Since the start of the conflict in February 2022, billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware has been sent to Ukraine by the EU. By late February 2023, it had forwarded €3.6 billion worth of military assistance to the Zelensky regime via the European Peace Fund. However, even at that time, the total cost for EU countries could have been closer to €6.9 billion.
In late June 2023, the EU pledged a further €3.5 billion in military aid. Josep Borrell is the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the EU Commission.
Following this latest pledge, he stated on Twitter:
“We will continue to double down on our military support on both equipment [and] training. For as long as it takes.”
Great news for European and UK armaments companies like BAE Systems, Saab and Rheinmetall, which are raking in huge profits from the destruction of Ukraine (see the CNN Business report “Europe’s arms spending on Ukraine boosts defense companies“).
And as for BlackRock, JP Morgan and private investors, they aim to profit from the country’s reconstruction along with 400 global companies, including Citi, Sanofi and Philips.
At the same time, in “War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land“, the Oakland Institute describes how financial institutions are insidiously supporting the consolidation of farmland by oligarchs and Western financial interests.
With Ukrainian forces struggling on the battlefield, it poses the worrying question: with so much money at stake for Western capital, just how far will the US escalate in order to prevent Russia from securing control over areas of the country?
Meanwhile, away from the boardrooms, business conferences and high-level strategizing, hundreds of thousands of ordinary young Ukrainians have died.
Irish MEPs Mick Wallace and Claire Daley have been staunch critics of the EU stance on Ukraine (see Claire Daley talking in the EU parliament about Ukraine burning through a generation of men on YouTube).
Wallace recently addressed the EU Parliament, describing the heist currently taking place in that country by Western corporations.
Wallace said:
The damage to Ukraine is devastating. Towns and cities that endured for hundreds of years don’t exist anymore. We must recognise that these towns, cities and surrounding lands were long being stolen by local oligarchs colluding with global financial capital. This theft quickened with the onset of the war in 2014.
The pro-Western government opened the doors wide for massive structural adjustment and privatisation programmes spearheaded by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the IMF and the World Bank. Zelensky used the current war to concentrate power and accelerate the corporate fire sale. He banned opposition parties that were resisting deeply unpopular reforms to the laws restricting the sale of land to foreign investors.
Over three million hectares of agricultural land are now owned by companies based in Western tax havens. Ukraine’s mineral deposits alone are worth over $12 trillion. Western companies are licking their lips.
What are the working-class people of Ukraine dying for?
Photograph Source: Alexander Davronov – CC BY-SA 4.0
When news broke of Wagner Commander Yevgeny Prigozhin’s race toward Moscow this past weekend I noted in a social media post this required a serious logistical effort to supply. I have since scaled back my assessment of its logistical complexities. Rather than 24,000 Wagner forces on the march toward Moscow, it quickly became known it was only 4-6,000, and estimated vehicles at 55 on the bottom end, to 200 on the top side. Not insignificant, but not huge either. And we don’t know yet if it was Prigozhin’s intention of going all the way to Moscow, or if it was a bluff. In short, logistics may not have been that consequential for this rash dash to Moscow, or perhaps they were all along intending to halt before arriving there. There may, or may not, have been significant planning involved, but the logistical complexity of Prigozhin’s race to Moscow may not have required the advanced planning many pundits assert.
No sooner, however, had the tires on Prigozhin’s trucks stopped rolling, than pundits from what Vladimir Putin calls the “collective West” (as he terms what is chiefly the UK and its former historical settler colonies) were spinning yarns about how the run on Moscow reprised events of 1917. In fact, so was Putin for that matter. Having seemingly read an article or book on the subject, the foreign policy commentariat began churning out articles suggesting a veritable Kornilov Affair that was a prelude to the collapse of Russia’s Kerensky government still at war with Germany. Of course, it remains too early to tell if there are any “rhymes” let alone repetitions, to paraphrase the late Samuel Clemens to 1917, in this matter.
Regarding WWI, we all know it was catastrophic for Czarist and Kerensky’s Russia. Then 1.8 million Russian soldiers died and some half-million direct civilian deaths and another 700,000 from war related disease. Its economy shrank by over half. So, it was utter economic collapse then and some 2-3 million dead for Russia in 1917. This has little relation to Russia now, but that is hardly to say all is well there presently. But what are the differences between then and now?
Today, instead of over half of Russia’s GDP gone, Russia’s economy shrank 2.1% in 2022 and is set to grow by 0.7% this year. We might quibble at the margins of these numbers, but for most this is an unnoticeable change, vs the catastrophic collapse of Russia’s economy in WWI. Moreover, Russia presently is not even on a full war-economy footing (although their critics from Russian chauvinists say they should be). Russia is spending a paltry 3% of their GDP on the war. In short, Putin has undertaken his war in Ukraine on the cheap in hopes of “keeping the calm” at home. But it appears Putin went too far on this score of war without domestic inconvenience and the military and nationalists are unhappy with the results.
On deaths, the numbers are serious. Some tens of thousands (others argue more, but without conclusive evidence) Russian soldiers are dead. These are poor working-class sops from the provinces few care about. Disregard for their plight, if not fate, showed Putin at his worst when he told the mother of one of these fallen young men that she should be happy her son died for a reason. “Some people, are they even living or not living? It’s unclear. And how they die, from vodka or something else, it’s also unclear…But your son lived, you understand?” It’s rotten, but also increasingly normal in war today and Ukraine now also shows a similar profile for who is fighting and dying in this war.
This is all by way of saying we should not overstate comparisons with WWI, which while the present war is terrible, its impact still pales to that of the first World War. That said, the war clearly has gone on too long for the taste of Russia’s nationalists and they are restive with the lack of its progress. Thus, Putin will have to exit or escalate, both of which pose their dangers for the Kremlin, and possibly the world if Putin takes the likely path of escalation.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeffrey Sommers.
Putin is weak and getting weaker. In this special live taping of Gaslit Nation, Russian mafia expert Olga Lautman, who has a long history of investigating and exposing the Russian mafia state’s active measures in the U.S. and Europe, joins Andrea to discuss where things are headed in Russia’s escalating power struggle, what it means for Ukraine, and how the world needs to start preparing for a post-Putin Russia.
“Putin is finished,” Olga warns in this urgent discussion. Putin may be forced into retirement in a dacha on the outskirts of Russia or “die in his sleep,” with Shoigu or another tool of the Russian security forces becoming the new strongman. Prighozin’s attempted military coup was the inevitable escalation of growing tensions between warring factions, but as Olga points out, the siloviki–the ruthless, imperialistic, genocidal security forces–are in charge, and always have been, even during the collapse of the Soviet Union. They are the kingmakers, and it’s clear that they want Putin gone. Prigozhin served a purpose of striking Putin with a fatal blow, and the months ahead will continue to weaken him as Russia continues to lose an unwinnable war in Ukraine.
Our bonus episode this week includes our extended audience Q&A at our live taping, with a focus on Russia’s influence campaigns in U.S. elections. As mentioned in this week’s show, there’s going to be a special live taping of Gaslit Nation held in New York City at the Lower East Side venue Caveat, hosted by Kevin Allison of the popular and provocative storytelling podcast RISK! on Saturday August 5th at 4pm EST. The discussion will include the making of the brand new Gaslit Nation graphic novel Dictatorship: It’s Easier Than You Think!, and include an opportunity to order signed copies. For tickets to join the event in person or wherever you are by watching the livestream, get your tickets here!
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is one of the key people driving US foreign policy. He was mentored by Hillary Clinton with regime changes in Honduras, Libya and Syria. He was the link between Nuland and Biden during the 2014 coup in Ukraine. As reported by Seymour Hersh, Sullivan led the planning of the Nord Stream pipelines destruction in September 2022. Sullivan guides or makes many large and small foreign policy decisions. This article will describe Jake Sullivan’s background, what he says, what he has been doing, where the US is headed and why this should be debated.
Background
Jake Sullivan was born in November 1976. He describes his formative years like this:
I was raised in Minnesota in the 1980s, a child of the later Cold War – of Rocky IV, the Miracle on Ice, and ‘Tear down this wall’. The 90s were my high school and college years. The Soviet Union collapsed. The Iron Curtain disappeared. Germany was reunified. An American-led alliance ended a genocide in Bosnia and prevented one in Kosovo. I went to graduate school in England and gave fiery speeches on the floor of the Oxford Union about how the United States was a force for good in the world.
Sullivan’s education includes Yale (BA), Oxford (MA) and Yale again (JD). He went quickly from academic studies and legal work to political campaigning and government.
Sullivan made important contacts during his college years at elite institutions. For example, he worked with former Deputy Secretary of State and future Brookings Institution president, Strobe Talbott. After a few years clerking for judges, Sullivan transitioned to a law firm in his hometown of Minneapolis. He soon became chief counsel to Senator Amy Klobuchar who connected him to the rising Senator Hillary Clinton.
Mentored by Hillary
Sullivan became a key adviser to Hillary Clinton in her campaign to be Democratic party nominee in 2008. At age 32, Jake Sullivan became deputy chief of staff and director of policy planning when she became secretary of state. He was her constant companion, travelling with her to 112 countries.
The Clinton/Sullivan foreign policy was soon evident. In Honduras, Clinton clashed with progressive Honduras President Manuel Zelaya over whether to re-admit Cuba to the OAS. Seven weeks later, on June 28, Honduran soldiers invaded the president’s home and kidnapped him out of the country, stopping en route at the US Air Base. The coup was so outrageous that even the US ambassador to Honduras denounced it. This was quickly over-ruled as the Clinton/Sullivan team played semantics games to say it was a coup but not a “military coup.” Thus the Honduran coup regime continued to receive US support. They quickly held a dubious election to make the restoration of President Zelaya “moot”. Clinton is proud of this success in her book “Hard Choices.”
Two years later the target was Libya. With Victoria Nuland as State Department spokesperson, the Clinton/Sullivan team promoted sensational claims of a pending massacre and urged intervention in Libya under the “responsibility to protect.” When the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorizing a no-fly zone to protect civilians, the US, Qatar and other NATO members distorted that and started air attacks on Libyan government forces. Today, 12 years later, Libya is still in chaos and war. The sensational claims of 2011 were later found to be false.
When the Libyan government was overthrown in Fall 2011, the Clinton/Sullivan State Department and CIA plotted to seize the Libyan weapons arsenal. Weapons were transferred to the Syrian opposition. US Ambassador Stevens and other Americans were killed in an internecine conflict over control of the weapons cache.
Undeterred, Clinton and Sullivan stepped up their attempts to overthrow the Syrian government. They formed a club of western nations and allies called the “Friends of Syria.” The “Friends” divided tasks who would do what in the campaign to topple the sovereign state. Former policy planner at the Clinton/Sullivan State Department, Ann Marie Slaughter, called for “foreign military intervention.” Sullivan knew they were arming violent sectarian fanatics to overthrow the Syrian government. In an email to Hillary released by Wikileaks, Sullivan noted “AQ is on our side in Syria.”
Biden’s adviser during the 2014 Ukraine Coup
After being Clinton’s policy planner, Sullivan became President Obama’s director of policy planning (Feb 2011 to Feb 2013) then national security adviser to Vice President Biden (Feb 2013 to August 2014).
In his position with Biden, Sullivan had a close-up view of the February 2014 Ukraine coup. He was a key contact between Victoria Nuland, overseeing the coup, and Biden. In the secretly recorded conversation where Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine discuss how to manage the coup, Nuland remarks that Jake Sullivan told her “you need Biden.” Biden gave the “attaboy” and the coup was “midwifed” following a massacre of police AND protesters on the Maidan plaza.
Sullivan must have observed Biden’s use of the vice president’s position for personal family gain. He would have been aware of Hunter Biden’s appointment to the board of the Burisima Ukrainian energy company, and the reason Joe Biden demanded that the Ukrainian special prosecutor who was investigating Burisima to be fired. Biden later bragged and joked about this.
In December 2013, at a conference hosted by Chevron Corporation, Victoria Nuland said the US has spent five BILLION dollars to bring “democracy” to Ukraine.
Sullivan helped create Russiagate
Jake Sullivan was a leading member of the 2016 Hillary Clinton team which promoted Russiagate. The false claim that Trump was secretly contacting Russia was promoted initially to distract from negative news about Hillary Clinton and to smear Trump as a puppet of Putin. Both the Mueller and Durham investigations officially discredited the main claims of Russiagate. There was no collusion. The accusations were untrue, and the FBI gave them unjustified credence for political reasons.
Jake Sullivan is a good speaker, persuasive and with a dry sense of humor. At the same time, he can be disingenuous. Some of his statements are false. For example, in June 2017 Jake Sullivan was interviewed by Frontline television program about US foreign policy and especially US-Russia relations. Regarding NATO’s overthrow of the Libyan government, Sullivan says, “Putin came to believe that the United States had taken Russia for a ride in the UN Security Council that authorized the use of force in Libya…. He thought he was authorizing a purely defensive mission…. Now on the actual language of the resolution, it’s plain as day that Putin was wrong about that.” Contrary to what Sullivan claims, the UN Security Council resolution clearly authorizes a no-fly zone for the protection of civilians, no more. It’s plain as day there was NOT authorization for NATO’s offensive attacks and “regime change.”
Planning the Nord Stream Pipeline destruction
The bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines, filled with 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas, was a monstrous environmental disaster. The destruction also caused huge economic damage to Germany and other European countries. It has been a boon for US liquefied natural gas exports which have surged to fill the gap, but at a high price. Many European factories dependent on cheap gas have closed down. Tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs.
Seymour Hersh reported details of How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline. He says, “Biden authorized Jake Sullivan to bring together an interagency group to come up with a plan.” A sabotage plan was prepared and officials in Norway and Denmark included in the plot. The day after the sabotage, Jake Sullivan tweeted
I spoke to my counterpart Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe of Denmark about the apparent sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines. The U.S. is supporting efforts to investigate and we will continue our work to safeguard Europe’s energy security.
Ellerman-Kingombe may have been one of the Danes informed in advance of the bombing. He is close to the US military and NATO command.
Since then, the Swedish investigation of Nord Stream bombing has made little progress. Contrary to Sullivan’s promise in the tweet, the US has not supported other efforts to investigate. When Russia proposed an independent international investigation of the Nord Stream sabotage at the UN Security Council, the resolution failed due to lack of support from the US and US allies. Hungary’s foreign minister recently asked,
How on earth is it possible that someone blows up critical infrastructure on the territory of Europe and no one has a say, no one condemns, no one carries out an investigation?
Economic Plans devoid of reality
Ten weeks ago Jake Sullivan delivered a major speech on “Renewing American Economic Leadership” at the Brookings Institution. He explains how the Biden administration is pursuing a “modern industrial and innovation strategy.” They are trying to implement a “foreign policy for the middle class” which better integrates domestic and foreign policies. The substance of their plan is to increase investments in semiconductors, clean energy minerals and manufacturing. However the new strategy is very unlikely to achieve the stated goal to “lift up all of America’s people, communities, and industries.” Sullivan’s speech completely ignores the elephant in the room: the costly US Empire including wars and 800 foreign military bases which consume about 60% of the total discretionary budget. Under Biden and Sullivan’s foreign policy, there is no intention to rein in the extremely costly military industrial complex. It is not even mentioned.
US exceptionalism 2.0
In December 2018 Jake Sullivan wrote an essay titled “American Exceptionalism, Reclaimed.” It shows his foundational beliefs and philosophy. He separates himself from the “arrogant brand of exceptionalism” demonstrated by Dick Cheney. He also criticizes the “American first” policies of Donald Trump. Sullivan advocates for “a new American exceptionalism” and “American leadership in the 21st Century.”
