There is Something Rotten under the NATO Narrative.
Despite the great majority of the mainstream Western media’s inattention to the origin and history of the Ukraine conflict going back to the Maidan Revolution and coup in 2014, there are some burning ethical issues regarding the conduct of the Ukrainian government and elements of the Ukrainian armed forces that the American people and their Congress should not ignore.
Ukraine is an ethnically divided nation. Only 60 percent of Ukrainians consider Ukrainian their native language. More than 17 percent consider Russian their native language, and 22 percent consider both Russian and Ukrainian their native language. The large Russian cultural minority is most concentrated in the southern and eastern oblasts (states) of Ukraine, where 60 to 90 percent of voters favor pro-Russian candidates and policies. There is also a small minority of 156,000 Hungarian-speakers concentrated in the Transcarpathian area of western Ukraine near the Hungarian border. Pro-Russian politics are relatively strong in Transcarpathia, about 42 percent, because of Ukrainian Security Services (SSU) attempts at cultural cleansing of language, education, religion, history, statues, and other Hungarian identity. Ukrainian cultural cleansing has also included suppression of Orthodox churches and believers wishing to maintain a connection with the Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow Patriarchate.
The Minsk II agreement of February 12, 2015, between Ukraine, the Russian Federation, Germany, France, and the two Russian-speaking Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk agreed along with a cease-fire that Ukraine would create new laws giving Russian-speakers in the Donbass republics equal language, religious, cultural, and political rights. The cease-fire did not last, although the level of warfare declined. However, Ukraine never implemented any of the agreement. We now know for certain from former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others that Ukraine, Germany, and France, with tacit British and American approval, never intended to implement any of the Minsk II agreement. NATO only used the Minsk II agreement to gain time to build up the Ukrainian Army to later subdue the Donbass and take back Crimea. Moreover, the Minsk II deception and betrayal gravely damaged the credibility of German, French, British, and American diplomacy.
Crimea, by the way, is only about 15 percent Ukrainian, has always been strongly pro-Russian, and requested the Russian Federation to annex it in view of the anti-Russian 2014 presidential coup associated with the violent and murderous Maidan Revolution—over 100 killed, including many security police assassinated by snipers. Most of the Ukrainian troops in Crimea at that time were Crimean Russians and immediately went over to the Russian side. There was no battle for Crimea. The Crimean people and legislature were eager to escape the anti-Russian cultural cleansing of the new Ukrainian government.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, as of June 30, 2021, nearly 14,000 people had been killed in the Donbass War since April 2014. Approximately 4,200 were Ukrainian military personnel, 5,300 were Donbass militia members, and 500 were Russian volunteers. Civilian deaths, which undoubtedly came disproportionately from Donbass’s 90 percent Russian speaking population were at least 3,901. The Ukrainian Army has continued artillery strikes into civilian areas of Donetsk. Although the volume of Ukrainian artillery strikes is now much lower, new NATO weapons have made them more accurate. According to the Donetsk Insider, as of December 22, 2022, total civilian deaths in Donetsk oblast alone now total 5,441, of which 1,091 occurred in 2022.
This Ukrainian Army’s deliberate and continuous shelling of civilian areas raises the level of Ukrainian Army actions from cultural cleansing to ethnic cleansing since its purpose is obviously to terrorize the Russian-speaking cultural majority in Donbass into submission or drive them out of the Donbass. The fact that so many Russian-speaking civilians have been killed by continuing Ukrainian artillery strikes on clearly civilian targets has caused many to term Ukrainian actions in Donbass “ethnic genocide.” This is not on the scale of the ethnic genocide of the Holocaust or the Ottoman Empire genocide of Christians in the early 20th Century, but it nevertheless illustrates the easy evolution from cultural cleansing to ethnic cleansing to genocide.
The following quotes are from a recent brief interview of a top Donetsk military leader by Canadian-American independent journalist Eva Bartlett.
“During my last trip to the Donetsk People's Republic, over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, I joined RT in some reporting. This brief clip, with Artem Zhoga, commander of the Sparta Reconnaissance Battalion, was filmed on NY's eve, at Donetsk airport.”
Bartlett asked Zhoga what he felt was the cause of the ongoing conflict between the Ukrainian government and the Donbass republics.
"What are we fighting against? We are fighting against injustice, against genocide—the genocide of the Russian-speaking population, the dissident population, those who do not think like the nationalists, the Nazis—against this Russophobia that has formed in the Western world.
