By Sarah Lindemann-Komarova, Echo Siberia Blog, 5/12/22

Sarah Lindemann-Komarova has lived in Siberia since 1992. She was a community development activist for 20 years and currently, focuses on research and writing.

On February 24, 2022, the Donbas War turned into a Special Military Operation (SMO) and the Crimean special sanctions operation became a War. As the conflicts evolve, the reaction to both are similar in the two vastly different environments I live (the town of Akademgorodok, Novosibirsk and Manzherok Village, Altai Republic).

There was unified shock, no awe, among those supporting and those against the SMO. As the weeks drag on, the shock does not diminish. Those who oppose the SMO are vehement and vocal. They will bring up the topic. Those who support it are mostly silent and never introduce the subject. Support by the people I have encountered comes with an asterisk. There is no rah rah, go get em. For them, something had to be done. The operation was provoked because it did not begin on February 24 but eight years ago. They usually slip it in starting with a description of their connection to Ukraine (family, friend, where they grew up) and/or to someone serving in the Russian military there. There are no degrees of separation, this is personal. Their heartache is equal to those who oppose.

Early Days

Day one people were very active on social media. The range of Points of View were well represented:

· An Independent Deputy from Novosibirsk posted 5 Thesis: For Peace, Stop Military Actions, It is Important to be Calm, Limit your News Time, and Care Instead of Fear.

· An activist in Novosibirsk was arrested when he protested and posted photos with commentary of his experience from the holding cell to the court.

· In Manzherok, an elderly woman posted about her “Homeland Ukraine” and relatives still in Kyiv, “My heart bleeds… Ukraine is on the border of Russia, historically our peoples are brothers. Artificially separating them was a great sin… now I only rely on the mercy of God.”

· A programmer who moved his family to Siberia from the Donbas when the war started, “War is always bad. Eight years ago, the Kyiv authorities launched a war against the civilian population. The shells hit my alma mater, there were casualties, people hid in the basements.”

The assumption was it would be over in a few days so when the second week began a new reality took hold. There was not a lot of chatter about it online beyond a lively debate on the Manzherok What’s App chat about whether or not it was appropriate to celebrate Maslenitsa (the first day of Spring), we did. A neighbor’s son in law came over to install security cameras and asked, “Do you want to talk politics?” My husband answered, No”, Anton said, “Good”. The Russian government passed a law threatening 15 years in prison for people who publish “fake news”.

The second front, sanctions, kicked in noticeably. Exchanging information and advice became part of the Siberian canon: weather, food, and sanctions. Every day you woke up to discover what else you can’t do. It began with no Apple/Google pay, then fly, and shop at IKEA. Everyone started backing up data and signing up for Chinese UnionPay Cards. They said goodbye to Coke, Pepsi, KFC, McDonalds, and Burger King and checked the origin of favorite products. Everyone who did not have a VPN got one. Anyone who wasn’t on Telegram or VK moved there. The few Facebook stragglers fled when Meta announced it would relax content moderators[1] criteria in some countries to allow promoting violence against Russians and Russian soldiers and death to Putin and Lukashenko. The Russian government blocked Meta Platforms.

Then, a new sanctions category appeared with announcements about where Russian artists, athletes, and students are not welcome. When the stakes couldn’t be higher the sanctions jumped the shark with the banning of Russian cats on the International cat circuit.

The exception is IT specialists who are not only welcomed, but enticed. At one Novosibirsk AI Department two out of 80 programmers decided to leave, one returned after a week. Another working for a US start-up with a wife and two kids was given the option. “I am not in physical danger, I have an apartment…why go?” But for young people without families the opportunity to travel, that was fostered by COVID distance work, the response is “why not?’ The Russian government fast tracked an order providing special benefits to the IT sphere including no Army conscription until 27, low percent mortgages, and IT companies do not pay taxes on profit for 3 years.[2]

Two Months In

The Western sanctions have done nothing to foster a negotiated settlement. There is an occasional announcement about a donation drive for refugees in Novosibirsk. Graduates of Novosibirsk State University launched a petition that has attracted 1,298 signatures representing classes from 1964. 84% provided public signatures and a few of those indicated they are living in the US. ”Z”s are not ubiquitous. I have only seen one billboard, one giant sign at a horse rental business, and less than 20 “Z” cars. I saw “Z” t-shirts for sale but have only seen one person wearing it, a young girl.

