Russia Matters, 1/19/24

5 Things to Know

1. In the past month, Russian forces have gained 57 square miles of Ukrainian territory, while Ukrainian forces have re-gained 1 square mile, according to the Jan. 16, 2024, issue of the Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. In an article on the war entitled “Russia Regains Upper Hand in Ukraine’s East as Kyiv’s Troops Flag,” NYT noted this week that “[n]ow Russian troops are on the attack, especially in the country’s east. The town of Marinka has all but fallen. Avdiivka is being slowly encircled. A push on Chasiv Yar, near Bakhmut, is expected.” A new Russian offensive could occur sometime between Jan. 12 and Feb. 2, ISW reported, citing estimates of Russian war watchers. For Ukraine to survive Russian offensives in 2024, it needs to pursue the strategy of active defense, according to Western officials cited by FT. Pursuing this strategy, toward which the Ukrainian government has recently allocated $466 million, could be vital, given the ammunition and personnel shortages the Ukrainian armed forces are suffering from, the former partially blamed on delays in disbursements of military aid by the U.S. and EU:

• Russian artillery fire now exceeds Ukrainian artillery fire at ratios between five-to-one and ten-to-one, ISW reported this week, citing Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov. “Today we had two shells, but some days we don’t have any in these positions,” a commander of a Ukrainian artillery crew told NYT. “I have two tanks, but only five shells,” a deputy Ukrainian battalion commander told this newspaper.
• Russian forces can generate forces at a rate equal to Russian monthly personnel losses, while Ukrainian forces struggle to find adequate personnel reinforcements, according to the Ukrainian MoD’s military intelligence cited by ISW and  NYT, respectively. “Three out of 10 soldiers who show up are no better than drunks who fell asleep and woke up in uniform,” a Ukrainian soldier confided to NYT in reference to new recruits that arrive at his brigade. Ukrainian MPs are expecting to receive a revised version of the mobilization bill, which is expected to allow a mobilization of half a million Ukrainians, in the first week of February, according to Ukrainska Pravda.

2. Several top figures in NATO’s staff and alliance members’ governments have asserted this week that they believe a war with Russia is possible, with some warning that it could possibly erupt as soon as 5 years from now. Among them are Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Britain’s defense secretary Grant Shapps. “We have to take into account that Vladimir Putin might even attack a NATO country one day,” Pistorius—whose country’s military is reportedly gaming out a Russian-NATO conflict in 2025—told Tagesspiegel. “Our experts expect a period of five to eight years in which this could be possible,” he added, according to Politico. As for Shapps, he has said that Western countries need to prepare for further conflicts involving Russia over the next five years, according to FT. In the view of NATO military committee chief Rob Bauer, a conflict could occur in the next 20 years. The alliance needs to be on high alert for war, and “that’s why we are preparing for a conflict with Russia,” Bauer said. Putin and his top ministers have repeatedly rejected predictions that Russia might attack a NATO country.

3. Around 90,000 troops will participate in NATO’s largest exercise in decades, known as Steadfast Defender 2024, which will kick off next week, the alliance’s top commander Chris Cavoli was quoted by Reuters as saying on Jan. 18. Steadfast Defender 2024 will run to late May and involve units from all 31 NATO member countries, plus Sweden, according to AFP. The drills will include at least 1,100 combat vehicles, 80 aircraft and 50 naval vessels and will be taking place in the Baltics and Poland, according to Axios and Stripes.com. The exercise will be the biggest since the 1988 Reforger drill during the Cold War, according to AFP.

4. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has rejected U.S.-Russian arms control talks because of U.S. support for Ukraine and warned about the risks of a direct confrontation, according to Reuters and  Bloomberg. “There is already more and more talk of a direct clash of nuclear powers” while “there are fewer and fewer restraining factors in the West,” he claimed at a Jan. 18 press conference meant to sum up Russian diplomats’ work in the past year. Lavrov—who will travel to New York for UNSC meetings next week—said Washington had proposed separating the issues of Ukraine and the resumption of talks on arms control, but Russia found the proposal unacceptable. Lavrov’s warning of a nuclear clash comes one week after Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev’s threat to carry out nuclear strikes if Ukraine tried to target “our missile launchers across the entire territory of Russia.” Speaking in Washington on Jan. 18, Pranay Vaddi, senior director for arms control at the White House national security council, expressed hope that Russia may change its mind as the February 2026 expiration of New START approaches.

