Российские СМИ, по словам бывшего генсека Союза журналистов России Игоря Яковенко, превратились в оружие госпропаганды. Силу этого оружия испытывает сейчас на себе Украина. http://dw.de/p/1Bhva

of course > http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26769481

It's ruSSia FSB and GRU plus few local useful idiots

ruϟϟian crimes in Ukraine - The Deportation and Fate of the Crimean Tatars - http://www.iccrimea.org/scholarly/jopohl.html

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis" - Dante Alighieri

die in hell ruSSian nazi  

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/03/21/where_the_fascists_are_122017.html

Where the Fascists Are

By Cathy Young - March 21, 2014

The claim that last month’s democratic revolution in Ukraine was actually driven by ultra-right extremists, fascists, or even “neo-Nazis” has been a staple of Kremlin propaganda. It is also echoed by Western pundits who think that Vladimir Putin is getting a bum rap and the United States is backing the bad guys in this conflict. It is true that far-right nationalists are a troubling, though by no means dominant, presence on Ukraine’s political scene and a potential problem for the new leadership’s quest for European integration. But the cries of “fascism” from Moscow and its apologists are breathtakingly hypocritical, considering the Putin regime’s entanglement with far-right, ultranationalist and, yes, fascist elements at home and abroad.

It’s hard to gauge the actual extent of extremist involvement in the Maidan protests, which began in late November in response to Yanukovych’s rejection of a European Union trade deal. At the start of February, Vyacheslav Likhachev, a Russian Jewish journalist and board member of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, estimated that “radical nationalists” made up about one percent of the protesters. On one occasion in the early days of the “Euromaidan,” a notorious hatemonger, poet Diana Kamlyuk, took advantage of an open microphone night to make overtly racist and anti-Semitic remarks; but Likhachev stressed that this was an isolated, widely condemned incident, and that the rallies featured prominent Jewish speakers as well as Jewish religious and cultural events.

As tensions between protesters and riot police escalated, the radicals took on a larger role—particularly Right Sector, a paramilitary group some view as bordering on neo-Nazism because of its admiration for World War II-era Ukrainian nationalist, onetime Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. (While Bandera’s record on anti-Semitism is a matter of some dispute, his followers unquestionably committed atrocities toward Poles, Russians, Jews, and others; by any objective reckoning, he was certainly more terrorist than freedom fighter.) Right Sector has made some effort to improve its image: its leader, Dmitro Yarosh, has met with the Israeli ambassador in Kiev to assure him that the group strongly opposes anti-Semitism and xenophobia. Yarosh and other militants have also praised Jewish fighters on the Maidan. Still, concerns about their influence justifiably remain.

Another alarming factor is the nationalist party Svoboda (“Freedom”), whose head, 45-year-old Oleg Tyahnibok, has a history of anti-Semitic and racist comments—though he has tried to reinvent himself as a moderate. Svoboda has about 8 percent of the seats in Ukraine’s parliament; thanks to the deal brokered by Germany and France before Yanukovych’s resignation, it also holds four of the twenty posts in the interim government, including that of Minister of Defense. The party’s attempts to shed its thuggish reputation have not been entirely successful; on March 18, three Svoboda parliament members threatened and assaulted the chief of Ukraine’s TV Channel 1, angered by what they regarded as the station’s pro-Russian slant, and forced him to write a statement of resignation. The incident, which caused near-universal outrage, is now being investigated.

The good news, as historian Timothy Snyder points out in The New Republic, is that current polls show Svoboda getting 2 or 3 percent of the vote in May’s presidential election. And some reports on the right-wing menace in Ukraine clearly overstate the party’s impact. Thus, a March 13 column in the Los Angeles Times and a March 18 Foreign Policy article pointed to Svoboda’s successful push for a law making Ukrainian the country’s sole official language—without mentioning that Interim President Oleksandr Turchynov later vetoed the bill.

Meanwhile, in Russia, nationalists in the upper echelons of power include such prominent figures as former NATO envoy and current Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who first entered the political scene as a leader of the nationalist bloc Rodina (Motherland). In 2005, Rodina was banned from Moscow City Council elections for running a blatantly racist campaign ad: the clip showed three Azerbaijani migrants littering and insulting a Russian woman and Rogozin stepping in to tell them off, and ended with a slogan promising to “clean up the trash.” While Rogozin is no fan of America, he has some peculiar American fans: in 2011, a glowing tribute that concluded with, “Let’s hope that Rogozin rises to power in Russia—and for the rise of a ‘Rogozin’ in America and elsewhere throughout the West,” appeared on the “white identity” website, Occidental Observer.

Rodina co-founder and Rogozin’s erstwhile rival for its leadership, Sergei Glazyev, most recently served as Putin’s man in charge of developing the Customs Union—the alliance with Kazakhstan and Belarus that was also to include Ukraine. Like Rogozin, Glazyev has attracted the sympathetic attention of far-right kooks in the Unites States—in this case, Lyndon LaRouche: in 1999, LaRouche Books published an English translation of Glazyev’s book, “Genocide: Russia and the New World Order,” with a foreword by LaRouche himself.

But Rogozin and Glazyev are mere peons compared to self-style “traditionalist” intellectual Alexander Dugin, a writer and professor at Moscow State University. In his New Republic article, Snyder identifies Dugin—“an actual fascist”—as “the founder of the Eurasian movement,” the ideology that provides the foundation for Russia’s expansion into Ukraine.

In fact, Dugin—who, in his writings in the 1990s, was quite explicit about the fascist and even Nazi roots of his views, asserting that true fascism had never been tried and would be born in Russia—is more than just the father of an idea. As documented in a 2009 article by Ukrainian scholar Andreas Umland (who has also chronicled the rise of extremism in Ukraine), Dugin has extensive, close ties to Russia’s political elites and the pro-Kremlin media. A number of high-level officials and journalists have served on the leadership council of his organization, the International Eurasian Movement. Dugin’s admirers include Ivan Demidov, a TV producer who at one point, in 2008, headed the ideology section of the ruling party, United Russia.

Dugin’s frightening rhetoric has been on display in recent days. After a massive antiwar demonstration in Moscow on March 15, he wrote on his Facebook page, “This is no longer simply filth, ideological opponents, or dissenters, but a parade of traitors. Today, they have risen against the Russian people, against our State, against our history. They are defending murderers, occupiers, Nazis, and NATO. All the participants in this march of the fifth column have been condemned—by history, by the people, by us.” Then, he quoted a line from a famous wartime poem: “As many times as you see them, kill them.” (The poem, of course, referred to German invaders.)

If those are the ideologues, it’s hardly surprising that some of Russia’s foot soldiers in the conflict with Ukraine are of the brownshirt type. Most notable among these is Pavel Gubarev, the pro-Russian activist in Donetsk who briefly proclaimed himself the city’s “People’s Governor” and raised a Russian flag over the local government building. A few days after Gubarev gained notoriety, it was revealed that he had once been an activist in the militant group Russian National Unity, whose emblem bears an unmistakable resemblance to the swastika. (Photos of Gubarev in uniform made the rounds of the Internet.) And, shortly before the March 16 referendum, the Kremlin’s man in Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, used a blatant anti-Semitic code in a televised speech, referring to Ukraine’s new leadership as “an unnatural union of cosmopolite oligarchs who have grown rich plundering the Soviet era’s heritage, and neo-Nazis.” Of course, “cosmopolite” was once an infamous Soviet euphemism for “Jew”—and it is no accident that the best-known business oligarch allied with the new government is a Jewish man, Ihor Kolomoysky.

Then there’s the matter of the “international observers” Moscow invited to the referendum in Crimea—a veritable freak central of neo-Stalinists and far rightists including Belgian neo-Nazi Luc Michel, Hungarian right-wing extremist Bela Kovacs, and Serbian-born American paleocon and war crime apologist Srđa (Serge) Trifković. Another observer, Polish parliament member Mateusz Piskorski, who praised the referendum in a Russia Today interview, is a former neo-Nazi in a very literal sense. As one of Poland’s leading newspapers, Gazeta Wyborcza, reported in 2006, in the late 1990s and early 2000s Piskorski published a magazine called Odala, which openly praised Nazi Germany, interviewed Holocaust deniers, and proclaimed that “considering the decay and multi-racialism of the West,” a united Slavic empire was “the only hope for the White Race.” Piskorski now belongs to Dugin’s Eurasian Movement.

