, that would scare away prosecutors trying to investigate the company for corruption.

“People would be intimidated to mess with them,” Archer testified, describing the value Hunter brought to the company.

In a separate interview with TV host Tucker Carlson, Archer said that at the time Biden forced Shokin’s firing because he was posing a major threat to Burisma by going after the assets of the owner Mykola Zlochevsky.

“He was a threat,” Archer said. “He ended up seizing assets of Mykola – a house, some cars, a couple properties. And Mykola actually never went back to Ukraine after Shokin seized all of his assets.”

Archer told Carlson that while pressure was being applied to Hunter Biden, the Burisma board was being told that Shokin was being dealt with and could stay in the job. But Archer added that he now doubts the story being told to the board.

The GOP-led House Oversight and Accountability Committee said Archer’s testimony and other evidence it has gathered shows that by late 2015 Burisma was pressuring Hunter Biden to do something about Shokin, who had stepped up his probe of the energy company after then-U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt gave a speech in September 2015 in Odessa, Ukraine, urging more action against the firm.

“In December 2015, Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, and Vadym Pozharski, an executive of Burisma, placed constant pressure on Hunter Biden to get help from D.C. regarding the Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin,” the committee stated in a memo in late July.

Government memos obtained by Just the News also directly conflict with the narrative, showing the State Department was actually sending a different message to Shokin, the Ukrainian government and to Joe Biden before a sudden pivot in late November 2015.

For instance, Nuland sent a letter to Shokin in June 2015 on behalf of then-Secretary of State John Kerry congratulating Shokin and suggesting they were “impressed” about the job he was doing on corruption reforms. The letter was so important it was hand-delivered by Pyatt, according to the memos Just the News gathered.

“Secretary Kerry asked me to reply on his behalf to your letter of May 13, 2015, discussing Ukraine ‘s efforts to address corruption, including through implementation of the new anti-corruption strategy and reform of the Prosecutor General’s Office,” Nuland wrote in the June 11, 2015, memo obtained through a FOIA lawsuit.

“We have been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda of your government,” Nuland continued. “The challenges you face are difficult, but not insurmountable. You have an historic opportunity to address the injustices of the past by vigorously investigating and prosecuting corruption cases and recovering assets stolen from the Ukrainian people. The ongoing reform of your office, law enforcement, and the judiciary will enable you to investigate and prosecute corruption and other crimes in an effective, fair, and transparent manner.”

Those upbeat sentiments remained strong heading into fall 2015 inside the IPC task force charged with monitoring Shokin and determining whether Joe Biden should deliver new U.S. aid to Ukraine at the end of the year.

In its September 2015 meeting, the IPC affirmed that Shokin’s reform effort – including the creation of a new independent inspector general watchdog to police prosecutors’ behavior – was advancing enough to warrant the new loan guarantee

“All, thank you for a productive meeting yesterday. Please find a SOC below. It was agreed: The IPC concluded that (1) Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee and (2) Ukraine has an economic need for the guarantee and it is in our strategic interest to provide One,” Christina Segal-Knowles, the Obama White House director of International Economic Affairs, wrote to top officials from the NSC, DOJ, Treasury and State who advised the task force.

“As such, the IPC recommends moving forward with a third loan guarantee for Ukraine in the near‐term, noting State/F’s preference to issue the guarantee as late as possible to allow more clarity on the budget context and Embassy Kyiv and Treasury’s assessment that Ukraine needs the guarantee by end‐2015,” she also said.

The task force identified some deliverables to be ironed out in the weeks before the loan guarantee, including strengthening procurement and other policies inside Shokin’s office.

“State (including via consultation with State/INL) and DOJ will explore options to further strengthen the PGO CP and submit a revised proposal (State and DOJ by October 6),” Segal-Knowles wrote.

In addition to urging the billion dollar loan guarantee be approved, the task force memo made no suggestion to fire Shokin or list any failures to pursue corruption.

By early November 2015, the task force had crafted a draft agreement for the loan guarantee. In a document titled “Third U.S. Loan Guarantee: Proposed Conditions Precedent,” officials laid out what Shokin’s office had agreed to do and made made no demand or even suggestion that the prosecutor be fired.