5. Security officials from 83 countries have discussed the terms of Ukraine’s Peace Formula in Davos this week, with Switzerland agreeing to host the next meeting even as its foreign minister said it would be an “illusion” to think that Russia would participate on such terms. These include the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity within its 1991 borders and the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Ukrainian territories. In a setback to Ukraine, China chose not to attend the Jan. 14 meeting, which took place ahead of the World Economic Forum, even though Chinese Premier Li Qiang was attending WEF. In addition, officials from some non-Western states that did attend the meeting reiterated their position that a settlement should address Moscow’s security concerns, such as Ukraine’s desire to join NATO, according to FT. In remarks made this week, Putin and his foreign minister Lavrov rejected Kyiv’s peace formula again, with Lavrov reiterating Russia’s maximalist demands, including Ukraine’s “backing out of joining of NATO.”

By Tarik Cyril Amar, RT, 1/5/24

Here’s a little experiment that you can replicate at home: Type ‘Russia Danger’ into Google (or Bing, or whatever search engine you like, but it probably has to be in English or another NATO-affiliated language; say German or French or Polish). Peruse the results.

Then type ‘Russia Weak’ and repeat.

Funny, isn’t it? Both searches will net you a rich catch of links and titles, of opinion pieces, longform articles, surveys and so on, depicting a dangerous or a weak Russia, as the case may be. And many of those sources will be high-quality or, at least, thoroughly mainstream: Reuters, The Telegraph, The New York Times, NPR, reputable think tanks, institutes, and experts – that sort of thing.

In other words, the West is producing two roughly equally prominent narratives about Russia that are mutually exclusive. True, there are some attempts – vaguely reminiscent of medieval scholasticism – to reconcile them. Almost a year ago now, Reuters, for instance, ran the headline that “even a weak Russia is a problem for Europe.”

How convenient from a Western point of view! That way, you can have your triumphalism (because the phrase “Russia weak” here, of course, implies “West strong”) and, at the same time, you can still spread the fear of big bad Russia, with all that means for intra-NATO politics (i.e. US dominance), military budgets, and arms manufacturers. The latter have been doing very well out of yet another war that has – surprise, surprise – turned out to be a racket, in the famous words of US Marine Major General Smedley Butler.

Yet, on the whole, we are looking at a stark contrast. You may think that this is simply reflecting a healthy debate, with two opposing opinions clashing or that differences are due to time passing and things, especially in Ukraine, changing on the ground. To an extent, you’d be right: It is obvious, for instance, that the Western mood has become more pessimistic after the failure of Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive had to be acknowledged.

But the above is far from the whole explanation for the striking Western bipolarity (to use a term from clinical psychology) about Russia. For as so often with Western narratives about that country, they may not help you much to understand the real Russia, but if you read them against the grain, they can tell you a lot about the West’s imaginary Russias (yes, there is more than one). And that, in turn, offers some timely insights into the real West.

Let’s look at a sample of points habitually made about Russia in the two big Western narratives.

For ‘Russia Danger’ we get: obsessively imperial (wants the Soviet Union back or, at least, something similarly dominant); supremely devious (never means what it says and not even the opposite, either); very subversive (able to make or break American presidents, for instance); militarily powerful and ruthless (its forces are battle-hardened and learning, its weapons advanced and adaptable, and, worst of all, its war economy is effective – unlike the West’s); well-connected (it gets ammunition from North Korea, sells oil to India, China just won’t stop siding with it, and, exasperatingly, much of the world is not heeding the West’s command to isolate it); and last but not least, politically “totalitarian,” of course (just disregard here that that term makes absolutely no sense with regard to Russia now).

For ‘Russia Weak’ we find: Not all it’s cracked up to be and really just a fraud (this is where almost no one can resist that deadly tired cliche about “Potemkin” this and “Potemkin” that); primitive in terms of, well, really, everything: values, politics, organization, technology (Remember German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s Wayward Washing Machine Theory regarding how Russians get their microchips? No? Lucky you.); savage (This one easily blends with “primitive,” of course – see under “Russian soldiers without guns but with sharpened shovels”); isolated (at least by the very proper crowd in the West), and, last but not least, always brimming with repressed popular discontent and, potentially at least, on the verge of color revolution and regime change (so to speak, authoritarian enough to condemn, but terribly bad at that, too – see under “Potemkin” and “primitive”).

