On the face of it, watching western mainstream news bulletins it appears obvious, the Russians are conducting a scorched earth policy in their assault upon Ukraine.
Burned out buildings that appear to be to all intents and purposes civilian residential blocks, a hospital or school here and there and one notable theatre in Mariupol.
Then there was the ‘scandal’ of an apparent assault on Europe’s largest nuclear energy plant.
Distraught civilians, including children are often seen along with various fleeing civilians and we are given the impression that the Russian assault is indiscriminate and brutal, almost completely without mercy.
What else should we think but that a great wrong is being perpetrated by a military, government and president completely without conscience who are completely careless in their actions, with malign intent and murderously lethal weaponry applied without rhyme of reason at the civilian population of Ukraine.
What else can we believe but the evidence of our eyes?
We see one burned out building after another where entire neighbourhoods are strewn with rubble, blackened windows and walls, one wrecked and shattered building after another, clearly buildings of civilian use and not military. Our conclusions are obvious, are they not? The Russians are absolute monsters.
But is it all as simple as it looks?
Perhaps we ought to ask ourselves a few questions? Though the likelihood of the most people watching doing this appears to me at least, to be slight, considering the sights assaulting their eyes and the always Russia-negative delivery of the voice overs assaulting their ears.
There has been talk of the Russian military, having such a long supply chain in some cases, particularly those members of it stationed close to Kiev, having problems restocking their ammunition supply. However, on the face of it, they are quite indiscriminately using masses of their supply shooting up civilian housing, presumably with civilians inside.
The weaponry in use is clearly not simply machine guns, hand guns or anything of this kind, the damage done indicates much more sophisticated and powerful weaponry than this. Missile attacks both large and hand-held MANPAD type delivery systems. Such weaponry comes at quite a price, with each unit of explosive power hitting a residential block costing several thousand in most currencies including dollars. Why “waste” it on attacking civilians and their homes?
Would there not be more sense in preserving your fire power to attack those you claim are your mortal enemy, in the first place the so-called neo-Nazi adherents of the ‘volunteer battalions’ and ‘national guard’ or the lesser but nonetheless very much regarded enemy forces of the Ukrainian army? Did Russian troops come so far at such a cost in terms of risk to themselves (you may have seen the videos of what happens to those of them who are captured by those they fight), vast cost to their government in terms of vehicles hit and rendered destroyed, fuel and ammunition… just to take pot shots at civilians and blast their homes to kingdom come?
The Ukrainians as Vladimir Putin has written about at length are brother and sister Slavs and essentially the same people as those in Russia. He has gone to great pains to write in detail on this subject and their common heritage, ancestry and history, their “DNA”, if you like and most likely in literal terms as well as in any metaphorical or peripheral sense.
The project as described by Putin and others within the Russian high command is to relieve the vast majority of Ukrainians of the weight of extremist forces that Russia claims are embedded deep within the structure of power within their nation, the so-called ‘neo-Nazis’ or ‘ultra-nationalistic’ forces that it is said hold de facto power over presidential and governmental policies, along with a high degree of radical extremism and anti-Russian hatred among the governing political elite themselves.
What sense then is there in alienating the civilian population of Ukraine by targeting them and so creating an emotional and physical backlash against them which is more than likely to be transferred into a fervent and continual guerrilla war against them. Why create such scenes of devastation also that will inevitably turn an already existent distrust of them globally into absolute disgust amounting at times to absolute hatred where they are regarded as utterly evil, those to be made outcast pariahs and all to do with them driven out from all civilised U.S. and European sight?
The Russians claim not to be doing so. If this is indeed the case why the so very obvious devastation, what of the residences that have become smoking, devastated ruins, what of the power plant, the hospital, the schools the theatre?
Is there any evidence for the Russian claims of innocence to the charge of demonically and with ruthless, criminal, indeed demonic heartlessness, deliberately and with malice aforethought seeking to kill civilians or attack them in their homes, destroying everything they hold dear?
In fact evidence of this is in fact beginning to emerge. Though such is the depth of the conviction that virtually all Russians are liars and deceivers, purveyors of propaganda and no better and quite likely even worse than their communist forebears that it will inevitably greeted by enormous skepticism, especially by those in elite positions, whether in the political or media spheres, across the west.
These are some emerging civilian testimonies regarding the actions of the aforementioned ‘neo-Nazis’ / ‘ultranationalist forces’, that the maternity hospital that came under attack was vacated of all its doctors, nurses and patients and taken over by them before the attack occurred, of civilians of Mariupol who state that the same ‘neo-Nazi‘ / ‘ultranationalist’ forces came to the theatre in their city and mined and blew it up even as civilians sheltered in its basement.
