HOW LONG WILL THE WEST'S PICTURE OF 'POOR INNOCENT UKRAINE' BE BELIEVED?

Western populations have been sold a completely false narrative on Ukraine.

The actual story would have revolted the sensibilities sensitivities of populations in the USA, UK and across Europe if they had been reported.

It was necessary to paint a completely fake scenario which would appeal to those emotional vulnerabilities rather than cause them to question western elite priorities.

Did western populations even see the violence that went on in Kiev's Maidan Square through the winter months of 2013-14? Did they watch lightly-armed young policemen assailed by bricks, clubs, toxic sprays and Molotov cocktails, not to mention heavy chains and on one occasion by a fork-lift truck? I suspect not.

Where western strategic and national interests are concerned the press and media of nations such as the USA, UK and elsewhere have dispensed with their scepticism and have begun to placidly relay the state narratives requested of them. Unlike during the final stages of the Vietnam war there arose a new mentality among the owners, editors and so-called journalists of the establishment press and media in the West. Gone were the reports and articles questioning America's wars, gone was the journalistic neutrality of previous years. Western states were no longer being held to account for their actions but instead were given explicit support.

It was after 9/11 that western states could hardly do any wrong in the eyes of western mass media. To criticise them was to be branded as a puppet organisation for whoever the USA was attacking or invading. And as everyone agreed that the USA deserved total sympathy for the atrocity perpetrated against them it became quite unthinkable to question its motives or that of any of its allies.

One regime change operation after another followed 9/11 as we all know. In general none of the nations within 'The Coalition of the Willing as it was called had the nerve or inclination to question any of them. Not even when the fabled weapons of mass destruction of Iraq failed to show up. Naturally the media giants had to say something or other, but it was muted and delivered to a permanent stay under the nearest group-thought carpet from then on. There was to be no scepticism regarding U.S. foreign policy no matter what. The BBC and Guardian in the UK learned their lessons well and speedily became the stenographers for western states' official narratives.

So it was that when the USA, with EU compliance, saw an opportunity to intervene in Ukraine and engineer the subversion of the democratically-elected president and government of Ukraine they jumped at the chance. Despite the obvious attempt to bring them down using ultra-violence it was seen as too good an opportunity to miss. John McCain made his way to Maidan Square and joined the leader of a party that was once called 'National Socialist Party' and known for his Hitler salutes, on stage. The U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt and the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland showed their support for those attempting to bring the government and president down by handing out cookies on Maidan Square. They subsequently discussed who the replacements should be in a leaked phone conversation.

The above was bad enough, but more was to come and none of the reality brought about by any of these or subsequent events could be allowed to be communicated verbatim or with any degree of honesty to the American people or the populations of European states.

Once the deed was done and the democratic process in Ukraine was in complete ruins the western allies acted surprised when those who had been primarily responsible for voting in the departed president and government in elections confirmed free and fair by observers began to respond.

The people of Crimea and south-eastern Ukraine knew what to expect next as they knew the kind of people who had collapsed their democratic rights. They knew also what their next steps would be, to damn them for being Russian-speakers, to condemn them for their good relations with Russia just across the border, condemn them too for honouring the memory of their liberation from the Nazis by the Red Army and treat them as wholly second-class citizens in their own land, given the epithet 'Moskals', a word of derision and hate in western Ukraine.

Ukraine is a country split virtually right down the middle a little akin to the situation prevailing in Ireland. Two distinct cultures, identities, histories, mythologies and languages. The voting patterns in innumerable elections showed this fact explicitly. Ukraine is split in two, one side facing west, the other facing east.

The people of Crimea reacted fast and, asking Russia to help them held a referendum on reuniting with Russia, the country that had been Crimea's long-term home until arbitrarily given to Ukraine in 1956 by the then Soviet leadership. This decision to rejoin Russia was labelled a 'Russian Invasion' in the West with both political and media elites uniting to cry foul against the big bad Russians. 

In the Donbass of SE Ukraine those under the threats enumerated above and who had lost their democratic rights along with the people of Crimea on Maidan took things into their own hands too. All administration buildings in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions were taken over and the Kiev-loyal administrators replaced. Not one person died as a result of this takeover.

The new authorities in Donetsk and Lugansk demanded a high degree of autonomy so that the legacy, culture and affiliations the people there held could be preserved in the face of the overwhelming antagonism of those who had taken power in Kiev. The response from Kiev was almost immediate with a military force being sent to quell the uprising and deal with any resistance using the full power of its military and attendant militias formed of the ultra-nationalists and neo-Nazis who had been at the forefront of the violence on Maidan.

The resulting bloodbath where unguided mortar shells were sent into the communities of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions hitting residential tower blocks, hospitals and schools along with town centres and suburbs went almost totally unreported in the West. Instead a fervent anti-Russian cover story was designed and deployed to portray a completely false picture of what was going on. I watched intently from the winter of 2013-14 to late 2018 when the worst of the carnage went on. The bodies lying in the streets of the Donbass and Lugansk were heartbreaking to see. Women, children, grandfathers and mothers, all civilians, lying dead in their homes or on the streets, children playing football in a school playground, the decapitated body of a teacher and much, much else besides. Not a word of any of these atrocities reached the front pages (or any pages in fact) of western press and no such images (even blurred ones) were seen on any western TV screens or laptops of those devoted to the BBCs or CNNs of this world.

The one-sided articles, television programs and documentary footage available from western establishment sources totally skewed all coverage of Ukraine to a simple and simplistic black and white image where Russia was all bad, Ukraine all good and the choice of each reader and viewer was there, ready-made with ample conditioning relentlessly repeated years after years right up to the very minute you read this.

Poor Ukraine. Hateful Russia! Nice, innocent, freedom-loving Ukrainians evilly attacked and invaded by brutal enslaving Russians. The diatribes, the invective and the jingoism of every western elite complementing every other elite narrative made the western world one giant propaganda soup. It can hardly cause any amazement or surprise that this whole enterprise had one inevitable destination, war and more war.

The infinite arrogance and irresponsible goals of the USA to eliminate all those who are rivals to its unlimited power and be sole global hegemon for its own self-interest and preservation has brought us to the brink of a world war. Russia has responded to all this in the only ways it knew how, by advocating peace through the return of the democratic rights of the people of the Donbass and the retention of their pro-Russian culture, historic legacy of respect for Russia and its language itself which is and always has been Russian.

All of the features above that relate to the 'other side' of this story, this tragic story of modern Ukraine, have been kept hidden from western audiences by intent. But with each new day showing just how resilient the people of the Donbass are, and the growing in strength of Russian resistance to western attacks, I do wonder now, how long will the West's picture of 'Poor Innocent Ukraine' be believed?