We could refine the picture, but the outlines should be clear enough. And here is what it reveals: what is behind the West’s two Russias is not merely a debate or differences of opinion and assessments, but the latest iteration of a deep cultural pattern with a long history, reaching back to, at least, the moment when Peter the Great gate-crashed the European Great Power club in the early 18th century.

On one side, the West loves to imagine Russia in what – after the great Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said – we have learned to call an Orientalist framing, as a Backward Other: a part of that perennial fantasy ‘East’ that the West simply can’t imagine – or accept – as its equal. That’s the root of all those descriptions of today’s Russia as a kind of shovel-wielding gas station running on empty (if you will forgive a metaphor as muddled as the thinking it designates).

But there is another powerful register in the West’s Russia imagination: the Sinister Other. Whereas in the Orientalist key, Russia is ultimately always seen as reassuringly weak, the Sinister Other is different: a kind of evil mirror image of the West’s self-idealization, this Russia appears as modern, wielding up-to-date means of power across multiple domains from information, to the economy, to the battlefield. The Sinister Other can also mobilize its population well; it has, like the West, solved the political challenge of bringing the masses into politics, only in a way the West likes to imagine as morally inferior to its own brand of manufacturing consent.

Consider the issue of how Russia has been fighting the current war between it, on one side, and Ukraine and (de facto) NATO on the other. Initial – and gleeful – Western observations about Moscow’s mistakes and predictions that, with its call-up of September 2022, Moscow would fall flat on its face and even trigger large-scale rebellion, if not revolution, were a classic example not only of wishful groupthink but of the Orientalist, Backward-Other register. Put crudely: “Those Russians just can’t hack it, because – they are Russians.”

Yet, when Russia did succeed in mobilizing and also adjusted its military tactics, at least some Western perceptions shifted into the Sinister-Other key: as Barry R. Posen, an unusually perceptive Western observer wrote in Foreign Affairs, “the most alarming thing about Russia’s bombing campaign is that Moscow knows what it is doing.” Indeed. But where’s the news?

It is crucial to understand that this Western pattern is not merely about passive observation. On the contrary, there is a proactive aspect to it: We can read the last decades, essentially since the end of the Soviet Union, as marked by the West’s obstinate attempt to not only imagine Russia as backward and weak. Rather, Russia – and Russians – were supposed to fit that image: Under Western eyes, Russia was to be relegated in the real-existing hierarchy of international politics – a big country (and market), sure, but still one that, when push comes to shove, can be coerced and even defeated. And because Moscow has resisted this demotion successfully, Russia is now the Sinister Other again.

That shift illustrates the single most depressing thing about the West’s views of Russia: the West may change its tone from time to time, it may even produce two very different, mutually exclusive narratives about Russia at the same time, when stuck in a moment of transition or confusion. But it never actually learns. All it does, collectively and with all too few exceptions, is alternate between different frameworks of stereotypes. What a missed opportunity. Again and again.

By Jeremy Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine, 1/2/24

A few days after the October 7 attacks in northern Israel, The Atlantic Council ran an inflammatory article on its website by Jonathan Panikoff, a former deputy national intelligence officer, entitled “It doesn’t matter whether Iran planned the Hamas attack—Tehran is still to blame.”[1]

The article referenced a Wall Street Journal article that claimed unfoundedly that Iran was responsible for planning the attacks, and expressed belief that even if Iran didn’t directly plan it, Iran was still responsible because it had supported Hamas in the past.

The article went on to support an aggressive military response by the U.S. and Israel that could potentially entail bombing Iran. The latter was a long-held dream of neoconservatives who have wanted to overthrow the regime of the Ayatollahs since it took over from the Shah, a U.S. and Israeli client, in a 1979 revolution.

Glenn Diesen, The Think Tank Racket: Managing the Information War With Russia (Clarity Press, 2023) looks at the influence of think tanks like The Atlantic Council in driving gargantuan U.S. military budgets and endless wars that have no end in sight.

The Atlantic Council has been particularly hawkish with regards to Russia, helping to fuel a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia in Ukraine that has decimated a generation of Ukrainian and Russian youth and left us on the threshold of World War III.

Diesen is an associate professor at the University of Southeast Norway and an associate editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs.