Umland’s 2009 article on Dugin and creeping Russian fascism ended with the eerie prediction: “Should Dugin and his followers succeed in further extending their reach into Russian high politics and society at large, a new Cold War will be the least that the West should expect from Russia, during the coming years.” Perhaps fascism has indeed won—and not in Ukraine.

Vilaly Churkin’s Mendacious Claim that Most Countries Recognize Crimea’s Integration with Russia
Posted on April, 7, 22:52 0 Comments Tags: Crimea, Russia, UN   

March 6, 2014 Russian news agency «RIA Novosti» published report of Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin in which he said that Crimea’s intergration with Russia is a geopolitical act and the majority of the countries recognise it de facto or de jure.

Чуркин

«It is a new geopolitical fact: Crimea has become a part of Russian Federation. No need to launch an energetic campaign here, I think. The majority of countries recognise Crimea’s integration with Russia “de-jure” or “de-facto”, » — he said, answering the question of a Russian television channel NTV journalist about the further steps in word community’s recognition of Crimea.

However, only 11 countries (among them North Korea, Syria, Sudan and Zimbabwe and Russia) voted against «Ukraine Territorial Integrity» resolution during the U.N. General Assembly session.

That is why the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine representatives called the claims of Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin that the majority of countries recognise Crimea’s integrity with Russia «another nonsense and disinformation».

«Either Russian officials are horrible at maths or it is a distortion of facts for the sake of wishful thinking. The real state of affairs was clarified by the voting for “Ukraine Territorial Integrity” resolution during the U.N. General Assembly session on March 27. 47 countries contributed to the creation of the resolution. 100 countries supported the resolution. Only 11 countries (including Russia) — voted against it, » — stated Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine representative.

Униан

«Also, this voting “against” by the tiny group of 10 countries does not mean that all those countries recognised the annexation of Crimea by Russia de facto or de jure. We all remember words of Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko (sadly, his country voted “against” the resolution), when he said Belarus has no plans for legal relations with Crimea, » — he added.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also notes «earlier we heard from Mr. Churkin that “93 countries in the U.N. did not support territorial integrity of Ukraine.” That is another nonsense. According to the article 18 of the U.N. Chapter, the decisions of the general assembly are made by the present delegations that vote (“for” or “against”). Therefore, the countries that did not vote when the Ukrainian resolution was reviewed or “abstained”, passed their votes to the majority, for the resolution, thus supporting it, » — underlined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine representative.

Currently there are 193 countries members of the U.N. Among the internationally recognised countries, only the Holy See and State of Palestine are not members of the U.N., among partially recognised: SADR, Taiwan, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Republic of Kosovo, Sovereign Military Order of Malta and Northern Cyprus.
http://www.stopfake.org/en/vilaly-churkin-s-mendacious-claim-that-most-countries-recognize-crimea-s-integration-with-russia/

The Russian TV channel NTV distorted information given by Ukrainian channels, using it out of context
Posted on April, 10, 14:53 0 Comments Tags: Russia, Russian propaganda, нтв   

The Russian NTV program “Today. Summary program“ from April 6, 2014 showed footage of two Ukrainian television programs -” TSN. Weekly “(TV channel “1 +1″) and “Agents of influence” (TV channel “NTN”) in an altered context, and called them “ruthless examples of anti-Russian propaganda”, writes Mediasapiens.

In particular, NTV used the story of “The war of provocations»” (“Agents of influence”), which was reporting on the creation of Russian propaganda. A NTN journalist made a staged footage of alleged non-existent characters, the residents of the Rostov region of Russia, who supposedly desire to be part of Russia. Based on a fictitious story the journalist explained how Russian TV channels engage in an information war against Ukraine.

After a fictional story, the author of “War of provocations” explains (video 4:43): that everything just shown to the audience is solid fiction and all characters of the staged scenes are just actors. They demonstrate the mechanism of information warfare. “Similar stories, but with the opposite content are regularly shown on Russian channels,” concluded the author in the story.

However, the Russian channel NTV showed the footage story “War of provocations” without such an explanation, describing it as propaganda against Russia.

НТН_1

НТН_2

Also the Russian channel distorted the context of the story of Olga Malchevska (TSN.Weekly) on the situation in Crimea after the annexation. The TSN reporter used black-and-white footage when talking about the shortage of goods and delays in payments on the peninsula.

NTV showed a part of the story, without explaining the context, calling it a lie and information war against Russia.

ТСН_1

ТСН_2

In addition, NTV is trying to convince its audience that Ukrainians used to receive information about the events from Russian TV channels, which now stopped broadcasting on the territory of Ukraine. However, Russian media had minor ratings in Ukraine. In early February, аccording to ITC, “NTV.World” was on the 25th place of the rating (0.09%) with an audience share of 0.46%. At the same time, most viewers preferred the Ukrainian TV channel “Inter”, which rating is 2.32% and an audience share of 11.43% (18-54, all Ukraine).

However, in the same program, Russian journalists reported false information about an alleged attempt by the Ukrainian side to sell aid of the U.S. military on the Internet (video 8:50). This is information we have already refuted. The same news program reported a “famous” story about a Kharkiv professor who was allegedly fired from the V,N. Karazin Kharkiv National University for wanting to speak in Russian. We have also refuted that story.

Source: osvita.mediasapiens.ua

http://www.stopfake.org/en/the-russian-tv-channel-ntv-distorted-information-given-by-ukrainian-channels-using-it-out-of-context/

Russian Channel One Lies About Events in Donetsk, Using a Month Old Video
Posted on April, 8, 13:24 0 Comments Tags: Pavel Gubarev, Ukraine, Донецк, Киев   

Today «Channel One» published news and video about fights in Eastern Ukraine. They informed that the police of Donetsk promised to use no force, quoting Roman Romanov, whom they introduced as the chief officer of the Head Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Donetsk Oblast.

Первый канал

However, Roman Romanov was fired from this position a month ago. The official web site of the Ministry of Internal Affairs posted this information back on March 6.

МВС

Also, on the video presented by «Channel One» one can notice Pavel Gubarev sitting behind Romanov’s back, while Gubarev is currently held in pretrial detention centre in Kiev, therefore there was no way for him to be present in the regional state administration building in Donetsk on April 7.

губарев

Same video dated March 3 and shot from a different perspective can be found on YouTube.

http://www.stopfake.org/en/russian-channel-one-lies-about-events-in-donetsk-using-a-month-old-video/

The TV channel “Russia 1″ accused Ukrainian media of lies, which were distributed earlier by the Russian NTV channel
Posted on April, 12, 02:04 0 Comments Tags: Mykolaiv, Rossia, Russia 1, нтв, петков, петхов   

An enchanting story of the “German citizen” Andrei Pethov (according to the Russian NTV channel) or Petkov (according to “Russia 1″) is gaining momentum.

A day before yesterday, StopFake wrote about the story, which was released on the NTV program “PE”. In the story it is claimed that Pethov brought 500,000 Euros for the needs of Maidan in Mykolaiv. The presenters also claimed that he cooperated with the Right Sector and was organizing a group of 50 EU citizens. Their task supposedly was to cripple the maximum number of peaceful protesters, so that they could no longer take part in protests. The story also claimed that later Pethov allegedly changed his views as he was disappointed with the people from Maydan.

This story is still online on NTV. Here’s the link: http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/895357/

5
Here is the “exclusive interview” of Pethov to NTV: http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/895499/

4

Here are two stories together on YouTube in case NTV does decide to remove the fake stories from its site:

As has been written by StopFake, these stories contain a huge amount of outright fabrications and direct inconsistencies with the story shown by the Russian TV channel “Russia 1″, which also decided to air the report on Pethov-Petkov.

After the news of blatant lies have spread through Ukrainian news resources, the TV channel “Russia 1″ decided to distance itself from their story. However, it reported that the original source of this misinformation was Ukrainian media and not the Russian NTV channel: http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html? id=1469266

6

In fact, Ukrainian media have only described directly conflicting statements in the stories of Russian channels NTV and “Russia 1″, and found inconsistencies in the statements of the Pethov-Petkov, which he had made in an “exclusive interview.”