Sullivan has a shallow Hollywood understanding of history: “The United States stopped Hitler’s Germany, saved Western Europe from economic ruin, stood firm against the Soviet Union, and supported the spread of democracy worldwide.” He believes “The fact that the major powers have not returned to war with one another since 1945 is a remarkable achievement of American statecraft.”
Jake Sullivan is young in age but his ideas are old. The United States is no longer dominant economically or politically. It is certainly not “indispensable.” More and more countries are objecting to US bullying and defying Washington’s demands. Even key allies such as Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are ignoring US requests. The trend toward a multipolar world is escalating. Jake Sullivan is trying to reverse the trend but reality and history are working against him. Over the past four or five decades, the US has gone from being an investment, engineering and manufacturing powerhouse to a deficit spending consumer economy waging perpetual war with a bloated military industrial complex.
Instead of reforming and rebuilding the US, the national security state expends much of its energy and resources trying to destabilize countries deemed to be “adversaries”.
Conclusion
Previous national security advisers Henry Kissinger and Zbignew Brzezinski were very influential.
Kissinger is famous for wooing China and dividing the communist bloc. Jake Sullivan is now wooing India in hopes of dividing that country from China and the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).
Brzezinski is famous for plotting the Afghanistan trap. By destabilizing Afghanistan with foreign terrorists beginning 1978, the US induced the Soviet Union to send troops to Afghanistan at the Afghan government’s request. The result was the collapse of the progressive Afghan government, the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and 40 years of war and chaos.
On 28 February 2022, just four days after Russian troops entered Ukraine, Jake Sullivan’s mentor, Hillary Clinton, was explicit: “Afghanistan is the model.” It appears the US intentionally escalated the provocations in Ukraine to induce Russia to intervene. The goal is to “weaken Russia.” This explains why the US has spent over $100 billion sending weapons and other support to Ukraine. This explains why the US and UK undermined negotiations which could have ended the conflict early on.
The Americans who oversaw the 2014 coup in Kiev, are the same ones running US foreign policy today: Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland and Jake Sullivan. Prospects for ending the Ukraine war are very poor as long as they are in power.
The Democratic Party constantly emphasizes “democracy” yet there is no debate or discussion over US foreign policy. What kind of “democracy” is this where crucial matters of life and death are not discussed?
Robert F Kennedy Jr is now running in the Democratic Party primary. He has a well informed and critical perspective on US foreign policy including the never ending wars, the intelligence agencies and the conflict in Ukraine.
Jake Sullivan is a skilled debater. Why doesn’t he debate Democratic Party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr over US foreign policy and national security?
Russian forces have carried out widespread and systematic torture of civilians detained in connection with their attack on Ukraine, summarily executing more than 70 of them, the UN human rights office said on Tuesday.
It interviewed hundreds of victims and witnesses for a report detailing more than 900 cases of civilians, including children and elderly people, being arbitrarily detained in the conflict, most of them by Russia. The vast majority of those interviewed said they were tortured and in some cases subjected to sexual violence during detention by Russian forces, the head of the UN human rights office in Ukraine said.
A lot of nonsense is being spouted by a bevy of spontaneous “Russian experts” in light of the Prigozhin spray, a mutiny (no one quite knows what to call it), stillborn in the Russian Federation. It all fell to the theatrical sponsor, promoter and rabble rouser Yevgeny Prigozhin, a convict who rose through the ranks of the deceased Soviet state to find fortune and security via catering, arms and Vladimir Putin’s support.
In the service of the Kremlin, Prigozhin proved his mettle. He did his level best to neutralise protest movements. He created the Internet Research Agency, an outfit employing hundreds dedicated to trolling for the regime. Such efforts have been apoplectically lionised (and vilified) as being vital to winning Donald Trump the US presidency in 2016.
His Wagner mercenary outfit, created in the summer of 2014 in response to the Ukraine conflict, has certainly been busy, having impressed bloody footprints in the Levant, a number of African states, and Ukraine itself. Along the way, benefits flowed for the provision of such services, including natural resource concessions.
But something happened last week. Suddenly, the strong man of the mercenary outfit that had been performing military duties alongside the Russian Army in Ukraine seemed to lose his cool. There were allegations that his men had been fired upon by Russian forces, a point drawn out by his capture of the 72nd Motorised Rifle Brigade commander, Lieutenant Colonel Roman Venevitin. Probably more to the point, he had found out some days earlier that the Russian Defence Ministry was keen to rein in his troops, placing them under contractual obligations. His autonomous wings were going to be clipped.
The fuse duly went. Prigozhin fumed on Telegram, expressing his desire to get a number of officials, most notably the Defence Minister, Sergei Shoigu, and Chief of the General staff Valery Gerasimov, sent packing. A “march for justice” was organised, one that threatened to go all the way to Moscow.
President Vladimir Putin fumed in agitation in his televised address on June 24, claiming that “excessive ambition and personal interests [had] led to treason, to the betrayal of the motherland and the people and the cause”. Within hours, Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, whose diplomatic skills are threadbare, had intervened as mediator, after which it was decided that the Wagner forces would withdraw to avoid “shedding Russian blood”.
This all provided some delicious speculative manna for the press corps and commentariat outside Russia. Nature, and media, abhor the vacuum; the filling that follows is often not palatable. There was much breathless, excited pontification about the end of Putin, despite the obvious fact that this insurrection had failed in its tracks. John Lyons of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was aflame with wonder. Where, he wondered, was the Russian President? Why did the Wagner soldiers “get from Ukraine to Rostov, take control of Ukraine’s war HQ then move to Voronezh without a hint of resistance”?
John Lough of Chatham House in London claimed that Putin had “been shown to have lost his previous ability to be the arbiter between powerful rival groups.” His “public image in Russia as the all-powerful Tsar” had been called into question. Ditto the views of Peter Rutland of Wesleyan University, who was adamant in emphasising Putin’s impotence in being “unable to do anything to stop Prigozhin’s rogue military unit as it seized Rostov-on-Don”, only to then write, without explaining why, about uncharacteristic behaviour from both men in stepping “back from the brink of civil war”.
Then came the hyperventilating chatter about nuclear weapons (too much of the Crimson Tide jitters there), the pathetic wail that accompanies those desperate to fill both column space. The same degree of concern regarding such unsteady nuclear powers as Pakistan is nowhere to be seen, despite ongoing crises and the prospect of political implosion.
Commentors swooned with excitement: the Kremlin had lost the plot; the attempted coup, if it could even be called that, had done wonders to rattle the strongman. Those same commentators could not quite explain that Prigozhin had seemingly been rusticated and banished to Belarus within the shortest of timeframes, where he is likely to keep company with a man of comparatively diminished intellect: Premier Lukashenko himself. Prigozhin, for all his aspirations, has a gangster’s nose for a bargain, poor or otherwise.
As Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov put it, the original criminal case opened against Prigozhin for military mutiny by the Kremlin would be dropped, while any Wagner fighters who had taken part in the “march for justice” would not face any punitive consequences. Those who had not participated would be duly assimilated into the Russian defence architecture in signing contracts with the Defence Ministry.
The image now appearing – much of this subject to redrawing, resketching, and requalifying – is that things were not quite as they seemed. Assuming himself to be a big-brained Wallerstein of regime stirring clout, Prigozhin had seemingly put forth a plan of action that had all the seeds of failure. Britain’s The Telegraphreported that “the mercenary force had only 8,000 fighters rather than the 25,000 claimed and faced likely defeat in any attempt to take the Russian capital.”
Another reading is also possible here, though it will have to be verified in due course. Putin had anticipated that this contingently loyal band of mercenaries was always liable to turn, given the chance. Russia is overrun with such volatile privateers and soldiers of fortune. Where that fortune turns, demands will be made.
Ultimately, in Putin’s Russia, the political is never divorceable from the personal. Chechnya’s resilient thug, Ramzan Kadyrov, very much the prototypical Putin vassal only nominally subservient, suggests that this whole matter could be put down to family business disputes. “A chain of failed business deals created a lingering resentment in the businessman, which reached its peak when St. Petersburg’s authorities did not grant [Prigozhin’s] daughter a coveted land plot.” The big picture, viewed from afar, can be very small indeed.
We speak with Nina Khrushcheva in Moscow after an extraordinary weekend that saw the most significant challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leadership since the beginning of his invasion of Ukraine 16 months ago. On Friday, the head of the powerful Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, accused the Russian military of attacking his forces and began a march on Moscow — but the revolt…
In the midst of Russia’s imperialist war, Ukraine’s unions and popular movements have carried out a double struggle: they have actively engaged in resistance against the invasion while also having to oppose Volodymyr Zelensky’s neoliberal policies and the growing indebtedness of the country fostered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union. In a recent forum sponsored by…
In his bestselling book of 1987, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, historian Paul Kennedy chronicles the rise of western power and its world dominance from 1500 to the present. He reports that the rise was not due to any particular event, nor even an unusual series of events. It was, in fact, neither foreseen nor even recognized until it was already well under way, although it may be accurately ascribed to multiple factors, which Kennedy discusses. The same may be said of the ongoing fall of western power.
Although the decline of the West is rapidly becoming more evident to informed observers of current events, the start of that decline is less easy to pinpoint, in part because it seemed less inevitable and more reversible until quite recently. Was the high point the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Victorian England? The U.S. Eisenhower administration? Some might date it from the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, marking the beginning of the truncated “New American Century.”
That “century” appears to be ending in the manner of so many other powers that fill the pages of Kennedy’s book – through imperial overreach, excessive military spending, lagging economic productivity and competitiveness, and failure to invest in the physical, technical and human resources necessary to remain a dominant power. In short, the West is flagging.
The signs for this are too evident to ignore. The industrial base of the West is withering. Post-WWII, the U.S. dominated because it was the only major industrial power to survive unscathed, and its investment in western Europe and Japan increased the wealth of all three. Over the last half of the 20th century, however, these economies began to shift much of their industry to countries with cheaper labor and more efficient production, such that by the 21st century much of their manufacturing capability had vanished, and they became mainly consumer societies.
2023 has become a watershed year for the power shift, due to dramatic western weaknesses exposed by the Ukraine war. The war revealed that a relatively modest economy (Russia) had the capability to outproduce the U.S. and all the NATO countries combined in war materiel. The U.S. “arsenal of democracy” and its European partners proved unable to provide more than a fraction of the weapons and ammunition that Russia’s factories produced. Ukrainian soldiers supplied by NATO countries found themselves vastly outnumbered in tanks, artillery, missiles, unmanned and manned aircraft, and even the latest hypersonic and electronic weapons that were arrayed against them in seemingly limitless supply. The U.S. and European NATO partners could only cobble together small numbers of incompatible weapons from their diminishing inventories, and make promises of future deliveries after months or years.
But the U.S. and its allies were not counting on physical weapons alone. They weaponized the U.S. dollar, through seizures of Russian accounts in U.S., European and other banks totaling more than $300 billion, and through application of economic sanctions, including expulsion of Russian banks from the SWIFT dollar trading system. This also backfired.
First, Russia retaliated by seizing U.S. and European assets within Russia, in equal or greater amounts. Second, they “pivoted east,” negotiating new trading partnerships with China, India and other countries. Third, they and their new partners, including other targets of U.S. sanctions, began to develop financial agreements to displace or reduce the use of SWIFT. Even countries that had heretofore not been threatened with asset seizure or economic sanctions, like Brazil, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia, joined these agreements, in order to expand their trading base, and as insurance against use of the USD for financial pressure or threats. The result was that the Russian economy proved astonishingly resilient – moreso even than many of the NATO countries. The Russian GDP fell by less than 2% in 2022 and is expected to rise by up to 2% in 2023, despite the war and sanctions. Russia has opted for a sustainable but inexorable war with less than 1/6 the casualties of Ukraine. Visitors report that it hardly feels like a country at war. The annual St. Petersburg Economic Forum attracted 17,000 participants from 130 countries and concluded 900 deals and contracts worth 3.9 trillion rubles ($46 billion).
The decline of Europe was further illustrated by the consequences of the US bombing of the Nordstream gas pipelines in September, 2022, and the sanctions on Russian natural gas and petroleum products imposed by NATO. Together, these ended the competitiveness of the European economies, which had hitherto thrived on accessibility to cheap Russian fuel. As predicted by Radek Sikorsky, MEP, this meant
… double-digit inflation, skyrocketing energy prices, and electricity shortage, … Germany will be deindustrialized, … German industries, scientists and engineers will move to the US, who will generously accept them.
And Europe will be set back a couple of decades. Already, most European countries — France, Italy, Spain etc. — have had zero growth in GDP-per-capita for more than a decade. Add in inflation, the standard of living will soon be down 30-40%.
In effect, the U.S. had defeated its NATO “partners” (mainly Germany) and cannibalized their industries for the sake of its own benefit, potentially short-lived.
But the United States believed that its mighty dollar could offset its faded industry and increasingly toothless military – that it could be printed in unlimited amounts without losing value, and could become its most powerful weapon. The history of this dollar began in 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced that, in effect, the U.S. dollar would no longer be backed by gold, but rather by whatever the dollar could purchase in the U.S., i.e. by the U.S. economy itself. This became widely accepted because a) the U.S. was the world’s largest economy, b) the two great international regulatory financial institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, were also based on the dollar, and c) nearly all the world’s countries outside of the Soviet Union and other socialist societies used the dollar as the reserve currency for their own money. In addition, the world shed fixed exchange rates, with their troublesome periodic revaluations, for floating rates, which generally made the changes more gradual and more stable for the major currencies, and especially the dollar.
The effect of so many dollars circulating so widely was to invest most of the world in protecting its value. The more a country’s non-dollar currency became based on the dollar as its reserve currency, the more the incentive for that country to defend the dollar. Later, as the U.S. began to lose its industry, it came to depend on this value to maintain its economy. It marketed its debt to other countries and “persuaded” other countries to fund U.S. bases on their territories for the purpose of “mutual defense.” This is part of the reason the U.S. now has more than 800 military bases worldwide. Although the U.S. national debt is, at time of writing, more than $33 trillion, the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board seem to think that they can continue to unload it without limit onto other countries.
Decision makers in the U.S. seem to think that they have found the goose that lays the golden egg: when they need more money, they have only to borrow indefinitely and market their IOUs to buyers, many of whom don’t really have the option of saying no. Thus, for example, it used unlimited borrowing to fund without hesitation a very costly Ukraine war by more than $100 billion in 2022 alone, while denying basic services to its own citizens.
But borrowing is not the only way that the U.S. raises funds. Given the stability of the dollar, many countries store or invest them in the U.S. But when a country has a disagreement with the U.S., or chooses a leadership or policies not approved by the U.S., the U.S. is not above confiscating those funds. In 2011, this is what it did with $32 billion of Libyan funds, the largest but by no means the only such confiscation of another nation’s funds at that time. Since then, similar confiscations have occurred with Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan and other nations. Eclipsing Libya, however, was the confiscation of Russia’s $300 billion by the U.S and its mostly NATO allies, an estimated $100 billion of it by the U.S. alone.
Recently, however, other countries are becoming wary of the U.S. and choosing other options that reduce their participation in what they view as a Mafia-style protection racket as well as their placement of assets in places where they could be confiscated in case of disagreement. As noted earlier, a growing number of countries are opting to either bypass the dollar-based SWIFT system, or to complement it with new agreements where goods are paid in another currency or with multiple currencies. Even Saudi Arabia has begun accepting payment in Chinese Yuan and paying Russia in rubles. In addition, China and other countries have decided to limit or reduce their USD exposure. So far, this has had no appreciable effect on the value of the USD. But if the dollar starts to become less desirable, it may become a questionable investment, in which case the U.S. risks losing its status as a world power – even a modest one. At that point, having demolished German and other European access to cheap fuel, the U.S. will join the rest of the west in its decline, leaving the rising economies of China, India, Brazil, Russia and other countries in Asia, Latin America and possibly Africa to displace them.