His book emphasizes the undue influence that think tank pseudo-intellectuals play because of their ubiquitous presence in the mainstream media as well as academia and because of their authorship of policy reports that often guide government policy.

Rather than being even-handed or in any way objective in their analysis, the think tank fellows follow a preordained narrative.

According to Diesen, their job is to manufacture consent for the goals of their paymasters—weapons manufacturers and oil companies who profit off of war along with foreign governments courting more U.S. military aid.

Diesen writes that “think-tanks have become a symptom of hyper-capitalism in which all aspects of society have become an appendage to the market. Even political influence is regulated by the free-market, in which think tanks are an important component.”

Diesen notes that a brilliant achievement of propaganda has been to convince the population that propaganda is only an instrument of authoritarian states—that the U.S. is supposedly combating—and not liberal democracies.

The think tanks help condition the public to fear foreign threats and support wars of aggression under the veneer of providing independent expert analysis.

Paul Craig Roberts, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under Ronald Reagan, has called The Atlantic Council the “marketing arm of the military-security complex,” while Diesen calls it “NATO’s Propaganda Wing.”

The Atlantic Council’s financial report from 2019/2020 reveals that it received over $1 million from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to Diesen. It also received major contributions from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, The Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), U.S. State Department, a Saudi oil billionaire (Bahaa Hariri), Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk, Crescent Petroleum, and Burisma, an energy company owned by Ukrainian oligarchs which appointed Hunter Biden to its board along with former CIA counter-terrorism director Cofer Black.

The Atlantic Council’s close ties to the CIA were further evident when its former executive vice-president, Damon Wilson, was appointed CEO of the NED, a CIA offshoot that promotes propaganda and supports dissidents in countries whose governments have been targeted by the U.S. for regime change.

Former CIA Director James R. Woolsey is listed as a lifetime director of the Atlantic Council, while former CIA Directors Leon Panetta, Robert Gates and David Petraeus are listed on its Board, along with such war criminals as Henry Kissinger, and Condeleezza Rice.

Over the past decade, the Atlantic Council has published countless reports on Russia’s kleptocracy and disinformation being spread allegedly by Vladimir Putin, and has hosted anti-Russian dissidents and Belarusian opposition figures such as Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who called for more aggressive intervention by the U.S. in Belarusian politics.

One of The Atlantic Council’s fellows, Michael Weiss, spreads his anti-Russia invective as an editor at the popular online media outlet, The Daily Beast. He helps run a neo-McCarthyite website, PropOrNot that promotes the worst kind of fear mongering imaginable, attacking independent media outlets, including the Ron Paul Institute, for allegedly advancing Russian propaganda.

In 2015, the Atlantic Council helped prepare a proposal for arming the Ukrainian military with offensive weaponry like Javelin anti-tank missiles—the same year that it presented its Distinguished Leadership Award to Marillyn Adams Hewson, then the CEO of Lockheed Martin, which produces Javelin missiles and many other lethal weapons.

Since the commencement of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, The Atlantic Council has doubled down on its long-standing Russophobia, calling for bombing Russia and starting World War III.

Last February, Matthew Kroenig, the Deputy Director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, argued for consideration of the U.S. preemptive use of ’tactical’ nuclear weapons.[2] This would not only kill thousands of people directly but likely cause what scientists characterize as a “nuclear winter” by injecting so much smoke and debris into the air that it will block sunlight and cause a precipitous drop in global temperatures, affecting food production across the globe.

Triggering New Cold and Hot Wars

The Atlantic Council’s support for war with Russia is characteristic of think tanks which played a crucial role in pushing the decision to expand NATO after the Cold War.

George F. Kennan and other foreign policy experts had warned against this because NATO was perceived as a hostile military alliance by Russia and it would undermine new European security initiatives involving Russia. Vietnam War architect Robert S. McNamara at the time also called for a new “peace dividend” by which the U.S. would reduce its military budget and address social needs with taxpayer dollars.

The overriding imperative of the weapons industry, however, was to revitalize cold war thinking to ensure continuously high military budgets and the expansion of NATO and the think-tanks were enlisted to fulfill that end.

Diesen points out that the Brookings Institute, one of the oldest American think tanks, played an instrumental role in the Russia Gate hoax, which greatly contributed to the spread of Russophobia underlying the U.S. proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

A primary researcher and contributor to the Steele dossier, the seminal document in Russia Gate which spread false information about Donald Trump being blackmailed because of an alleged encounter with Russian prostitutes, was an employee of the Brookings Institute named Igor Danchenko, who was indicted by Special Counsel John Durham for lying to the FBI.