Early days there was news from relatives in Kyiv (hunkered down, not happy that weapons were being distributed to everyone) and Mariupol (hunkered down, happy the Russians arrived). Now you hear news about those serving. One friend welcomed her son-in-law home, another, waiting to hear if he will be going, got a call that his friend was killed.

Despite what has been promoted by the White House as, “The most significant and crippling sanctions package…in history” [3], early anxiety has become “what else is new”. So far, workarounds or substitutes have been found or are in the process of being developed. There is no panic or complaint, “We will just plant more vegetables” said one mother.

The Siberian calm is rooted in two things. The Russian character described in a Perestroika anecdote that defines a pessimist as someone who believes things can’t get worse and an optimist as someone who knows they can and will. The second is the experience of three previous economic shocks (early 90s, 1998, and 2008) when all aspects of life were drastically transformed overnight. Also, the 2014 Crimea sanctions demonstrated there is opportunity for those ready to take advantage of it. The cheese niche is now being filled by people like Alexei the cheddar cheese master from Tyumen.

After an initial leap up, the ruble dollar exchange is lower than it was before the SMO. 42 brands in Novosibirsk remain closed but some, like IKEA and Zara continue to pay their workers and are waiting for an opportunity to return siting supply chain issues. [4] McDonalds, Burger King, and KFC are still working. Coke is available, just no more investment or marketing. At the Mega Mall, the “Unfortunately, we are temporarily closed” signs hang on closed gates like “back in ten minutes” with fully dressed mannequins and full shelves and racks. [5] On a recent Sunday there were plenty of shoppers, many flocking to the French holdouts Leroy Merlin and Auchan.

There have been several product panics including sugar and xerox paper. The latest is female hygiene products and some stores are limiting three to a customer along with sugar and kasha. Despite some hoarding, the shelves remain full of these and most other products.

Inflation is real but fluctuating. A Novosibirsk newspaper project monitors costs for goods at ten of the most popular supermarkets. The last week of April, the average cost of most products listed are down (Sugar/-3.91%, Salt/-2.54%, Tea/-10.11%, Macaroni/-11.34%, Flour/.01%, Bread/-4.60% ). The three climbing were Rice/+4.90%, Buckwheat/2.28%, and Vodka, up 1.25%. [6]

I met an interior decorator who has never been busier, “people can’t invest abroad so they are investing it here”. Round the clock work on the massive Sberbank Manzherok Resort continues but there are concerns there may be a pause because the interiors were from Italy so a substitute may need to be found. Many people in Manzherok are building guest houses to take advantage of what is expected to be a blockbuster season since it is hard to travel abroad. However, Turkey has just made that easier by creating a new airline, Southwind, to accommodate Russian tourists.

Anyone with strong ties to the West, financial or personal, is having a harder time. The UnionPay salvation card crashed when China stopped negotiations with Russian banks due to fears of secondary sanctions. [7] One friend and her daughter lost jobs that were connected to Western business, it is clear that more layoffs are to come.

Nobody needs to wear a “Z”, the sanctions have insured that the war is a shared experience: the teenager who can’t make income from Instagram, the Babushka worried about cooking oil, the beautician who can’t see American movies in the theatre, the mini-oligarch who doesn’t have access to his Swiss bank accounts, the middle class families waiting for IKEA to open or for a car part to arrive.

