by Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker blog
How much of the current Russophobia campaign is to detract from the outrageous far-right regime Barry Obama installed in Ukraine?
Certainly, if this wave of anti-Semitism – excuse me, Russophobia – was not clouding everything involving that region of the world, Ukraine’s chaos would necessarily receive more attention.
So even though protecting the US Democratic Party’s domestic standing is probably the primary goal, another key goal is obfuscating the heinous effort to get NATO (finally) installed in Ukraine and to destabilise Russia via Afghanistan Part II.
There has now been 3.5 years of war in the Ukraine, and very little genuine coverage of it in the Mainstream Media.
That’s why it is not surprising that the West has not cared to relay the appalling – but unsurprising – Italian news interview with 3 men who claim they were snipers at Maidan Square in Kiev in February 2014. The Italian newspaper Il Giornale and Italian Mediaset Matrix TV (Channel 5, most popular in Italy, English subtitled report here) first carried the story.
“Everyone started shooting two or three shots at a time. It went on for fifteen, twenty minutes. We had no choice. We were ordered to shoot both on the police and the demonstrators, without any difference,” says one of the snipers in the report.
The Mainstream Media/Western governments have long alleged that democratically-elected ex-president Viktor Yankovich masterminded the massacre of more than 80 people. But does that sound like the orders a sitting president would make, assuming he was trying to stay in office?
The Italian report offers a far more plausible explanation: the 3 snipers – all Georgian – were recruited by “color revolution” beneficiary Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia. This fanatical Russophobe fled corruption charges there, but was fantastically propped up in post-coup Ukraine in 2015 as a provincial governor (given citizenship as well). It seems unsurprising that he would be linked to being a major part of yet another colour revolution aimed at weakening Moscow.
Saakashvili has since been hounded out of Ukraine by the coupe regime. His benefactor is obviously Washington, but woe betide the nation he adopts next! The latest report is that he has illegally returned to Ukraine – the man does not have a passport, after all.
In the Italian report the 3 snipers claim to have been hired in the Georgian capital by Saakashvili’s military advisor, Mamuka Mamulashvili. Guns, passports and a $5,000 fee secured the allegiance of these mercenaries.
One of the mercenaries is quoted as saying: “I also told him (Mamulashvili): ‘Things are getting complicated, we have to start shooting….But who should we shoot?’. He replied that who and where did not matter – we only had to shoot somewhere in order to sow chaos.”
But, in one sense, this is is not really news….
This was all already clear at the very beginning
The Italian report confirms what was famously leaked in a 2014 phone call between European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet.
Paet to Ashton: “…all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers, from both sides, among policemen and people from the streets, (thus contradicting Ashton, who just said that ex-president Yanukovych was behind the killings) that they were the same snipers, killing people from both sides….
Paet to Ashton: “…she said that as medical doctor (Olga Bogomolets, chief coordinator of medical aid at the main protest camp in Independence Square), she can, you know, say that it’s the same handwriting, the same type of bullets, and it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition that they don’t want to investigate, what exactly happened; so that now there is stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.
Ah the new coalition…feted as democracy lovers through and through…not wanting to find out who killed more than 80 of their fellow protesters. This phone call obviously threw the Nobel Committee for a loop – obviously, they had to cancel their Peace Prize plans for the Maidan protesters and even had to wait until 2015 to award an anti-Soviet Belorussian novelist who was willing to denounce Russia over Ukraine.
So everybody knew back in February 2014 that the Maidan Protests were not a true expression of the People’s will because they had been co-opted by sinister forces. Compounded with the vast presence of neo-Nazis and their Russophobic statements and policy plans, and most people saw through the Mainstream Media’s coverage.
That Ashton-Paet leak made international news. It also forced a counter-narrative from the Western nations trying to install a chocolate billionaire – or a former heavyweight champion, that would have worked too – into Ukraine’s highest office.
The lede sentence from CNN’s report on the leak story gives all the instructions an American audience needs in order to turn off their brain before reading: “Don’t read too much into the conversation.”
The problem is that Mainstream Media like The Guardian denigrate such a leak as a “conspiracy theory” when it was actually a serious policy conversation between two top government officials. Either they can’t tell the difference, or they are controlled, because the only possible “conspiracy” here would have to necessarily have to be between Ashton and Paet?