Working under Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and renowned anti-Russian hawk, Danchenko claimed to have accrued incriminating information against Trump from a meeting with Russian-American Chamber of Commerce President Sergey Millian, who said that this meeting never actually took place.[3]

The Atlantic Council was another false purveyor of Russia Gate whose revenues increased tenfold from 2006-2016 when it began demonizing Vladimir Putin and smearing politicians like Tulsi Gabbard who advocated for cooperative diplomacy between the U.S. and Russia.

Leaving out the fact that Putin revitalized Russia’s economy after the failed privatization and shock therapy initiatives of the 1990s, The Atlantic Council made people believe that Putin invaded Ukraine on a whim and would destabilize all of Europe if he was not stopped.

This kind of analysis obscures the true origins of the conflict in Ukraine and the Western role in supporting NATO expansion and a 2014 coup against Ukraine’s legally elected government led by Viktor Yanukovych, which led to the outbreak of civil war.

The Atlantic Council continues today along with other think-tanks to whitewash Ukrainian war crimes, corruption and close ties with the far-right and neo-Nazis.

A person in a suit smiling

Michael McFaul of the Hoover Institute even celebrates Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s crackdown on opposition politicians and media, while hypocritically framing the struggle against Russia as one of authoritarianism versus democracy.

McFaul and others have made clear that a primary U.S. foreign policy goal is to try and delink Ukraine and the rest of Europe from Russia while expanding U.S. natural gas sales in Europe.

In 2019, the RAND Corporation, the think tank of the intelligence agencies, issued a report calling for threatening NATO expansion and the arming of Ukraine in order to draw Russia into a conflict that would facilitate its overextension militarily and economically and cause the Russian government to lose domestic and international support.

The same report advocated for intensifying the ideological and information war against Russia to weaken the legitimacy and stability of its government, and voiced support for the anti-corruption crusade of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, whom Diesen identifies as a British intelligence asset supportive of policies designed to weaken the Russian Federation.

RAND earlier had advocated for provoking civil war within Syria through covert action and informational warfare and by capitalizing on the sustained Shia-Sunni conflict in order to undermine the nationalist Assad regime and draw Russia into the conflict there.

RAND also advocated for the destabilization of the Caucuses in order to cause a fissure between Russia and its traditional ally, Armenia, hence weakening Russia.

This latter goal was achieved when Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan expressed no-confidence in Russia’s ability to protect it after Azerbaijan—heavily armed by the U.S. and Israel—invaded the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

RAND had also issued policy recommendations for reducing Russian influence in Moldova and undercutting Russian trade with Central Asia and promoted regime change in Belarus to destabilize a Russian ally and alter the country’s orientation westward.

Following this prescription, the NED and other U.S. agencies provoked an uprising in 2020 against Belarus’ socialist leader Alexander Lukashenko, who was demonized in western media though he helped curb inequality and poverty considerably while resisting the rapid privatization initiatives carried out by other post-Soviet leaders.

CNAS and Team Biden

One of the most influential think tanks today is the Center For a New American Security (CNAS), which received huge sums from oil companies like Chevron and BP, financial giants like Bank of America, and J.P. Morgan Chase, and Amazon and Google from Big Tech.

CNAS’s former CEO, Victoria Nuland, was a former adviser to Dick Cheney and a key architect behind the 2014 coup in Ukraine.[4]

CNAS’ founder, Michèle Flournoy, was a board member of the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton who as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy helped develop counterinsurgency policy for Afghanistan and contributed to convincing Barack Obama to invade Libya. More recently, she has advocated for an aggressive military buildup in the South China Sea to counter a rising China.

When Joe Biden became president, at least 16 CNAS alumni were selected for foreign policy positions. CNAS had pushed heavily for making Kamala Harris Vice President as her foreign policy team consisted of an army of CNAS think-tankers—including Flournoy.

The appointment of CNAS alumni to prestigious positions and their lobbying influence epitomizes the so-called revolving door in which high level White House and Pentagon officials who serve corporate-military interests while in power are rewarded with lucrative paying jobs in which they continue to serve the same underlying interests.