Against the genocide of the civilian population, because there is no other way to call the enemy's firing on institutions such as the Kalinin hospital, schools, the city center, and the market district.
There is no other way to call it, this is precisely the genocide of the civilian population."
Many of Bartlett’s reports can be found on her Telegram Channel. Eva Karene Bartlett, Reality Theories. One of the few Western journalists to brave reporting from areas under frequent artillery shelling, she also has many interviews on the internet. She is routinely demonized and subject to ad hominem attacks by other journalists who report the dominant false mainstream narratives of the Ukraine War. She is brave, has deep empathy for suffering, fights for truth, and finds no glory in war.
Several weeks ago I reported on her near brush with death when Ukrainian artillery shells hit on a main business street right in front of her Donetsk hotel just as she was departing. Her report covered the dead and maimed civilians in the street. Not pleasant, but it was the truth near at hand.
Yesterday, January 24, she was reporting on Ukrainian rockets that contain petal mines. These small mines, spread by artillery or rocket strikes may look like a flower or toy, but they have maimed 87 civilians in Donetsk since November 28, including four children. One of the elderly victims died in the hospital.
The Ukraine General Staff and its captive media report literally thousands of Russian “atrocities” and “war crimes,” so many and exaggerated that they are obviously part of an ongoing propaganda and Russian smear campaign. They are like a “Joe Biden lie,” too obviously false to be believed by informed and reasonable people and therefore laughable. They are notoriously bad with numbers but prolific at false flags.
There is no longer political freedom or freedom of speech in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky has banned all opposing political parties and closed all opposing media. The Ukrainian SSU in now persecuting and trying to destroy the Ukrainian Orthodox Church because of its historical connections to the Russian Orthodox Church. It is trying to replace it with a church with a stronger Ukrainian identity and “new Ukrainian values”—which are not as Biblically conservative as those of the Russian Orthodox Church. Joe Biden actually helped facilitate this church conflict in September 2018. Ukraine is now so dependent on the United States that Zelensky’s political choices must be framed within U.S. government agendas and support.
As point man in Ukraine for the Obama Administration in 2013 and 2014, VP Joe Biden was also heavily involved in backing the anti-Russian Maidan Revolution and coup that started the Donbass conflict and led to Crimean annexation by Russia in 2014. His present Under Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, and his National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, were also heavily involved in backing the coup, which George Soros, the CIA, British MI6, and the U.S. State Department helped organize and fund. The ultra-nationalist, anti-Russian groups that Artem Zhoga referred to as “Nazis” in his quote—The Svoboda (Freedom) Party, Right Sector, and the terrorist Azov Regiment (now part of the Interior Security Ministry and associated with the SSU) still exist, and although they are no more than a 15 percent political minority, wield disproportionate influence on Ukrainian policy on cultural, language, and ethnic issues. Their political and war policy influence on Zelensky is undoubtedly very strong.
Should the U.S. support Ukrainian cultural cleansing, ethnic cleansing, and violence against the Russian and Hungarian speaking minorities in Ukraine? The answer should be obvious to most American voters and to the U.S. Congress.
Despite extremely misleading Ukrainian, NATO, and U.S. propaganda, the war is not going well for Ukraine. According to prominent military analyst and author, retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor, the Ukrainian armed forces have lost 122,000 dead and another 35,000 missing and presumed dead, totaling 157,000. By comparison, Russian losses may be somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000, which is high but only about 1/8 of Ukrainian losses. This is mostly because of superior Russian artillery numbers, munitions, maintenance, durability, arms industry production, and military tactics. Moreover, most of the Ukrainian Army’s artillery, anti-aircraft weapons, tanks, armored cars, and munitions have been destroyed by the Russians. A huge percentage of the weapons the U.S. has sent them wound up on the arms black-market and in the hands of our enemies. Russian Aerospace Forces have gravely damaged Ukraine’s electrical grid and transportation system and thus the Ukrainian economy. One hundred of the best German and American tanks may prolong the war a bit and increase casualties but not change the outcome.
A foolish U.S. escalation could result in humiliation, tragedy, and further and more dangerous escalations rather than victory.
U.S. foreign policy toward Russia is at least 30 years out-of-date. Perhaps we should put aside our false narratives and demonization strategy and seek to understand the Russians. Understanding rather than false narratives and propagandized media and politics is what is needed for a just and beneficial peace that honors freedom, good will, and mutual prosperity—and avoids World War III.
“Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.” Proverbs 28:13 ESV