UKRAINE: ATROCITY PORN, SERIAL LIES & WESTERN PROPAGANDA

Whether the majority of the western world knows it or not the Ukraine war has been characterised by arguably the greatest number of lies ever conveyed as fact in any previous war. These lies have come in serial fashion from the Ukrainian regime and conveyed as fact via western mass media news outlets.

The first and most innocuous of these lies was the least harmful in its effects, serving only to bolster Ukrainian morale in the early days of the war. This was the fantasy portrayed as fact of a modern day version of Germany’s first world war hero Baron Manfred von Richthofen who was a German pilot eventually credited with 80 air combat victories. The fictitious Ukrainian version was given the moniker, ‘The Ghost of Kiev’ and was credited before his exposure as pure fantasy with shooting down 40 Russian aircraft.

Such stories have featured in many wars and, at their more innocuous level as above serve to bolster morale, both in the ranks and among the civilian population. However, there is a wider use for such tall tales where the goals are stretched far wider into the weaponizing of words to a degree where real impact is achieved on the other side.

In the USA the CIA has significant resources dedicated to creating believable lies to achieve such results. This can extend beyond simply having lies seeded in national newspapers and mainstream media news shows. Counterfeiting various items is also seen as an important element in the armoury of what are known as Psychological Operation teams (PsyOps for short.) These are also complemented by the Black Operations teams (BlackOps). Any kind of deceit that can lower enemy morale, heighten allied morale, degrade enemy influence or enhance allied influence that can be made believable will be used.

The techniques alluded to above have been used many times, stretching back many years, even to medieval times when for instance the lie that the Saracens were killing Christian babies and drinking their blood was used to recruit troops for the Crusades to “liberate” Jerusalem. More recently, during the Iraq war there were several instances, the most well known of them being the ‘Kuwaiti babies torn from incubators by Iraqi troops’ fabrication and the Jessica Lynch story which conjured up a fictitious daring rescue of said Jessica from the clutches of the Iraqis.

Coming up to present time we have had the most number of these “useful lies’ related in the shortest time frame ever over the last few months in the war that has raged in Ukraine. Each and every one of them including the latest that has featured in almost every mainstream news outlet over the last 24 hours were reported as if they were cut and dried obvious with no possible need for scepticism or investigation.

Note: In reading of the atrocities below please keep in mind that in all but one of the events below they took place in eastern Ukraine within the Donbass region and in all cases the casualties were Russian-speakers that the Russian campaign sought to free from what was strongly perceived to be oppressive and at times murderous Ukrainian subjugation.

In addition it should be kept in mind that the most radical members among the Ukrainian forces taking part in the conflict consider all Russian-speaking Ukrainians to be man, woman and child sub-humans, traitors to Ukraine, candidates for violent elimination or for ethnic cleansing from Ukraine.

1. The Mariupol Theatre

On 16 March 2022, the Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine was bombed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was used as an air raid shelter during the siege of Mariupol, sheltering about 1,000 civilians, of whom about 600 were killed. (Wikipedia)

Though it is claimed that this atrocity was investigated no independent investigation was carried out to my knowledge.

‘A closer look reveals that local residents in Mariupol had warned three days before the March 16 incident that the theater would be the site of a false flag attack launched by the openly neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which controlled the building and the territory around it.

Civilians that escaped the city through humanitarian corridors have testified that they were held by Azov as human shields in area, and that Azov fighters detonated parts of the theatre as they retreated. Despite claims of a massive Russian airstrike that reduced the building to ashes, all civilians appear to have escaped with their lives.’

‘While the Russian military operation in Ukraine has triggered a humanitarian crisis in Mariupol, it is clear that Russia gained nothing by targeting the theatre, and virtually guaranteed itself another public relations blow by targeting a building filled with civilians–including ethnic Russians.

Azov, on the other hand, stood to benefit from a dramatic and grisly attack blamed on Russia. In full retreat all around Mariupol and facing the possibility of brutal treatment at the hands of a Russian military hellbent on “de-Nazification,” its fighters’ only hope seemed to lie in triggering direct NATO intervention.’

Link: More details regarding the Mariupol Theatre atrocity here.