 

In the first story the NTV presenter and Pethov-Petkov himself said that he brought the money to the Maidan. On the other hand, in the second news story of “Russia 1″ he said, pretending to be surprised, that he was going to Antimaydan and “certainly against the Bandera people.”

 

He allegedly brought money for people who demonstrate against Maidan , although Petkov no longer talks about the amount of EUR 500 thousand (which he mentioned in the NTV story). He only says that ” he collected a little of his own money and decided to make a contribution for the organization of the pacifists camp”. Here he no longer calls himself a German doctor, who has 15 clinics across Germany, as he had done in the NTV story.

 

Also “Russia 1″ is very indignant at the Ukrainian media who called Pethov-Petkov a mercenary, although it was the NTV channel which called him that.

 

Team StopFake again wishes Andrey Petkov-Pethov a speedy recovery and Russian journalists more creativity.

http://www.stopfake.org/en/the-tv-channel-russia-1-accused-ukrainian-media-of-lies-which-were-distributed-earlier-by-the-russian-ntv-channel/

“The Wolf who cried Fascist!” – Pathology of Russian Propaganda against Ukraine, pt. 2
Posted on March, 31, 15:35 0 Comments Tags: fascist, Hitler, Nazi, Russian propaganda, Soviet, Stalin   

Here you can read the second part of Brian Bryttan about Russian Propaganda against Ukraine. The original article can be found here. Also, you can already read the first part.

How Russia ‘fought against fascism’ – from 1920 until 1941

Soviet and Nazi officers

For more than twenty years, Moscow’s closest ties in Europe were with Germany – starting in 1920 when Berlin supplied intelligence about the Polish Army to the Soviets. (And twenty years later, Stalin returned the favor when he had his radio stations in Minsk broadcast signals to the Luftwaffe to guide them to their Polish targets.) Everyone now knows about the secret 1939 Nazi-USSR Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty, but even as late as October, 1940, Stalin was still  negotiating terms to join the Tripartite Pact with Italy, Japan, and Germany.

Karl Radek, fervent Stalinist and one of the authors of the new Soviet Constitution, wrote

    “… only fools could imagine we should ever break with Germany… No one can give us what Germany can.”

 

Berlin needed oil, manganese, wheat – while Moscow needed machine tools, military materials, and equipment for their chemical industry. Soviet-Nazi collaboration extended past economic and into military cooperation, involving such firms as Krupp, Rheinmetall, Junkers aircraft , Walther firearms, and I.G. Farben for toxin chemical research.

Illegal Nazi-Soviet joint military operations were secretly conducted on Soviet territory during inter-war years. They included:

    - Nazi-Soviet tank school at Kama, near Kazan

    - Nazi-Soviet pilot training school at Litebsk

    - Junkers fighter-plane plants at Fili (the largest enterprise of its time)

    - Nazi-Soviet War poison gas and mists plants in Tomka, near Samara

Hoping to improve his relations with Hitler, Stalin returned to Germany Jews who had come to the Soviet Union expecting the promised ‘worker’s paradise’ . For their part, Nazi officers visited Soviet concentration camps to study how the Russians handled a common concern.
nazi-and-soviet-officers

Nazi and Soviet officers

A fascist by any other name…

While still in bed with Hitler, Stalin annexed the Baltics, tore apart Poland and started a war with Finland. Why is this not ‘fascist’ if the Nazis were doing the same thing? And then, did Stalin’s subsequent horrendous acts suddenly stop being ‘fascist’ once Hitler became his enemy?

Back in 2008, Dr. Andreas Umland wrote that describing Russia as ‘drifting to fascism’ was “…crying wolf too early”. Significantly, he went on to add that in assessing Russia’s fate today and in the next years “we should reserve the label ‘fascist’ for only those that indeed deserve this most value-laden term of the 20th century.”

Most value laden?… Are some labels more equal than others?

So just why should we elevate ‘fascism’ to a preeminent position? After all, history is full of horrific cruelties and injustices. And Dr. Umland’s “most value-laden” F-word has served Russia very well for numerous pretexts, including its present invasion of Crimea.

Originally applied to Mussolini, ‘Fascism’ was used to describe a radical authoritarian nationalism. But why should it matter who does it – someone from the ‘right’, from the ‘left’ or little green men in Crimea?

The same media who repeat talking points about “fascism” in today’s Ukraine, never  mention the millions of Ukrainians who gave their lives fighting both ‘fascist’ Nazis and their former allies – the Soviets.

hitler-stalin-2-450x310

(Actually, the Soviets even got the label wrong when they started using it against Hitler. Perhaps if they had correctly defined the Germans as National Socialists (Nazis), the realization that their enemy were also Socialists would have struck a nerve?)

 

Right Sector and Svoboda party

The two most often attacked Ukrainian organizations are the Right Sector and the Svoboda party. Both Svoboda and Right Sector are very minor players on the current political landscape and have no realistic hope of any significant role in the coming government.

The leader of the Right Sector is Dmytro Yarosh, born and raised in the predominantly Russian speaking south-eastern city of Dniprodzerzhinsk. Yarosh was a member of the Young Pioneers and the Countrywide Leninist Communist Youth League  and served two years in the Soviet Army. One of the key forces during the Kyiv Revolution, the Right Sector has many Russian speaking members and has not been associated with any ‘fascist’ or anti-Jewish statements. In his first foreign interview, Yarosh told TIME that while the revolution needs to steer the country into a new direction, not dependent on either the West or East, he understands that any new opposition government is not likely to carve out a place for him and his men.

The Svoboda party was established in 1991 but only within the last four years attained a noticeable profile. Both Svoboda and Right Sector are very minor players on the current political landscape and have no realistic hope of a major role in the coming government. Svoboda members have recently bullied a TV journalist. Svoboda formally says it is not anti-European, nor anti-Russian, nor anti- Jewish but pro-Ukrainian.

Actually, the ‘anti-Semitic’ theme is now being played by Moscow at low volume ever since the chief Rabbi of Ukraine, seconded by every major Ukrainian Jewish organization, issued statements categorically affirming the freedoms Jews have in Ukraine and supporting the new Kyiv government. There are no instances of any Human Rights Watch organization reporting either Jewish or Russian “persecution” in Ukraine.

What the West does not understand about the “right”-ist groups in Ukraine is that they are here because the anti-Imperialist battle is not over, and they are not that frightening. They are certainly not saying “ban all foreigners…or Russians… or Jews” like Right groups in other European countries. What they are saying is it is time to save their culture and society which the Russians destroyed.

it is important to appreciate the reasons why the Svoboda party emerged on the scene so recently. First, they capitalized on the vacuum created when the “Rukh” movement (Yushchenko’s party) started to disappear after Yanukovych’s election. And perhaps more significantly, both Right Sector and Svoboda were part of a nation-wide uprising against the unprecedented centralization and isolation of Yanukovych’s government, under which the entire judicial system had for all intents disappeared, and the entire country was engaged in a deathly struggle with the criminal government.

Once a story gets out, the damage is done.

Today, TV commentators act as if they own this label. CNN ‘experts’ recently took umbrage at comparisons between Putin’s and Hitler’s Crimean and Czechoslovakian adventures. All three commentators were quick to point out Putin had not killed 6 million Jews, nor had he started a world war, so how dare anyone call him a fascist? And yet the very same media regularly labels “fascist” elements in Ukraine (Prof. Steven Cohen called the Kyiv Maidan a ‘fascist rabble’ on CNN).

Commentators from the West who pride themselves on their own Diversity and Tolerance, concluded for viewers that 60% Russian-speakers should de facto have a choice for separation of Crimea – (no one seemed to care what would happen to the remaining 40%  of non-Russians).  Are the ‘experts’ implying that poor dumb Slavs are just not up to the same Western ideals of diversity which their own, more enlightened nations live by? And how condescending, if not outright racist of the media to suggest that?

Once it’s put out there, the damage is done. On March 3 Chritiane Amanpour confrontedCNN’s Wolf Blitzer for his unstudied ‘report’ repeating Russian Ambassador Churkin’s claims that “fascists and anti-Semites” were to blame for Ukraine’s unrest. Mr. Blitzer justified himself that he was merely ‘reporting’ someone else’s statement – but did not issue any correction for the record.