Diesen emphasizes at the end of his book that think tanks in the modern U.S. have helped to subvert democracy and obstruct U.S. foreign policy in the interests of wealthy corporations that profit from endless wars. He sees as a solution more public disclosures about the sources of think tank funding and public pressures that could help reduce their influence.

Another more radical solution is a socialist revolution that would result in the nationalization of the weapons industry, taking profit out of war, and reorganizing research, development and production toward fulfilling human needs.

1. Panikoff is the Atlantic Council’s Director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative. ↑
2. In John Bellamy Foster, John Ross, and Deborah Veneziale, Washington’s New Cold War: A Socialist Perspective (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2023), 42. ↑
3. The New Knowledge think-tank fabricated a story of Russian interference in the 2017 Alabama state election with the intent of causing the defeat of Republican candidate Roy Moore. ↑
4. Nuland was also a fellow at the Brookings Institute. ↑

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 1/7/24

As the proxy war winds down and all players begin preparing for the post-conflict future, whenever it comes to pass, it’s worthwhile to once again share this fact in order to reduce the chances that any of his people fall for the West’s plot to turn them and Ukrainians into irredeemable enemies.

President Putin said during a meeting last week with servicemen at a military hospital in Moscow that the Western elite, not Ukraine, are their Russia’s true enemies. This is an important clarification since it’s easy for folks to lose sight of the conflict’s larger dynamics after over 22 months of fighting despite repeated reminders from the Kremlin about what’s really driving the violence. The undisguised bloodlust of the Kiev regime and their supporters also distracts from the Western elite’s puppet master role.

The Russian leader published a treatise in summer 2021 “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, where he also not only reaffirmed his recognition of Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent state, but also endorsed it. In his words, “You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome! But on what terms?” Simply put, he made peace with the fact that Ukrainians nowadays regard themselves as separate from Russians, but he wants their states to respect each other’s interests.

Therein lies the roots of the current conflict since post-“Maidan” policymakers have consistently done the West’s bidding at Russia’s expense because they owe their power and wealth to the former. That New Cold War bloc envisaged threatening Russia through multidimensional means from Ukraine in order to coerce it into becoming their vassal. If it wasn’t for this grand strategic goal, then everything that led up to Russia’s special operation over the past decade wouldn’t have happened.

Regrettably, Ukraine’s role as the West’s “anti-Russia” was eventually embraced by a growing number of its people, whose identity was reshaped around World War II-era fascist nostalgia as a result of their post-“Maidan” regime’s socio-cultural policies and the past three decades of Western “NGO” work. Reversing this radical revision of Ukrainian identity from its pre-World War I and Soviet-era roots to today’s neo-fascist form is what Russia is referring to when it says that it wants to denazify Ukraine.

These changes in how Ukrainians view themselves were brought about through the abovementioned artificial means, but their consequences have been very real for everyone as evidenced by recent events. This observation doesn’t absolve those who nowadays embrace these views of their personal responsibility for them, especially for the crimes that they commit under the influence of this ideology, but it crucially places the past ten years’ processes into their appropriate context.

Accordingly, those Ukrainians who remain committed to their country’s Western-cultivated neo-fascist identity are Western Hybrid War pawns against Russia, while those who haven’t fallen under the influence of this ideological scourge and retain their original identity aren’t deemed a threat. The real threat all along has been the Western elite, specifically its liberal-globalist faction that’s responsible for reshaping Ukrainian identity in order to geostrategically exploit that country as explained.

Even if the real enemy finally decided to comply with Russia’s requested goals of demilitarizing Ukraine, denazifying it, and restoring that country’s constitutional neutrality in exchange for a Korean-like “land-for-peace” armistice deal, then the second of them will be the most difficult to implement. Removing the post-“Maidan” regime and banning all public glorification of fascism (books, chants, flags, insignia, monuments, museums, etc.) would be a good first step but more would have to be done.

The problem is that a sizable share of the population either actively or passively supports their country’s Western-cultivated neo-fascist identity after being falsely convinced that it’s the only “true” one. They can therefore become sleeper cells for sabotaging their country and its ties with Russia after the conflict finally ends on the latter’s three requested terms of demilitarization, denazification, and neutrality. In a sense, their role would be similar to Al Qaeda’s after the end of the Soviet-Afghan War.