Is the Dollar overvalued? By the laws of supply and demand, one could argue that it is not. But it is a fair question when the supply is enormous and growing, and the demand is artificial and coerced. What will happen when the dollar’s near monopoly as an exchange medium ends? The dollar has not always been the preeminent tool for pricing international transactions. At the turn of the 20th century, the British pound sterling was literally the gold standard. But the British economy was fading, and the pound continued to fall against both gold and the USD. Now, although it is still a major currency, it is a mere shadow of its former self. If or when the many dollars worldwide come home to claim their true value, we may discover that they buy little more than castles of sand.
When world power has shifted elsewhere, the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, France and the entire West may come to depend for glory upon their historical and cultural treasures, like the ones of other bygone civilizations that western tourists once visited so widely.
Where is Putin? No one has seen him lately other than a short video of Putin looking uncharacteristically tense addressing the nation, calling out a military coup against him that killed around a dozen Russians in his military. Putin’s longtime operative, the Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the private military army Wagner (named after Hitler’s favorite composer!) has turned into Putin’s Frankenstein monster. When you have an in-house coup guy, expect him to turn his coup skills on you eventually, especially when he, like the rest of the ruthless oligarchs around you, smell blood in the water. Prighozin’s coup attempt is the greatest domestic challenge launched against the Kremlin since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the succession fight over who takes over from the increasingly weak Putin is far from over. In this brief summary, Andrea gives some of the highlights of the dramatic events of the weekend, and discusses where the Kremlin succession battle may be headed, and what it means for Ukraine and others caught in the middle. For a deep dive discussion, join our special live taping of Gaslit Nation this coming Tuesday June 27 at 12pm EST with Russian mafia expert Olga Lautman, where we’ll discuss whether Russia is headed towards a civil war, if and when Putin might be disposed of, and how his agents are active abroad in their fascist war against the democratic alliance. To get access to that, receive your ticket to the live taping by supporting the show at the Truth-teller level or higher on Patreon, and cancel anytime. A link to the virtual event will be sent to your inbox via Patreon the morning of the event. Thank you to everyone who supports the show — we could not make Gaslit Nation without you!
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner private army has pulled back from their advance into Moscow on Saturday, agreeing to retreat towards Belarus in a deal struck that will spare them prosecution for their rebellion. After previously stating that his army had no intention of backing down, the fray fizzled out rather quickly, with Prigozhin later stating that he wished to avoid bloodshed.
RT talks with Carl Zha about the Wagner PMC group leader Prigozhin’s bid for power by launching a coup against the Russian government, from RT studio in Moscow.
This is the culmination of an agreement that was signed just a year earlier. As Cocklin had bannered on 6 October 2022, “Germany’s EnBW to Buy More Venture Global LNG in Ongoing Shift from Russia”. At that time, he reported that, “Venture Global LNG Inc. said Thursday German utility EnBW AG would expand the amount of LNG it would take under a 20-year sales and purchase agreement (SPA) signed in June.” So: the basic agreement had been signed in June 2022.
Here is what is now known about the price that will be paid for that “amount of LNG”: Nothing. However, something is known about the history of this deal:
On 22 June 2023, Venture Global headlined “Venture Global and SEFE Announce 20-year LNG Sales and Purchase Agreement. Venture Global set to become Germany’s largest LNG supplier, with a combined 4.25MTPA of 20-year offtake agreements signed. Approximately half of CP2 20MTPA nameplate capacity has been sold, with 1/3 of the contracted capacity committed to German customers. Construction expected to begin in 2023.”
As-of yet, no one has indicated what the delivered price of product to Germany will be under this contract, nor what the price to Germany had been of the Russian pipelined gas that it will now be replacing. Of course, only on that basis can the net annual added cost to Germany, that will end up being paid by Germans, under this historic contract, be calculated.
Whatever it will turn out to be, the June 22 announcement gives good indication that the biggest payoff from blowing up the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines from Russia to Germany will end up in American hands.
Venture Global Partners was founded on 30 July 2008, by Robert Pender and Mike Sabel. In 2010, they established Venture Capital Partners, and then they announced in 2013, that their “development strategy is to be a long-term, low cost producer of LNG Working with a global LNG technology vendor.” They received venture-capital funding of $125M in 2015, then in February 2021 $500M debt-funding from Morgan Stanley, Mizuho Capital, Bank of America, and JP Morgan, and then in January 2023, an additional loan of $1B from an unspecified source.
The losers in all of this are, of course, the people of Germany — and also of other European countries that had been buying the extra-cheap Russian pipelined gas — who will now be paying Americans a much higher price than previously they had been paying Russians. Not only will Germans and other Europeans now be paying for the super-chilled canned and cross-Atlantic shipped gas that previously was simply pipelined, but Europeans will now have lost what little sovereign independence they had formerly had when the U.S. Government allowed them to buy their gas and oil from Russia.
Perhaps they will be learning the hard way that it’s no fun to be a vassal nation.
For example: slide 2 of the 9 November 2017 “US LNG vs Russian pipe gas: impact on prices”, by Dr. Thierry Bros of the Oxford University Institute for Energy Studies, states that Russian gas is the least costly, US LNG can’t compete with it on price, Nord Stream 1 (NS 2 hadn’t yet been approved) is cheaper than gas piped through Ukraine, and Nord Stream 2 (once operational) will be cheaper than gas piped through Ukraine.
Slide 6 shows that the ”Full cost of US LNG” is more than twice the “Henry Hub” (or “HH”) gas price.
A CSIS (Pentagon think tank) blog post on 5 July 2019 was headlined “How Much Does U.S. LNG Cost in Europe?” and asked the “familiar question: Can U.S. LNG compete with Russian gas in Europe?” but conspicuously refused to answer it.
A 25 March 2021 German study concluded that Russia outcompeted America even on LNG supplied in Europe: “LNG exports from Qatar and Russia are relatively competitive in Western Europe,” and even under the best of circumstances, “U.S. LNG only displaces small volumes from other LNG suppliers in Western Europe.”
Germans will be paying the extra price for this, for at least 20 years.
If America still is a successful country, then this is the way it will be happening. The wealth will be coming from their colonies. It won’t just be trickle-down (as has been the case domestically in America ever since at least 1980) but also trickle-in (from the colonies). Uncle Sam has been getting hungrier, and is grabbing now from across the Atlantic.
At least there are some Americans who benefit from what Biden has been doing.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.
The 53rd session of the UN Human Rights Council started 19 June (to end on 14 July 2023). Thanks to the – as usual – excellent documentation prepared by the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) I will highlight the themes mostly affecting HRDs.
To stay up-to-date you can follow @ISHRglobal and #HRC53 on Twitter, and look out for its Human Rights Council Monitor. During the session, follow the live-updated programme of work on Sched.
Here are some highlights of the session’s thematic discussions
Human rights of migrants
The Council will consider a resolution on the human rights of migrants this session, where a big problem is the criminalisation of the provision of solidarity and support, including rescues at sea, by migrant rights defenders.
Reprisals
..States raising cases is an important aspect of seeking accountability and ending impunity for acts of reprisal and intimidation against defenders engaging with the UN. It can also send a powerful message of solidarity to defenders, supporting and sustaining their work in repressive environments.
Anexa Alfred Cunningham (Nicaragua), a Miskitu Indigenous leader, woman human rights defender, lawyer and expert on Indigenous peoples rights from Nicaragua, who has been denied entry back into her country since July 2022, when she participated in a session of a group of United Nations experts on the rights of Indigenous Peoples. States should demand that Anexa be permitted to return to her country, community and family and enabled to continue her work safely and without restriction.
Vanessa Mendoza (Andorra), a psychologist and the president of Associació Stop Violències, which focuses on gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive rights, and advocates for safe and legal abortion in Andorra. After engaging with CEDAW in 2019, Vanessa was charged with ‘slander with publicity’, ‘slander against the co-princes’ and ‘crimes against the prestige of the institutions’. She has been indicted for the alleged “crimes against the prestige of the institutions” involving a potentially heavy fine (up to 30,000 euros) and a criminal record if convicted. States should demand that the authorities in Andorra unconditionally drop all charges against Vanessa and amend laws which violate the rights to freedom of expression and association.
Kadar Abdi Ibrahim (Djibouti) is a human rights defender and journalist from Djibouti. He is also the Secretary-General of the political party Movement for Democracy and Freedom (MoDEL). Days after returning from Geneva, where Kadar carried out advocacy activities ahead of Djibouti’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), intelligence service agents raided his house and confiscated his passport. He has thus been banned from travel for five years. States should call on the authorities in Djibouti to lift the travel ban and return Kadar’s passport immediately and unconditionally.
Hong Kong civil society (Hong Kong): Until 2020, civil society in Hong Kong was vibrant and had engaged consistently and constructively with the UN. This engagement came to a screeching halt after the imposition by Beijing of the National Security Law for Hong Kong (NSL), which entered into force on 1 July 2020. States should urge the Hong Kong authorities to repeal the offensive National Security Law and desist from criminalizing cooperation with the UN and other work to defend human rights.
Maryam al-Balushi and Amina al-Abduli (United Arab Emirates), Amina Al-Abdouli used to work as a school teacher. She was advocating for the Arab Spring and the Syrian uprising. She is a mother of five. Maryam Al Balushi was a student at the College of Technology. They were arrested for their human rights work, and held in incommunicado detention, tortured and forced into self-incriminatory confessions. After the UN Special Procedures mandate holders sent a letter to the UAE authorities raising concerns about their torture and ill treatment in detention in 2019, the UAE charged Amina and Maryam with three additional crimes. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found their detention arbitrary and a clear case of reprisals for communicating with Special Procedures. In April 2021, a court sentenced them to three additional years of prison for “publishing false information that disturbs the public order”. States should demand that authorities in the UAE immediately and unconditionally release Maryam and Amina and provide them with reparations for their arbitrary detention and ill-treatment.
Other thematic reports
At this 53rd session, the Council will discuss a range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights through dedicated debates with the mandate holders and the High Commissioner, including:
The Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association
The Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity
The Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of expression
The Special Rapporteur on the right to health
The Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary of arbitrary executions
The Special Rapporteur on promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change
The Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance
The Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises
The High Commissioner on the importance of casualty recording for the promotion and protection of human rights
The Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide
In addition, the Council will hold dedicated debates on the rights of specific groups including:
The Working Group on discrimination against women and girls
The Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences
The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants
The Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children
The Special Rapporteur on independence of judges and lawyers
#HRC53 | Country-specific developments
Afghanistan
The Human Rights Council will hold its Enhanced Interactive Dialogue on Afghanistan, with the Special Rapporteur on the situation in Afghanistan and the Working Group on Discrimination against Women in Law and Practice. The joint report of the two mandates follows up from an urgent debate held last year on the situation of women and girls in the country. Their visit to the country concluded that there exist manifestations of systemic discrimination violating human rights and fundamental freedoms in both public and private lives. ISHR has joined many around the world to argue that the situation amounts to gender apartheid, and welcomes the call of the two mandate holders to develop normative standards and tools to address this as “an institutionalised system of discrimination, segregation, humiliation and exclusion of women and girls”. The gravity and severity is urgent, and requires that States act on the ongoing calls by Afghan civil society to establish an accountability mechanism for crimes against humanity.
Algeria
On 15 June, fifteen activists and peaceful protesters will face trial in Algiers on the basis of unfounded charges which include ‘enrolment in a terrorist or subversive organisation active abroad or in Algeria’ and ‘propaganda likely to harm the national interest, of foreign origin or inspiration’. The activists were arrested between 23 and 27 April 2021, and arbitrarily prosecuted within one criminal case. If convicted of these charges, they face a prison sentence of up to twenty years. This case includes HRDs Kaddour Chouicha, Jamila Loukil and Said Boudour who were members of the LADDH before its dissolution by the Administrative Court of Algiers following a complaint filed by the Interior Ministry on 29 June 2022. We urge States to monitor the prosecution closely, including by attending the trial. We also urge States to demand that Algeria, a HRC member, end its crackdown on human rights defenders and civil society organisations, amend laws used to silence peaceful dissent and stifle civil society, and immediately and unconditionally release arbitrarily detained human rights defenders.
China
The recent findings of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in March, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in May, and the seven key benchmarks on Xinjiang by 15 Special Rapporteurs add up to wide range of UN expert voices that have collectively raised profound concern at the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers and HRDs in mainland China. Seldom has the gap between the breadth of UN documentation on crimes against humanity and other grave violations and the lack of action by the Human Rights Council in response to such overwhelming evidence been so flagrant: the Council’s credibility is at stake. ISHR calls on the Council to promptly adopt a resolution requesting updated information on the human rights situation in Xinjiang, and a dialogue among all stakeholders on the matter. Governments from all regions should avoid selectivity, put an end to China’s exceptionalism, and provide a meaningful response to atrocity crimes on the basis of impartial UN-corroborated information.
The recent convictions of prominent rights defenders Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong to 12 and 14 years in jail respectively, and the recent detention of 2022 Martin Ennals awardee Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan for ‘subversion of State power’ a year after his release, point to the need for sustained attention to the fate of HRDs in China. States should address in a joint statement the abuse of national security and other root causes of violations that commonly affect Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese HRDs. States should also ask for the prompt release of human rights defenders, including human rights lawyers Chang Weiping, Yu Wensheng and Ding Jiaxi, legal scholar Xu Zhiyong, feminist activists Huang Xueqin and Li Qiaochu, Uyghur doctor Gulshan Abbas, Hong Kong lawyer Chow Hang-tung, and Tibetan climate activist A-nya Sengdra.
Egypt
Since the joint statement delivered by States in March 2021 at the HRC, there has been no significant improvement in the human rights situation in Egypt despite the launching of the national human rights strategy and the national dialogue. The Egyptian government has failed to address, adequately or at all, the repeated serious concerns expressed by several UN Special Procedures over the broad and expansive definition of “terrorism”, which enables the conflation of civil disobedience and peaceful criticism with “terrorism”. The Human Rights Committee raised its concerns “that these laws are used, in combination with restrictive legislation on fundamental freedoms, to silence actual or perceived critics of the Government, including peaceful protesters, lawyers, journalists, political opponents and human rights defenders”. Egyptian and international civil society organisations have been calling on the HRC to establish a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the human rights situation in Egypt, applying objective criteria and in light of the Egyptian government’s absolute lack of genuine will to acknowledge, let alone address, the country’s deep-rooted human rights crisis.
Israel and OPT
Civil society continues to call on the OHCHR to implement, in full, the mandate provided by HRC resolution 31/36 of March 2016 with regards to the UN database of businesses involved in Israel’s illegal settlement industry. The resolution mandated the release of a report containing the names of the companies involved in Israel’s settlement enterprise, to be annually updated. The initial report containing a list of 112 companies was released by the OHCHR in February 2020, three years after the mandated release date and despite undue political pressure. Since then, the UN database has not been updated. UN member states should continue to call on the OHCHR to implement the mandate in full and publish an annual update, as this represents a question of credibility of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Council.
The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel will present its second report to the Council on 20 June. Member states should continue to support the work of the CoI to investigate the root causes of the situation in line with its mandate with a view to putting an end to 75 years of denial of the Palestinian’s people inalienable rights to self-determination and return. As the Palestinian people commemorate 75 years of Nakba (the destruction of Palestinian homeland and society), the CoI needs to address the root causes of the situation, including by investigating the ongoing denial of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and the return of refugees, as well as the ongoing forcible displacement of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line in the context of Israel’s imposition of a system of colonial apartheid.