Such testimonies, recorded on video, are not being aired anywhere on national news bulletins across the West. Neither are the videos showing vigilante actions by the more extreme factions of the unofficial Ukrainian security state. These videos and there are a great many of them show civilians of all ages (including children) being taped to lamp posts or trees then being beaten, often with them commonly stripped half-naked. These the “security forces” call “Marauders”, thieves. Quite commonly their faces are spray-painted green.
There is a case to be made that the scorched earth policy which appears obvious on western screens laid at the door of the Russians may not be as simple and clear cut as it looks.
There is a very strong incentive on behalf of the most radical elements within the Ukrainian security forces to bring other western powers into their fight against Russia, and if possible those of NATO. In fact this would appear to be their only hope of survival and victory over the Russian assault. To create sufficient reasons for such a response from allied, outside forces and especially NATO would appear to be quite obvious. False flag events are one well known and infamous method of gaining such external and highly crucial support.
This was seen in the infamous market bombing incident in Sarajevo which can be credited with bringing NATO into the civil war in Yugoslavia which ended in being instrumental in the breakup of the country. In Iraq, the testimony of a little girl (who was later shown to be the daughter of a disaffected Iraqi general) whose tearful story of Iraqi babies being ripped from incubators and having their heads bashed in on hard-tiled hospital floors had enormous effect on President George Bush senior who used her testimony in a speech soon after. (All found to be carefully arranged deception afterwards.)
It appears that almost everything may have been tried so far to generate the kind of emotions required (including in one case TV news moderator tears) to generate the ‘something must be done’ moment required to gain outside and very crucial effect. Hence the nuclear power plant “attack” (it appears to have been a firefight involving an administration building, not the plant itself), the claims of Russians attacking hospitals and schools (though why they would do so is only inferred, pure evil, rather than with any logical purpose in mind) and the seemingly demonic attack on the Mariupol theatre. And naturally the devastation caused by attacking civilian housing and apartment blocks.
Much is being made of the Russians being tempted to use chemical weapons in recent times. This has been a quite frequent meme in recent times with statements concerning this fear coming from no less a personage than the U.S. president himself. At the same time there is talk of the Russian military being “stalled” outside Kiev, frustrated at not being able to take the city. References are being made of the Russian assault on Ukraine failing.
It could be said with some merit that such statements (which fly in the face of those made by various military analysts that the contrary is true and that the Russian plan of action is generally successful) are meant to portray increasing Russian frustration that their goals are not being met and that therefore they may be tempted to use the ultimate no-no in terms of weaponry, a chemical weapon.
What may be being sought is an avoidance of the situation which occurred in Douma in Syria where dreadful and distressing scenes were shown on western TV sets of distraught Syrian children having apparently been subjected to the horrors of a chemical weapon attack by the Syrian army. A Syrian army that had all but won its war against the forces it was fighting at the time. Aaron Mate has conducted a one-man investigation into this event with the help of high-ranking whistleblowers within the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) who say their findings indicating it was not the Syrian military who perpetrated the event were excluded from the subsequent official report.
When an army is about to vanquish their foes it appears to be unlikely that they would feel it necessary to use such a prohibited means of conducting warfare which may just possibly bring the intervention of outside and very powerful forces and potentially set back your imminent victory and even possibly lose you the entire war due to the vast ability of those outside forces (in this case the USA, its allies and NATO) to conduct such a range of extensive and long-running operations against you. Such as those conducted against the libyan authorities some years before.
So, there is much to be gained in encouraging these ‘outside forces’ to become involved. And as the neoconservatives who in the years before 9/11 said that what was needed was a ‘Pearl Harbour-type incident to motivate the U.S. government, and as the Iraqi incubator baby story showed as well as the own-side perpetrated Sarajevo market massacre showed and that the incident in Douma was meant to generate, you need a highly emotive issue to generate it.
The neoconservatives mentioned above also refer to a ‘believable lie’ as generally vital, such a one as Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or Britain’s ‘45 minute readiness of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction readiness’ to generate that certain ‘something must be done moment’ which galvanizes a huge uplift in contemplated responses resulting just possible in outright and fully committed intervention.
I leave it here for your contemplation. Is almost the totality of western television news acting as the potential springboard for the desire of radicals, whether now in Ukraine, or elsewhere in future, to stimulate the required emotional response needed at volume to push western elites to intervene once again in wars and in this case one which has the potential ultimately to lead to a nuclear war?
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