Those fighters were also indoctrinated by the Western elite, albeit into believing that the only “true” Muslim identity is a violent jihadist one. Once they were no longer needed by the West, they either stayed in Afghanistan, returned to their homelands, or went further afield. In all three cases, they advanced their cause wherever they went. Some also remained in contact with their handlers, others stayed within their sphere of influence, while some genuinely went rogue.

The same dynamics are expected when it comes to post-conflict Ukraine’s neo-fascists, and unfortunately there’s little that Russia or anyone else can do to prevent that from happening. Just like jihadist veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War went on to commit atrocious crimes against fellow Muslims, so too will Ukraine’s neo-fascist veterans likely do the same against their own people as well whether at the West’s behest, under its influence, or as lone wolves. Almost nothing can be done to prevent this.

Instead, all that can be done is for everyone to remember that those who commit such crimes only represent a radical Western-cultivated version of Ukrainian identity, which turned them into Hybrid War proxies by weaponizing certain historical experiences and perceptions thereof via information warfare. Although some demagogues might be inclined to associate them with all Ukrainians, they’re just as extreme in that national community as Al Qaeda’s jihadists are in the international Muslim one.

Both have their share of folks in society who passively support them, which is problematic, but it’s wrong to assume that all Ukrainians and Muslims are neo-fascists and jihadists respectively. Those in foreign societies who treat them that way, particularly in Russia’s and the West’s as a result of the latest conflict and 9/11 correspondingly, inadvertently fuel radical recruitment efforts. That’s why it’s so important to raise maximum awareness among the public that neither Ukrainians nor Muslims are enemies.

President Putin is a far-sighted leader with a keen understanding of global dynamics, which explains the timing with which he reminded Russians that it’s the Western elite that are their true enemies, not Ukrainians. As the proxy war winds down and all players begin preparing for the post-conflict future, whenever it comes to pass, it’s worthwhile to once again share this fact in order to reduce the chances that any of his people fall for the West’s plot to turn them and Ukrainians into irredeemable enemies.

By Alex Cosh, The Maple, 1/4/24

In the first weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Canada’s directorate of NATO policy said that Ukraine’s notorious Azov Regiment continued to be far-right “fanatics” despite their integration into the country’s national guard, emails obtained by The Maple through an access to information request show.

Recruits belonging to the same military unit were photographed last year holding what a leading arms monitoring researcher said were Canadian-made assault rifles fitted with Canadian-made scopes. It is unclear which foreign military supplied the weapons to Ukraine, however.

The NATO policy directorate’s assessment contradicts claims frequently made by Azov’s defenders, who insist that the controversial military unit was de-radicalized after it was formally integrated into the Ukrainian forces — a claim often repeated by Western media sources.

The claims about Azov’s de-radicalization have also been a key part of narratives that portray those who raise concerns about the unit as carrying water for Russia’s invasion.

Besides apparent material aid, Azov also continues to enjoy words of support from some prominent Western media outlets amid Ukraine’s lagging war effort.

Voice of America (VOA), a U.S. state broadcaster that is regarded by critics as a pro-Washington mouthpiece, ran approving coverage of a protest held in front of the White House last November in support of Azov soldiers imprisoned by Russia.

The VOA article did not acknowledge the group’s far-right ideology, which some commentators and news outlets claim no longer exists. That view contrasts sharply with assessments shared among Canadian military officials back in 2022.

‘They Are Fanatics’

In March 2022, the Department of National Defence (DND) was facing media questions over mounting allegations that the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) had trained far-right groups in Ukraine, including Azov, prior to Russia’s invasion.

In an internal email sent to Lt. Col. Andre Salloum, DND’s then-director of communications, Elana Aptowitzer, quoted “information from the Directorate of NATO Policy.”

Copied text in the email read:

“It’s true that Azov was brought into the NGU [National Guard of Ukraine], but we don’t train them because they are fanatics, and we don’t share their values … It’s true that the Azov has dogged us as an issue for years, but we should definitely not hide from the fact that we train the NGU because of a small minority in their ranks.”

DND confirmed in an email to The Maple that the ministry still regards Azov Regiment as a far-right extremist group.

“Our position remains that we are not – nor will we – be providing support to Azov and affiliated entities,” the ministry said in an unsigned email. “We continue to vehemently oppose any and all racist, discriminatory and hateful views and any groups that promote them.”