Words have meanings, and labels have consequences. However, when we create a hierarchy of values, and attach a greater emotional significance to terms like “fascism” – this often leads to an automatic reflex, selective outrage and muddies the waters – rather than an honest look.

Hollywood still keeps cranking out dozens of films about Hitler and the Nazis, but when was the last time you saw a movie about Stalin or any of the horrors under the Soviet Union?

    Part 1 examined how the term ‘fascist’ has become almost meaningless today, how Russian ‘antifascists’ are the real ‘fascists’ and anti-Maidan propaganda.

     

By Adrian Bryttan, March 21, 2014

Russian Fiction the Sequel: 10 More False Claims about Ukraine
Posted on April, 14, 15:09 0 Comments Tags: Crimea, fascist, Russian military, Russian propaganda, Ukraine, USA   

“No amount of propaganda can make right something that the world knows is wrong.”
– President Obama, March 26

Russia continues to spin a false and dangerous narrative to justify its illegal actions in Ukraine. The Russian propaganda machine continues to promote hate speech and incite violence by creating a false threat in Ukraine that does not exist. We would not be seeing the violence and sad events that we’ve witnessed this weekend without this relentless stream of disinformation and Russian provocateurs fostering unrest in eastern Ukraine. Here are 10 more false claims Russia is using to justify intervention in Ukraine, with the facts that these assertions ignore or distort.

1. Russia Claims: Russian agents are not active in Ukraine.

Fact: The Ukrainian Government has arrested more than a dozen suspected Russian intelligence agents in recent weeks, many of whom were armed at the time of arrest. In the first week of April 2014, the Government of Ukraine had information that Russian GRU officers were providing individuals in Kharkiv and Donetsk with advice and instructions on conducting protests, capturing and holding government buildings, seizing weapons from the government buildings’ armories, and redeploying for other violent actions. On April 12, armed pro-Russian militants seized government buildings in a coordinated and professional operation conducted in six cities in eastern Ukraine. Many were outfitted in bullet-proof vests, camouflage uniforms with insignia removed, and carrying Russian-designed weapons like AK-74s and Dragunovs. These armed units, some wearing black and orange St. George’s ribbons associated with Russian Victory Day celebrations, raised Russian and separatist flags over seized buildings and have called for referendums on secession and union with Russia. These operations are strikingly similar to those used against Ukrainian facilities during Russia’s illegal military intervention in Crimea in late February and its subsequent occupation.

2. Russia Claims: Pro-Russia demonstrations are comprised exclusively of Ukrainian citizens acting of their own volition, like the Maidan movement in Kyiv.

Fact: This is not the grassroots Ukrainian civic activism of the EuroMaidan movement, which grew from a handful of student protestors to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians from all parts of the country and all walks of life. Russian internet sites openly are recruiting volunteers to travel from Russia to Ukraine and incite violence. There is evidence that many of these so-called “protesters” are paid for their participation in the violence and unrest. It is clear that these incidents are not spontaneous events, but rather part of a well-orchestrated Russian campaign of incitement, separatism, and sabotage of the Ukrainian state. Ukrainian authorities continue to arrest highly trained and well-equipped Russian provocateurs operating across the region.

3. Russia Claims: Separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine enjoy broad popular support.

Fact: The recent demonstrations in eastern Ukraine are not organic and lack wide support in the region. A large majority of Donetsk residents (65.7 percent) want to live in a united Ukraine and reject unification with Russia, according to public opinion polls conducted at the end of March by the Donetsk-based Institute of Social Research and Policy Analysis. Pro-Russian demonstrations in eastern Ukraine have been modest in size, especially compared with Maidan protests in these same cities in December, and they have gotten smaller as time has progressed.

4. Russia Claims: The situation in eastern Ukraine risks spiraling into civil war.

Fact: What is going on in eastern Ukraine would not be happening without Russian disinformation and provocateurs fostering unrest. It would not be happening if a large Russian military force were not massed on the border, destabilizing the situation through their overtly threatening presence. There simply have not been large-scale protests in the region. A small number of separatists have seized several government buildings in eastern cities like Donetsk, Luhansk, and Slovyansk, but they have failed to attract any significant popular support. Ukrainian authorities have shown remarkable restraint in their efforts to resolve the situation and only acted when provoked by armed militants and public safety was put at risk. Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observers have reported that these incidents are very localized.

5. Russia Claims: Ukrainians in Donetsk rejected the illegitimate authorities in Kyiv and established the independent “People’s Republic of Donetsk.”

Fact: A broad and representative collection of civil society and non-governmental organizations in Donetsk categorically rejected the declaration of a “People’s Republic of Donetsk” by the small number of separatists occupying the regional administration building. These same organizations confirmed their support for the interim government and for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.

6. Russia Claims: Russia ordered a “partial drawdown” of troops from the Ukrainian border.

Fact: No evidence shows significant movement of Russian forces away from the Ukrainian border. One battalion is not enough. An estimated 35,000-40,000 Russian troops remain massed along the border, in addition to approximately 25,000 troops currently in Crimea.

7. Russia Claims: Ethnic Russians in Ukraine are under threat.

Fact: There are no credible reports of ethnic Russians facing threats in Ukraine. An International Republican Institute poll released April 5 found that 74 percent of the Russian-speaking population in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine said they “were not under pressure or threat because of their language.” Meanwhile, in Crimea, the OSCE has raised urgent concerns for the safety of minority populations, especially ethnic Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars, and others. Sadly, the ethnic Russians most at risk are those who live in Russia and who oppose the authoritarian Putin regime. These Russians are harassed constantly and face years of imprisonment for speaking out against Putin’s regular abuses of power.

8. Russia Claims: Ukraine’s new government is led by radical nationalists and fascists.

Fact: The Ukrainian parliament (Rada) did not change in February. It is the same Rada that was elected by all Ukrainians, comprising all of the parties that existed prior to February’s events, including former president Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. The new government, approved by an overwhelming majority in the parliament — including many members of Yanukovych’s former party — is committed to protecting the rights of all Ukrainians, including those in Crimea.

9. Russia Claims: Ethnic minorities face persecution in Ukraine from the “fascist” government in Kyiv.

Fact: Leaders of Ukraine’s Jewish as well as German, Czech, and Hungarian communities have all publicly expressed their sense of safety under the new authorities in Kyiv. Moreover, many minority groups expressed fear of persecution in Russian-occupied Crimea, a concern OSCE observers in Ukraine have substantiated.

10. Russia Claims: Russia is not using energy and trade as weapons against Ukraine.

Fact: Following Russia’s illegal annexation and occupation of Crimea, Russia raised the price Ukraine pays for natural gas by 80 percent in the past two weeks. In addition, it is seeking more than $11 billion in back payments following its abrogation of the 2010 Kharkiv accords. Russia’s moves threaten to increase severely the economic pain faced by Ukrainian citizens and businesses. Additionally, Russia continues to restrict Ukrainian exports to Russia, which constitute a significant portion of Ukraine’s export economy.

Source: U.S. Department of State.

In ruϟϟia the MPs prepare law project about  "Great Russian Aryan race" http://argumentua.com/novosti/v-rossii-deputaty-zayavili-o-velikoi-russkoi-ariiskoi-rase

more ruϟϟian aryan here > great photos http://oleg-leusenko.livejournal.com/1010183.html?fb_action_ids=681062035286094&fb_action_types=og.recommends

only ruϟϟian is nazis and chauvinist in E.Europe atm. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrpWbHYBOnc

East Ukraine now is an ideal lesson for postmoderns who doubt the reality of force, coercion, credibility, prestige & sheer, naked power.

Putin’s Libertarians
April 10th, 2014   Submitted by Roman Skaskiw

u-genghis-khan-monumentLast August, I met former Belarusian Presidential candidate Yaroslav Romanchuk at a libertarian conference near Lviv, Ukraine. He was somewhat of a Ron Paul figure, a businessman-turned-politician advocating radical free market reforms in Belarus. The consequences for being a libertarian in or near Russia are much more severe than in the United States. In 1994 he faced pressure: to stay in business he’d have to either join the mafia or join the government. He ended up abandoning the import-export business he had spent years building.

