A vast, unconscionable injustice has been perpetrated in eastern Europe since 2014 in which some 15,000 souls have perished with minimal reporting on the fact by western mass media. How can this be?
It began in the early months of 2014. The American-approved authorities who took over from the democratically-elected president and government after the Maidan insurrection sent the Ukrainian army to deal with an uprising in the Donbass that rose in response to the undermining of Ukraine’s democratic system. Along with a somewhat reluctant army came the ultra-nationalist radicals who had been responsible for the deaths of some seventeen lightly-armed young policemen during the course of the Maidan riots.
On arrival in the Donbass where a largely peaceful revolt had taken place with government offices taken over the army arrived planning to lay siege to the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. There were many instances of heroism where large groups of civilians attempted to block the way of Ukrainian army tanks attempting to reason with the soldiers inside. However, steadily these armed forces prevailed and began setting up road blocks on the primary roads to the major conurbations. The army had come in force with orders that clearly demanded that it return the power of the new authorities over the area by whatever means proved necessary.
Thus it was that the conditions were set up for an inevitable conflict rather than the negotiated settlement the people of Donetsk and Lugansk sought. Their goal was autonomy within a state now taken over by a US-supported and essentially US-controlled faction who had assumed the levers of power in their land. This faction included elements stemming from the most radically nationalistic members of the extreme right, people who used the Nazi salute and whose forebears had joined Nazi battalions composed of Ukrainians seeking to eliminate Russians and Russian influence from Ukraine and further to assist in Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union.
In the Donbass the Russian-speaking majority honoured the memory of how the Soviet Red Army had liberated them from the Nazis, there were many mixed marriages of Russian-speaking Ukrainians and Russians, the nearby border with Russia was essentially open oftentimes with no border guards in attendance or checks made. In essence there was scarcely any difference in culture, heredity, tradition or lifestyle between the Ukrainians and Russians in these Ukrainian regions bordering Russia. They were where the heavy industry and mining took place that supplied a significant proportion of Ukraine’s income. The people there knew well how the most radical of those Ukrainians living in western Ukraine saw them, as ‘Moskals’, as Russians, and they knew very well what those radicals wished to do to them.
No doubt the principal American figures involved in assisting the Maidan insurrection took little, if any account of how Ukraine was in fact a nation split into two quite distinct parts, the West with its ethnic Ukrainians looking west and the Russian-speakers in the east looking eastward. The animosity felt by a cult-like following of radicals in western Ukrainians toward anything remotely Russian was perhaps discounted if considered at all. No doubt the overwhelming desire to draw Ukraine as a whole into the western orbit caused all other considerations to be relegated to a very low priority, if they were even considered at all. In line with most other US-inspired projects of the past the planning for any aftermath of the initial acts designed to establish a successful outcome would have been sketchy if present at all.
The political leadership of the USA with the Europeans in tow had long sought the entry of Ukraine into NATO. This had been formally declared at the Bucharest NATO summit of 2008 and, along with pressuring the Ukrainian leadership to grow ever closer to the EU, the fault lines ignored between the two distinct loyalties in Ukraine grew. Prior to this push by the Americans and Europeans Ukraine had been a relatively peaceful nation where the democratic process delivered elections monitored by electoral officials/inspectors where the results provided a balance of power. If you view any of the maps of distribution of parties elected in presidential and general elections prior to the events of 2013-14 you will see that both west and east Ukraine were represented clearly. The split between east and west Ukraine could not possibly be more obvious than in those images, one of which you can view at the foot of this commentary.
In any event, the Maidan insurrection took place with all its bloody months of violence. However peacefully it may have begun it soon descended to levels of arson, murder and full scale violence that would never have been tolerated in any western city. The police were attacked with Molotov Cocktails, beaten with heavy chains, clubs of all kinds, paving stones, toxic sprays and even at one point with a fork lift truck. As related above, some seventeen young policemen, armed only with a shield and baton, died. In most case they merely attempted to hold the line against further acts of ultra-violence by the mob, many of whom sported Nazi symbology on their bodies or the shields they carried. Ultimately the mob won after a false flag attack killed many of their number. The democratically-elected president and government fell. The political elites of the USA and EU had won the day and their carefully selected placemen took over.
Returning to the situation after Maidan and the response of the Russian-speakers of the east to the insurrection described briefly above, and the arrival of the Ukrainian army to deal with those seeking to protect their way of life and language, things quickly descended into a stand-off. Instead of any attempt to use the establishment of a dialogue with those who had taken power in the east the new west-installed authorities decided to use brute force. What happened next was inevitable, especially as the radical elements who had arrived with the army had an all-consuming hatred for Russians and the Russian-speaking Ukrainians of the eastern regions. Genocide and ethnic-cleansing was their goal, they had no interest in allowing a peaceful process of any kind.
After the initial, small-scale events of violence which initially took place, whether it was the radical element alone or by the hand of Ukrainian troops also, mortar shells began to rain down on the villages, towns and cities of Donetsk and Lugansk regions. These mortar shells were clearly not guided by any targeting data, they simply flew undirected and hit whatever was in their path. These consisted often of the highest structures, those such as the Soviet-era residential blocks, hospitals and schools. Shells which missed such buildings landed at random along the streets and in the town centres of urban conurbations destroying lives, homes and livelihoods at random. The resulting images were truly shocking, children, civilian men and women, the elderly, no one was spared. The horror of these attacks was truly unconscionable and occurred day after day and were especially horrific in the years 2014 and 2015. Ultimately some 15,000 died. Yet reporting in the West was minimal.
Western reports of the deaths taking place made no mention of the siege of Donetsk and Lugansk. Every report was careful to mention Russia in a negative light creating the impression that all wrong was on the side of the Russians and Russian-speakers. It did not suit the narratives of the western leadership to report the facts impartially, neither did it suit the overall western ambition to force the entirety of Ukraine into its orbit. A killing field where only one side was perpetually guilty and innocents could be slaughtered with impunity had been set up. The Ukrainian army and its neo-Nazi elements had a free hand to do whatever they wished without fear of the atrocities they were committing being reported. All was to be framed in the context of “Russian aggression” and the falsehood that “Russian invaded Ukraine”. Russians were increasingly arriving to help protect the Russian-speaking populations, that much was true, but there was no Russian aggression, no Russian invasion.
The killing of civilians on a daily and nightly basis by the Ukrainian army and those neo-Nazi radicals increasingly incorporated within it has continued since those early months of 2014 until the present day. Those being killed are viewed as subhumans by the most radical of those who have terrorised them for so long now. They make no distinction between infants, teenagers, adults or the elderly. For them all should be killed or else driven out from Ukraine and Ukraine being only for the ethnic Ukrainians. This is why mention is made of genocide. The level of hatred felt by the ultranationalist radicals is truly at a level where they would gladly eradicate all Russian-speaking Ukrainians. And the Ukrainians of the east have known this very well and are very well aware of the historical record on this, stretching all the way back to the years those of the west arrived in league with the Nazis during world war two.
For western reporters, self-censoring, knowing what was acceptable to report and what was not, a decision had to be made, keep supplying what was expected, or risk the consequences of your actions. The vast majority, employed as they were by mainstream news organisations towed the line, in fact not a single correspondent, reporter or journalist that we know of rocked the boat. If any one of their number attempted to, and no doubt found their submission rejected we do not know, but at any rate all reports published conformed to the selfsame line, it was all the fault of the Russians. This is how the conflict in eastern Ukraine was reported and it is how events in Ukraine are reported now. Western national interests, to draw Ukraine into the western orbit governs all reporting across the western world and without exception.
Russia has many goals for its special military operation including the denazification and demilitarisation of Ukraine along with ensuring Ukraine never joins NATO and thus presenting an ever increasing danger on its doorstep. But a primary goal has been from the start and all through the Minsk process seeking a peaceful resolution to the situation in the Donbass, has been to shelter the Russian-speaking majority in the Donbass from harm and provide them with a guarantee of future security within which to maintain their traditional way of life and language. These goals are being achieved, slowly in some eyes but surely and current the primary achievements are in the areas where the shelling of the civilian population of Donetsk City has been most prevalent. These areas are now being cleared of those who have been causing the misery of Russian-speaking civilians for so long now, misery that was cynically hidden from western view by its entire mainstream media.
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