In addition, on 10 July, the Council will hold an interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.
Saudi Arabia
In light of the ongoing diplomatic rehabilitation of crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi authorities’ brazen repression continues to intensify, as ALQST has documented. Some notable recent trends include, but are not limited to: the further harsh sentencing of activists for peaceful social media use, such as women activists Salma al-Shehab (27 years), Fatima al-Shawarbi (30 years and six months) and Sukaynah al-Aithan (40 years); the ongoing detention of prisoners of conscience beyond the expiry of their sentences, some of whom continue to be held incommunicado such as human rights defenders Mohammed al-Qahtani and Essa al-Nukheifi, and; regressive developments in relation to the death penalty, including a wave of new death sentences passed and a surge in executions (47 individuals were executed from March-May 2023), raising concerns for those currently on death row, including several young men at risk for crimes they allegedly committed as minors. We call on the HRC to respond to the calls of NGOs from around the world to create a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the ever-deteriorating human rights situation in Saudi Arabia.
Nicaragua
Continued attention should be paid by States at the HRC to the steadily worsening situation in Nicaragua. On 2 June, the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights raised ‘growing concerns that the authorities in Nicaragua are actively silencing any critical or dissenting voices in the country and are using the justice system to this end’. The OHCHR reports 63 individuals arbitrarily detained in May alone, with 55 charged with ‘conspiracy to undermine national integrity’ and ‘spreading false news’ within one single night, without access to a lawyer of their choosing. States should express support for the monitoring and investigation work of the OHCHR and the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN), and call on the Nicaraguan government to release the remaining 46 political prisoners, revoke its decision to strip deported political prisoners off their nationality, and take meaningful measures to prevent, address and investigate violence by armed settlers against Indigenous Peoples and Afro-descendants.
Russia
Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has also been accompanied by a domestic war of repression against human rights defenders, independent journalists and political dissent. Most recently, Russia has adopted a sweeping new law criminalising assistance to or cooperation with a range of international bodies, including the International Criminal Court, ad hoc tribunals, foreign courts and arguably even the UN Human Rights Council itself. This law is manifestly incompatible with the right to communicate and cooperate with international bodies, and a flagrant and institutionalised case of reprisal. With Russian authorities having been found by a UN-mandated Commission of Inquiry to be possibly responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes, and having a closed and highly repressive environment for civil society (ranking 17/100 in the CIVICUS Monitor), Russia is plainly unfit to be elected to the UN Human Rights Council and should be regarded as an illegitimate candidate. States should support and cooperate with the mandate of the new Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Russia, as well as with the Commission of Inquiry into human rights violations and abuses associated with Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.
Sudan
Since the beginning of the war in Sudan on 15 April 2023, increasing numbers of Sudanese WHRDs are receiving threats and subject to grave danger. WHRDs are facing challenges in evacuating from Sudan and face further protection risks in neighboring countries. Sudanese women groups and WHRDs are risking their lives to provide support, solidarity, and report on the rising numbers of sexual and gender-based violence crimes. Many survivors are trapped in fighting areas unable to access support, and the occupation of hospitals by RSF is hindering women’s access to health services. The Council must urgently establish an international investigation in Sudan with sufficient resources, including to investigate the threats and reprisals against WHRDs for their work, and to document sexual and gender-based violence. During the debate with the High Commissioner and designated expert on Sudan on 19 June, we urge States to condemn sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). States should highlight the impacts of the war on women and girls, including sexual and reproductive health as well as lack of support services for survivors of SGBV. States should reaffirm the importance of participation of women and their demands, and amplify the critical work of WHRDs on the ground despite the imminent risks to their lives and safety. States should also condemn the increasing threats against WHRDs and demand their effective protection.
Venezuela
On 5 July, the High Commissioner will present his report on the human rights situation in Venezuela, which will include an assessment of the level of implementation of UN recommendations already made to the State. The Council focus on Venezuela remains critical at a time when some States’ efforts to normalize relations with Venezuela risk erasing human rights from key agendas. Council members and observers should actively engage in the interactive dialogue with the High Commissioner to make evident that the human rights situation in the country remains at the heart of their concerns. The human rights and humanitarian situation in the country remains grave. Human rights defenders face ongoing and potentially increasing restrictions. We urge States to:
Express concern about the NGO bill, sitting with the Venezuelan National Assembly, and call for it to be withdrawn. The potential implications of this bill are to drastically shrink civic space, including by criminalising the work of human rights defenders;
Call for the release of all those detained arbitrarily – including defender Javier Tarazona who has been held since July 2021 and whose state of health is deteriorating;
Call for the rights of human rights defenders and journalists to be respected including during electoral periods, with a mind to Presidential elections next year; and
Call on Venezuela to engage fully with all UN agencies and mechanisms, including OHCHR, and develop a clear plan for the implementation of UN human rights recommendations made to it.
Tunisia
Civil society organisations have raised alarm at the escalating pattern of human rights violations and the rapidly worsening situation in Tunisia following President Kais Saied’s power grab on 25 July 2021 leading to the erosion of the rule of law, attacks on the independence of the judiciary, a crackdown on peaceful political opposition and abusive use of “counter-terrorism” law, as well as attacks on freedom of expression. The High Commissioner has addressed the deteriorating situation in the three latest global updates to the HRC. Special Procedures issued at least 8 communications in less than one year addressing attacks against the independence of the judiciary, as well as attacks against freedom of expression and assembly. Despite the fact that in 2011 Tunisia extended a standing invitation to all UN Special Procedures, and received 16 visits by UN Special Procedures since, Tunisia’s recent postponement of the visit of the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, is another sign of Tunisia disengaging from international human rights mechanisms and declining levels of cooperation. The upcoming session provides a window of opportunity for the Council to exercise its prevention mandate and address the situation before the imminent risk of closure of civic space in Tunisia and regress in Tunisia’s engagement with the HRC and its mechanisms is complete.
Syria
On 5 July, the Council will hold an interactive dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on Syria. In a report to the Human Rights Council in 2021, the Commission of Inquiry on Syria called for the establishment of a mechanism to reveal the fate of the missing and disappeared. On 28 March 2023, during the 77th session of the UN General Assembly, the Secretary-General and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights briefed UN Member States on the situation of the missing in Syria, and the findings of the study conducted by the Secretary-General as mandated by Resolution UNGA 76/228. The study concluded that in order to address the situation of the missing in Syria and its impact on families’ lives, it is necessary to create an institution to reveal the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared and to provide support to their families. As discussions are taking place in the UNGA to adopt a resolution establishing a humanitarian institution to reveal the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared, civil society, led by the Truth and Justice Charter, urges States to support the families of the missing to know the truth about the fate and whereabouts of their loved ones by voting in favour of the resolution at the UNGA.
Other country situations
The High Commissioner will present the annual report on 19 June. The Council will hold an interactive dialogue on the High Commissioner’s annual report on 20 June 2023. The Council will hold debates on and is expected to consider resolutions addressing a range of country situations, in some instances involving the renewal of the relevant expert mandates. These include:
Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Eritrea
Interactive Dialogues with the High Commissioner and the Special Rapporteur on Myanmar
Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Burundi
Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Ukraine
Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Belarus
Interactive Dialogue with the Fact-Finding Mission on Iran
Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Expert on Central African Republic
Appointment of mandate holders
The President of the Human Rights Council has proposed candidates for the following mandates:
Special Rapporteur on minority issues (Mr Nicolas Levrat, Switzerland)
Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants (Ms Anna Triandafyllidou, Greece)
Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism (Mr Ben Saul, Australia).
Resolutions to be presented to the Council’s 53rd session
At the organisational meeting on 5 June the following resolutions (selected) were announced (States leading the resolution in brackets):
Human rights situation in Syria (Germany, France, Italy, Jordan, Netherlands, Qatar, Turkey, USA, UK)
New and emerging digital technologies and human rights (Austria, Brazil, Denmark, South Korea, Morocco, Singapore)
Civil society space (Chile, Ireland, Japan, Sierra Leone, Tunisia)
Independence and impartiality of the judiciary, jurors and assessors, and the independence of lawyers – mandate renewal (Australia, Botswana, Hungary, Maldives, Mexico, Thailand)
Human rights of migrants (Mexico)
Mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus – mandate renewal (EU)
Mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Eritrea – mandate renewal (EU)
Business and human rights – mandate renewal (Russian Federation, Ghana, Argentina and Switzerland)
Extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions – mandate renewal (Finland, Sweden)
Situation of human rights of Rohiynga muslims and other minorities in Myanmar (Pakistan on behalf of OIC)
Adoption of Universal Periodic Review (UPR) reports
During this session, the Council will adopt the UPR working group reports on Argentina, Benin, Czechia, Gabon, Ghana, Guatemala, Japan, Pakistan, Peru, Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and Zambia.
Panel discussions
During each Council session, panel discussions are held to provide member States and NGOs with opportunities to hear from subject-matter experts and raise questions. 5 panel discussions are scheduled for this upcoming session:
Panel discussion on the measures necessary to find durable solutions to the Rohingya crisis and to end all forms of human rights violations and abuses against Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar
Annual full-day discussion on the human rights of women [accessible panel]. Theme: Gender-based violence against women and girls in public and political life
Annual full-day discussion on the human rights of women [accessible panel]. Theme: Social protection: women’s participation and leadership
Annual panel discussion on the adverse impacts of climate change on human rights [accessible panel]. Theme: Adverse impact of climate change on the full realisation of the right to food
Panel discussion on the role of digital, media and information literacy in the promotion and enjoyment of the right to freedom of opinion and expression [accessible panel]
“Plans love silence. There’ll be no announcement of the start.” Photo credit: Ukraine Defense Ministry
As Ukraine prepared to launch its much heralded but long delayed counteroffensive, the media published a photograph of a Ukrainian soldier with his finger on his lips, symbolizing the need for secrecy to retain some element of surprise for this widely telegraphed operation.
Now that the offensive has been under way for two weeks, it is clear that the Ukrainian government and its Western allies are maintaining silence for quite a different reason: to conceal the brutal cost Ukraine’s brave young people are paying to recover small scraps of territory from Russian occupation forces, in what some are already calling a suicide mission.
Western pundits at first described these first two weeks of fighting as “probing operations” to find weak spots in Russia’s defenses, which Russia has been fortifying since 2022 with multiple layers of minefields, “dragon’s teeth,” tank-traps, pre-positioned artillery, and attack helicopters, unopposed in the air, that can fire 12 anti-tank missiles apiece.
On the advice of British military advisers in Kyiv, Ukraine flung Western tanks and armored vehicles manned by NATO-trained troops into these killing fields without air support or de-mining operations. The results have been predictably disastrous, and it is now clear that these are not just “probing” operations as the propaganda at first claimed, but the long-awaited main offensive.
A Western official with intelligence access told the Associated Press on June 14, “Intense fighting is now ongoing in nearly all sectors of the front… This is much more than probing. These are full-scale movements of armor and heavy equipment into the Russian security zone.”
Other glimpses are emerging of the reality behind the propaganda. At a press conference after a summit at NATO Headquarters, U.S. General Milley warned that the offensive will be long, violent and costly in Ukrainian lives. “This is a very difficult fight. It’s a very violent fight, and it will likely take a considerable amount of time and at high cost,” Milley said.
Russian videos show dozens of Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles lying smashed in minefields, and NATO military advisers in Ukraine have confirmed that it lost 38 tanks in one night on June 8, including newly delivered German-built Leopard IIs.
Rob Lee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute explained to the New York Times that the Russians are trying to inflict as many casualties and destroy as many vehicles as possible in the areas in front of their main defensive lines, turning those areas into lethal kill zones. If this strategy works, any Ukrainian forces that reach the main Russian defense lines will be too weakened and depleted to break through and achieve their goal of severing Russia’s land bridge between Donbas and Crimea.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense reported that Ukraine’s forces suffered 7,500 casualties in the first ten days of the offensive. If Ukraine’s real losses are a fraction of that, the long, violent bloodbath that General Milley anticipates will destroy the new armored brigades that NATO has armed and trained, and serve only to escalate the gory war of attrition that has destroyed Mariupol, Sievierodonetsk and Bakhmut, killing and wounding hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians and Russians.
A senior European military officer in Ukraine provided more details of the carnage to Asia Times, calling Ukraine’s operations on June 8 and 9 a “suicide mission” that violated the basic rules of military tactics. “We tried to tell them to stop these piecemeal tactics, define a main thrust with infantry support and do what they can,” he said. “They were trained by the British, and they’re playing Light Brigade,” he added, comparing the offensive to a suicidal charge into massive Russian cannon fire that wiped out Britain’s Light Cavalry Brigade in Crimea in 1854.
If Ukraine’s “Spring Offensive” plunges on to the bitter end, it could be more like the British and French Somme Offensive, fought near the French River Somme in 1916. After 19,240 British troops were killed on the first day (including Nicolas’s 20-year-old great-uncle, Robert Masterman), the battle raged on for more than four months of pointless, wanton slaughter, with over a million British, French and German casualties. It was finally called off after advancing only six miles and failing to capture either of the two small French towns that were its initial objectives.
The current offensive was delayed for months as Ukraine and its allies grappled with the likelihood of the outcome we are now witnessing. The fact that it went ahead regardless reflects the moral bankruptcy of U.S. and NATO political leaders, who are sacrificing the flower of Ukraine’s youth in a proxy war they will not send their own children or grandchildren to fight.
As Ukraine launches its offensive, NATO is conducting Air Defender, the largest military exercise in its history, from June 12 to 23, with 250 warplanes, including nuclear-capable F-35s, flying from German bases to simulate combat operations in and over Germany, Lithuania, Romania, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. The exercise has led to at least 15 incidents between NATO and Russian aircraft in the skies near Lithuania.
It seems that nobody involved in NATO has ever stumbled over the concept of a “security dilemma,” in which supposedly defensive actions by one party are perceived as offensive threats by another and lead to a spiral of mutual escalation, as has been the case between NATO and Russia since the 1990s. Professor of Russian history Richard Sakwa has written, “NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.”
These risks will be evident in the upcoming NATO Summit in Vilnius on July 11-12, where Ukraine and its eastern allies will be pushing for Ukraine membership, while the U.S. and western Europe insist that membership cannot be offered while the war rages on and will instead offer “upgraded” status and a shorter route to membership once the war ends.
The continued insistence that Ukraine will one day be a NATO member only means a prolongation of the conflict, as this is a red line that Russia insists cannot be crossed. That’s why negotiations that lead to a neutral Ukraine are key to ending the war.
But the United States will not agree to that as long as President Biden keeps U.S. Ukraine policy firmly under the thumbs of hawkish neoconservative desk warriors like Anthony Blinken and Victoria Nuland at the State Department and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan at the White House. Pressure to keep escalating U.S. involvement in the war is also coming from Congress, where Republicans accuse Biden of “hemming and hawing” instead of “going all in” to help Ukraine.
Paradoxically, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies are more realistic than their civilian colleagues about the lack of any military solution. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, has called for diplomacy to bring peace to Ukraine, and U.S. intelligence sources have challenged dominant false narratives of the war in leaks to Newsweek and Seymour Hersh, telling Hersh that the neocons are ignoring genuine intelligence and inventing their own, just as they did to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
With the retirement of Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, the State Department is losing the voice of a professional diplomat who was Obama’s chief negotiator for the JCPOA with Iran and urged Biden to rejoin the agreement, and who has taken steps to moderate U.S. brinkmanship toward China. While publicly silent on Ukraine, Sherman was a quiet voice for diplomacy in a war-mad administration.