One acquaintance told me she hoped this inspired people to be more responsible for their country, especially government. There are some signs of this in the Village. For the first time the chat has hosted detailed, hours long discussions about improving quality of life. A protest against illegal deforestation got traction on social media and was picked up by regional news.

The Manzherok House of Culture was full for a Town Meeting that not only included the Heads of the District and Village, but representatives from the Prosecutor, Healthcare, Pension, and Tax Departments. There are also indications the government is getting serious about corruption with March 6 amendments that authorize audits for officials and their families that have assets greater than their total income for the previous two years.[9]

CONCLUSION

The SMO trend is not good, no one is backing down, everyone is arming up, and the info wars are out of control making sure everything is dumbed down to heroes and villains. The situation is complex and none of that complexity is presented in most of what you find in main-stream Western media. 30 years after the “new Russia” was born and the anticipated peace dividend celebrated, we have arrived at the worst-case scenario. There are only three certainties: anyone who makes a prediction about this situation should be ignored, the world will never be the same, and the people of Siberia will not be weakened.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-instagram-temporarily-allow-calls-violence-against-russians-2022-03-10/

[2] http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202203020001?index=0&rangeSize=1

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw6F8_JyI7Q&t=3791s

[4] https://sib.fm/news/2022/03/29/v-marte-v-novosibirske-zakrylis-42-magazina-populyarnyh-brendov

[5] https://www.thetechoutlook.com/news/ikea-plans-to-come-back-to-russia/

[6] https://tayga.info/177358

[7] https://intellinews.com/chinese-unionpay-payment-system-backs-away-from-russian-banks-on-secondary- sanctions-fears-242072/?source=russia

[8] https://www.garant.ru/news/1532593/

This was an important discussion but very depressing.

By James Carden, Asia Times, 5/12/22

This is the second part of a three-part series on ‘the Blob’ that runs American foreign policy. Read part one here.

WASHINGTON – The Russian war on Ukraine has seen ‘the Blob’ reassert itself with a vengeance in the 11 weeks since Russia announced the commencement of hostilities on February 24.

This article will examine the forces shaping President Joe Biden’s approach to the Ukraine crisis, and then move on to explore the state of foreign policy debate, or lack thereof, within Biden’s Democratic Party.

Former high-ranking military officials, intelligence analysts and diplomats who served at various points during the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump administrations paint a picture in recent conversations with Asia Times of the likely policy options being presented to President Biden as he faces the gravest crisis on the European continent since the Second World War. 

The past month has seen the Biden administration, by fits and starts and then seemingly all at once, adopt a militarized, hardline approach toward Russia, declaring Ukraine’s “victory” over Russia as the only acceptable outcome.

While Biden remains steadfast in assuring the public that there will be no “boots on the ground,” in point of fact, current and former officials have suggested that US paramilitaries are indeed on the ground, with military assistance being coordinated by the new appointee to the Biden National Security Council, retired US Army Lieutenant General Terry Wolff.

According to retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as secretary of state Colin Powell’s chief of staff, the administration is planning for a protracted conflict in Ukraine.

Wilkerson says “they are extremely desirous of a protracted conflict because they want to effect regime change in Moscow, destabilize Russia and then take on China. That is their long-term geopolitical strategy.”

It is helpful here to take a moment to describe the prevailing mindset of the top national security officials closest to Biden. 

At the very beginning of Biden’s term, a message was sent loud and clear to both supporters and critics in Washington that it would not tolerate any deviations from the establishment orthodoxy and that the perspective and expertise of outsiders were not welcome. 

Consider, for instance, the case of respected Russia expert Dr Matthew Rojansky. For years, Rojansky had served as the director of the mainstream, congressionally-funded Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center think tank.

No fierce challenger of the establishment, Rojansky had been a fixture in track-two level talks between American and Russian political scientists and former government officials.Russia expert Matthew Rojansky’s views are unwanted by the Biden administration. Image: Twitter / Bucknell University

Yet when news leaked that Rojansky was under consideration for an appointment to Biden’s National Security Council (NSC), the knives came out and the Democratic hawks made Rojansky their prey. The appointment was torpedoed – and quickly.