We joked about America’s RT (Russia Today) news service — that the United States government should sponsor a Russian language libertarian channel in Russia and Eastern Europe. The joke, which for us needed no explanation, was that governments can invoke principles of freedom when they undermine a rival government, while simultaneously behaving like a savage tyrant at home. This should not be difficult to understand.

I have been horrified by the libertarian coverage of events in Ukraine. Much of it has been such an uncritical parroting of Kremlin propaganda, so devoid of journalistic integrity, and such a betrayal of libertarian principles, that I can’t decide whether the authors, many of whom I’ve long admired, suffer a bias toward contrarian narratives or are on the Kremlin payroll.

One of the most ridiculous examples is Ry Dawson of rys2sense.com so carelessly echoing the Kremlin’s 70-year-old propaganda of labeling all opposition fascist, that he even called Ihor Kolomoiski a Nazi-worshiping fascist. Kolomoiski is a Ukrainian oligarch and the recently appointed governor of Dnipropetrovsk province. He is also not only Jewish, but the co-founder and president of the European Jewish Union.

Paul Craig Roberts attempted to de-legitimize Ukraine’s protests by praising the now-deposed Yanukovych regime and turning a blind eye to its barbarity. His praise includes the term “human-rights trained Ukrainian police”, this after the police had begun kidnapping injured protesters from hospitals. One such protester, Yuriy Verbytsky, a seismologist from the Geophysical Institute in Lviv and mountain climber was injured in the protests, hospitalized, kidnapped from the hospital, severely beaten, and left in the woods where he froze to death. “Human-rights-trained” police do not strip and humiliate captured protesters in -10 C degree weather.

The corruption and savagery of Ukraine’s police is neither secret nor new. Last summer, police stepped aside during a violent raid against the business interests of opposition politician. The business manager was later assassinated. This sort of corporate raiding has been fairly common, though most victims quietly give up their businesses without a fight. There was also this story of policemen connected to the Party of Regions raping a young woman and going free until a rioters sacked the police station, it was a tragic repeat of a brutal rape-murder that happened the year before, also by politically connected persons who were also released by Ukraine’s “human rights trained” police.

It’s one thing to oppose intervention. I’ve done so myself. It’s another to mischaracterize the barbarity of the Yanukovych regime in an attempt to discredit the uprising against it.

Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace has made the libertarian circuit — lewrockwell.com, the Tom Woods Show, the Scott Horton Show, and of course, RT. He makes a number of ridiculous claims, including the argument that the Russian military already had free reign in Crimea: “How can you annex and invade a territory in which you are already legally present?”

I really don’t know what to make of this. Can anyone help me? I find it equally unlikely that he is this disconnected from reality or that he is deliberately spreading disinformation. Are there other explanations?

The claim is analogous to having US soldiers remove their insignia, don balaclavas, surround and take over Cuban military bases, hi-jack Cuban Naval vessels, kill two Cuban soldiers, threaten civilians, and then claim the aggression is legal because the US military is leasing a military base in Guantanamo Bay by mutual agreement.

Justin Raimondo of Anti-War seemed to make a similar claim and offered this insanely aggressive polemic, against Alexander McCobin of Students for Liberty who offered a very respectful and reasonable criticism of libertarian sympathy toward Putin.

USA Watchdog’s interview with Dmitry Orlov was so over-the-top biased, it seemed like The Onion: “Ukraine is a no-man’s land in the west, and Russian territories in the east. . . . [Western Ukraine] is an insolvent nugget of nothingness.” They repeatedly deleted my comments from the video. Incidentally, if any libertarians want to visit me in the heart of the “insolvent nugget of nothingness,” know that last year Reuters rated Lviv the #1 European City to see now.

I have respected and looked up to some of these authors for a long time. I corresponded with several of them. You’d think they’d consider me an asset. I’m Ukrainian and have lived in Ukraine for two years. I know the people, the culture and the historical context. My libertarian credentials are easily verified. I’ve written for the Mises Institute since 2010, the Daily Anarchist since 2011. I’ve spoken at the Property and Freedom Society and elsewhere. Appealing to them was like speaking to a brick wall. I was either ignored or lectured and scorned for my “blindness.”

Of course, you can accuse me of being biased. I’m Ukrainian, but I think the examples above are so glaring, they demonstrate there’s something strange happening in the libertarian media.

Also, I’ve never taken the Ukrainian nationalist or neo-con interventionist line. I’ve argued against Ukraine joining the EU or NATO, against western military involvement, and that Ukraine might be better off without Crimea and some eastern provinces despite my impression that slim to moderate majorities of these territories want to remain with Ukraine. See more evidence of my views here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Also, I am not alone. I have libertarian friends from Russia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Belarus and all over Ukraine, who, after years of looking to America’s libertarian community as a light of knowledge and inspiration, now feel utterly betrayed.

In the words of my good Russian friend and co-author Dr. Yuri Maltsev:

    I am glad that there is a growing opposition to Putin’s regime in Russia itself. The list of eminent Russian intellectuals against aggression in Ukraine is much longer than those confused libertarians who support “Russian national interests” (Mises and Hayek would detest such an expression).

He has also written:

    There is nothing libertarian in the neo-Stalinist Putin’s regime. Stalinism is an exact opposite of freedom. It is the same as to embrace Hitler just because he disliked FDR. Enemy of my enemy is not necessarily a friend . . . I think that socialists Timoshenko and Yushchenko [the Orange revolution politicians elected after mass protests in 2004] squandered Ukrainian prospects for freedom and prosperity and should be blamed for that, but the alternative (Putin-Yanukovich) proved to be way more disgusting.

A number of Facebook groups have formed in reaction. Here is an interview with a British ex-pat living in Lithuania who formed the group Confused Pro-Putin Libertarians.

Like all propaganda, the Kremlin propaganda regarding Ukraine relies on repetition of a small number of simple ideas. It hurts me to see so much of the libertarian media uncritically parroting them. There are three:

I – Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to secede.

II – The protests are orchestrated by foreign intelligence agencies.

III – Violent Ukrainian Nazis threaten ethnic minorities.

All three of these are wrong, and the last two are deeply hypocritical.

I. CRIMEANS VOTED OVERWHELMINGLY TO SECEDE.

I am all for secession, but what happened in Crimea wasn’t it.

- Over 123% of Sevastopol residents voted.

- A Russian journalist demonstrated she could vote with a Russian passport.

- Pro-Ukrainian activists were kidnapped. So were Ukrainian Journalists.

- International journalists had their equipment seized. There is some evidence that phones, cameras and tablets from Norwegian and Polish journalists were passed to Russia’s intelligence agency, the FSB.

- Russian documentary film makers posted this footage in which they were chased, harassed, threatened and shown the destroyed media equipment of other journalists.

- For the last several weeks, Vice magazine has managed to produce footage of confrontations with masked gunmen bent on secrecy. The “referendum” was shrouded in extreme secrecy.

So somebody please tell Ben Swann that it’s not quite accurate to lead with “Crimea overwhelmingly votes to leave Ukraine for Russia.” Again, I’m all for secession, but this wasn’t it. It was aggression, fraud and annexation.

- The fact that the result was 96% unanimous should be sufficient evidence of fraud. There is historic data on this issue. IRI conducted surveys in Crimea in 2009, 2011 and 2013:

40 to 45% of Crimeans considered their identity to be Russian.
23 to 33% favored joining Russia.
In 2013, 12% rated relations with Russia as one of the top three issues (from a list of 17).
Interestingly, as of 2013, 40% of Crimeans do not use the internet.

One can accuse IRI of being biased, though the study details their methodology. They are also consistent with Ukrainian surveys. The 2001 census, which measured ethnicity, not identity, showed that Crimea was 58% Russian. The census didn’t allow for “Crimean” as did the IRI surveys, hence the discrepancy.

Also, this wasn’t the first referendum in Crimea. During the referendum for Ukrainian independence in 1991, a narrow majority of Crimeans (54%) supported becoming part of independent Ukraine.

So, while the views of the substantial minority should certainly be taken into account, the 96% result is absurd, especially since 30% of Crimeans consider themselves either Crimean-Tartar or Ukrainian.

For what it’s worth, when Ukraine gave up the third largest Nuclear arsenal in the world in 1994, the agreement required Russia and other countries to recognize Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

Part of Putin’s justification for betraying this agreement and annexing (this is the accurate term) Crimea was the protection of ethnic minorities. What would the Putinist libertarians say about the Catholic clergy and Tartars who are now refugees. See also, Ukrainian Catholics experiencing ‘total persecution’ in Crimea. How would Pat Buchanan square these headlines with his fawning coverage of Russia’s Christian values?

What would the cheerleaders of Crimean “secession” say about the recently passed Russian law which goes into effect next month and forbids “Public calls to actions aimed at violating the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation.” So for example, starting next month, if Ukrainians in Russia’s Kuban region, who outnumber Russians, even spoke about secession, they’d face prosecution.

I’d also be curious to hear them comment on the two brutal wars Russia waged to prevent secession of Chechnya in 1994 and 1999. It would distinguish principles from Putinism.

II. THE PROTESTS ARE ORCHESTRATED BY FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES.

Paul Craig Roberts describes the protesters as “pawns” who would “place their country in the hands of the IMF so that it can be looted like Latvia.”

Does he not realize how dramatically higher the standard of living is in Latvia than in Ukraine? The desire for a better life is not a CIA conspiracy.

Remember, I’m against Ukraine joining the EU. I think Ukraine can find greater freedom by embracing its historic role as a borderland, but the preference for EU membership over Russian-puppet kleptocracy is completely rational. Compare any post-Soviet EU nation (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), to any post-Soviet non-EU nation (Ukraine, Belarus) and the difference in quality of life is staggering.

I have no illusions that western intelligence agencies aren’t heavily involved here. I can’t imagine a scenario in which they wouldn’t be. Can you?

It is correct to say that Western intelligence/EU/NATO/globalists/World Bankers have worked to bolster and direct Ukraine’s revolution. It is incorrect to claim they orchestrated a coup.

Consider this historical context:

Somewhere between 3 and 12 million Ukrainians were exterminated by the Soviet Union in a single man-made famine from 1932-1933, and the Great Famine was neither the first nor the last great slaughter of Ukrainians. In western Ukraine, armed resistance to the Soviet Union, arguably the most brutal regime to have ever exited, lasted until 1955 — for a full decade after WWII ended. This was at a time when the United States provided material aid to the Soviet Union, so obviously the resistance was homegrown.

Is it so hard to believe that the inheritors of this legacy are resisting what they perceive as the kleptocracy descended from the Soviet Union which is empowered by a former KGB agent-turned President of Russia?

The evidence for western involvement is as follows:

1) An American-made viral video. I agree. This is troubling. I have criticized the super slick, victimology 101, “I am a Ukrainian” viral video both before and after discovering it was made by American film maker Ben Moses. (What the hell was doing in Kyiv?)

2) $5 Billion dollars. Paul Craig Roberts was technically correct when he stated that $5 Billion has been spend in Ukraine for the highly suspicious purpose of “promoting Democracy.” Stefan Molyneux repeated this figure. Neither of them mentioned it had been spent since 1991. Politifact.com concluded that a direct connection between the $5 billion and the protests is a “distortion.” Their analysis breaks down how the money was spent.

3) Victoria Nuland’s phone call choosing the opposition. I posted it on my blog with commentary. She seems to choose Arseniy Yatsenyuk as her favorite opposition politician. This is troubling because he was then appointed Prime Minister for the interim government which is to work until after elections in May.

This is evidence of foreign powers hi-jacking the revolution, not orchestrating it. From the moment opposition politicians expressed support for the protests, Ukrainians have been circulating memes ridiculing them. Vitali Klitschko was sprayed in the face with a fire extinguisher on Maidan when he attempted to address to protesters. I personally attended the funeral of one of the killed protesters. His fellow protester dedicated almost an entire few-minute eulogy to admonishing the opposition politicians. “It wasn’t for them that we sacrificed,” he said.

It seems obviously that the opposition politicians have been were playing catchup to the protests, rather than being their driving force.

As Ukraine’s new government evolves, keep an eye on Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Yulia Tymmoshenko. In my estimation, those are the favorite candidates of the globalists who want to use Ukraine as a foil against Russia. Curiously, Tymmoshenko is probably also the one favored by Putin, because of previous dealings they had together. I’m happy to see Ukrainians deeply skeptical about both of them.

4) As the title of Paul Craig Robert’s article states: US and EU Are Paying Ukrainian Rioters and Protesters.

His evidence?

    One reader wrote: “My wife, who is of Ukrainian nationality, has weekly contact to her parents and friends in Zhytomyr [NW Ukraine]. According to them, most protesters get an average payment of 200-300 grivna, corresponding to about 15-25 euro. As I additionally heard, one of the most active agencies and ‘payment outlets’ on EU side is the German ‘Konrad Adenauer Stiftung’, being closely connected to the CDU, i.e. Mrs. Merkel’s party.”

    Johannes Loew of the Internet site elynitthria.net/ writes: “I am just back from Ukraine (I live in Munich/Germany) and I was a lot at the Maidan. Most of those people get only 100 grivna. 300 is for Students.”

The wife of an anonymous reader, plus what seems like an expletive-filled pro-Putin website seems like very shaky evidence on which to headline a widely circulated article.

I would not be surprised if somebody was on the payroll of Western intelligence, but there’s little evidence. There’s also a lot of evidence of the sentiment being genuine. How do I know?

My lead software developer traveled to Kyiv every time violence flared up. He, like many Ukrainians, considered it his duty. After major bloodshed started on February 20th, I texted him: “Should I wish you a safe journey?” He texted me back: “You’re late. I’m already on Maidan.”

He owns an SUV and a three-story home where he lives with his wife and two children. We go skiing together. He’s part of Ukraine’s miniscule middle class and not the type of person who’d be motivate by the thirty Euros which the wife of some anonymous reader of Mr. Roberts insists is motivating the protesters. Ridiculous!

You can also read through the profiles of the deceased protesters and find scientists, university lecturers and all sorts of young professionals.

I have also been to maidan numerous times and have enough very close friends among the protesters, friends who confide in me. I don’t doubt that somebody is being subsidized, but it’s not the norm. My friends have been investing their own money in travel, body armor, and days off from work. It was a grass roots protests with people from all walks of society, including women, old people, and at least one insanely courageous 16 year old lying to his mother about his safety while protesters are killed just meters away.

By contrast, the anti-Maidan protests and, more recent, the pro-Russian ones are overwhelmingly (though not entirely) military-aged men. There have been instances of them discussing their pay — raw footage here, and here, and possibly here.

The supposedly spontaneous pro-Russian protesters in the east were heavily armed and took hostages. When in the history of spontaneous, grassroots protests have the protesters taken hostages?

They numbered between dozens and hundreds in Donetsk and Kharkiv whose populations exceed a million, or about 500,000 in the case of Luhansk. Some of the arrested leaders had Russian passports. Also, here.

5) Snipers were hired by the opposition. On February 20th, snipers began killing unarmed protesters deep inside the protest camps raising the death toll to about 100. Until then, violence had been relegated to the area of the barricades facing government buildings.

It seems the evidence for this is a phone call between EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet in which they say that the bullet wounds suffered by the 13 police who were killed are the same as those suffered by the protesters. As far as I know, that’s it.

I posted the conversation with commentary on my blog.

The evidence to the contrary includes the arrest of 12 special policemen, a Russian FSB colonel who admitted to being in Kyiv during the escalation, and apparent photos of SBU agents preparing for the slaughter.

I don’t know what happened, though the preponderance of the evidence seems to suggest either government- or Russian-backed snipers. The importance of this is exaggerated in my opinion. The moral authority of the protesters and illegitimacy of the government was establish long before the bloody escalation on February 20th.

6) The US sponsored anti-government media. I think this one is 100% accurate. The best detailing of this influence I’ve read is from Daniel McAdam’s colleague at the RPIP, Steve Weissman. His article details how much was spent on which media sources. The article is great, though completely incongruous to its title “Meet the Americans Who Put Together the Coup in Kiev.” There’s plenty to criticize in this, but let’s be precise. Sponsoring media is very different from “put[ting] together a Coup.” The article also acknowledges that US foreign policy toward Ukraine “was – and is – only minimally about overthrowing Ukraine’s duly elected government.”

The US’s sponsoring of dissident media is also only half the story. There are also news sources in Ukraine that vigorously promote the Russian perspective.

I would not describe the Tea Party (about which I’ve co-authored a book, incidentally) as orchestrated by Russian intelligence just because RT supports libertarian ideas in the United States, and I would not describe Ukraine’s protests are orchestrated by Western intelligence just because they sponsor news media which promotes democracy, anti-corruption, and measured economic liberalism.

Let’s also discuss the hypocrisy:

In addition to the Russian nationals taking over government buildings in Eastern Ukraine, the whole Yanukovych regime, now-deposed, was much more of a foreign operation than the protests against it, though it was an operation of the Russian FSB. The fact that Russian intelligence is active in all levels of Ukrainian government is common knowledge.

In the context of the protests, Russian media used the same actress in five different locations posing as a citizen concerned about the protests. (Which is your favorite hairstyle?)

Here is a story from the St. Petersburg Times about how the Kremlin employs professional internet propagandists. (Maybe some will visit Daily Anarchist?)

A Russian reporter who was beaten by anti-Maidan hooligans, whom, ironically, he was trying to heroicize, claimed later that he was attacked by Maidan protesters. In February, Russian sponsored news pulled the plug on a Crimean politician mid-sentence when he began talking about the corruption of the now-deposed Yanukovych regime.

I know about very obvious use of provocateurs among the protesters from first hand accounts. Here is a detailed analysis.

Russians also finance, equip, advise and even man separatists movements in Ukraine. Here is a story about the recent arrest of a Russian national.

We libertarians are supposed to be the smart ones, the rational ones. It should not be beyond our capacity to understand that two rival intelligence agencies are at work in Ukraine.

III. VIOLENT UKRAINIAN NAZIS THREATEN ETHNIC MINORITIES

It is wrong to characterize the protests as “violent.” They remained as peaceful as typical Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street protests even after five protesters were killed and dozens kidnapped. It was mostly people singing songs and resisting attempts to remove them from Kyiv’s central square. No stores were smashed or looted despite this being the most expensive commercial real estate in Ukraine. Alcohol was forbidden among the protesters.

On January 16th the Yanukovych government, without following legislative procedure, passed legislation nearly identical to a Russian law which criminalized virtually every form of protest. Protesters began receiving SMSs from their cellular phone companies telling them they’ve been listed as having taken part in illegal mass disturbances. This was a pivotal moment where Ukraine could have either become a Belarus-style dictatorship, or insisted on deposing the government. They made the right decision.

The evidence for the protesters being violent fascists and neo-nazis seems to be photos depicting SS symbols among the protesters and the opposition politician Oleh Tyahnybok. You can find a typical collection of photographs and accusations here, though the guys with the swastika tattoos are Russian, not Ukrainian. The “I’m Ruskie” sweatshirt gives it away. More on that hypocrisy later.

First, realize that for seventy years, the Kremlin’s domestic propaganda has centered on convincing Russians that they are surrounded by Nazis poised to invade, and that the only defense is offense. This propaganda did not end with the Soviet Union. Russia imagines Nazis everywhere, and when it can’t find them, it creates them:

- In 2002, Johan Backman, a spokesman for the Finnish Anti-Fascist committee accused the Foreign Ministry of Finland of Russophobia and racism. He had earlier claimed that during WWII, tiny Finland planned an ethnic cleansing of Russians in Karelia in order to create a Finno-Ugric superpower, possibly stretching as far as the Ural Mountains. He is very popular on Russian television. In March 2009, the newspaper Eesti Ekspress reported a link between him and the well-known Finnish neo-nazi Risto Teinonen, both of them being connected to the alleged former KGB agent Vladimir Ilyashevich.

- In 2007, Estonians were accused of being fascists and nazi sympathizers when they relocated (not even fully removed!) a statue from their capital celebrating their Soviet “liberators.” About 17% of Estonia’s population was deported to Siberia by their Soviet “liberators.”

- Here is an article by a Lithuanian writer about how every attempt by Baltic States to distance themselves from their Soviet past is met with accusations of fascism and Nazism. “In 1988, the then Lithuanian SSR Supreme Council announced the tricolor as the official symbol of the Lithuanian SSR, and Russian comedian Mikhail Zhvanetksyi joked: ‘What is going on – Lithuania returned the fascist flag.’ I remember the audience applauded after the joke.”

- Here is an article about Russian intelligence agents creating “Nazi” groups in Finland and Estonia:

    “About 10 pro-Russia activists have created 5 organizations that are active in Estonia, these organizations all include the same people”, reported the chief commissioner. In Finland, another group consisting of 5 Russia’s agents, including the notorious Nazis Backman and Molari, created 5 organizations with the same 5 agents.

    “We are taking about a small core group of pro-Russia’s individuals, who have created various organizations. Each of them typically consists of the same people belonging to different organizations.

- Here is a story about how during Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, the pro-Russian regime orchestrated a cartoonishly explicit “Nazi” march in support the opposition candidate to discredit him.

- This study of ideology in Belarus attempts to conflate Belorussian nationalism with Nazi collaboration during WWII.

- The pro-western regime of Saakashvili in Georgia, which fought a brief war with Russia in 2008, losing two provinces, was regularly accused of fascism by the Russian media. You can see cached stories and commentary in a Google search which have since been removed.

For the last 70 years, anybody in or near Russia’s sphere of influence who attempted to leave was accused of fascism and Nazism. This propaganda is nothing new.

I have encountered its effectiveness here in Lviv, the western Ukrainian city where I live. Two separate friends told me about phone calls from relatives in Moscow asking whether it’s true that in Lviv people have begun beating people in the streets for speaking Russian. Another friend who works in a hostel told me a Russian family stayed there for a week, barely leaving their room except to the grocery store because, she later discovered, they feared Ukrainian fascists would attack them. These accounts are so divorced from reality, I wouldn’t believe them if they weren’t first-hand accounts.

Russian is spoken every day in Lviv. One of the city’s street musicians often plays his guitar and sings in Russian in the city center. When the government was toppled and the police briefly disbanded, volunteers guarded the Russian consulate to prevent provocations.

So, the propaganda is old and effective, at least domestically. Now let’s look at the evidence.

Oleh Tyahnybok, the opposition politician often used as proof that he, as well as protesters are frothing at the mouth to begin murdering Russians and Jews isn’t a very good Nazi. He has repeatedly made statements about respecting ethnic minorities and says Israel is a good model of nationalism for Ukraine to follow. Also, he has very little standing with the protesters. He’s been an outsider with little support. His political party keeps trying to jump in front of the parade and failing in humiliating ways, like when wounded Maidan protesters slammed his party for falsely claiming them as members. Also, it’s widely rumored that he is sponsored by Russian interests for the purpose of radicalizing the opposition, though I’m unaware of any concrete proof.

The pictures of protesters with SS symbols (not swastikas) are real, unfortunately. WWII in eastern Europe was not the good versus evil struggle Americans typically imagine. Up to 25% of all Ukrainians had been exterminated by the Soviet Union in the two decades prior to the war. Of course there was massive collaboration.

There was collaboration from Russians too. Red Army artillery officer and Nobel Prize winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s epic history of the Soviet gulag system includes testimony about how his Red Army unit faced much more frantic and desperate resistance from ethnically Russian Nazi units than from German ones.

But while this legacy was stamped out in Russia, in Ukraine, where armed resistance continued until 1955, it lives on.

See Timothy Snyder’s book Bloodlands to understand the plight of people trapped between Hitler and Stalin. This history is controversial and the subject of endless debate, but consider this account from the Jewish magazine Tablet:

    So while Bandera and his men were responsible for killing Jews, their ideology wasn’t fundamentally anti-Semitic; rather, it was pro-Ukrainian, and anti- everyone who appeared to be in the way of that, which included the pro-Soviet Jews. . . . Of the 63 attempted and actual assassinations carried out by Ukrainian nationalists in the interwar period, only one was directed against a Jew.

Much to the delight of the Kremlin, a very (very, very) small minority of Ukrainian protesters don SS symbols as a symbol of resistance to Moscow. They do so because the Galician SS Division is viewed as a heroic last stand against the Soviets, who, I’ll remind you again, exterminated up to 25% of all Ukrainians in the two decades prior to WWII.

I’m not saying this is the complete narrative of the division, but one can understand why they garner sympathy:

- The division formed in 1943 when it was absolutely clear the Nazis were going to lose the war. The Division was supposed to form the core of an eventual Ukrainian Army. This followed the model from twenty years earlier when the “Sich Riflemen” of the defeated Austro-Hungarian Army formed the core of a professional Ukrainian army which fought first the Polish Army, then the Bolsheviks for the creation of a Ukrainian state, losing eventually on both fronts, but allowing for the declaration of an albeit short-lived Ukrainian state in 1918.

- The SS division formed with two stipulations: 1. they only be used to fight the advancing Red Army and 2. they be the only SS Division allowed to have priests. The latter is symbolically significant because when the Soviets first took over Western Ukraine (then-Poland) in 1939, they immediately slaughtered all the priests (and deported all the seminary students).

- The Galician SS Division, about 13,000 men from western Ukraine, suffered approximately 70-80% killed in action in the Battle of Brody which goes down in history as a mere speed bump along the Red Army’s advance to Berlin. At Brody they were encircled by the Red Army’s First Ukrainian Front.

- One survivor of the division, Hryhoriy Hevryk, joined the Red Army and became an official hero of the Soviet Union for actions in Poland.

History is not as simple as Hollywood would have you believe, especially in what were “the Bloodlands.”

Much more important than arguing over history is today’s charge from the Kremlin echoed by Ry Dawson, Stefan Molyneux, Paul Craig Roberts, Daniel McAdams, Justin Raimondo, Scott Horton and other prominent libertarians that the protests are “fascists,” neo-nazis,” and determined to harm Russians, Jews and other ethnic minorities.

Name calling is a tactic of the left. I would love to hear these authors articulate what exactly they think the protesters will do and what the evidence is. Their concern for Russians and Jews doesn’t seem to be shared by the actual Russians and Jews closest to the protests.

- There are plenty of videos like this one of ethnically Russian Maidan protesters talking about this propaganda. They fought and bled alongside the Ukrainian protesters to topple the Yanukovych regime.

- So did Jews. I speculate about whether the presence of Israelis can be turned into a conspiracy here.

- Here is well known Russian Nationalist and historian Boris Myronov explaining that Stepan Bandera was not a fascist.

- Here the head rabbi of Kyiv explains the difference between nationalism and Nazism in the context of this accusation.

- Here, another Kyiv rabbi who lived in the capital for the past 20 years discusses the protests. He says there’s no serious antisemitism in Ukraine and that it’s worse in Russia.

- Here is an open letter from the Jewish community of Ukraine defending the reputation of the protests.

I cannot imagine more credible evidence against the propaganda being repeated by so many libertarians.

Now lets talk about hypocrisy:

If Putin was concerned by fascists, he could find one within arm’s reach. His adviser, Aleksandr Dugin uses the word “fascism” in his vision for what Russia should aspire to.

There are hundreds of Youtube videos of violent neo-nazis in Russia itself.

Two of the pro-Russian organizers in Easter Ukraine, Mika Ronkainen and Pavel Gubarev, both Russian citizens, posted pictures on social media of themselves in Nazi uniforms or with faux swastika banners.

What is the evidence that the protesters or new government is hostile to ethnic minorities? All of their animosity was directed at toppling a corrupt government.

No pro-Russian protesters have been harmed. On the other hand, here is a heartbreaking subtitled eyewitness account of the violence in Donetsk when pro-Ukrainian protesters were attacked by the pro-Russian counter protest. They were forced to kneel, urinated on, and two were stabbed to death. Here is some raw footage. The deceased, including 22 year old Dmytro Chernyavskiy, were Donetsk natives. Their attackers seemed to be foreigners to the city. They did not recognize the anthem of the local football team.

After the murders, the Kremlin, from its alternate reality, made a specific announcement about protecting Russians in Donetsk.

The Russian nationalist protesters (mob?) also killed two people in Kharkiv and beat Ukrainian writer and Kharkiv native Serhiy Zhadan who took part in pro-Ukrainian protests there.

It seems this brutality, which occurred in early to mid March is the reason the separatists agitation of the last few days in Eastern Ukraine has gotten so little support. In cities of over a million residents, only between dozens and hundreds of people stood in support of the separatists. There are videos which seem to show their supporters getting paid (here).

In Luhansk, the heavily armed and well-equipped separatists took 60 hostages. At the time of this writing, 51 have been released, but the standoff continues.

As I noted above, Pro-Ukrainian activists were kidnapped in Crimea, and Tartars and Catholics have been fleeing the region since armed men with balaclavas and no insignia on their uniforms arrived to “protect ethnic minorities.”

There has been no analogous violence toward pro-Russian demonstrators from pro-Maidan or pro-Ukrainian activists who so many libertarians have been accusing of fascism, neo-nazism, and hooliganism.

No Russian language books have been burned. In Crimea and Kharkiv, Ukrainian language books were burned.

Much fuss has been made about restricting the use of the Russian language. This concerns official government business only. The law requiring Ukrainian was widely ignored from 1991 until 2010. In 2010, an official exception was made for Russian. The new government proposed repealing this exception, but the president vetoed this. So, no change.

This is what causes Justin Raimondo to write: “One of the very first acts of the Ukrainian coup leaders after chasing out the duly elected government of Viktor Yanukovich was to outlaw the Russian language as an official “second language” in all regions of Ukraine.”

It never became a law, and it only concerns official government business. It doesn’t preclude use of Russian on television, in schools, or anywhere else. In some parts of Ukraine, almost all schools are Russian language.

By contrast, in Russia there are no Ukrainian schools whatsoever – not even in the Kuban region where Ukrainians outnumber Russians. In Moscow, in 2010, 50 Ukrainian language fiction books were seized from a library because of “ethnic radicalism.”

This hypocrisy repeats itself in every country along Russia’s border. Russia’s professional agitators will demand full status and accommodation for the Russian minority language, while within Russia itself, minority languages are considered “ethnic radicalism,” and story books get removed from libraries.

CONCLUSION

In the words of an Estonian friend:

    What infuriates me most is that this is best example we have of semi-libertarian revolution where force was used and the goal of overthrowing the government was reached. We have TONS to learn from this. Instead, some of the libertarians start calling these people fascists and puppets of West (verbatim Kremlin phraseology, sic!). There was (and there had to be) wide support in society for Maidan protests, otherwise they would have stopped in mid December or so. And they wouldn’t have gotten any further even with millions of € from the west. Instead there was wide logistical support from civil society in Kiev (not even the hotbed of Ukrainian nationalism, which is more in Lviv) to enforce the barricades, feed the protesters, give medical support, etc. People wouldn’t do that for 10$ or 100$, they would do that for freedom and for better tomorrow. . . . .

    My understanding of politics is greatly helped by 2 things that I have been lucky enough to experience:

    1. Life in Soviet Union.
    2. Experiencing social & political revolution first hand (Estonian Singing Revolution).

    From first I learned how boldly state can lie and that people in power can resort to anything to stay in power. Also, of course I learned about the utter disaster that is socialism (it’s so bad, it’s not even funny). And while I do not want to conflate Soviet Union with Russia or Russian culture, there is way too many similarities between the leadership, TV and mentality in SU and current Russian Federation.

    From second I learned what societal change looks like. It is something hard to describe, it is a time of chaos, of hope, of crazy events and uncertain future. Not something you want to live in permanently but still an exiting time to be around. And I hope this has given me some understanding of political events in other places and times.

    This gives me (and others with similar fate) some edge over Westerners and also Western libertarians who don’t have that experience (not all of them of course). Some of them don’t recognize revolution from street protest and they also don’t seem to have any immunization against Soviet lies and propaganda. I hope this might explain some strange attitudes and claims from people who I presumed think in similar ways to me.

This is a very generous perspective. I hope he’s right, that libertarians, at least most of them, are simply mistaken.

tldr: Libertarian coverage of Ukraine has been characterized by misinformation, rote repetition of Kremlin propaganda, and the abandonment of journalist integrity and libertarian principles. Here’s the proof.

http://dailyanarchist.com/2014/04/10/putins-libertarians/