Many fear that Sherman’s job will now go to Nuland, the leading architect of the ever-mounting catastrophe in Ukraine for the past decade, who already holds the #3 or #4 job at State as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.
Other departures from the senior ranks at State and the Pentagon are likely to cede more ground to the neocons. Colin Kahl, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, worked with Sherman on the JCPOA, opposed sending F-16s to Ukraine, and has maintained that China will not invade Taiwan in the near future. Kahl is leaving the Pentagon to return to his position as a professor at Stanford, just as China hawk General C.Q. Brown will replace General Milley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs when Milley retires in September.
Meanwhile, other world leaders continue to push for peace talks. A delegation of African heads of state led by President Ramaphosa of South Africa met with President Zelenskyy in Kyiv, and President Putin in Moscow on June 17th, to discuss the African peace plan for Ukraine.
President Putin showed the African leaders the 18-point Istanbul Agreement that a Ukrainian representative had signed back in March 2022, and told them that Ukraine had thrown it in the “dustbin of history,” after the now disgraced Boris Johnson told Zelenskyy the “collective West” would only support Ukraine to fight, not to negotiate with Russia.
The catastrophic results of the first two weeks of Ukraine’s offensive should focus the world’s attention on the urgent need for a ceasefire to halt the daily slaughter and dismemberment of hundreds of brave young Ukrainians, who are being forced to drive through minefields and kill zones in Western gifts that are proving to be no more than U.S.- and NATO-built death-traps.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.
During the economic crisis in 2008, the United States sought China’s aid. US treasury secretary Hank Paulson conferred with Chinese officials, and China agreed to increase the value of the RMB and to stop selling US T-bills which it had been doing at that time.
Paulson said, “It is clear that China accepts its responsibility as a major world economy that will work with the United States and other partners to ensure global economic stability.” But the notion that China was acting in a selfless fashion was also dispelled by Paulson who stated China helps when it is in their own interest.
That same attitude was repeated by the US State Department in March 2021 during the first face-to-face meeting with president Joe Biden’s administration in Anchorage, Alaska: “America’s approach will be undergirded by confidence in our dealing with Beijing — which we are doing from a position of strength — even as we have the humility to know that we are a country eternally striving to become a more perfect union.” [emphasis added]
Given the baleful US shenanigans against China, Chinese high-ranking officials were ill-disposed to meet with their American counterparts. Chairman Xi Jinping was not interested in meeting with Biden after the US shot down a Chinese weather balloon. The Pentagon sought a meeting between defense secretary Lloyd Austin and China’s minister of national defense Li Shangfu, but the latter reportedly ghosted Austin in Singapore.
Finally, secretary of state Antony Blinken managed to secure a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang in Beijing. The official readouts for each country, however, reveal a glaring gap between them.
The Chinese readout noted that “China-U.S. relations are at their lowest point since the establishment of diplomatic ties…” Other excerpts read:
China has always maintained continuity and stability in its policies towards the United States, fundamentally adhering to the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation proposed by President Xi Jinping. These principles should also be the shared spirit, bottom line, and goal that both sides uphold together.
Qin Gang pointed out that the Taiwan question is at the core of China’s core interests, it is the most significant issue in China-U.S. relations, and it is also the most prominent risk. China urges the U.S. side to adhere to the one-China principle and the three China-U.S. Joint Communiqués, and truly implement its commitment not to support “Taiwan independence”.
That the US and China were not on the same page was clear from the oft-heard banality in the American readout:
The Secretary made clear that the United States will always stand up for the interests and values of the American people and work with its allies and partners to advance our vision for a world that is free, open, and upholds the international rules-based order.
That the US side made no comment on China’s core interest was a glaring brush off. Instead the US side pushed its “international rules-based order,” which is about rules defined by the US for others to follow. In other words, China does not decide what rules apply to its province of Taiwan.
The readouts made crystal clear that China and the US view the world through different lenses.
China is about peaceful development and win-win trade relations. The US is about waging war, sanctions, bans on trading, and an immodest belief in its indispensability. Because of this, China and Russia with the Global South are each forging their own way, a way that respects each country’s sovereignty. In future, it will be increasingly difficult for the US to use loans to impoverish other nations and plunder their wealth through the IMF’s financial strictures. Sanctions, freezing assets, and blocking financial transactions through the SWIFT system have pushed countries away and toward de-dollarization, joining BRICS, taking part in the Belt and Road Initiative, and using other financial institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank based in Beijing. Even companies in countries nominally aligned with the US are pulling back from the harms of adhering to US trading bans. The US pressure tactics have resulted in blowback, and there is sure to be growing apprehension within empire.
The US is a warmaker. It flattened Iraq, Libya, and would have done the same to Syria had not Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah intervened at the invitation of the Syrian government. Nevertheless, the US still illegally occupies an enormous chunk of Syria and plunders its oil, revealing its true nature to the world.
China is a peacemaker; for example, the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, the Syrian-Arab League reunion, a ceasefire between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, a proposal for peace between Russia and Ukraine that was rejected by the US, and currently China is playing an honest broker to try and solve the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, something the US has failed miserably at solving (not that it was ever interested in solving this besides, perhaps, a brief interregnum under Jimmy Carter).
China has stood steadfastly with Russia during its special military operation in Donbass and Ukraine. China knows that if the US-NATO would succeed in their proxy war, the plan is “regime change” and a carve up of Russia to exploit its resource wealth. This would pave the way for further “regime change” in China.
The Blinken-Qin meeting has been an abysmal failure in diplomacy. Communist China is ascendant, and the capitalist US is in economic decline, but it still believes that it can bully and fight its way to the top by keeping the others down.
External experts are poring over the “inappropriate editing” of international news published online by RNZ. It has already tightened editorial checks and stood down an online journalist. Will this dent trust in RNZ — or news in general? Were campaigns propagating national propaganda a factor? Mediawatch asks two experts with international experience.
The comedians on 7 Days had a few laughs at RNZ’s expense against a backdrop of the Kremlin on TV Three this week.
“A Radio New Zealand digital journalist has been stood down after it emerged they’d been editing news stories on the broadcaster’s website to give them a pro-Russian slant, which is kind of disgusting,” host Jeremy Corbett said.
“You’d never get infiltration like that on 7 Days. Our security is too strong. Strong like a bear. Strong like the glorious Russian state and its leader Putin,” he said.
“I love this Russian strategy: ‘First, we take New Zealand’s fourth best and fourth most popular news site — then the world!” said Melanie Bracewell, who said she had not kept up with the news.
Just a joke, obviously, but this week some people have been asking if Kremlin campaigns played a role in the inappropriate editing of online world news.
It was on June 9 that the revelation of it kicked off a media frenzy about propaganda, misinformation, Russia, Ukraine, truth, trust and editorial standards that has been no laughing matter at RNZ.
The story went up a notch last weekend when TVNZ’s Thomas Mead revealed Ukrainian New Zealander Michael Lidski — along with 20 others — had complained about a story written by the journalist in May 2022, which RNZ had re-edited on the day to add alternative perspectives after prompting from an RNZ journalist who considered it sub-standard.
The next day on RNZ’s Checkpoint, presenter Lisa Owen said the suspended RNZ web journalist had told her he edited reports “in that way for five years” — and nobody had ever queried it or told him to stop.
RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson, who is also editor-in-chief, then told Checkpoint he did not consider what he had called “pro-Kremlin garbage” a resignation-worthy issue.
“I think this is a time for us actually working together to fix the problem,” he said.
RNZ had already begun taking out the trash in public by listing the corrupted (and now corrected) stories on the RNZ.co.nz homepage as they are discovered.
Thompson said the problem was “confined to a small area of what RNZ does” but by the following day, RNZ found six more stories — supplied originally by the reputable news agency Reuters — had also been edited in terms more favourable to the ruling regimes.
“RNZ has come out with a statement that said: ‘In our defence, we didn’t actually realise anyone was reading our stories’,” said 7 Days’ Jeremy Corbett.
That was just a gag — but it did actually explain just how it took so long for the dodgy edits to come to light and become newsworthy.
7 Days’ comedians have a laugh at RNZ against the backdrop of the Kremlin in last Thursday night’s episode. Image: TV Three screenshot RNZ/APR
Where the problem lay Last Wednesday’s cartoon in the Stuff papers — featuring an RNZ radio newsreader with a Pinocchio-length nose didn’t raise any laughs there either — because none of the slanted stories in question ever went out in the news on the air.
They were only to be found online — and this was a significant distinction as it turned out, because the checks and balances are not quite the same or made by the same staff.
“In radio, a reporter writes a story and sends it to a sub-editor who will then check it. And then a news reader has to read it so there’s a couple of stages. Maybe even a chief reporter would have checked it as well,” Corin Dann told RNZ Morning Report listeners last Monday.
“What I’m trying to establish is what sort of checks and balances were there to ensure that that world story was properly vetted,” he said.
That question — and others — will now be asked by the external experts appointed this week to run the rule of RNZ’s online publishing procedures for a review that will be made public.
On Thursday a former RNZer Brent Edwards made a similar point in the National Business Review where he’ is now the political editor.
“For a couple of years, I was the director of news gathering. I had a large responsibility for RNZ’s news coverage but technically I had no responsibility whatsoever for what went on the web,” he said.
“Done properly the RNZ review panel could do all news media a favour by providing a template for how online news should be curated. It should reinforce the importance of quality, ethical journalism,” Edwards added.
His NBR colleague Dita di Boni said “there but for the grace of God go other outlets” which have “gone digital” in news.
“I worked at TVNZ and there was a rush to digital as well with lots of resources going in but little oversight from the main newsroom.”
Calls for political action Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has made it clear he doesn’t want the government involved in RNZ’s editorial affairs.
David Seymour of the ACT party wanted an inquiry — and NZ First leader Winston Peters called for a Royal Commission into the media bias and manipulation.
Former National MP Nathan Guy told Newshub Nation this weekend “heads need to roll” at RNZ.
“If I was the broadcasting minister, I would want the chair in my office and to hold RNZ to account. I want timeframes. I want accountability because we just can’t afford to have our public broadcaster tell unfortunate mistruths to the public,” he said.
In the same discussion, Newsroom’s co-editor Mark Jennings reminded Guy that RNZ’s low-budget digital news transition happened under his National-led government which froze RNZ’s funding for almost a decade.
“This is what happens when you underfund an organisation for so long,” he said.
Jennings also said “trust in RNZ has been hammered by this” — and criticised RNZ chairman Dr Jim Mather for declining to be interviewed on Newshub Nation.
Earlier — under the headline Media shooting itself in the foot — Jennings said surveys have picked up a decline and trust and news media here.
“And the road back for the media just had a major speed bump,” he concluded.
How deep is the damage to trust?
The Press front page is dominated by the RNZ story. Image: The Press/RNZ Pacific
While the breach of editorial standards is clear, has there been an over-reaction to what may be the actions of just one employee, which took years to come to light?
Last week the think-tank Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures at Auckland University hosted a timely “disinformation and media manipulation” workshop attended by executives and editors from most major media outlets.
It was arranged long before RNZs problems arose — but those ended up dominating discussion on this theme.
Among the participants was media consultant and commentator Peter Bale, who has previously worked overseas for Reuters, as well as The Financial Times and CNN.
“I really feel for RNZ in this, for the chief executive and everybody else there who does generally a great job. The issue of trust here is in this person’s relationship with their employer and their relationship with the facts.”
The exposure of the “inappropriate editing” undetected for so long has created the impression a lot of content is published online with no checking. That is sometimes the case when speed is a priority, but the vast majority of stuff does go past at least two eyes before publication.
“I think it is true also that editing has been diminished as a skill. But I don’t think it’s necessarily a failure of editing here but a failure of this person’s understanding of what their job is,” Bale told Mediawatch.
“You shouldn’t necessarily need to have a second or third pair of eyes when processing a Reuters story that’s already gone through multiple editors. The critical issue for RNZ is whether they took the initial complaints seriously enough,” he said.
‘Pro-Kremlin garbage’?
Peter Bale, editor of WikiTribune . . . “This person has inserted what are in some people’s views genuine talking points [about] the Russian view . . . But it was very ham-fisted.” Image: RNZ Pacific
There have been many reports in recent years about Russia seeding misinformation and disinformation abroad.
Last Tuesday, security and technology consultant Paul Buchanan told Morning Report that RNZ should be better prepared for authoritarian states seeking to mess with its news.
“This incident that prompted this investigation may or may not be just one individual who has certain opinions about the war between Russia and Ukraine. But it is possible that . . . stories were manipulated from abroad,” he said.
Back in March the acting Director-General of the SIS told Parliament: “States are trying, in a coercive disruptive and a covert way, to influence the behaviors of people in New Zealand and influencing their decision making”.
John Mackey named no nations at the time, but his GCSB counterpart Andrew Hampton told MPs research had shown Russia was the source of misinformation many Kiwis were consuming.
Is it really likely the Kremlin or its proxies are pushing propaganda into the news here? And if so, to what end?
“I think there’s been a little bit of ‘too florid’ language used about this. This person has inserted what are in some people’s views genuine talking points from those who . . . want to have expressed what the Russian view is. But it was very ham-fisted,” said Bale.
“There are ways to do this. You could have inserted the Russian perspective to highlight the fact that there is a different view about things like the Orange Revolution when the pro-Kremlin leader in Kyiv was overthrown,” he said.
Not necessarily ‘propaganda’
“I don’t think it is necessarily ‘Kremlin propaganda’ as it’s been described. It was just a misguided attempt to bring another perspective, I suspect, but it still represents a tremendous breach of trust,” he said.
“I write a weekly newsletter for The Spinoff about international news, and I try sometimes to show . . . there are other perspectives on these stories. Those things are legitimate to address — but not just surreptitiously squeeze into a story in some sort of perceived balance.
“I don’t think in this particular case that it is to do with the spread of disinformation or misinformation by Russia. I think this is a different set of problems. But I agree (there’s a) threat from the kind of chaos-driving techniques that Russia is particularly brilliant at. They’re very skilled at twisting stories . . . and I think we need to be ready for it,” he said.
The guest speaker at that Koi Tū event last Wednesday was Dr Joan Donovan, the research director of the Shorenstein center on Media and Politics at Harvard University in the US, where she researches and tracks the sources of misrepresentation and misinformation in the media, and the impact they have on public trust in media — and also how media can prepare for it.
At the point where 15 supplied news stories had been found to be “inappropriately edited” by RNZ, she took to Twitter to say: “This is wild. Fake news has reached new heights.”
Set against what we’ve seen in US politics — and about Russia and Ukraine — is it really that bad?
“Usually what you see is the spoofing of a website or a URL in order to look like you’re a certain outlet and distribute disinformation that way. It’s very unlikely that someone would go in and work a job and be editing articles without proper oversight,” said Donovan — who is also the co-author of recently published book,Meme Wars, The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy.
“I think when it comes to one country, wanting to insert their views into another country — even though New Zealand is very small — it does track that this would be a way to influence a large group of people.
“But I don’t think if any of us know the degree to which this could be an international operation or not,” she told Mediawatch.
“What you learn is that their pattern is that they happen over and over and over again until a news agency or platform company figures out a mitigation tactic, whether it’s removing that link from search or writing critical press or debunking those stories.
“When I think about the fallout of it . . . using the legitimacy of RNZ in a parasitical kind of way and that legitimacy to spread propaganda is one of the most important pieces of this puzzle that we would need to explore more,” she said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
In an interview shortly before his death Daniel Ellsberg said the US runs a “covert empire”, which is a really good way of putting it. A giant globe-spanning cluster of nations consistently moves in alignment with the dictates of Washington, but they all keep their official flags and their official governments, so it doesn’t look like an empire despite functioning as one in every meaningful way.