“Ukraine shall provide to USAID a copy of the comprehensive regulation, adopted by the Prosecutor General, which ensures the independent operations of the Office of Inspector General (IG) of the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO),” the memo explained. “The regulation shall clearly define the PGO IG’s jurisdiction, powers, and authority, to enable it to perform its functions in a manner that is effective and credible, and that increases the accountability of the PGO to the public. The regulation shall be endorsed by the U.S. Department of Justice.”

A month later, Joe Biden appeared to be synced with the task force recommendations.

In a call to Poroshenko on Nov. 5, 2015, Obama’s vice president delivered the message that Ukraine was about to get the massive new loan guarantee, while cheering on more reforms in Shokin’s office and the country’s elections, according to a State Department memo summarizing the phone conversation.

“Vice President Joe Biden spoke today with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko about implementation of the Minsk agreements, economic reforms, and anti-corruption initiatives,” the department’s “readout” of the call recounted. “The Vice President congratulated President Poroshenko on the conduct of Ukraine’s local elections, which represent another milestone in the country’s democratic development.

“Regarding economic reforms, the Vice President reiterated the U.S. willingness to provide a third $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine contingent on continued Ukrainian progress to investigate and prosecute corruption and ensure that Ukraine’s tax reform is consistent with its IMF program,” the memo stated.

In the weeks that ensued, State and Justice officials proceeded with their plan laid out in the October memo, even inviting the senior leadership of Shokin’s office to come to Washington in January 2016 for further collaboration.

When those prosecutors arrived in Washington, according to the State Department memos, word leaked out that Biden had in December 2015 changed the U.S. message. The U.S. embassy in Kyiv reported the leak in the Ukrainian press, prompting a new thread among the IPC task force members that once again affirmed that they were “super impressed” with Shokin’s team.

“According to Dzerkalo Tyzhnya news website, ‘the U.S. State Department has made it clear to the Ukrainian authorities that it links the provision of a one billion dollar loan guarantee to Ukraine to the dismissal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin,” the Kyiv embassy wrote members of the IPC task force.

“Buckle in,” Pyatt wrote in a cryptic response to the leak on Jan. 21, 2016.

Eric Ciarmella, a CIA official assigned to the Obama White House for Ukraine issues who would later emerge as the whistleblower whose allegations prompted Trump’s impeachment, seemed surprised by the leak.

“Yikes. I don’t recall this coming up in our meeting with them on Tuesday, although we did discuss the fact that the PGO IG condition has not yet been met,” Ciarmella wrote the IPC task force members. “I’ve been meaning to write to you about our meeting – we were super impressed with the group, and we had a two-hour discussion of their priorities and the obstacles they face.”

A few days earlier, the Obama White House circulated the latest conditions for the loan guarantee, again signaling the task force was prepared to provide the loan guarantee, though there were still some undelivered promises inside Shokin’s office.

“Here’s nearly the latest CP document. We’ve made some very minor tweaks since this version, which I will dig up and send to you tomorrow but wanted to get something to you tonight,” Segal-Knowles wrote State Department official Rachel Goldbrenner on Jan. 15.

The attached document was identical to the conditions memo crafted in November for Biden’s call with Poroshenko. Remarkably, it made no demand for Shokin’s removal from office.

In fact, none of the documents provided to Just the News or to Sen. Johnson’s exhaustive investigation in 2020 show any recommendation by the IPC to withhold the billion dollar loan guarantee or to demand Shokin’s firing. If they exist, they have not been provided to date.

Now, the story of how Joe Biden pivoted in late November 2015 to withhold the loan guarantee and forced Shokin’s firing is captured in two sets of emails that chronicle a tumultuous six weeks for the vice president’s office and for Hunter Biden’s relationship with Burisma.

They’ll be divulged in tomorrow’s second installment, including the Joe Biden talking points that provided the first documented mention of seeking Shokin’s dismissal. Those talking points, however, were not even shared with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.