The Maple first filed the ATIP request in August 2022, but DND did not release the documents until a year later, and only after The Maple filed a formal complaint with the federal Information Commissioner. The Commissioner found The Maple’s complaint to be “well founded,” and said DND’s delays “undermine[d] the credibility of the access system,” echoing similar comments made in its investigation into an earlier complaint made by The Maple against DND.

Repeated Denials

DND’s repeated denials that it trained or provided support to Azov come against evidence to the contrary that has emerged over the past several years.

In 2021, the Ottawa Citizen’s David Pugliese found that Canadian officers who were reported to have met with and been briefed by Azov members in 2018 did not denounce the group, but instead feared that journalists would expose the meeting.

In April 2022, Radio Canada and CTV News reported on further evidence showing that the CAF had trained members of Ukraine’s military who were reported to be members of far-right groups, including Azov, as recently as 2020.

In September 2022, DND would not rule out the possibility that Canadian weapon transfers to Ukraine had ended up in Azov Regiment’s hands when asked directly by The Maple.

Photographic evidence highlighted by Project Ploughshares researcher Kelsey Gallagher last February appeared to show Azov recruits training with Colt Canada C7 rifles fitted with ELCAN Specter optics. However, it is not clear who supplied those weapons.

The DND website stated that the ministry transferred 700 carbine rifles from the CAF’s inventory to Ukraine in February 2022, but did not list assault weapons, like the C7, in that package.

DND said it sent a $59 million package of small arms and ammunition sourced from Colt Canada in April 2023, followed by another $60 million package last November. These packages included assault weapons using 5.56 millimetre cartridges, matching the caliber of C7s.

According to The Armourer’s Bench, a blog run by two British arms historians, DND said in November 2022 that it had not transferred C7 rifles to Ukraine at that time. The weapons used by Azov recruits pictured in February last year may have been transferred to Ukraine by other NATO militaries that also use the C7.

The ‘Azov Debate’

Azov Regiment has been a point of heated debate since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Critics of the unit point to its ongoing use of Nazi symbols, and evidence of continuing links to Andrey Biletsky, a white supremacist, Azov founder and leader of the far-right National Corps political party. Until Russia launched its invasion, extensive reporting from Western media outlets documented comments from Azov commanders and members who openly endorsed neo-Nazi ideas.

Those who defend Azov, including some Western news outlets and opinion writers, claim that since it was integrated into Ukraine’s national guard in 2014, the regiment has been gradually deradicalized and today functions as an ordinary military unit. Focusing on the group’s neo-Nazi origins, they argue, lends credence to Russia’s claim that its invasion of Ukraine was necessary because the country was overrun with fascists and needed to be “de-Nazified.”

Last year, The Maple found that major Canadian news outlets adopted this position during the spring of 2022, when Azov fighters were engaged in an intensive battle against Russian forces in Azovstal. At this time, news stories began suggesting that the group’s Nazi ideology was consigned to its past, or the publications glossed over the issue entirely.

This culminated in a profile published by The Globe and Mail in August 2022 that critics said whitewashed Azov’s ongoing neo-Nazism and functioned as a piece of far-right propaganda, regardless of the reporter’s intent. The Globe reporter wrote that Azov “has a history of far-right leanings but is now part of the Ukrainian army.”

Writing in The Nation last June, The Forward correspondent Lev Golinkin accused Western media of whitewashing the neo-Nazi unit.

“This overnight normalization of white supremacy was possible because Western institutions, driven by a zeal to ignore anything negative about our Ukrainian allies, decided that a neo-Nazi military formation in a war-torn nation had suddenly and miraculously stopped being neo-Nazi,” he wrote.

“But the truth is that this is an easily debunked fantasy spun out by a handful of propagandists.”

Speaking to The Maple in 2022, Ottawa University Professor Ivan Katchanovski told The Maple that the changing news coverage of Azov Regiment reflected a political calculation driven by a desire to promote Ukraine’s war effort, irrespective of inconvenient facts about some of the country’s far-right soldiers.

“This is also going to have a dangerous effect on Ukraine and potentially other countries because now, basically, Nazis in Ukraine are made into national heroes,” said Katchanovski.

Social media giant Meta also embraced claims about Azov’s de-radicalization, as it removed the military unit from its list of dangerous individuals and organizations last year. Last June, Stanford University hosted an Azov delegation, during which Azov’s neo-Nazi Wolfsangel insignia was projected onto the wall, according to The Forward.