Rojansky is now head of a US-Russia-focused non-profit, far from the corridors of power. That’s worrying because, outside of Central Intelligence Agency director William Burns, deep expertise on Russia is thin on the ground in the Biden administration, according to former and current officials who spoke to Asia Times.

But if Russia expertise is lacking, what the vast majority of Biden’s foreign policy appointments do have are deep connections to the reflexively hawkish and dominant wing of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, and that, in part, explains the trajectory of the administration’s policy in Ukraine.

The evolution of Biden’s policy was described to this correspondent by former ambassador Chas Freeman, now a senior fellow at the Watson Institute at Brown University who remains deeply engaged in the foreign policy debate in Washington. Freeman said: “It took about eight weeks for the administration, in the person of NSC Advisor [Jake] Sullivan, to enunciate war aims for the proxy war.

“At the outset of its response to the Russian invasion, the administration was careful to limit possible provocation of the Russians. But, not having seen direct retaliation from Moscow, it has become progressively less cautious. 

“This lack of caution is aided by the fact that it is Ukrainians, not Americans, who are dying and by the success of pro-Ukrainian propaganda and the effective Western ban on contradictory information from non-Ukrainian sources. There is a risk that the administration will inhale its own propaganda and underestimate the risks it is taking,” said Freeman.

George Beebe, former head of Russia analysis at the CIA and a senior member of the intelligence service who served on the national security staff of vice president Dick Cheney, agrees.

“It seems to me that the United States and NATO are experiencing the phenomenon of the appetite growing with eating. We didn’t expect the Ukrainians to be as successful as they proved to be,” Beebe said.

Beebe, now the director of the grand strategy program at the Quincy Institute, continued: “A good part of the credit goes to the Ukrainians themselves, their leadership, their courage and fighting against the Russians. A good part of it comes from our own support for them, the intelligence and military assistance that we’ve provided that they’ve used very effectively.

“But I think that has produced battlefield successes that go well beyond anything that the US government expected when Putin launched this invasion. As a result, we started to think, ‘Hey, maybe we can win this.’”Ukrainian soldiers use a launcher with US-made Javelin missiles during military exercises in Donetsk region, Ukraine, on December 23, 2021. Photo: Ukrainian Defense Ministry Press Service

“Our eyes, “ says Beebe, “have grown bigger. You walk around here in Washington and there are very few people that are worried that we might get into an escalation spiral that we can’t control. Seems to me that much of Congress is worried that they might be accused of not doing enough to support Ukraine, not of doing too much that tips us over the edge here into a very dangerous situation. So I think it is fair to say that we are in a much more dangerous situation right now from the point of view of escalation than we’ve been in my lifetime.”

Freeman observes that as a result of the war fever enveloping Washington, “It is now taboo in the United States to inquire into the origins of the war, to suggest that Western policy had any role in provoking it, or that there has been or is any basis for Russia’s security concerns.”

And nowhere is the taboo of raising even the most basic questions about American involvement stronger than on Capitol Hill. Indeed, what the last couple of weeks in Washington has shown is that, with respect to the proxy war the administration has now embarked upon, there is essentially a uni-party on Capitol Hill. 

This is thanks in large part to one person: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who rules her caucus – including the so-called “Squad” – with an iron discipline. In some respects, as Beebe pointed out, Congress appears to fear it is not doing enough.

Pelosi is working overtime – and with the full support of the small and now politically neutered progressive caucus – to ensure that the dominant perception is otherwise.

Two landmark pieces of legislation recently signed into law by Biden help tell the tale. Legislation to revive the lend lease program and apply it to Ukraine passed the House on April 28 by a vote of 417 to 10; the 10 opposition votes were all Republicans. Two weeks later, the House passed by a wide margin, 368 to 57, a US$40 billion aid package to Ukraine. Once again, there were no Democratic dissenting votes.