We really don’t pay enough attention to the fact that all the most influential media platforms are owned and operated by extremely wealthy people who have every motive to keep us all focused on culture wars and electoral politics so we don’t focus on class war and direct action.
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It’s surreal how saying the FBI constantly grooms mentally ill people to get involved in terrorist plots makes you sound like a kooky crackpot, but it’s actually a well-documented fact that we just don’t talk about much for some reason.
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The only time Trump was praised by the mass media was when he bombed Syria. The only time Biden was condemned by the mass media was when he withdrew from Afghanistan. There’s probably a lesson in there somewhere.
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The New York Times publishing an article which criticizes Ukrainian Nazis for wearing Nazi insignia, not because Nazism is wrong but because it’s bad war propaganda, was one of the most New York Times things that has ever happened.
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The decision by some Ukrainian soldiers to wear patches with Nazi icons threatens to reinforce Russian propaganda used to justify the invasion. It also could give the symbols mainstream life after the West's decades-long efforts to eliminate them.https://t.co/TdhO6pKpFG
The article even admitted that western reporters have been avoiding acknowledging the problem because they don’t want to play into “Russian propaganda”, and have actually asked Ukrainian soldiers to remove Nazi patches before taking photos. If you choose not to report something because it would hurt your side’s propaganda efforts, then you are not a journalist, you are a propagandist.
What’s funny about the “Nazis in Ukraine” controversy is that Nazis in Ukraine is not even the strongest argument against western proxy warfare in that nation. Western propagandists could just say “Yes Ukraine has a Nazi problem but we believe the benefits of protecting Ukrainian democracy outweigh the negatives of some skinheads getting rocket launchers here and there” or whatever, and most westerners would swallow it. The only reason propaganda outlets like The New York Times feel the need to keep diddling this issue and manipulating people’s minds and gaslighting everyone about it is because they’re so habituated to pushing for complete and total narrative control on US foreign policy, so it never occurs to them to cede even the slightest amount of ground or yield even the most obvious admissions to avoid looking ridiculous.
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The world is ruled by thugs and tyrants, the most thuggish and tyrannical of whom pour a tremendous amount of energy into convincing their populations that only other countries are ruled by thugs and tyrants.
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If people and digital records survive the Earth’s next act of nuclear warfare, let the record show that we were seeing clear warning signs every day and overwhelmingly ignored them.
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President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus said that the country has started to receive nuclear weapons from Russia, a long-threatened provocation and the latest sign of the worsening relationship between Russia and the U.S. https://t.co/XrExrtoXoN
Saying “America didn’t bomb Nord Stream, Ukraine did!” is like saying “Will Smith didn’t slap Chris Rock, his hand did!” It’s a distinction without any meaningful difference, no matter how hard they try to spin it as an independent act that the US would’ve had no control over.
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There’s no basis for the belief that today’s CIA and FBI are any less depraved than they were in the days of Dulles and J Edgar Hoover.
Seriously, what’s changed since that time? There was a cold war back then? There’s a cold war now. The laws, rules and policies were drastically changed and the people who did those bad things were punished? They were not.
There’s no basis whatsoever for the belief that the CIA and FBI did bad things in the past but don’t do bad things currently. It’s believed because it is comfortable, and for no other reason.
We learn about bad things the CIA and FBI did “in the past” because they stand nothing to lose by us learning about bad things they wanted to do and already did. Later on what’s happening today will be “in the past” and we’ll learn what they were up to in this slice of spacetime.
All the conditions which existed during the most notorious acts of depravity by those agencies are also the case today. Cold war. Hot war. Dissident groups. The fight for US hegemony. That’s all happening currently, and there’s no reason to believe they’re any nicer and cuddlier about it today.
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US accuses Chinese warship of unsafe maneuver in the Taiwan Strait; China accuses US warships of being on the wrong side of the fucking planet. https://t.co/RtPFgXoW5e
If western governments need to keep ramping up censorship, propaganda and the persecution of journalists in order to defend western freedom and democracy, is it really freedom and democracy? And is it worth defending?
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The only way to get a good read on what manipulators are really about is to ignore their words and watch their actions, because they only use language to manipulate and extract what they want from people. Apply this to politicians and governments, and to narcissists in your life.
Example: if you ignore the US government’s stories about its love of freedom and democracy and rules-based order and just look at its actions, what you see is a violent and tyrannical regime which works continually to destroy and subvert nations around the world which disobey it.
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One of the hardest lessons I’ve ever had to learn in life is that projection cuts both directions. We project our bad qualities and motives onto others, wrongly assuming that they have the same character flaws as us, but we can also project our positive traits onto others who might not have them.
In a world full of narcissists, sociopaths and manipulators, this is important to be aware of — whether you’re looking at politicians, governments, or your own interpersonal relations. In the past I’ve suffered serious consequences for assuming that someone must have healthy and relatable reasons for their harmful actions toward me and projecting my own good motives onto them, when really all they wanted was to use and subjugate me.
You can’t assume that someone is operating from the same inner motivations as you, whether those imagined motivations are negative or positive. Some people just suck, and do things you would never do because of motives that would never even occur to you.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon, Paypal, or Substack, buying an issue of my monthly zine, and following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
They think we are mugs – and it’s insulting. It’s all fine for politicians to be swimming, swerving and tossing about in the goo of paranoia that is surveillance, chatting to the ghost called foreign interference; but to expect the rest of the citizenry to be morons is rather poor form. But the formula has always been such: We terrify you; you vote us in, and we increase the budget of the national security state.
Regarding the business of the Russian embassy site in Canberra, this is all the more stunning. Australia’s parliamentarians rarely pass bills and motions at such speed, but the measure to ensure that the Russian embassy would not have a bit of real estate 500 metres from the people’s assembly was odd, at best. On June 15, legislation was whizzed through, effectively extinguishing Russia’s lease.
It was also prompted by a rather bruising matter: the Russians had already been triumphant in the Federal Court. They had been granted the lease for the Yarralumla site in December 2008 by the National Capital Authority. But the 99-year lease was cancelled by the same body on the basis that “ongoing unfinished works detract from the overall aesthetic, importance, and dignity of the area reserved for diplomatic missions.”
Russia duly challenged the cancellation and won. In May, the court found in its favour, negating the cancellation of the lease. This seemed to have a curiously unifying effect in Parliament: agents of the Kremlin would be a mere stone’s throw away from the elected chamber.
Members of the Albanese government were tediously, predictably, on message, claiming that their intelligence services were all cognisant of a threat no one else could possibly take seriously. According to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the government had “received very clear security advice as to the risk presented by a Russian presence close to Parliament House.” The whole parliamentary measure had taken place “to ensure the lease site does not become a formal diplomatic presence.”
The cabinet’s most eager of beavers, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil, affirmed the Prime Minister’s concerns. “The principal problem with the proposed second Russian embassy in Canberra is its location,” she suggested. “The government has received clear national security advice that this would be a threat to our national security and that is why the government is acting decisively to bring this longstanding matter to a close.”
This entire comic episode also led Albanese to anticipate Russian stroppiness and reference to precedents in international law. This prompted the remark that Russia was not “in a position to talk about international law, given their rejection of it so consistently and so brazenly with their invasion of Ukraine.”
Over stiffening, proud vodkas at the eventual Russian embassy site, Australian officials will be able to do a merry jig and say that they have been tearing strips off international law for decades. From race relations to illegal invasions, the good guys have been wondrously bad. Remember Iraq in 2003, when we deviously and cowardly subverted the United Nations Charter and aided the destruction of a sovereign country? (Oh, the laughter!) Or those negotiations with an impoverished East Timor over its access to natural resources? (We almost got away with bugging the negotiators – but for those insufferable whistleblowers well read in international law and principle!)
Such officials will also be able to recall the efforts of Australian intelligence agents to undermine international law during the Cold War, playing a starring role in overthrowing Chile’s democratically elected Allende government in the 1970s, at the very same time the Central Intelligence Agency was conferencing on how to get rid of that pesky Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. It was beautifully, if diabolically symmetrical.
Saliently stunning in this splutter of rage from Australia’s politicians is that any embassy position near Parliament House, notably from Russia, would make any difference at all. Two issues spring to mind.
The first is that Australia’s all commanding superior, the US government, tends to privilege technology to the point of childish obsession. For all their technological genius in specific, idiosyncratic areas, the Russians have tended towards the craft, cut and cultivation of human contacts in intelligence. The embassy’s proximity would not matter one jot.
The other aspect of the embassy debate is cringingly odd. Why bother listening to anything Australia’s Parliament has to say that might influence the events of the world? Vassal states are poor fare in the marketplace of intelligence and policy; their returns for any foreign power are junk food quality, limp cold chips and hardly worth bothering about. (Recently, the politicisation of sexual assault is all the rage – there is, what might be politely called in diplomatic channels, a woman problem in the great chambers of the capital.)
The true clearance stores for Australian intelligence lie in the bowels of the US State Department, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency. Yes, the fallback position is always that Australia is a “Five Eyes” member in the sacred Anglophone intelligence sharing agreement that makes it a target. But why go for the inferior imitation if you can get the original?
A new mood of defiance in the Global South has generated bewilderment in the capitals of the Triad (the United States, Europe, and Japan), where officials are struggling to answer why governments in the Global South have not accepted the Western view of the conflict in Ukraine or universally supported the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in its efforts to ‘weaken Russia’. Governments that had long been pliant to the Triad’s wishes, such as the administrations of Narendra Modi in India and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Türkiye (despite the toxicity of their own regimes), are no longer as reliable.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar has been vocal in defending his government’s refusal to accede to Washington’s pressure. In April 2022, at a joint press conference in Washington, DC with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Jaishankar was asked to explain India’s continued purchase of oil from Russia. His answer was blunt: ‘I noticed you refer to oil purchases. If you are looking at energy purchases from Russia, I would suggest that your attention should be focused on Europe… We do buy some energy which is necessary for our energy security. But I suspect, looking at the figures, probably our total purchases for the month would be less than what Europe does in an afternoon’.
Kandi Narsimlu (India), Waiting at the Bus Stand, 2023.
However, such comments have not deterred Washington’s efforts to win India over to its agenda. On 24 May, the US Congress’s Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released a policy statement on Taiwan which asserted that ‘[t]he United States should strengthen the NATO Plus arrangement to include India’. This policy statement was released shortly after the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, where India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with the various G7 leaders, including US President Joe Biden, as well as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Indian government’s response to this ‘NATO Plus’ formulation echoed the sentiment of its earlier remarks about purchasing Russian oil. ‘A lot of Americans still have that NATO treaty construct in their heads’, Jaishankar said in a press conference on 9 June. ‘It seems almost like that is the only template or viewpoint with which they look at the world… That is not a template that applies to India’. India, he said, is not interested in being part of NATO Plus, wishing to maintain a greater degree of geopolitical flexibility. ‘One of the challenges of a changing world’, Jaishankar said, ‘is how do you get people to accept and adjust to those changes’.
Katsura Yuki (Japan), An Ass in a Lion’s Skin, 1956.
There are two significant takeaways from Jaishankar’s statements. First, the Indian government – which does not oppose the United States, either in terms of its programme or temperament – is uninterested in being drawn into a US-led bloc system (the ‘NATO treaty construct’, as Jaishankar put it). Second, like many governments in the Global South, it recognises that we live in ‘changing world’ and that the traditional major powers – especially the United States – need to ‘adjust to those changes’.
In its Investment Outlook 2023 report, Credit Suisse pointed to the ‘deep and persistent fractures’ that have opened up in the international order – another way of referring to what Jaishankar called the ‘changing world’. Credit Suisse describes these ‘fractures’ accurately: ‘The global West (Western developed countries and allies) has drifted away from the global East (China, Russia, and allies) in terms of core strategic interests, while the Global South (Brazil, Russia, India, and China and most developing countries) is reorganising to pursue its own interests’. These final words bear repeating: ‘the Global South… is reorganising to pursue its own interests’.
In mid-April, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs released its Diplomatic Bluebook 2023, in which it noted that we are now at the ‘end of the post-Cold War era’. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States asserted its primacy over the international order and, along with its Triad vassals, established what it called the ‘rules-based international order’. This thirty-year-old US-led project is now floundering, partly due to the internal weaknesses of the Triad countries (including their weakened position in the global economy) and partly due to the rise of the ‘locomotives of the South’ (led by China, but including Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Nigeria). Our calculations, based on the IMF datamapper, show that for the first time in centuries, the Gross Domestic Product of the Global South countries surpassed that of the Global North countries this year. The rise of these developing countries – despite the great social inequality that exists within them – has produced a new attitude amongst their middle classes which is reflected in the increased confidence of their governments: they no longer accept the parochial views of the Triad countries as universal truths, and they have a greater wish to exert their own national and regional interests.
Nelson Makamo (South Africa), The Announcement, 2016.
It is this re-assertion of national and regional interests within the Global South that has revived a set of regional processes, including the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) process. On 1 June, the BRICS foreign ministers met in Cape Town (South Africa) ahead of the summit between their heads of states that is set to take place this August in Johannesburg. The joint statement they issued is instructive: twice, they warned about the negative impact of ‘unilateral economic coercive measures, such as sanctions, boycotts, embargoes, and blockades’ which have ‘produced negative effects, notably in the developing world’. The language in this statement represents a feeling that is shared across the entirety of the Global South. From Bolivia to Sri Lanka, these countries, which make up the majority of the world, are fed up with the IMF-driven debt-austerity cycle and the Triad’s bullying. They are beginning to assert their own sovereign agendas.
Interestingly, this revival of sovereign politics is not being driven by inward-looking nationalism, but by a non-aligned internationalism. The BRICS ministers’ statement focuses on ‘strengthening multilateralism and upholding international law, including the purposes and principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations as its indispensable cornerstone’ (incidentally, both China and Russia are part of the twenty-member Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter). The implicit argument being made here is that the US-led Triad states have unilaterally imposed their narrow worldview, based on the interests of their elites, on the countries of the South under the guise of the ‘rules-based international order’. Now, the states of the Global South argue, it is time to return to the source – the UN Charter – and build a genuinely democratic international order.
Leaders of the Third World at the first conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade, 1961.
Credit: Museum of Yugoslavia, Belgrade.
The word ‘non-aligned’ has increasingly been used to refer to this new trend in international politics. The term has its origins in the Non-Aligned Conference held in Belgrade (Yugoslavia) in 1961, which was built upon the foundations laid at the Asian-African Conference held in Bandung (Indonesia) in 1955. In those days, non-alignment referred to countries led by movements rooted in the deeply anti-colonial Third World Project, which sought to establish the sovereignty of the new states and the dignity of their people. That moment of non-alignment was killed off by the debt crisis of the 1980s, which began with Mexico’s default in 1982. What we have now is not a return of the old non-alignment, but the emergence of a new political atmosphere and a new political constellation that requires careful study. For now, we can say that this new non-alignment is being demanded by the larger states of the Global South that are uninterested in being subordinated by the Triad’s agenda, but which have not yet established a project of their own – a Global South Project, for instance.
As part of our efforts to understand this emerging dynamic, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research will be joining with the No Cold War campaign, ALBA Movimientos, Pan-Africanism Today, the International Strategy Center (South Korea), and the International Peoples’ Assembly to host the webinar ‘The New Non-Alignment and the New Cold War’ on 17 June. Speakers will include Ronnie Kasrils (former minister of intelligence, South Africa), Sevim Dagdelen (deputy party leader for Die Linke in the German Bundestag), Stephanie Weatherbee (International Peoples’ Assembly), and Srujana Bodapati (Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research).
In 1931, the Jamaican poet and journalist Una Marson (1905–1965) wrote ‘There Will Come a Time’, a poem of hopefulness for a future ‘where love and brotherhood should have full sway’. People in the colonised world, she wrote, would have to pursue a sustained battle to attain their freedom. We are nowhere near the end of that fight, yet we are not in the position of almost total subordination that we were in during the height of the Triad’s primacy, which ran from 1991 to now. It is worthwhile to go back to Marson, who knew with certainty that a more just world would come, even if she would not be alive to witness it:
What matter that we be as cagèd birds
Who beat their breasts against the iron bars
Till blood-drops fall, and in heartbreaking songs
Our souls pass out to God? These very words,
In anguish sung, will mightily prevail.
We will not be among the happy heirs
Of this grand heritage – but unto us
Will come their gratitude and praise,
And children yet unborn will reap in joy
What we have sown in tears.
According to the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, Kiev’s sponsors reportedly demanded that the regime eliminate as many Russians as possible as a condition for sending weapons. The case shows how the West really does not expect a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield, only seeking to weaken Russia as much as possible.
Kiev’s defense chief Aleksey Reznikov claimed during an interview to Foreign Policy that Western supporters, before establishing a policy of unlimited military aid, demanded from Ukraine that as many Russian citizens as possible be killed. Once the extermination of Russians is guaranteed, Western support will be maintained “as long as it takes”, informed the minister.
He told interviewers that, at first, NATO expected Ukraine to manage the challenge of facing Russian troops alone, without Western military support. However, with the worsening of combat conditions and the imminence of the Ukrainian defeat, the receiving of weapons became inevitable. So, the sponsors imposed a condition on the Ukrainians: before admitting any defeat on the battlefield, they must at least achieve the goal of eliminating a large number of Russian soldiers.
“We asked, ‘can we have stingers?’ We were told, ‘No, dig trenches and kill as many Russians as you can before it’s over.’ People thought our victory was impossible”, he said during the interview.
Reznikov made it clear that now Kiev has “Bradleys, Strykers, Abrams, Leopards, and more” because it is fulfilling the imposed objective of killing the enemies. Also, for this same reason Kiev “will soon be equipped with American-made F-16 fighter jets”.
Indeed, the minister’s words bring answers to several questions. For example, previously, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had said during a meeting with Zelensky in Kiev that the US was making a “good investment” by sending money to “kill Russians”. Now, with the information revealed by Reznikov, it becomes more and more evident that the US really plans to cause the death of Russians with its help to Ukraine.
At first, Reznikov’s words may sound banal, since in a context of conflict there is obviously always the goal of eliminating enemy fighters. However, there are a series of nuances that make the American attitude problematic and highly anti-humanitarian with the Ukrainian proxies themselves.
As the minister made clear, the Western intention was to let the Ukrainians fight alone and achieve the expected result without receiving any military assistance. This is consistent with NATO’s attitude in the early days of Russia’s special operation, which was to refuse the supply of military support, focusing only on humanitarian and financial aid.
However, the situation changed dramatically after April 2022, when NATO started sending tanks to the Ukrainian regime. This change in attitude on the part of the alliance is now perfectly explained: the initial objective was to leave the Ukrainians without help, but this would lead to a quick defeat of Kiev, so an agreement was reached for the country to start receiving unlimited aid in exchange for the elimination of Russian soldiers.
In other words, the alleged “Ukrainian victory”, which the mainstream media talks about so much, was never in NATO’s plans. What the alliance only wants is to kill Russians. It is the plan to kill Moscow’s fighters that justifies the support for Kiev, not any concern for “democracy” or “Ukraine’s territorial integrity”.
This agreement between the Ukrainians and their sponsors is also an important key for understanding the West’s war plans. The US-led military alliance does not aim for victory against the Russians, but for the massive elimination of troops. Usually in wars the goal is victory, and the death of soldiers is just a tool in order to achieve this aim. But in NATO’s proxy war, the final goal is actually restricted to killing Russian soldiers, with no greater ambitions, since defeating Russia currently seems unfeasible.
NATO’s strategists know that in an eventual scenario of open and direct confrontation against Russia, the chances of victory are minimal, since Moscow is the greatest nuclear power in the world. So, the alliance focuses on promoting proxy wars in which as many Russians as possible die, thus achieving enough attrition to generate long-term damage to the Russians. Therefore, in the face of the imminent Ukrainian defeat, NATO seems now “hurried” to generate new anti-Russian flanks in Eurasia, as it is possible to see in regions such as Transnistria, Kosovo, Artsakh, Georgia and Belarus.
Reznikov has, perhaps unintentionally, given an end to the entire narrative spread by his own regime and Western media that the aim of military aid is for Kiev to “win the war” and regain its pre-2014 territory. There are no such goals in the alliance’s plans, which only want Ukrainian forces to kill as many Russians as possible in order to generate losses on America’s biggest geopolitical enemy.
It is important that this information be shared and reach the western public opinion to make it clear to the citizens of NATO’s countries that their tax money is not being invested in any “resistance against the invader”, but, exactly as in Graham’s words, in the death of Russians.
The Indonesian Air Force (TNI-AU) has confirmed that it has agreed to buy Qatar’s fleet of French-built Dassault Mirage 2000 combat aircraft to address a persistent air defence gap, the service said in a 14 June announcement. The TNI-AU stated that it had signed a €733 million (US$793.14 million) contract in January 2023 to acquire […]
Belarus says Russia has begun transferring tactical nuclear weapons to the former Soviet state, which shares a nearly 700-mile border with Ukraine, escalating the risk of a nuclear confrontation in Europe. Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has urged allies to “dig deep” to provide more arms and ammunition to help Ukraine as it launches its counteroffensive against Russia.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which oversees the spy agencies of the United States, has admitted in a report requested by Senator Ron Wyden that the US intelligence cartel has been circumventing constitutional regulations designed to protect US citizens from government surveillance by simply purchasing information collected by commercial data brokers.
In an escalation in surveillance capitalism that should surprise no one but alarm everyone, US intelligence agencies have found that while the Fourth Amendment prohibits their directly wiretapping, hacking or bugging whomever they please without a warrant, there’s nothing stopping them from simply purchasing massive amounts of data harvested by Silicon Valley tech companies which can provide them with similar kinds of information. So that’s what they’ve been doing, because of course it is.
But remember kids, it’s important for you to be very afraid of TikTok because TikTok might harvest your information and give it to an authoritarian surveillance state.
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CIA: Can I have your personal information? People: No way! Google: Can I have your personal information? People: Sure. Google: Here's that personal information you bought. CIA: Thanks!
A disturbing new Responsible Statecraft piece by Branko Marcetic notes that the civilian leadership roles in the US government which have historically been responsible for reining in the more dangerous impulses of the US war machine have actually been far more hawkish and aggressive on Ukraine than the Pentagon’s professional warmakers. According to a recent Washington Post report, inside the Biden administration “the Pentagon is considered more cautious than the White House or State Department about sending more sophisticated weaponry to Ukraine.”
If only the war machine is responsible for placing checks on the nuclear brinkmanship of the war machine, that means there are no real checks on the nuclear brinkmanship of the war machine. If JFK had been more hawkish and aggressive than his own generals at the most perilous moments of the last cold war, it’s entirely likely that the world as we know it would not exist today. It is bone-chilling that we are relying on the better angels of the most murderous military on earth to see us through these increasingly close games of nuclear chicken.
As Marcetic discussed in another article last year, the insanely hawkish rhetoric we are seeing from the western political/media class around the subject of nuclear brinkmanship is demonstrably far more oriented toward reckless confrontation than it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The people whose job it is to encourage restraint in these situations — the press, the diplomats, and the elected officials — are instead doing the exact opposite.
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Insane and evil–the AEI dips a toe in the idea that the US should give Ukraine nukes:https://t.co/qiI7UyXchZ
This as influential Russian foreign policy strategist Sergey Karaganov argues that Moscow has “set too high a threshold for the use of nuclear weapons” and that “it is necessary to arouse the instinct of self-preservation that the West has lost” by “lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons” and “moving up the deterrence-escalation ladder.” Karaganov cites the fact that Belarus has begun receiving tactical nukes from Russia to show that Moscow is already moving in this direction.
This looks all the more disquieting in light of Michael Tracey’s observations in a recent Newsweek article titled “The Government Keeps Lying to Us About Ukraine. Where Is the Outrage?” Tracey discusses the way fighters from Ukraine and from NATO member Poland have been ramping up attacks on Russian territory, while the US government and news media deceive the American public about the fact that this is happening and how dangerous it is.
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I wrote an item for Newsweek about how the US government is systematically deceiving the American people about the nature of US involvement in Ukraine — and the deception keeps getting more and more extreme https://t.co/zexOTPTCMy
On top of all this you’ve got the empire’s increasingly ridiculous spin about the Nord Stream pipeline bombings. The mass media are now saying that Ukrainian special operations forces perpetrated the attack, and that the CIA had advanced knowledge of their plans, but tried unsuccessfully to tell them not to go through with it.
Which is a narrative that just so happens to fit perfectly into alignment with the information interests of the US empire. It contradicts reporting by Seymour Hersh that the US was directly involved in the attack, it pins culpability on a nation with whom the west highly sympathizes who can be framed as acting in their own defense against Russian invaders, and the US intelligence cartel gets to wash its hands of the whole ordeal by claiming it told the Ukrainians not to attack pipelines used by US ally Germany.
It’s also a narrative that is completely nonsensical. Saying “America didn’t attack Nord Stream, Ukraine did!” is like saying “Will Smith didn’t slap Chris Rock, his hand did!” Ukraine is completely dependent on the will of the US government to continue this war; if the US government draws a hard line and tells them not to do something or risk losing support, it will necessarily have to obey. It’s been public knowledge for a year now that the CIA is intimately involved in activities on the ground in Ukraine, and the CIA has been actively training Ukrainian special operations forces since before this war even began.
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It’s amazing how many revisions this “actually Ukraine did it” narrative has undergone ever since Hersh’s bombshell in February forced NATO spy agencies to plant a counter-narrative. It’s like watching a slow wiki page edit, revised & drip-dripped across major NATOland media. https://t.co/4lygcedysJ
So it’s a distinction without a difference to claim that Ukraine and not the US bombed Nord Stream — and that’s pretending for the sake of argument that we know the US wasn’t much more directly involved in the attack than it is admitting. There is currently no logical reason to assume that’s even the case, and there is never any valid reason to take the US intelligence cartel at its word about anything.
We are marching toward dystopia and oblivion, and we are doing it in ways that have no historical precedent. We’re in completely uncharted waters, and things are only getting crazier and crazier.
What a wild world. What a time to be alive.
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Belarus says Russia has begun transferring tactical nuclear weapons to the former Soviet state, which shares a nearly 700-mile border with Ukraine, escalating the risk of a nuclear confrontation in Europe. Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has urged allies to “dig deep” to provide more arms and ammunition to help Ukraine as it launches its counteroffensive against Russia. The Ukraine conflict has intensified the “new Cold War” between the United States and its allies, on one side, and Russia and China, on the other, says Gilbert Achcar, professor of international relations at SOAS University of London. He pegs the start of this new geopolitical standoff to the Kosovo War in 1999, which NATO entered without U.N. approval and over the objections of Russia and China. He says the United States had a “window of opportunity” in the 1990s to reshape the world for more cooperation and multilateralism. “Instead of going for peaceful options, options leading to a long-term peace in international relations and enhancing the role of the United Nations, it made the opposite choices,” including the expansion of NATO, says Achcar. His new book is titled The New Cold War: The United States, Russia and China from Kosovo to Ukraine.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Though Western ‘news’ media have gotten their ‘explanation’ of this event from Ukraine’s Government, it never made sense that Russia would have wanted to flood, harm, and weaken, the entire western half of the territory that Russia now controls in the former Ukraine, including in Crimea (which was getting its water-supply from that dam).
The anonymous author of the “Moon of Alabama” website has a long and almost flawless record of accurately exposing realities that mainstream U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media had been hiding, and the latest such is his June 13 “Did Russia Destroy The Nova Kakhovka Dam?” His report there turns upside-down and inside-out the Ukrainian Government’s ‘explanation’ that the dam had been bombed not by a missile, but by an explosive device which had been placed there by saboteurs whom Ukraine’s Government assumes were from Russia. U.S.-Government-approved ‘news’-media accept and amplify that assumption, but “MoA” does not.
First, he quotes the New York Times and other U.S. Government mouthpieces presenting the Ukrainian Government’s ‘explanation’ of the blow-up; and then he rips it apart by noting the extremely relevant (but in U.S.-and-occupied lands ignored) fact, that on May 12, Britain had supplied to Ukraine its “Storm Shadow” missiles that are designed to have a two-stage bombing-operation: first, a normal surface bomb, but then after it a fuse-ignited ground-penetrating bomb to explode deeper inside even a fortified and hardened underground target such as that dam was apparently blown up.
The British-supplied Storm Shadow weapon is perfect for this type of destruction — exploding from deep underground, instead of from the surface. And whereas Russia doesn’t have any Storm Shadows, Ukraine definitely does — ever since May 12.
The present news-report about U.S.-and-allied lies is being simultaneously submitted for publication by all of the standard U.S.-Government mouthpiece propaganda-media, just in case any of them might finally want to go beyond their standard U.S.-Government-approved sources.
“Due to the possibility of the use of prohibited methods of war by the Ukrainian regime, as well as information that Kyiv is preparing a massive missile strike on the Kakhovka hydroelectric station, there is an immediate danger of the Kherson region being flooded,” Vladimir Saldo, Russian-installed head of occupied Kherson province, said in a video message.
“Given the situation, I have decided to expand the evacuation zone by 15 km from the Dnipro,” he said. “The decision will make it possible to create a layered defence in order to repel Ukrainian attacks and protect civilians.”
Moscow has accused Kyiv of planning to use a so-called “dirty bomb” to spread radiation, or to blow up a dam to flood towns and villages in Kherson province. Kyiv says accusations it would use such tactics on its own territory are absurd, but that Russia might be planning such actions itself to blame Ukraine. …
Saldo, the Russian-imposed occupation leader for the province, identified seven towns on the east bank that would now be evacuated, comprising the main populated settlements along that stretch of the river.
Even U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media occasionally report relevant facts when they find them useful to mention in a ‘news’-report that has an anti-Russian “spin.”
So: we know that Russia’s Government was trying to protect the residents in that region against this attack, but U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media have unquestioningly accepted the Ukrainian government’s accusation that Russia’s Government did it. And, now, an extremely likely explanation has finally been provided, which implicates both Ukraine’s government and UK’s Government as having done it.
It’s precisely this that makes Russia’s ability to withstand Western aggression all the more mind-boggling, particularly when considering the sheer discrepancy in population size, nominal military budgets, size of Russia’s economy in comparison to the combined financial and economic strength of the US-led political West (to say nothing of its geopolitical influence), etc.
It should be noted that the virtually direct involvement of the political West has resulted in a strategic stalemate with tactical back and forth, as both sides made gains somewhere or were forced to concede areas elsewhere. However, the notable difference is that Russia is doing that for strategic reasons, particularly in order to avoid heavy casualties (both civilian and military), while the complete opposite is true for the Kiev regime (Bakhmut/Artyomovsk being the case in point).
Perhaps the best proof of this is the ongoing counteroffensive of the Neo-Nazi junta forces. Although experts have already predicted how it would go (and that’s precisely how it’s been going for approximately two weeks now), the Kiev regime is forced to keep up with it, because its puppet masters don’t really care about Ukrainian casualties as long as they can portray Russia as supposedly “weak” and “incapable of winning”.
