THE TWISTING OF REALITY TILL FALSENESS. THE SPREADING OF LIES

Let’s start from the beginning. In February 2014, there was a coup in Ukraine which overthrew the legitimately elected president of the Ukrainians, Viktor Yanukovych. It was a violent coup, preceded by armed riots, a full-fledged uprising against the constitutional order in which the forces of order found themselves overwhelmed, unable to impose or restore the rule of the law, with deaths among its members and among the rebels. This subversive violence, as is known and notorious – although some strive to cover it up – was promoted by the United States and sponsored and applauded by the European Union, by its leaders and by the vast majority of its media, not to forget their economic elites; there was business.

The misdeed (and I’m keeping the noun small and restrained) develops characteristics of organized crime when the legitimate president, Yanukovych, despite his efforts to stop the violence by offering to advance elections – within three months – and leave office, did not succeed in his efforts, consummating thus the plotted coup d’état. But this was only the beginning of the tragedy.

The uprising, known by the Ukrainian name of Maidan – literally meaning square – referring to Kyiv’s Independence Square, where the riots were largely concentrated, actually began in November 2013, although its antecedents and roots are very previous. Although we have already pointed out the promoting foreign powers, they would not have achieved their purposes without the ultranationalist groups they found there and eagerly supported, neo-Nazis of different denominations (Azov Battalion, Aidar, Kraken, among others), nostalgic for the Nazi leader Stepan Bandera[i], encouraging and financing them, converging the interests of these to install a regime like the one currently existing in Ukraine, with the interests of the US and its allies, to expand its political-military (NATO, arms industry) and economic (commercial, industrial and financial) power.

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[i] The «banderosvski spirit» is rather a neo-Nazi ideology founded by Stepan Bandera, a historical figure who participated in the 40’s in the Nazi holocaust, practiced on the Poles and Ukrainians. In 1929 Bandera joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), where he quickly rose to various positions and in 1933 he was already a regional head and commander of the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO). Garcia Waiter, Julio; The Euromaidan, 04/21/2022; Posted on Rebellion.org.

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The consequences of the coup, it is well known, have been various, both internally and externally. Related to each other. Very briefly, as far as this article is concerned, the illegal and illegitimate regime change brought with it the persecution and oppression of the Russian-speaking population of the country, a minority of approximately one third of its total inhabitants, as well as everyone who dissent from discriminatory measures or violations of human rights.

The attacks are open and brazen, rhetorical and material. We have some examples of the former in one of the famous speeches by Petro Poroshenko, president elected after the coup, when in October 2014, comparing the future of Ukrainian children with respect to what he called «theirs” – referring to those of the Russian minority – he blurted out, among other nice things: “Our children will go to schools and kindergartens while yours will hide in basements!”. And so it has been, indeed, for those children and also for their elders.

Poroshenko’s government and then Zelensky’s, with their army and paramilitaries, have not stopped bombarding civilians[ii] in dissident regions.

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[ii]   As @nsanzo wrote for Slaviangrad.es magazine, the Ukrainian government had done everything possible to keep its word. See in Poroshenko keeps his word: the children of Donbass do not go to school; Slaviangrad.es, 3/23/2015.

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Take note now for what I will say later, that it was the Ukrainian nationalists themselves, with the country’s institutions already in their power or dominated by them, who removed Russian-speaking people from the condition of Ukrainian nationals, even denying them the corresponding demonym.

According to UN figures, from the start of the Euromaidan to February 24 of this year, when the Russian government’s special operation began, approximately 14,000 people died from the Ukrainian violence, many of whom were children and adolescents. Some of the cruelest episodes occurred in Odessa, when a fanatical crowd drunk with nationalism attacked citizens opposed to the regime, who, faced with the brutality of that mass, took refuge, to their misfortune, in a building belonging to a trade union group set in fire by those bigots, thus killing, burned or asphyxiated, more than 40 of their victims, killing still others when trying to escape from the fire.