What, then, accounts for Pelosi’s total effectiveness in pushing the war agenda through the House with only token Republican opposition?

A longtime and current Democratic Party insider with ties going back to the Clintons says that Pelosi has become the most effective and feared House Speaker since Sam Rayburn because she is a “Workhorse not a show horse. She understands the substance and policy better than all those folks who just want to hear themselves talk.”

“Don’t ever,” she said, “bet against Nancy Pelosi.”In this file photo taken on October 9, 2021, US Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, speaks to the press on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Photo: AFP / Nicholas Kamm

It helps, too, to control the money. The insider noted that Pelosi’s power comes as much from her legendary indefatigability, showing up at all hours to events large and small to press the flesh and charm the intended marks, as from her access to the high dollar donor base that funds the Democratic party.

In a contest between large dollar donors and small donors such as those who were the lifeblood of the two Bernie Sanders presidential runs, there is no contest.

And in this administration, as with all others, it’s the big donors, like Mr. Biden’s patron, former Comcast CEO David Cohen, who is now his ambassador to Canada, and fundraisers like Jane Hartley, now US ambassador to the United Kingdom, who have the ear of the president and Pelosi.

Pelosi has faced no opposition from her left flank on the massive funding for the war effort, and not simply because progressives are outspent and outnumbered. Progressives have a very weak infrastructure on Capitol Hill when it comes to foreign policy.

As the longtime defense analyst and critic Winslow Wheeler said, “I worked in the Senate and Government Accountability Office for 31 years. I worked for three Republicans and one Democrat. I know the difference between quality staffers and obedient functionaries.” 

“Bernie,” says Wheeler, “has a bunch of non-entities on his defense staff. But, on the bright side, at least Elizabeth Warren has Mandy Smithberger, a diamond in the wasteland.”

And so, Biden’s approach to the war is reflective of a kind of “hegemonic multilateralism” that presidents Obama and Clinton practiced, which is basically the pursuit of global hegemony as set out by the infamous 1992 Defense Planning Guidance authored by Paul Wolfowitz and disguised with rhetorical nods to “humanitarianism” and the importance of multilateral international institutions such as the UN.

But there are serious risks in such an approach. Beebe, who has long experience with Russia, says Biden’s wartime policy reflects a zero-sum mentality that is “something that we’ve accused the Russians of, I think with some justification, for many years.”

The idea that whatever weakens Russia and hurts Putin is good for the US, says Beebe, “makes us susceptible to winding up in strategic situations in which our interests are actually hurt. As the Russian conventional military weakens, one of the dangers is that Russia’s dependence on its nuclear arsenal grows.”Russia has threatened to use nuclear arms in retaliation for the West’s support to the Ukrainian resistance. Photo: Getty / Twitter

Freeman’s assessment is equally bleak.

“The US, our NATO allies, Ukraine, and Russia are now locked into long-term hostility. It is entirely possible that the conflict in Ukraine’s east and south, like that between India and Pakistan in Kashmir, will sustain warfare for decades to come. If so, there will be a constant danger of an outbreak of hostilities on Europe’s eastern frontiers and of escalation to direct conflict between Russia and the United States, including a possible nuclear exchange,” he said.

“Given the absence of any serious diplomatic dialogue between Washington and Moscow,” said Freeman, “it is far from obvious how such escalation can be prevented.”

This documentary about the historical context of the 2014 Ukraine war has been banned from YouTube and other venues. I just got around to watching it myself last week. I’m posting it here for those who haven’t seen it yet. For those receiving this via email, I think you’ll have to go to my actual blog to be able to click on and view it.