The stakes are as high as they could possibly be, so the belligerent thalassocracy needs to ensure that the Neo-Nazi junta at least doesn’t lose the aforementioned narrative, as the prospect of actually defeating the Russian military is all but impossible. To accomplish this, the US-led political West is ready to engage in a sort of nuclear brinkmanship the world has never seen, including during the entirety of the (First) Cold War.
To this end, Washington DC is already resorting to what some experts call “nuclear blackmail”. To prevent a complete defeat of its favorite puppets after Russia eventually launches its own counteroffensive, the US has placed additional nuclear weapons in Europe in order to increase pressure on Moscow and keep most of its forces on standby in case the ongoing Cold War between Russia and NATO turns hot. Poland, one of Moscow’s archenemies, has been particularly insistent on having American nuclear weapons deployed in its territory.
However, Minsk will not merely house such weapons, but will also be able to use them in case the political West escalates its aggression against Belarus itself, which has been under a crawling attack for several years now. Worse yet, the belligerent thalassocracy has never given up on trying to conduct yet another color revolution in Minsk, as it still insists that President Alexander Lukashenko is supposedly “illegitimate” and that the opposition is the “actual government in exile”.
The Kremlin has correctly anticipated virtually all moves by the US and NATO and has revised its strategic posturing towards them, making it perfectly clear that it’s ready for any “unexpected” developments. And while Russia is certainly not the one that wants to be the first to use a nuclear weapon, the political West is doing everything in its power (short of direct war, for now at least) to push Moscow to do exactly that.
On March 17, the International Criminal Court announced an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova. The court deemed that Putin and Lvova-Belova are “allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute),” and urged countries to enforce the warrant should either of the Russian officials attempt to visit other nations. On April 5, Edith M. Lederer of the Associated Press reported, “Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, who is being sought for war crimes for deporting children from Ukraine, told a U.N. meeting Wednesday that the children were taken for their safety and Moscow is coordinating with international organizations to return them to their families.”
Ukrainian children are not the only vulnerable group to have been forcibly relocated to Russia since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022; 200 residents of a nursing home in the Kherson region, for instance, were also sent to Russia in November 2022.
Ukrainian children are not the only vulnerable group to have been forcibly relocated to Russia since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022; 200 residents of a nursing home in the Kherson region, for instance, were also sent to Russia in November 2022. Many of them were long-time residents of the nursing home, and most had disabilities. Two of those residents recently escaped Russia and spoke with The Real News about their experiences living in occupied Kakhovka and being forced to transfer to Russian nursing homes.
In the days following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the Kherson region became a brutal fighting ground. Russian soldiers advanced swiftly and had the region under control by mid-March. The occupation of Kherson marked the first major offensive victory for the Russian military during the early days of the war. After the city fell, the towns surrounding Kherson were immediately occupied, including Kakhovka, a port city on the Dnieper River in the northeastern part of the region. On June 6, Kakhovka gained global attention after Russia’s alleged bombing of the city’s dam which is one of the biggest industrial and ecological disasters in Europe in decades, according to CNN.
In response to Russian aggression, many residents in Kherson held protests in the streets, screaming that Kherson was part of Ukraine. However, their cries were no match for Russian military might, and many who could not fight or flee were subjected to the filtration facilities and forced deportations that Russia has used throughout the war to push Ukranians out of occupied areas and to absorb them as would-be Russian citizens. According to a July 13, 2022 press release from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Ukrainians who have been deported claim they have been subject to “…threats, harassment, and incidents of torture by Russian security forces. During this process, Russian authorities also reportedly capture and store biometric and personal data, subject civilians to invasive searches and interrogations and coerce Ukrainian citizens into signing agreements to stay in Russia, hindering their ability to freely return home.”
Since then, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) has been actively working to document instances involving such deportations. “The HRMMU is following allegations of forced transfers and deportations of civilians, both adults, and children, including those residing in institutionalized care facilities, to the territory occupied by the Russian Federation and to the Russian Federation,” wrote an HRMMU spokesperson in an email to The Real News.
“HRMMU is trying to corroborate information about the fate of 143 children and 803 adults from nine social care institutions in the occupied territory of Kherson region in 2022. These are mostly children and adults with disabilities and older people,” they said.
Bogdan, 35, was born in Kyiv but was placed in an orphanage in Oleshky, in Kherson Oblast, when he was four years old. When Bogdan aged out of the orphanage system at 17, he was moved into a home for the elderly in Oleshky, until he moved again to Kakhovka in 2013. “In our country, we were like outcasts who had to be shut up in a nursing home and not shown to anyone, not to people, and not to be seen either,” he said.
“We had already sit [sic] there, played, and thought, ‘Let’s go to bed.’ Just turned off the lights, lay down, and [then we] heard it—the first three rockets flew by, and there was a bang in the distance. We realized it was no joke, no exercise, the war had begun,” he said.
In 2016, 25-year-old Oleksandr moved into the Kakhovka nursing home as well. His room was on the same floor as Bogdan’s, and the pair became friends. Oleksandr has limited mobility in his limbs, and although he can do things like eat and operate his wheelchair by himself, he relies on nurses for day-to-day needs, like bathing and changing his clothes. Though he was born with this condition, Oleksander is still unsure of his diagnosis.
Recalling the beginning of the war, Bogdan said that he and friends were awake playing video games at the nursing home one night: “We had already sit [sic] there, played, and thought, ‘Let’s go to bed.’ Just turned off the lights, lay down, and [then we] heard it—the first three rockets flew by, and there was a bang in the distance. We realized it was no joke, no exercise, the war had begun,” he said.
“After those three rocket explosions, everything seemed to calm down. We went to bed, another couple of hours passed, and [then] they started hitting regularly. We dozed off, and when I woke up, I was already in the hallway, looking at everybody. Many had fear in their eyes. Many had no understanding of what was going on. And then we realized that there was no way back. This was war,” he added.
In the days that followed, Kakhovka was plunged into chaos. “I didn’t go into town much and the administration kept us inside,” Bogdan said. “They were afraid to let us out into the city. We started having problems with medicines and food because, to be honest, we didn’t have an honest director at the time.” According to Bogdan and Oleksandr, the director was stealing humanitarian aid and pension funds sent to the home.
Life under the Russian occupation led to food and medication shortages in Kakhovka. One resident at the nursing home began to buy critically needed supplies for his peers with the money he received from his sponsors in Kyiv. “When something was very necessary, for example, tablets for a toothache, or for the head, or something else, they sent money,” said Bogdan.
“Mostly [the elderly residents] needed medication, [for high blood] pressure [and] headaches. We had guys who needed very serious pills for epilepsy. There were such complications. Mostly we [helped] because our bosses weren’t nice, and they didn’t pay much attention to them. We felt very sorry for them,” he added.
As the war raged on, conditions in the nursing home began to deteriorate. According to Oleksander, the staff employed to care for the residents began to ally with Russian soldiers, who walked around the grounds of the home. Inside the building, the staff allegedly took down anything resembling Ukraine’s national colors, yellow and blue, and played Russian songs from their phones.
We dozed off, and when I woke up, I was already in the hallway, looking at everybody. Many had fear in their eyes. Many had no understanding of what was going on. And then we realized that there was no way back. This was war,” he added.
In the weeks that followed the referendum, a new director took over the nursing home. According to Bogdan, she too worked alongside Russian soldiers, this time to prepare the residents to be deported over the border. She allegedly told the residents, “Let’s go to Sochi for the winter, have a rest, take a minimum of things,” meaning a few necessary items such as medication and clothing. The rest would have to be left behind.
Once part of Georgia, Sochi’s winter temperatures are far warmer than Ukraine’s. The men claim the director said moving to Sochi would be a vacation, that residents did not have to take many belongings, and that they would return to Kakhovka in the spring. However, the men knew they would not be able to return if they left the nursing home.
Located on a hill overlooking the Dnieper River, Russian soldiers wanted to turn the nursing home into a military base, believing that, if they were stationed at the nursing home, they could stop Ukrainian advances before they began. At the time, Ukraine’s military was making rapid advances that eventually led to them retaking Kherson city.
As the fighting reached a turning point in Kherson, Oleksander claimed Russian soldiers were evicting people from their houses. “Everything that was on the bank, they occupied by themselves, including our boarding house,” he said.
Meanwhile, the two men claim that the director worked behind closed doors to prepare for the deportation of the nursing home residents to Russia. “In general, [the staff] were running to the passport office, signing some paperwork, all the time. They did not tell us anything. But three days before our deportation, we were very often visited by the director. She could come late at night. For three days, she went,” said Bogdan.
The deportation occurred on Nov. 5, 2022, six days before Ukraine’s military recaptured Kherson city. The day they were forced to leave, Bogdan said, “The director warned us that you should not run anywhere, and if we [tried to escape, she told us,] ‘We will find any, we will punish them, and you will be punished severely.”
Following her warning, Bogdan claims four buses and 20 ambulances were driven up to the nursing home. The ambulances were to transport residents who could not walk on their own to the trains that would take them to Russia.
“I was depressed,” recalls Oleksander. “I understood they were taking us to Russia and thought that we will [sic] stay there and [Ukraine] wouldn’t remember us. We lived like this for eight months, and the authorities didn’t care to give us back to [Ukraine]. I thought we were screwed.”
“The director warned us that you should not run anywhere, and if we [tried to escape, she told us,] ‘We will find any, we will punish them, and you will be punished severely.”
“I understood we would be treated very differently, that the attitude would be bad towards us, because we’re Ukrainians. I understood that this was the end, that we were never going back,” he added.
The 200 residents were transported by bus for over six hours to Dzhankoy, a town in annexed Crimea. From there, Bogdan and Oleksander claim they were placed on a train that took them to Voronezh, a Russian town nearly 600 miles from Kakhovka and approximately 155 miles away from the Ukrainian border. The volunteers traveling with them, allegedly, were partially made up of medical specialists who provided round-the-clock care to those most in need of assistance. However, despite the bouts of kindness shown to the residents, Bogdan and Oleksander say these same specialists pushed the false narrative that Russian soldiers had saved the residents from living in a terrible country.
“They [volunteers] were told we were supposedly taken out from under fire. They were trying to calm us down. All the way, they were telling us [that] wherever they are taking us now, we would be better off than we were,” said Bogdan.
“I tried to explain that I understood that we were going to some unknown place, and I understood that we were going to people who had been turned against us for a long time. But then again, they kept on saying, ‘Stop it, we’re treating everybody well, everything will be fine,’” he added.
After exiting the train, Oleksander said he and the other residents were approached by Russian journalists and asked if they were glad to be out of Ukraine. From the station, the men said they were taken to two separate nursing homes, where they claimed there were two Ukrainian children under the age of four living with them.
According to Bogdan, the nursing home staff “tried to treat us nicely, but you could see the anger on their faces, like we owed them something. And that’s in my boarding house. And even the locals, who are [older]—some treated [us] with understanding [sic] of what happened, and some were like, ‘You came, why do we need you here?’”
Once in Russia, Ukrainians can technically leave the country, but few understand that the option exists due to a lack of accessible information about the process. As a result, many Ukrainians have reportedly remained in Russia because they believe they have no other choice.
To make matters worse, Ukrainians who have been illegally deported have to navigate their way through a shroud of confusing misinformation from Russian officials. Once in Russia, Ukrainians can technically leave the country, but few understand that the option exists due to a lack of accessible information about the process. As a result, many Ukrainians have reportedly remained in Russia because they believe they have no other choice.
“People can leave. They are afraid to go somewhere else. They don’t have money. They don’t have the knowledge to go somewhere else,” said Nelli Isaieva, a volunteer with Helping to Leave, the NGO that helped Oleksander and Bogdan get out of Russia.
“Many times people are texting us, ‘Which is the closest country in Europe? I need to go back to Ukraine.’ They don’t even need to go to Europe to go back to Ukraine, but they don’t know it. There’s so many times we are telling people, ‘You can use this border,’ and they say, ‘But Google says it’s closed, it’s not working.’”
“We say it is working, it’s not an official border that you can cross whenever you want, but you can use it, and you can safely go back home. But it’s war, and nothing is safe, but it still is more safe than staying in Russia,” said Isaieva.
Helping To Leave has helped evacuate 53,100 Ukrainians fleeing Russian-occupied territories and the Russian Federation since the beginning of the full-scale invasion last year. The NGO began with volunteers on a Telegram messaging channel working to help evacuate Ukrainians, and has grown significantly since. They now have over 350 volunteers who work without pay to help as many people as they can.
“Right now, the way [for people to get] out of temporarily occupied territories [back] to Ukraine has been blocked since December 2022. We cannot suggest [people] go to Russia, but many people approach us via our [Telegram] bot, and they ask, ‘If I go to Russia, will you help me?” said Isaieva.
“We say, ‘Yes, we can do this,’ but we cannot [recommend they] go to Russia. In some cases, people think it’s easy… but there are many cases where people were detained by the Russian military simply because they found something on their phones, or maybe they didn’t find anything, they just think, ‘We want to detain this person,’” she added.
Not long after arriving in the Voronezh region, Oleksander and Bogdan began to look for a way out. The same resident who had provided funds for critically needed supplies for the home in Ukraine was one of the five who, along with Oleksander and Bodan, planned to escape. In late December, that resident was able to get in touch with Helping To Leave, which agreed to help the men.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh God. How can we do this?” said Isaieva. “Because it’s not the first case where there were disabled people [who needed to be evacuated], but then I asked how many people in total were deported [and] when they said the number I thought, ‘How can we help them?’” she added.
Sometimes funding evacuations from Russia is as simple as buying a train ticket to a neighboring country, then helping people navigate their way to areas in the European Union. However, in more complex cases, such as that of Bogdan and Oleksander, more help is required. To get the five men out of Russia, Helping to Leave hired a local driver to transport them from their nursing homes to the Norwegian border, 1,705 miles away. The planning took nearly three weeks and $1,982, far more than the average costs, between $55 and $165 per person, the NGO pays.
“We are treated as people here. They don’t look at us and see the disabled, but look at us first of all as people. Everything we need, they help us, they hear us, they perceive us,” said Oleksander.
Helping To Leave recommended the men go to Norway because of the country’s system of social support for people with physical disabilities. When asked if any other nursing home residents wanted to leave Russia, Isaieva said, “Some people—they’re kind of okay staying there. I know some of them [are] in the situation where they are afraid to do something. These guys were brave. Of course, they were afraid it wouldn’t work, but they tried. Others are [too afraid to leave].”
On the morning of Jan. 27, 2023, the monthslong nightmare came to an end: Oleksander, Bogdan, and the three other men successfully crossed into Norway. Volunteers were ready to take the men to Bergen, far away from the Russian border, where they now live in a hotel with other Ukrainian refugees.
Speaking about the conditions of their lives in Bergen, the two men say they are treated far better than they were treated in Ukraine or Russia. “We are treated as people here. They don’t look at us and see the disabled, but look at us first of all as people. Everything we need, they help us, they hear us, they perceive us,” said Oleksander. “You see, in our country, we were like outcasts who had to be shut up in a nursing home and not shown to anyone, not to people, and not to be seen either.”
In Norway, Oleksandr explains, he has been encouraged to learn English and Norwegian and plans to eventually enroll in a university, something he said was not possible in Ukraine. Bogdan is now learning English and is currently in treatment to learn how to walk on his own without his cane.
But for those fortunate enough to find refuge, the people left behind are always on their mind. “This history repeats itself. And what about the deported people? We have to deal with that and not forget it,” Bogdan said. “Little by little, little by little, at least in small groups, we have to pull these people out, not to leave them, even if it’s a home for the elderly… The main thing is not to forget about [them].”