2. The Bucha Atrocity

The details of exactly what happened in the Kiev suburb of Bucha in late March-early April remain unclear. However, Russia was given the blame without question after the atrocity in which it is estimated around 1,000 civilians were summarily executed. It is known however that many wore white armbands and Russian military ration boxes were found in the vicinity of many victims. I believe the truth of the matter is that after the Russian military left Bucha the Ukrainian forces who entered after them went door to door to locate those who had ‘collaborated’ with the Russian forces (took military rations for them and so forth) and quite possibly as in medieval witch hunts took the word of Ukrainian locals concerning who to apprehend and shoot. I am aware of no motivation for the Russian forces to perpetrate these acts of inhuman violence against a population it was clearly supplying military rations to as an act of goodwill.

3. Missile attack on Kramatorsk Railway Station.

On the 8th of April 2022 at least one missile attack killed some 60 people who were gathered in the vicinity of Kramatorsk railway station with a view to leaving the city due to their fear of being embroiled in the fighting.

As with the Mariupol Theatre atrocity the word of Ukrainian activists and regime officialdom  was accepted at face value. Once again it was almost endlessly repeated that ‘Russia did it’ though no one could offer a motive on the Russian side and the motive of Ukrainian radicals to do so was not seen as worthy of mention.

4. Maternity hospital, school and civilian home attacks.

It is known from video and still image evidence and also from the accounts of civilians that Ukrainian troops have been using civilian infrastructure as bases and fighting positions. In the case of the maternity hospital it is known that it had lain empty and unused for a lengthy period. In regard to schools, video is online showing both Ukrainian troops and weaponry within them. And on the question of using civilians as human shields video and still image evidence has revealed Ukrainian troops amidst civilian housing estates and there are images of notices placed on home and apartment doors that Ukrainian troops have the right to occupy them at a moment’s notice.

5. Kremenchuk Shopping Mall Atrocity

Ukrainian president Zelensky has said that 1,000 people were in the Kremenchuk shopping mall when it was set aflame by some unknown means on the 27th of June. Western mainstream media talk of between 10 and 18 victims however. Russia of course has received the blame once again across all western mainstream news outlets. As in all the cases above this is said merely due to the fact that Ukrainian sources say so. No evidence is supplied and no investigation called for. It is said however that the Google Maps website reveals that the mall has been closed for the past four months.

Update after UN Security Council debate:

‘Russia does not target civilians in Ukraine and did not strike the shopping center in Kremenchug, Moscow’s envoy to the UN told the Security Council on Tuesday. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy said that the mall caught fire due to an explosion of Western-supplied weapons and ammunition, stored at the nearby factory and intended for the shelling of civilians in Donbass, making it a legitimate military target.’

‘“In reality, there was no strike on the mall,” Polyanskiy told the council, as Russia targeted a storage facility at the Kredmash factory next door. The weapons and ammunition stored there were bound for the front, where Ukrainian artillery was bombarding the civilians of Donbass as it had for years, to no objection from the UN, he added. “The Russian strike stopped that.”’

Again, in my firm view the hyperbole and exaggeration by Zelensky and the western mass media is yet another cynical disinformation device to increase the resolve of western nations to further bolster Ukraine’s war effort when there is evidence of it flagging. Of course there is also another explanation if the mall has been closed for four months now, that it has been used to store some of the weaponry and ammunition from the West or as a safe barracks for Ukrainian troops where their normal barracks are too readily spotted by drone for attack.

Are western audiences being swayed by the uniform blame game against Russia for all of the instances above where civilian populations have been either put at severe risk or have been massacred in large numbers. For me the events spoken of above exemplify the depth of cynical manipulation that has infested western wars for many years now but which have reached a fever-pitch level of total cynicism in the ongoing Ukraine war where the manipulation of human misery has reached its absolute nadir.

As was the case in both Iraq and Syria all western institutions, not merely its mass media, have been turned into war mode-pervaded organs of western state propaganda with the useful lies of activists instantly transformed to unquestioned and unquestionable fact in an instant. No scepticism applied, no investigation called for, simply a bald stating of the “facts” as provided by one side painting the other as evil incarnate.

Thus Russia, its president and the Russian forces (acknowledged even by western experts as having been careful NOT to cause civilian casualties or damage vital infrastructure) can be demonised by the entire elite western world acting as one.  

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Russian military field ration packs, Bucha: