When I wrote “Those Horrible Russians are Winning the Information War” I was just amusing myself and having a laugh at the expense of Anne Applebaum. But I hadn’t realised that a whole campaign was beginning!

She was at a forum organised by Legatum; she being the Director of its Transitions Forum which deals with “countries that are striving to make the transition from authoritarianism to democracy”. Said forum, “organised by the Legatum Institute, in cooperation with the Atlantic Council and the US Department of State” worried that “Through the manipulation of facts and the integration of outright lies into mainstream narratives, the Russian government seeks to influence public opinion and shape Western politics.” One of the attendees was the US Ambassador to Ukraine (and participant in the infamous phone call setting up the coup d’é tat, or, as the conference participants would put it, the transition from authoritarianism to democracy in Ukraine.) Anyway, here he is is saying that, although he is fully confident he knows what’s going on in Ukraine, he hasn’t actually been to the east and that “The biggest lie Russia tells is that Ukraine is a society somehow divided”. And that he has no idea who’s paying for the conference.

So it wasn’t just Applebaum, it was a group and one of their purposes was to figure out “what can be done about it”. (Can we take a guess at their answer? Shut them down. Free speech requires that JRL, RT and other deviants be silenced. Truth has only room for One Truth). A campaign will coming to your Local News Outlet soon; watch for it. Here are the first appearances: Legatum again and something longer on “Russian Hybrid Warfare” quoting Applebaum approvingly.

The whole idea is preposterous. Has your Local News Outlet mentioned the evidence that the Malaysian airliner was shot down by a Ukrainian aircraft? How about evidence that the “Heavenly Hundred” were actually killed by “elements of the Maidan opposition, including its extremist far right wing”? Any questioning of NATO’s commercially-obtained satellite photos? Mention of atrocities by “volunteer battalions” in the east? No, of course it hasn’t. You can only read about MH17 on sites like globalresearch.ca, the Maidan killers in academic journals, NATO’s evidence is only criticised on websites, only Russian news sites report atrocities. These are easily dismissed as, in order: crazy conspiracy sites, probably not peer-reviewed, pro-Russian websites and Kremlin funded so-called news organisations. None of it is “real journalism” and therefore none of it is worthy of inclusion in your LNO.

Instead, your LNO has covered Russian submarines in Sweden, Russian air force aggressive flights (but not told you that NATO has quintupled its flights), and the monthly Russian invasion scare. And lots of Hitler-Putin comparisons. This is “real journalism”.

So what’s really going on here? Certainly not that your LMO is passively re-printing Kremlin news releases or that the Kremlin’s tactics are working and could undermine European democracy. Quite the reverse. So what are these people worried about?

The answer is pretty obvious when you think about it: they realise their story is failing.

And it may well be that the impetus for this preposterous plaint are the problems the Party Line (and why not use that word redolent of Communist mind-control?) is having in Germany; in that Germany which is certainly the most important part of the European anti-Russia front. First we have satirical pieces like this one in which it’s evident that the audience knows they’re being manipulated. That’s bad enough. But the real bombshell was the revelation by Udo Ulfkotte, a veteran German reporter and editor, that “I ended up publishing articles under my own name written by agents of the CIA and other intelligence services, especially the Bundesnachrichtendienst.” The effect has been dramatic; his book Gekaufte Journalisten (Purchased Journalists) is high on the German best seller lists and the falloff in site visits to German media outlets is immediate and spectacular.

Comments by readers on stories also reveal the failure of the Party Line. I’ll take the first five surviving comments on a Telegraph piece from September “Its time to back away from the Russian wolf” to illustrate my point. 1. Russia is entering economic collapse 2. The author is paid by the Kremlin 3. if Russia had wanted to topple Kiev, it would already have done so 4. Ukraine is unstable and only NATO can stabilise it and “it is not only Putin who is empire building” 5. thanks for countering the standard line. The first two fit the Party Line; the third notices one of its fundamental contradictions; the fourth, while somewhat confusing, starts out well enough but is too even-handed and the fifth is outright scornful. Two out of five; that’s worrisome.

In short, the Party Line is not selling very well. But it’s not because yappy little dogs in the Blogosphere are bringing it down; it’s not because RT is creating millions of Putinbots. These are insignificant against the Western MSM chanting in unison.

Which brings me neatly to the real reason why the Line isn’t selling very well: from FAIR’s dissection of the Washington Post’s coverage of Putin’s Sochi speech. “The thing is, if you’re going to say someone is a poisonous liar who traffics in conspiracy theories, then you should show that. That the Post doesn’t seem to feel the need to do so either means the evidence isn’t there, or that the burden of proof is very low when it comes to official enemies.”

The evidence either isn’t there, or the burden of proof is low. Indeed.

What’s killing the Washington-Brussels-NATO Party Line on Ukraine is not Sinister Putin mind-control but its inherent falsity. Consider some of the things they expect their audience to believe, at one and the same time.

That the best way to prevent oligarchs from looting your country is to make one of them president and appoint others as provincial governors.
That the only way to transcend Ukraine’s political failures is to appoint a bunch of people who have been in and out of governments for years.
That an election that excludes the parties that got 40%+ the last time around is perfectly democratic.
That the shoot-down of MH17 is an enormously important story until it suddenly isn’t.
That the rebels would shoot down an aircraft flying at 10000 metres heading towards Russia in a straight line.
That the Putin who is so determined to re-establish the Empire forgot to grab Georgia in 2008.
That people haven’t noticed that it’s NATO that’s getting closer to Russia and not the other way around.
That NATO gets its intelligence from tweets, twitters and blurry commercial satellite images.
That postponing implementation of the Ukraine-EU agreement is unacceptable right up to the moment that it is postponed.
That the fact that Ukraine owes Russia billions for gas it has consumed is evidence of Russian pressure on Ukraine.
That Russia is always invading but never actually invades.
That all those swastikas and neo-nazi references are just a figment of Putin’s imagination.
That artillery shells keep falling on civilians in eastern Ukraine but nobody knows where they come from.
That self-determination is perfectly acceptable in Kosovo but absolutely unacceptable in Ukraine.
That Nuland and Pyatt didn’t actually plan out the new government.
That conferences like the Legatum one are ever going to tell you anything that you can’t already guess.

The Party Line involves just too much doublethink and memory suppression to keep going without turning the volume up ever louder and silencing dissenters. And it’s not just that they have a bad hand of cards, but they’re playing them badly: surely they can do better than blurry photographs of combine harvesters.

That’s all. At some level the Legatum people know it and they are getting desperate.

And, by the way, in these days of the Internet it’s much harder to get away with it. Since I began writing this piece, I have learned that Anne Applebaum’s income has greatly increased and something about who is behind Legatum (just the people you’d guess, too).

Those Horrible Russians are Winning the Information War: So we gotta ban them

On November 3, 2014March 31, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, PUTIN DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, WAR ON RUSSIA

http://russia-insider.com/en/media-criticism/those-horrible-russians-are-winning-information-war/ri830

Russia’s unconventional war on Ukraine is being fought with weapons, with economics—and with an unprecedented disinformation campaign now being waged across online forums, airwaves and media sites across Europe. Through the manipulation of facts and the i ntegration of outright lies into mainstream narratives, the Russian government seeks to influence public opinion and shape Western policy. In conversation with Anne Applebaum, Director of the Legatum Institute’s Transitions Forum , the panellists examined why these tactics are working, how they could undermine European democracy and what can be done about it.

I read this, and I just wanted to weep. Despite 2 million Google hits for “Russian aggression in Ukraine” and 4 million (plus images) for “Putin evil”, and 56 (56!) million for “Russian lies”, we (the Good Guys, that is) are being pasted in the information war with those Russian liars.

And to make all this still weirder – Applebaum & Co claim that they speak The Truth, which is commonly thought to be stronger than lies.

But still the few noble Truth-tellers (like Applebaum – PS, speaking about truth, did she tell you she is the wife of Poland’s former Foreign Minister and NATO GenSec hopeful?) have to struggle against the Russian Anti-Truth Media Lies and Falsification Campaign that is winning hearts and minds everywhere and can only be stopped by banning it altogether. Sometimes freedom can only be free by being unfree. Or something. Anyway, we gotta shut down these lying liars.

So Applebaum & Co want us to believe that although there are umpteen Western media outlets which are, day and night, 24/7, pumping out The Truth – BBC, CBC, CNN, Fox, AFP, Reuters and so on and on – thousands and thousands of hairstyles on TV earnestly explaining that it’s all Putin’s fault – day and night on every TV channel, every newspaper – NYT, WaPo, National Tubby, Times, Guardian, Der Spiegel – that, somehow (ah those insidious Russians!) the effort is failing. This gigantic effort is for naught.

Somehow in Applebaum’s universe (despite the fact that half the West’s newspapers have an oped by her explaining that it’s all Putler’s (Putler hasn’t quite caught on: only about 200K hits) fault every Sunday (41 thousand hits for “applebaum op ed”) lonely old RT beats them all in penetrating the Western Hive Mind Target.

But RT just pumps out lies (34 million hits on “RT lies”) cooked up in Putler’s demented brain (1 million hits on “Putin sucks”).

What a load of self-serving propagandistic nonsense.

How stupid do Applebaum and her minions think we are?

I mean to say:

HOW STUPID DO THEY THINK WE ARE?

A Dozen Theories About What’s Really Happening in Ukraine and One More

On November 2, 2014March 31, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn UKRAINE

http://russia-insider.com/en/ukraine/2014/11/04/02-00-57pm/dozen_theories_about_whats_really_happening_ukraine_and_one_more

The unanimity of the Western media on Ukraine and the memory repression required to swallow it should make any intelligent reader suspicious. One moment MH17 is the Biggest Story Ever, the next moment there is no mention of it at all. The postponement of the Ukraine-EU agreement was unthinkable right up to the moment when it suddenly happened. NATO gets its intelligence from commercial services. An election in which parties that had got 40% of the vote the last time around were effectively banned is a triumph of democracy. The best way to end the rule of corrupt oligarchs is to pick one as president. And so on.

Therefore, there must be some other reason. Here are some theories to explain what’s going on. They are in no particular order and the reader is invited to mix and match.

Brzezinski has frequently said that Russia plus Ukraine equals Empire. Brzezinski is said to have great influence on Obama’s policy. So Ukraine must put into the NATO box where Russia can’t get at it.
Fracking is unpopular in Europe, there are said to be large deposits in eastern Ukraine; there is much money to be made.
The GMO theory is similar to the fracking theory, Ukraine’s black-earth area is ideal for GMO food production.
Frighten Europe with the “Russian threat” in order to curtail any desire for an independent foreign policy. Putin himself suspects this might be the reason.
The Ukrainian oligarchs had run out of things to steal, so they concocted a scheme to attract IMF money to steal by manipulating the West. In order to make the coup happen, they enlisted the neo-nazis of Pravy Sektor and Svoboda and, realising that they could be dangerous, the oligarchs started a war in eastern Ukraine so as to kill them off.
It’s really all about China. The aim is to frighten Europe with the “Russian threat” so that it expands defence spending and frees Washington to confront China in the Pacific.
See Jon Hellevig’s exposition of why the West is destined to decline and is desperate to prevent or delay that decline.
It’s a trap to catch a bear. If Russia openly intervenes, it can be treated as a pariah for decades; if it doesn’t, Ukraine will be a bleeding sore to weaken it for decades.
It’s really all about preserving the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency, very important pillar of Washington’s power.
It’s Washington’s revenge on Moscow for preventing the attack on Syria last year.
The US Navy wants a base in Crimea.
It’s a chance to expand NATO further and keep it in business for years to come. Lots of employment and business opportunities there.

Finally, and never to be forgotten, those powerful drivers of history: stupidity and arrogance. We must recall that Obama and his advisors think Russia “makes nothing”. In short, they possess such a level of ignorance that any foolish or slapdash behaviour is to be expected.

The Friendly Swastika

On October 31, 2014March 31, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, UKRAINE

http://russia-insider.com/en/media_watch/2014/11/04/02-00-44pm/friendly_swastika

Perhaps the most idiotic thing ever said about today’s Ukraine. From Anna Nemtsova:

It [the swastika] also stands for just about everything negative that Russian President Vladimir Putin preaches about Ukraine being taken over by crypto-, and not-so-crypto-, Nazis. But young Stakhiv insists that’s wrong. He says he’s campaigning in oppo sition to ‘oligarchs running the country, the actual enemy of Ukraine’ and sees his mission as opposing the politics of the current president, the billionaire Petro Poroshenko, who, Stakhiv claims, does not see the real picture.

Nemtsova seems to expect us to agree that every Western campaigner for honesty in politics and anti-corruption uses the swastika as his motive. Swastikas are everywhere in the West; they stand for purity and truth.

Only a nasty old poop like Putin would think that swastikas have any connection with, well, not to put too fine a point on it, nazis.

There are a lot of swastikas and the like in today’s Ukraine to be explained away by the spinners, aren’t there?

Human Rights and Human Wrongs

On October 31, 2014March 31, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, WAR ON RUSSIA

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/human-rights-and-human-wrongs/ri787

I must introduce all of you out there in Internetland to the life and works of one Suzanne Nossel. She is a professional “human rights” bureaucrat: presently head of US PEN, she was earlier head of the US branch of Amnesty International and before that of Human Rights Watch.

But, before all that, she was an employee of the US State Department.

She boasts that she coined the expression “smart power” in 2004.

Washington, the theory goes, should thus offer assertive leadership — diplomatic, economic, and not least, military — to advance a broad array of goals: self-determination, human rights, free trade, the rule of law, economic development, and the quarantine and elimination of dictators and weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Unlike conservatives, who rely on military power as the main tool of statecraft, liberal internationalists see trade, diplomacy, foreign aid, and the spread of American values as equally important.

In short, Republicans just bomb you. Democrats bomb you too, but first they lecture you about your moral deficiencies.

And here is the latest example. Human Rights Watch (one of her former fiefdoms) invites us to sign a petition protesting Russia’s “increasingly repressive domestic policies”. Why those awful Russians have – not that the petition tells us so – imitated the US Foreign Agent Registration Act of 1938 which requires “persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities.”

FARA is, of course, a Good Democratic Law while the exact Russian equivalent is an Evil Repressive Law. Hypocrisy is evidently no impairment to ”smart power”.

Oh, and incidentally, as anyone with a knowledge of the difference between Russian and Ukrainian orthography knows, the sinister helmeted riot cops in the accompanying picture are actually Ukrainian riot police. Stupidity is no impairment to “smart power” either.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 30 October 2014

On October 30, 2014January 21, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn RF SITREP

RUSSIA INSIDER. Check it out – everybody is writing for it and it’s pulling in the eyeballs. Toss your subscriptions to NYT, WaPo and Economist and get tomorrow’s news about Russia today.

PUTIN SPEECH. Read the whole thing if you want to know what he’s thinking; if you haven’t time, read this. Nothing new – unilateral world is a disaster, only multilateral agreements can work. But more pointed this time. And he’s right: what rational entity thinks Washington improved Kosovo, Libya, Iraq, ISIS, Ukraine? Catastrophe and chaos everywhere. USA continues to win the greatest threat to peace poll. Some lines that struck me: “Russia does not need any kind of special, exclusive place in the world… While respecting the interests of others, we simply want for our own interests to be taken into account… We don’t need to be a superpower; this would only be an extra load for us… We have had more than enough of those revolutions in the 20th century. What we need is evolution… It is impossible to keep humiliating one’s partners forever in such a way… We have no desire to return to our totalitarian past. This is not because we fear anything, but because this path leads to a dead end…”.

SANCTIONS. An argument for Russian food counter-sanctions is that they would boost domestic producers. So far so good: production up nearly 17%. Russia’s GDP is doing better than predicted. In fact Igor Shuvalov sees them helping modernisation and hopes they continue. Meanwhile Germany’s business confidence drops some more.

MCCAIN’S GAS STATION. Just got bigger – huge oil find in Arctic.

JIHADIST ATTACKS. Have returned. Suicide bomber in Grozniy; fighting in Dagestan and the claim that a number of attacks had been averted . This may be attributable to the IS call for attacks world-wide. (Moscow provides weapons to Iraq as well as Syria in their wars against IS).

WHO PROVIDES YOUR LOCAL MEDIA OUTLET’S CONTENT? Read this and wonder. A lot of Germans get it: check out this satire from German TV on the Ukraine information war.

TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE. Khodorkovskiy before he became the West’s darling, only a decade ago: “Investors in Khodorkovsky’s projects regularly found that they had acquired worthless pieces of paper.”

GAS TALKS. I couldn’t put it better: Ukraine can’t pay. And, when it gets cold, it will start stealing the gas passing through on the way to Europe. My advice to Moscow is show the gas pressure in the lines entering Ukraine on a webcam. Russia is sending the gas it contracted to; if less comes out the other end, that’s Europe’s problem. “Pottery Barn rule”.

UKRAINE ELECTION. The most intelligent analysis I’ve read. Low turnout in south, east and Transcarpathia. High in Galicia, mediocre in centre. Ukraine is still divided: knowing the fix is in, the others have stopped bothering to vote. Here is perhaps the least intelligent analysis: burkas in east Ukraine? “A house hit by shelling in east Ukraine where turnout was much lower”: why do you suppose turnout was lower? “Voted in droves”? – the turnout was 52-53% (presidential election claimed about 60%). (Ominously, Svoboda claims that “Putin’s agents” falsified the results to their disadvantage. Stay tuned.)

NEW NWO. Moscow and Beijing create two new working groups. A US $100 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is being created. Moscow, Minsk and Astana are contemplating their own interbank financial system. A gas trading facility that will bypass the USD has been created in St Petersburg. The Bear and the Dragon, a continuing story. When does the Tiger join?

GEORGIA. PM Garibashvili says Tbilisi wants to begin a “real reconciliation” with Abkhazia and South Ossetia. While I do not blame the present government, I think it is too early for this. Tbilisi has to seriously confront its responsibility.

QUOTE OF THE DAY. “We lied to the Americans about that.” And who else is lying to them, do you think?

ESTONIA. An opposition party is calling for allowing anyone born in Estonia or living there before 1991 to receive citizenship. About 15% of the population are not citizens (either Russian or stateless). This is not only a violation of their rights (not that Western assessments are much excited) but bad for Estonia’s security to have so many disgruntled non-citizens.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 25 September 2014

On September 25, 2014January 21, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn RF SITREP

NEW WEBSITE. Check out http://russia-insider.com/en. Aims to provide a better source of Russia-related news. You will be able to read today what the Western MSM will grudgingly admit to in a few months.

CORRUPTION. We are informed that peculation in the defence sector may have totalled half a billion dollars. We cannot fail to notice that former Defence Minister Serdyukov walks free (as, come to think of it, do the Luzhkovs). I have always said I’ll believe that the anti-corruption drive is really biting when someone in an office near Putin or Medvedev is arrested. Hasn’t happened yet.

MILITARY EXERCISES. There have certainly been a lot of military exercises and drills in Russia this year. All quite understandable. Until 2008 I think Moscow operated on the assumption that the threat from NATO could be handled by nuclear deterrence and that Russia’s main security problems were from jihadists in the Caucasus and Central Asia. But the Georgian attack on Ossetia, which Moscow suspects was egged on by some people in Washington – certainly there were “mixed messages” – taught them that proxy wars will be coming. The fighting in Ukraine, will not have made them any less certain of this. Hence, the big drive for up-to-date and well-equipped conventional forces. George Kennan saw it all coming: “I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever.” Reason or not, here we are today.

“PEACE MARCH”. So-called; in Moscow pulled 5K to 10K – other sources make other claims but my sources suggest that that is more accurate. Plenty of counter-demonstrators were there too.

SPACE. The ISS is not quite so dependent on rockets from Russia (“which doesn’t make anything”) now that a US resupply rocket has docked.

TRUCE IN UKRAINE. Is holding. More or less. Still some shelling but prisoner exchanges are happening and some pullbacks. Atrocity reports from the OSCE. More coming. Westerners, duped by reports of Kiev gains – this BBC map was especially misleading – have no idea of the scale of Kiev’s defeat – 65% of its military hardware lost. Only now are Western media outlets starting to report reality. The NYT reports that Kiev took so few prisoners (or have so few still alive) that they kidnap civilians to make up the numbers.) Kiev was utterly defeated and did appalling things: will your news outlet tell you?

WHAT WAS IT ALL FOR? The whole thing began 21 November 2013 when Yanukovych decided to delay the implementation of the EU agreement to take Russian responses into account. On 12 September 2014 Poroshenko decided to delay the implementation of the EU agreement to take Russian responses into account. Mercouris sums up the cost of the eleven-month delay in that decision.

BACKING DOWN? Did Obama just intimate that he finds Crimea in Russia and a frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine acceptable? Or was it just empty talk? See Sean’s Russia Blog for the suggestion.

GENERAL WINTER. The coal shortage in Ukraine may reach five million tonnes. The head of the Ukrainian gas company says Ukraine either has to save five billion cubic metres of gas or buy it from Russia. Going to be cold.

SAAKASHVILI. Who has not set foot in his native land since he ceased to be President, has now had all his property in Georgia seized as well as an arrest warrant issued. Do you think he and Poroshenko ever discuss what happens afterwards?

POROSHENKO’S VISITS. He visited North America, addressed Parliament and Congress, standing ovations all round. “The aggression against Ukraine has become one of the worst setbacks for the cause of democracy in the world in years” and so on. But, it seems, not with much practical result.

OLD DISPUTES? Both India and Pakistan have filed applications to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation; given their long hostility this is somewhat surprising. The Chinese President has said, after talks with India’s PM, that Beijing is ready to cooperate with Delhi over the disputed territories. Meanwhile, many deals in the works between the two. Again, interesting. Of course a common threat can make people re-think the relative importance of things (witness Greece and Turkey in NATO).

SANCTIONS. Germany’s industrial production sags; Russia’s not doing badly.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 11 September 2014

On September 11, 2014January 21, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn RF SITREP

MH17. The preliminary report is here. It wasn’t pilot error (but who thought it was?); nor a problem with the aircraft (ditto). “The aircraft was penetrated by a large number of high-energy objects from outside the aircraft” (already knew that). So: cannon rounds, AAM or SAM, or some mixture thereof are all possible. Transmissions stopped at 1320:03 UTC and the “black boxes” had not been tampered with. Not much is it? For what it’s worth, the Russian military briefing shows a fighter jet just in front of MH17 at 1320 UTC (1720 Moscow time); MH17 disappeared from the radar at 1323 UTC.

CEASEFIRE. There is a ceasefire, there have been violations. I doubt it will last; the issue is not yet settled.

WHERE DO THE WEAPONS COME FROM? Cyberberkut claim to have hacked Kiev’s records: the rebels have captured, between 20 Jun and 23 Aug, 79 T-64 MBTs, 94 IFVs, 57 APCs, 24 Grad MLRS. This site attempts to record them. Another source is Soviet-era depots. (Said to be a large one at Slavyansk).

NEO-NAZIS. Remember when Ukrainian neo-nazis were just another of Moscow’s tall tales and Putin was the real fascist? Not so much any more: the MSM has finally noticed: Guardian, Telegraph, New York Times (but only at the very end of the piece), Newsweek, German TV. (But caution is advised: this may be reported only so the WMSM can pretend to be “objective”). Given the mighty Ukrainian warrior tradition, how could they be defeated? Only by betrayal; and that has to be in Kiev. Will these people return to Kiev determined to punish the “traitors”? Stay tuned. (Incidentally, Dear Reader, as far as I know, the NY Books piece is the first time the Western MSM has described what we who follow the Saker and Cassad have seen for months: shattered vehicles and corpses. The slaughter is stunning).

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL. Here’s a report that vaguely accuses both sides and claims Russian involvement (usual satellite photos of weapons supposedly from Russia – but much better photos than NATO’s interestingly – and reports). But more significant, and more detailed, a report on crimes of one of the neo-nazi “volunteer” forces on the Kiev side – the Aidar battalion.

SO WHAT’S GOING ON? I have always said that all Moscow ever wanted from Ukraine is a country 1. that paid its gas bills 2. wasn’t a NATO launch pad and 3. didn’t have a political crisis every 5 years that kept everybody in Moscow up all night. In short: prosperous, neutral and stable. But that possibility is gone now. So how about a fractional Ukraine (Crimea is not/not going to be a US Navy base – check out this if you think I exaggerate) that’s neutral but broke? But is this still possible? But I don’t think Moscow is all that happy about an independent (or incorporated) Novorossiya with an indeterminate and contested border on the other side of which is a neo-nazi entity, stuffed full of missiles and NATO (ie US) bases. Tough one for Moscow to figure out and, I hear, much argument there and attempted pulling of strings. But, contrary to Brussels/Washington/Kiev assumptions, Moscow does not control the fighters in Novorossiya; they have a vote too and they want out (you would too after this).

THEN. Ukraine news broadcast, one year ago today: pretty trivial stuff, eh? Bet a lot of Ukrainians wish it was the same today instead of the spreading catastrophe.