As I have pointed out before, the persecution or repression was not limited to the Russian-speaking minority but to anyone who dissented, generalized and extended throughout the country. “If you declared ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ and your target responded ‘Glory to Ukraine!’, it was considered great. If he didn’t respond, he was suspicious. If the answer was to go for a walk or Ukraine could go to hell, you lost your job or they brought you to the police for refusing to respond favorably, and sometimes the police couldn’t help but open inquiries, as if, out of nowhere, crime of treason was treated. Then, if the victim didn’t come to his senses fast enough, the secret services might intervene, and the fool would have to sign a confession, recantation, or plan for improvement”[iii].

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[iii]   Dreizin, Jacob, A Lesson from Ukraine on Revolution; America Greatness, July 18, 2020; https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/18/a-lesson-from-ukraine-on-revolution/.

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Tyranny advanced rapidly, reminiscent of what happened in the early stages of Nazism in the 1930s: wild mobs, masked individuals, silencing all open dissent, in the capital in a matter of weeks, in a few other major cities in a couple of months. It was mostly on a small scale: bullying, vandalism, a few broken faces, a few shots, a body here and a body there. The police acted as if nothing was happening, not because they agreed, but because that was what was expected of them[iv].

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[iv]   Half of the country felt that the nation was volatilizing from its bases, it was not just a feeling resident in the Donbass or in other regions with a majority linked to Russia. See Dreizin, J., op. cit.

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The cruel episode to which I have referred before, against that group of protesters in Odessa, mostly young people, has very probably been the point of no return.

Keep in mind that this city had a “Russian” majority, people who, as in so many other parts of the country, shared their language, origin, culture, and historical ties with Russia[v]. Until then «the Ukrainian minority of Odessa and the majority of the non-Ukrainian populations had thrown insults and a few bottles at each other», but the fanatics and violent football fans transferred from Kyiv «under the supervision of a few fascist gang leaders» changed the equation[vi].

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[v]   Remember that Odesa was, as such, founded by the Russians.

[vi]   See Dreizin, J., op. cit.

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Point of no return and of total and open aggression, now with military weapons, with the army and the national guard, without the slightest objection or containment, bombarding the civilian population opposed to the regime; all this, as I have said, promoted by the United States, with the obedient help of the European Union.

The repression – it must be insisted on – was not only political and armed, but cultural (prohibition of the use of one’s own language, denial of Russian cultural ties or heritage) and ethnic (persecution for the Russian origin of the population). The diplomatic attempts made by Russia and the affected minority itself – the Minsk agreements – failed due to the manifest non-compliance on the part of the Ukrainian regime (Minsk I) and the resilient refusal to reach a new agreement, also on the part of Ukrainian[vii].

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[vii]   With the dishonorable passivity of two of the guarantor States, France and Germany.

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The very serious acts perpetrated by the Kyiv regime after the 2014 coup d’état are subsumable in international laws that provide for and punish genocide and crimes against humanity, against the Russian minority in Ukraine. According to the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide[viii], «genocide is understood as any of the acts mentioned below, perpetrated with the intention of totally or partially destroying a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

a) Killing of members of the group;

b) Serious injury to the physical or mental integrity of the members of the group;

c) Intentional submission of the group to conditions of existence that will lead to its total or partial physical destruction;

d) (…)”[ix] .

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[viii]   [A/RES/260 A (III)], December 9, 1948.

[ix]   Art. II of the Convention.

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It is especially relevant, for the purposes of this article, the literal of art. III of the Convention, which in imperative terms provides for the punishment not only for the direct perpetrators of genocide but also for those who directly and publicly incite to commit it[x].

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[x] «c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide”.

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Not a few media outlets have been expressing their understanding, if not encouragement and even harangue, to the Kyiv regime, against what they usually call separatists or rebels to refer to the opposition Russian minority, which did nothing but to defend their rights and freedoms against the aggressor, a defense for which they were – and are, of course – legitimized to take up arms.

It is worth remembering in this regard the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights when it proclaims that it is «essential that the rights of man be protected by a regime of law, so that man is not compelled to resort to the supreme recourse of rebellion against tyranny and oppression”. It is to this rebellion that the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine has been compelled.

For this reason, the Western media, the vast majority of them, in addition to their political class, are also responsible, to a greater or lesser extent, for the international crimes committed by the Ukrainian government and its conspicuous instigators, the US and the NATO and EU countries. It has not only been the censorship and (illegal) closure of the Russian media, but the propaganda, with lies and silence, carried out by those media.