It must be quite frustrating for Moscow: I have no proof, but I assume they were the ones who orchestrated the Ashton whistle-blowing (or leak, if you prefer) and yet the Western Mainstream Media was able to completely ignore it. This is what happens when you have professional Russian politicians, diplomats and journalists going up against self-serving rank amateurs: they don’t play by the rules, even by the rules of common sense, and therefore they have recourse to the unpredictable tactics provided by fantasy and delusion.
There was also some fine whistle-blowing behind the leak that same month of Victoria Nuland’s infamous “F—- the EU” statement.
The actual translation of Nuland’s meaning is: “Forget about Ukraine’s European and IMF creditors who are worried that near-bankrupt Ukraine is going to default: Obama wants extreme right-wingers to take control of the government in order to provide total Western subservience, a NATO base on Russia’s borders and capitalist gutting on behalf of US-dominated corporatocracy/fascism.”
Nuland’s rant came just two months after she boasted that the US had spent $5 billion in Ukraine to achieve “democracy” in already-democratic Ukraine. The US made a significant investment, and in capitalism government is a business: it wants a return on its investment. This is not socialism, where the USSR/China supports Cuba, or Iran supports Palestine while getting little in return – capitalist countries have no ideology other than mercenary nihilism.
Back in March 2014 I posited that Ukraine was not a neo-Nazi movement, but a “NaLi movement” – National Liberals (“liberal” meaning “free-market capitalist” in Europe).
“Because, of course, that’s what the West wants: Nalism everywhere, and for the benefit of the international already-moneyed elite. European social safety nets: dismantled. Communism: already destroyed in Russia and permanently embargoed anywhere else. Nalism for all, for the benefit of a few.”
The 3 snipers say they never received payment and were abandoned by their paymasters, but the ideologically-nihilistic mercenaries contended that coming forward now is an act of conscience:
“At that time I did not realize, I was not ready, then I understood. We’ve been used. Used and stuck,” said Alexander.
Long-term analysis thanks to Eric Zuesse
I corresponded on this Italian report with Eric Zuesse, who was the first to break the Italian story into English. Mr. Zuesse, a historian and investigative journalist, has provided superb coverage and analysis of Ukraine since the situation began.
We must remember that even a fragmentation of Ukraine represents a major victory for the US. As long as they have a hostile “Little Ukraine” government on Russia’s borders – that’s cause for celebration in the Pentagon. The US does not care if a new “Little Ukraine” has lost Crimea and Donbass – they do not care for the interests of Ukrainians, after all.
Russia, even if we cynically assume it to be as self-interested as Washington, does indeed care more for the Ukrainian People because their two fates are intertwined and have been for centuries.
This desire to keep Ukraine intact and peaceful via democratic means is why Putin refuses to accept Donbass’ offer to secede from Ukraine, as he did with Crimea. (Of course, Crimea has a totally different history than the Donbass region, and anyone who doesn’t realise that knows very little about the entire situation, so just politely bear with them, LOL.)
“It’s in Russia’s national interest to improve the situation there, because if Donbass again participates in Ukraine’s national elections, Russia (Putin) will want enough Donbassers still to be living in Donbass so as to enable a neutralist such as Yanukovych to win power in Ukraine again, which is the only possible way to defeat the U.S. plan,” Zuesse told me.
So Donbass will remain the target of the Barry Obama-led ethnic cleansing – i.e., those who don’t support Washington’s man.
“If too many Donbassers relocate into Russia, then Putin’s plan (to use Donbassers to de-elect the nazis from power in Ukraine) won’t be able to succeed,” said Zuesse.
This is very similar to situation in Palestine, where Zionists wonder why neighbouring countries don’t just accept all the Palestinians? Well, not only would that legitimise and make permanent Israel’s illegal colonization, but the only way Palestinians get any land back is by playing by Israel’s democratic rules; without revolution or a Third Intifada, all that is left is to play by the rules of bourgeois (West European) democratic reforms….(which will simply be changed by Tel Aviv once the demographics favour the Palestinians, of course)
The future of Donbass also reminds me of the West’s “country-which-shall-not-be-named” – Republika Srpska of the former Yugoslavia. That area has been screwed up by the West nearly as badly as Afghanistan, and I cannot expand more on that here, but what does this screwing up mean for those living in Republika Srpska? It means being consigned to poverty and being a pawn (perhaps for decades), much like Donbass may be.
Srpska is basically a card which Belgrade can lord over the West: “Stop trying to ruin us, or we’ll annex Srpska”. Being a tool will not serve Donbassians any more than it has served those in Srpska, where poverty is rampant and reconstruction has been the least able to get off the ground in the former Yugoslavia region.
If Putin was a socialist – if he cared more about Ukrainians and was willing to risk Russia’s standing more – I believe he would have made more of a stink about the leaks. Unlike the leaders of the USSR, Putin does not really stand on moral-political grounds – he mainly gets vocal about sovereignty. Zuesse echoed this idea when I asked him how Russia can “win” in Ukraine, much as they have helped “win” in Syria:
“In my personal opinion, Putin has done everything exactly correct, but with only one possible exception, which — because everything else has been SO correct that he’s probably right about that one too: my preference would have been for Putin publicly to challenge the lies from Obama and the rest of the West,” Zuesse told me. “That recording is a smoking gun on a coup in process, if ever there was one….”
So what are we up against, in terms of trying to get the snipers’ confessions out to the general public?
Quite a lot, according to Zuesse, who was the first to be on top of this Italian report. He said his email list for his articles is a Who’s Who of all the top English-language Mainstream Media, as well as all the top leftist media sites…and they all passed.
“My email list includes some of the individuals who own or control major mainstream and many minor ‘alt-news’ US news media, plus top editors and producers, plus many prominent writers and reporters about international affairs. A few leading foreign news media also are included. So, at the highest levels at each of the network and cable news operations and each of the top national newspapers, and each of the top serious magazines, and each of the top online news-sites, there are plenty of individuals who receive each of my reports, and each report links to only the highest quality, most reliable, source for each contentious allegation, and this makes as easy as possible for each of these people to check and verify any contentious allegation that is made.
Those people all choose to keep this information to themselves. A few have privately indicated to me that their career would be at risk if they were to do anything to indicate to others in their organization that something from me should be published. Even at the top executive levels, these people fear losing their jobs,” said Zuesse.
As a journalist, all I can say is: “Yes, unfortunately….”
One thing to keep in mind is this: Who cares about Ukraine, besides those in the region?
When was the last time an attempted coup ever caused an election to be lost in the West?
The West sponsors coups all the time, and the voters in the Western imperialist nations behind them could not care less, so why would they start with Ukraine? The only exception to this was Vietnam.
This is not necessarily cruelty or even arrogance, I believe, but apathy and self-centredness – they have their own problems to consider. It also definitely shows what happens to a culture which accepts Nali-ism and capitalism, instead of the all-embracing tenets of socialism.
Above all, what Zuesse stressed there things to me was that ethnic cleansing is going on, being ignored and is being supported by Western media and governments.
Secondly, he stressed that there is no clear Western policy in Ukraine…except for destabilization. Creating chaos is, in fact, a definite policy – it preserves the status quo and makes “stable” countries stronger by comparison.
Thirdly, only Russia has enough skin in the game to care about Ukraine, and they are the only country with the means to do much about it.
But does Russia want to get involved in open war against the Ukrainian coup regime? Would that be successful and what would the collateral damage make it even worth it?
Sowing chaos is extremely effective, but not for the 99% Ukrainians.
Kudos to the Italian reporters who broke this story. Other than Mr. Zuesse and his report for The Greanville Post, all I have been able to find in English has been some articles from the Center for Research on Globalization. When the Mainstream Media refuses to discuss it, all you can do to help is repost what you find….
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television. He can be reached on Facebook.
The unknown snipers shooting into crowds in boilover Thailand at the same time is a story even the alt media seem to have forgotten. When the Thai sniper incident is placed beside the Maidan atrocity they both become more visible.
It never matters how clear things become, ho open the confessions, etc. Truths that should not move around, are kept out of circulation.
Don’t forget that the exact same thing happened in Lithuania in 1991. The fact that the snipers were Lithuanians was acknowledged by Lithuanians themselves, including the (at the time) Minister of National Defense, Butkyavichus. There was a bit of a row for a brief time, then it all went down the old memory hole. Algirdas Paleckis, who dared mention this publicly in 2010, was put in jail.
Here is a good summary. Better copy it. These things are disappearing from the web. There used to be a lot more information on the Lithuanian sinipers.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2013/01/16/lithuania-stamped-out-truth.html
Excellent report.
“When the Mainstream Media refuses to discuss it”
You know the matter is of extreme import to zionazia. It is in the ukraine where Jew-nazis from israel and the zio-colonies have the deepest involvement. Solidarity among the zio-media is a very good litmus test for determining zionazi interests.
Good work Ramin!
There are two things that I want to highlight:
The first is that much to our chagrin it is a right-wing newspaper that broke the story (a Pulcinella secret more than a story, as we say in colloquial Italian meaning something everybody could figure out). It is unfortunately a fact that the (phony) left is more Russia-phobic than the right.
Second thing: mainstream media means Anglo media and its translations in various vernaculars. Much like Globalization means Angli-balization.
“Those people all choose to keep this information to themselves. A few have privately indicated to me that their career would be at risk if they were to do anything to indicate to others in their organization that something from me should be published. Even at the top executive levels, these people fear losing their jobs,” said Zuesse.”
And that is journalism, and it has been that way in the west at least since the 1980s.
“…editor Edward Lucas of The Economist called for the ostracization of RT, Sputnik, and their respective staffers…
In Lucas’ view, Western countries “could do a bit more of ostracism” toward media services like RT and Sputnik. “I’m quite happy to say that if anyone puts a CV on my desk, and on that CV I see they worked at RT or Sputnik or one of these things, that CV is going into the bin and not into the intro.” As far as Mr. Lucas is concerned, a job at RT is “the last stage on a career latter.” ”
https://sputniknews.com/politics/201502081017975958/
Donbass News:
https://novorossiyadailysun.wordpress.com/category/donbass-news/
http://nrt24.ru/en
Just in case anybody still at least recalls the term “Donbass”.
Ramin, it wasn’t obummer involved in Ukraine, it was biden; looks like he washed his hands of what was to happen there, letting biden give the orders directly, and indirectly etc., and biden is destined for hell as a mass-murderer.
Back in August 2014, I e-mailed the 6 largest British newspapers about the Donbass, and in particular about Kristina & Kira being murdered in Gorlovka. Not one of them replied – they ALL knew what was going on, and by being complicit in their silence, so too, have condemned themselves to hell with biden, nuland, camoron, may et al.
The Vice President of the United States doesn’t have the power to order dinner. If Biden did anything, he did it with power that Obama had granted him. The VP only gets things done when he can say ‘the President wants this’. If the President ever comes out and says anything differently, any perceived power the VP is wielding instanly evaporates. Whether or not Obama got his hands directly dirty along the way, anything that Biden did was done by Obama.
Dear Ralph,
If it wasn’t Obama. then just exactly why was it that Obama called Putin a ‘Dick’ and a ‘Jackass’ at the G20 meeting which immediately cancelled that meeting?
Of course, Obama’s man General David Petraeus was not taken out of Afghanistan to be head of the CIA for nought, nor is the story of Petraeus’ retirement from the CIA over infidelity matters gospel either for as Petraeus had stated himself, everything is about perception.
Can you recall another major event that occurred about three weeks after the ‘Revolution in Kiev? The hijacking of MH370 perhaps? Remember the two Iranians with ‘stolen passports? Remember the supposedly other ‘suspected’ passengers, or even the five passengers who ended up not boarding and their luggage was retrieved?
Can you remember that MH370 took off as per normal and flew north into the South China Sea, and the last actual communication heard was the crew saying goodbye to KL controllers and then preparing to transfer to the Vietnamese Air Traffic Control who waited 17 minutes before enquiring as to ‘where was MH370’
It was at that time MH370 was hijacked and everybody on board was murdered. MH370 then climbed to 45,000 feet to avoid any other aircraft and did a U turn before descending to 5,000 to fly across Penang and into the Malaccan Straits then onwards towards the Andaman Sea, where MH370 disappeared from the military radars at Butterworth, Kota Baru and Thailand.
Are you aware that MH370 was seen by a passenger and thus the flight crew of a Saudi passenger jet flying from Mecca to KL? Or that when the passenger reported what she had seen to an air hostess the hostess simply closed the window and instructed the passenger to go to sleep?
Are you aware of the empty ‘fire suppressant’ bottle that was found washed up on one of the Islands of ‘The Maldives on about the 24th of March?
The ‘revolution in Kiev in reality was not sufficient for ‘American’ designs, they needed an excuse to place NATO forces within the Ukraine, and had the ‘Terrorist’ event that was supposed to take place with MH370 occurred then British forces would have justified NATO forces attacking Iran, and the ‘newly’ proclaimed Ukrainian government would have welcomed those NATO forces on Ukrainian soil, and there would have been nothing Russia could have done about it.
But Russia was well aware of the events and had to have been informed in either 2012 or 2013. Russia’s source had to have been Ibragim Todashev, which is why the FBI murdered him before he was permitted to leave the US. That then implicates Tamerlan Tsarnaev and also explains the deaths (murders) of the two FBI agents Lorek and Shaw, and identifies the main FBI agent James Yacone.
But it gets better than that. It is also possible to identify the ‘player’ Kazam Ali, or Ali Kazam, who gave out all of the ‘cover story to the BBC in regard to the ‘two Iranian boys’ set up as patsies.
Again and again, Russia has demonstrated her superiority over the anglozionists who wish to control the world today.
Belgrade is not trying to annex Srpska, and being surrounded by NATO Serbia does not really stand a chance. That people from Srpska want to join their brethren in Serbia, and escape fanatics from Sarajevo is only natural.
Of course Iranians backed those same fanatics and mujahedins in the last war (funny, Saudis did the same, it’s easy to come to an agreement if there are some Christian heads to chop apparently), good of you to mention that Ramin.
And, NATO ordered Ukrainian army to stand down. This was a news item at the time. Their wording was ‘It is imperative that the Ukrainian army stand down’ Imperative means ordered, commanded. As if an external power can order a nation’s army to stand down while there is an insurrection occurring (or at any other time). Says who was really running the show.
What about this American Bryan fellow?
Where is he now?
Katherine
This is old news. This has been known for years. During the Kiev riots, Yanukovich disarmed the Ukrainian riot police, not wishing to have civilians harmed. The “opposition”, on the other hand, used snipers to cause chaos and blame the fatalities on Yanukovich. How many of those “demonstrators” in Kiev were from the city and how many were brought from outside, especially from Western Ukraine ? What we had in Kiev in 2014 were Soros style “demonstrations”, where a minority is used to terrorize the majority. You do that by bringing supporters from all over the country to a specific place to create the impression of a “mass movement”. What was specific for Kiev in 2014 is that you had ordinary civilian demonstrators – fooled into demonstrating – mixed with neo-Nazis, thugs, criminals, mercenaries and foreign agents, which led to the violence and deaths. When it was all over Yats had the audacity to demand from President Vladimir Putin that Yanukovich be extradited and stand trial for those deaths. Putin, ofcourse, refused. After that Yats fled to Canada, where he was given Canadian citizenship in record time. That was nice of democratic Canada.
I posted my own take on Ukraine on All Fools Day 2015. Having done some thorough on-line research, I came to the conclusion that Victoria Nuland, Catherine Ashton and Christine Lagarde were acting in concert before, during and after the ousting of Yanukovych. There is certainly evidence the three women’s paths crossed in Washington, Kiev and Paris at opportune moments, even studiously avoiding being photgraphed together at times. Some readers might get something from the article, others might regard it as a conspiracy theory.
https://bryanhemming.wordpress.com/2015/04/01/double-double-toil-and-trouble-the-cauldron-of-kiev/
Now why would the Saudi Royal Family give the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak a billion $US? The original story I believe was only $681million. Could the ‘gifts’ be for something in regard to Iran? Could the costs be in regard to MH370 and MH17, and of course Razak has spent the lot.