By Lev Golinkin, The Nation, 5/12/22

Late last month, the Joe Biden administration publicly confirmed that a “Disinformation Governing Board” working group had been created within the Department of Homeland Security. The news prompted a flood of concern about the impact of such an Orwellian organ on America.

But there’s no need to engage in hypotheticals to understand the dangers. One has to only consider the past of Nina Jankowicz, the head of the new disinformation board.

Jankowicz’s experience as a disinformation warrior includes her work with StopFake, a US government-funded “anti-disinformation” organization founded in March 2014 and lauded as a model of how to combat Kremlin lies. Four years later, StopFake began aggressively whitewashing two Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups with a long track record of violence, including war crimes.

Today, StopFake is an official Facebook fact-checking partner, which gives it the power to censor news, while Jankowicz is America’s disinformation czar.

If the Biden administration is serious about combating threats such as white supremacy, perhaps it should first reflect on the old Roman question: Who will guard the guardians?

StopFake was founded right after Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan uprising ousted the country’s president and swept a new, US-backed government into power. Formed by professors and students from the Kyiv Mohyla Journalism School, StopFake presented itself as a plucky, grassroots group wielding hard facts and semi-permanent smirks as it shredded Russian propaganda. It gained notoriety by producing slick videos hosted by dynamic disinformation warriors debunking the Moscow lies of the day.

Western reporters—and checkbooks—were paying attention. Shortly after its creation, StopFake began receiving funding from Western governments, including the National Endowment for Democracy—an organization mainly funded by the US Congress—and the British embassy in Ukraine. It was also supported by George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. (StopFake has run numerous episodes that cover Soros but fail to disclose this potential conflict of interest—a violation of basic tenets of journalism.)

Among StopFake’s hosts was Jankowicz, a graduate of Bryn Mawr and the Georgetown School of Foreign Service who was already part of the burgeoning disinformation warrior industry while in Ukraine as a Fulbright Clinton Public Policy Fellow. On January 29, 2017, she hosted StopFake Episode 117, whose lead story dealt with a perennial obsession of Russian propaganda: Ukraine’s volunteer battalions.

These are the dozens of paramilitaries formed in 2014 to fight against Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s Donbas region. From the beginning, Moscow focused on the violent and far-right nature of many of these units.

At the time of Jankowicz’s piece, the Russian press was bristling at Kyiv’s creating a new holiday to honor military volunteers—Moscow commentators depicted this as a celebration of far-right butchers. Jankowicz offered an emphatically different take.

“Volunteer battalions organized throughout the country and they supported weak Ukrainian armed forces and prevented further Russian separatist encroachment. Today the volunteer battalions are part of the official Ukrainian armed forces, overseen by the Defense and Interior Ministries,” she said in her StopFake debunking segment.

“The volunteer movement in Ukraine extends far beyond military service. Volunteer groups are active in supporting Ukraine’s military with food, clothing, medicine, and post-battle rehabilitation, as well as working actively with the nearly two million internal refugees displaced by the war in Ukraine,” she added.

While Janowicz extolled the battalions, an on-screen graphic displayed patches of four paramilitaries: Aidar, Dnipro-1, Donbas, and Azov. All four have a documented record of war crimes, while Azov is an outright neo-Nazi group.

On September 10, 2014, three years before Jankowicz’s warm portrayal of volunteer battalions, Newsweek ran an article titled “Ukrainian Nationalist Volunteers Committing ‘ISIS-style’ War Crimes.” The story, which covered a report by Amnesty International, featured Aidar, one of the battalions lauded in Jankowicz’s segment. According to Amnesty, Aidar fighters amassed a record of “widespread abuses,” ranging from kidnapping and torture to “possible executions.”

Three months later, Amnesty issued an urgent report about Aidar and Dnipro-1—another paramilitary featured in Jankowicz’s segment—blocking food from eastern Ukrainian towns and villages. “Using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime,” Amnesty stated.

(Of course, almost every war crime charged against one side in this conflict has also been charged against the other; Russia has reportedly recently been blocking food in its siege of Mariupol.)