So their responsibility has not been limited to violating the right to information and cooperating in curtailing freedom of expression, but, as I have pointed out, to a certain complicity in the commission of international crimes.

To the previous behaviors would still have to be added others, also criminal in International Law, some of which can be qualified as crimes against humanity and others as war crimes, equally attributable to the successive governments of Ukraine after the coup d’état. I will only put some well-known cases:

• The use of civilian installations, with civilians, as a shield of war; One of the most publicized by the Western press was the bombing of the Mariupol maternity hospital, used by the Ukrainians militarily while they were holding medical personnel and patients; remember the young mother, Maria, whose images with wounds and bandages went around the world when the Russian offensive against the city of Mariupol began: it was she herself who was in charge of recounting, in the interview by Giorgio Bianchi[xi], how she and others were used not only as human shields, but also as extras (she was the involuntary protagonist) in a scenario set up by the military and the Azov battalion for Ukrainian propaganda.
• In a similar way, using civilians as a shield, was what happened at the Azov steel plant, on the outskirts of Mariupol itself, until they were finally evacuated and the fighters were taken prisoner.
• Another case, also widely publicized, was that of the massacre of civilians in Bucha, falsely attributed to the Russian army, committed against the inhabitants of that city, retaliated against by the Ukrainian military under the pretext that they were «collaborators»[xii].

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[xi]   «Pregnant lady from shelled Maternity Ward in Mariupol speaks about media manipulation [with audio]», https://youtu.be/3R5x2j-nJsQ; (If the video of the interview had been removed from You Tube, it can be seen on other platforms, such as Odysee).

[xii]   In addition to witnesses who have denied the Western propaganda version, see Scott Ritter’s explanations, one of them at https://t.me/ancreport/6572; and that of Richard H. Black, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVf1RbJ51rY (the original video appears to have been removed from You Tube, the one at this link is from a user who has managed to replace it).

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With the bombing of civilian populations, Zelensky and company commit crimes against humanity and war crimes every day.

The conducts that qualify as crimes against humanity were initially defined in art. 3 of the UN Security Council Resolution S/RES/1955 (1994)[xiii], later incorporated into the Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome, July 17, 1998), in its article 7. They are defined as «Any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population and with knowledge of such attack:

a) Murder;

b) Extermination;

(…)

e) Imprisonment or other serious deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental norms of international law;

f) Torture;

g) Rape (…) or other sexual abuse of comparable severity;

h) Persecution of a group or community with its own identity based on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious reasons, (…)

i) Forced disappearance of persons;

(…)

k) Other inhumane acts of a similar nature that intentionally cause great suffering or seriously threaten physical integrity or mental or physical health»

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[xiii]   From November 8, 1994.

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As regards war crimes, I refer to the 1949 Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, especially its rules on the treatment of prisoners[xiv] and responsibility[xv] for the treatment given to them. In this regard, the Convention stipulates that the responsibility lies with the State and not with the individuals or troops that have captured them, independently, of course, of the individual responsibilities that may exist; The torture and murders suffered by the Russian prisoners in the hands of the Ukrainian military or persons subject to the Ukrainian authority, are, therefore, the responsibility of their rulers, who, therefore, must purify responsibilities, penalizing the perpetrators, accomplices, concealers, necessary collaborators, apologists or inciters.

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[xiv]   Prisoners of war must be treated humanely in all circumstances. Any unlawful act or omission on the part of the Detaining Power, which results in the death or seriously endangers the health of a prisoner of war in its power, is prohibited and shall be considered a serious breach of this Agreement. In particular, no prisoner of war may be subjected to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of whatever nature, which are not justified by the medical treatment of the prisoner concerned, and which are not for his or her good. Likewise, prisoners of war must be protected at all times, especially against any act of violence or intimidation, against insults and public curiosity.

Retaliatory measures against them are prohibited. (art. 13).

[xv]  Article 12.

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The serious situation of the rights to be informed and to freedom of speech – remember, essential rights – routinely violated by those who should be their main defenders, the media and, in particular, journalists, has prompted many citizens who are not neither journalists nor reporters, to dedicate themselves to it: to inform and exercise freedom of speech.