FOREWARNED IS… NOTHING, APPARENTLY. Report from US Embassy in Kiev 2008. “Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war.”

INTELLIGENCE. I have been pretty contemptuous of the “evidence” presented by Washington and NATO. I’m not alone: here are some former intelligence professionals equally scornful. Indeed, so pathetic is the “evidence” that it suggests the whole Ukraine thing is being run out of State and the White House with minimal involvement from Langley or the Pentagon. By the way, the OSCE monitors on the scene report none of the things NATO and Washington are saying.

REVERSE FLOW GAS SUPPLY TO UKRAINE? Maybe not such a good idea, after all. Probably not legal either.

CONFUSED. Is the Mistral sale cancelled, deferred, or what? You figure it out. What about more EU sanctions? Coming tomorrow; they’re tied to the the ceasefire; some members say “no”. Moscow has retaliation ready. Astute observers notice that Russia is shrewdly helping its domestic production and that of the BRICS. And Russian GDP is still growing. On the other hand, Europe is hurting.

NATO is Meeting Today in Wales. Here’s My Suggestion for an Agenda

On September 5, 2014January 18, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn NATO, PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE

http://russia-insider.com/en/2014/11/04/02-12-45pm/nato_meeting_today_wales_heres_my_suggestion_agenda

Mr Kerry one year ago was telling us that it was absolutely certain that the Syrian government was using chemical weapons and that we had to go bombing. That wasn’t true. Today he’s asking us to bomb the people he wanted us to support last year. Discuss.
We all saw the photos this week of the militia cavorting in the US Embassy swimming pool in Tripoli. Was our intervention in Libya a good idea? Discuss.
A month ago we learned that the Kosovo Liberation Army that we supported, indeed put into power with its own country, was a pretty nasty criminal organisation. How did this happen? Discuss.
In conclusion, NATO interventions appear to make things worse, detract from the security of its members and are based on pretty flimsy evidence. Discuss.

But you know perfectly well that we will hear that NATO is wonderful, Ukraine is wonderful, Russia is bad and so is ISIS. NATO must get stronger.

What we should hear is that NATO has screwed up everything it’s touched since about 1990 and should, for the security of its members, let alone the rest of the world, pack up and go home.

Foreigners are Fighting on Both Sides in Ukraine. But There’s Little Proof.

On August 31, 2014January 18, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn UKRAINE

http://russia-insider.com/en/ukraine/foreigners_are_fighting_both_sides_ukraine_theres_little_proof

Are there Russians fighting on the rebel side? Yes there are, we are also told that there are Serbs, French, Spaniards and so on. How about the other side? Well at least one American has been killed fighting on Kiev’s side and there’s a Swedish sniper. No doubt there are others. Are any of these sent by their governments? I doubt it.

There are persistent rumours that American Blackwater (now re-named Academi) are fighting for Kiev, I have seen claims that there are Polish commandos. The participation of these forces would imply involvement by their governments. But I have seen no evidence. Evidence being documents, a corpse with identification or a prisoner speaking. Believable? Yes, but no evidence. (But stay tuned: the rebels have just captured a lot of documents.)

There are many assertions that Russian soldiers and weaponry – ie serving soldiers sent by and with the approval of Moscow – are fighting in eastern Ukraine. As I have argued here, the evidence presented by NATO is nothing like what real evidence gathered by the all-seeing American intelligence assets would look like. Evidence, so laughably inadequate, in fact, that it’s negative evidence: if this is the best they have, then they obviously have nothing. Again, believable, but no evidence.

We know NATO countries are providing the Kiev forces with “non-lethal equipment” because they say they are. (“Non-lethal equipment”, by the way, is a concept designed to fool the simple-minded. There is no such thing: wars need beans, bullets and bandages; if beans are provided free of charge that leaves more money for bullets). Russia’s aid convey is an example of providing beans, just as the US provision of MREs to the Kiev side is.

From where are the rebels getting their weaponry? Well they capture quite a lot: go to this website and see for yourself (destroyed on left, captured on right). Does Russia provide weapons from its stocks? Believable, but no evidence.

And that is really all that can be said with certainty about both halves of the charge.

BELIEVABLE, BUT NO EVIDENCE

Russia Observer

The Western Spinners are Losing and They Know It