The Donbas Battalion—the third paramilitary in Jankowicz’s segment—is another unit notorious for torture, as documented by the UN, among others. The fourth group, Azov, not only has its own history of war crimes, but is avowedly neo-Nazi; indeed, the Azov patch shown in Jankowicz’s video has a stylized Wolfsangel (the “N” with the sword)—a popular white supremacist rune used by groups like Aryan Nations.

Azov—which is now a premier hub of transnational white supremacy—has been extensively covered by Western media outlets, including by me in The Nation. Its nature was well known by the time of Jankowicz’s 2017 StopFake video. (In a 2020 book, Jankowicz briefly acknowledged Azov is a “far-right group,” but immediately pivoted to portraying them as victims of a Russian hoax.)

During Jankowicz’s tenure with StopFake (her last known episode aired May 21, 2017), the disinformation site continued being touted as a pioneer in combating Russian propaganda. In March 2017, a fawning Politico story heralded StopFake as the “grand wizards” of the anti-fake news ecosystem. It was an ironically prophetic description, given that Jankowicz’s misleading “nothing to see here” report about the battalions turned out to be a mere fraction of what StopFake has done for Ukraine’s far right.

By 2018, StopFake started defending C14, a neo-Nazi gang that conducted horrific pogroms of Ukraine’s Roma. After media outlet Hromadske described C14 as neo-Nazi, one of StopFake’s founders tweeted “for Hromadske, C14 is ‘neo-Nazi,’ in reality one of them—Oleksandr Voitko—is a war veteran and before going to the war—alum and faculty at @MohylaJSchool, journalist at Foreign news desk at Channel 5. Now also active participant of war veterans grass-root organization,” as if the fact that the gang has a veteran somehow precludes it from being neo-Nazi.

In 2020, StopFake defended C14 in a press release. The same year, news broke that C14 was aiding Kyiv police in enforcing Covid quarantine measures; StopFake labeled this fake news, denying C14 is far-right, describing it as a “community organization” instead, and citing C14’s own denial of carrying out anti-Roma pogroms as “evidence” of its innocence.

In reality, C14’s ties to Ukrainian authorities have been verified by Radio Free Europe (US government–run media), among others. By now, even the US State Department classifies C14 as a “nationalist hate group.”

StopFake has also continued defending the Azov Battalion. Last month, StopFake tweeted that the unit—which was formed out of a neo-Nazi gang, uses two neo-Nazi symbols on its insignia, and has been documented as neo-Nazi by numerous Western outlets—“doesn’t profess #Nazi views as official ideology,” labeling stories about Azov and neo-Nazism as fake news.

This is particularly disturbing because in February, Facebook reversed its ban on praising Azov. Facebook had previously banned the Azov battalion’s account as well as posts celebrating the neo-Nazi organization. The reversal is stunning, given the platform’s professed commitment to combating far-right extremism.

It’s unclear whether StopFake played a role in Facebook’s decision to lift its Azov ban, but considering StopFake is Facebook’s official fact-checking partner, it’s hard to believe the group’s track record of whitewashing Azov wasn’t a factor.

The “grand wizards” of battling fake news have even dabbled with Holocaust distortion, downplaying WWII-era paramilitaries who slaughtered Jews as mere “historic figures” and Ukrainian nationalist leaders, while attacking members of the US Congress who had denounced Ukraine’s glorification of Nazi collaborators.

Astonishingly, when Jankowicz herself was quoted in a July 2020 New York Times story about StopFake’s going off the rails, the article failed to disclose the fact that the disinformation expert being quoted used to work with the group.

Painting neo-Nazi paramilitaries with an extensive record of war crimes as patriots helping refugees, all while working with a “disinformation” group that turned out to run interference for violent neo-Nazi formations—that’s the experience Biden’s new disinformation czar brings to the table.