Media Omissions, Distortions, and Exaggerations Feeds the Fuel for War Against Russia

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“This really is a fight where all of us must support Ukraine because Ukraine is fighting for our values!”

0000000000000000000000000 – Chrystia Freeland, Canadian Minister of Finance (October 28, 2022)

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The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) held its twenty-seventh Triennial Congress in downtown Winnipeg from October 28-30. [1]

Two of the star speakers on hand were Canadian federal government ministers Chrystia Freeland and Anita Anand. These politicians were particularly active on the Russia-Ukraine war and in answering and addressing the question of how Canada can support Ukraine.

The Ministers in question, apparently in solidarity with just about every politician in the House of Commons, favoured more military aid.

Canada announced in February that it was providing $600 million in military assistance to the troubled country. There was also talk about Canadian Armed Forces supplying training and capacity building under Operation UNIFIER, which was launched in 2015 and was recently expanded until 2025. [2]

Continual bantering in major media coverage about the “illegal” and “unprovoked” attack by Russia has some individuals comparing Putin to Adolf Hitler!

Rarely if ever do they mention NATO moving closer to the Russian border – a direct breach of the contract between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. Secretary of State James Baker in 1990.

They ignore the evidence of a coup orchestrated by the U.S. in February of 2014 and the previous talks between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt indicating they (not the people) would choose the next Prime Minister of Ukraine.

Also ignored is the rise in Neo-Nazis including inside the military under the changed government, the killings of as many as 14,000 people in the Donbass region over the previous eight years, and the announcement by President Zelenskiy that Ukraine may pursue nuclear weapons to counter Russia.

While this program and Global Research does not approve of the methods taken by Russia in Ukraine (just as we did not approve of the actions by the United States in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc) the Global Research News Hour finds it necessary to present more of the facts and context of the fight before the bloody conflict escalates into the horrific.

In our first half hour, we hear from George Eliason, an American journalist resident in Luhansk, who relays to us his observations of what has happened there on the ground for the last eight years, the projections of the referenda on rejoining the Russian Federation being a sham, and the hidden history of the fascist like formations taking charge of power in Kyiv.

In our second half hour, we hear speaking clips from Ministers Freeland and Anand at the recent Ukrainian Canadian Congress. We also hear from Glenn Michalchuk, a peace activist in Winnipeg, who was protesting alongside others against the government’s championing war in Ukraine instead of aiding in the brokering of a peace agreement to end the war.

George Eliason is an American journalist based in Donbass. He has been interviewed by and provided analysis for RT, the BBC, and Press-TV. His articles have been published in the Security Assistance Monitor, Washingtons Blog, OpedNews, the Saker, RT, and Global Research among others.

Chrystia Freeland is the Minister of Finance of the Trudaeu government. Her ancestry stems from Ukraine.

Anita Anand is currently Minister of Defence.

Glenn Michalchuk is chair of Peace Alliance Winnipeg and the president of the Winnipeg branch of the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 367)

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Transcript of George Eliason. October 19, 2022

Global Research: Looking around your community, what kind of a reaction did you see towards the joining referendum to Russia recently?

George Eliason: Around the community, I actually went to the referendum for five towns. Everybody has been looking forward to this for a long time. And it’s, for them, it’s like coming home. And you have to understand that a hundred years ago, this was Russia. These were Russian people, most of Ukraine was Russia filled with Russian people. It was Lenin that created the Ukrainian state. And it took until the ‘30s and ‘40s for people to get used to being called “Ukrainian.” Right now is the first time in the last almost nine years, people have a reason to feel safer because they’ve been under attack that long. So, all the way around, people are really happy about it.

GR: What did you say to buttress the argument that people could speak freely, and weren’t voting as if they had Russian guns to their heads?

GE:(Laugh) Well, it’s just like the 2019 election for the President in both republics. People came out en masse to vote, even under shelling. And they did that this time. Back then, the – gosh, the turnout was like 97 percent. I was – I monitored the election back then. Right now, you couldn’t keep people from voting. They were taking the ballots to people’s homes, because Ukraine was trying to attack people in voting centres. They actually shot down over 100 missiles, 100 high bomb missiles, plus rockets, et cetera during the referendum. They needed the military at those places in case there was an attack from terrorists or otherwise. So, everybody looked at it as positive. Nobody here is scared of the military, and all these guys were local. They used – well, in LNR they used the LNR Army. In DNR they used the DNR Army to do that, and it was strictly protective. From what I saw this time again, they didn’t harass anybody, they didn’t actually talk to anybody. They were just protecting – standing guard, making sure no one did anything, you know, try to hurt anybody. That was it. There was nothing threatening about them.

GR: During the eight-year offensive is there an example of an incident that sticks out in people’s minds either undermining Russia or Ukraine in the Donbass?

GE: I went to three mass grave uncoverings and it was the saddest thing to see. You see the remains of people dug up that were killed eight years ago. And in some cases they were stacked on top of each other, and then one of the layers was a small child. I went to three of these. And this was all Ukraine’s doing, attacking and shelling civilians. It’s not one or two, it’s many. Ukraine, during this whole time, they haven’t attacked the army as much, they’ve been attacking apartment complexes; places where people gather; markets during busy days when people will be shopping. And these are open-air markets like a bazaar, think of it like a farmer’s market or a flea market: people walking around. That’s what Kyiv’s been attacking. If you want to look at an example of what Kyiv’s done that’s been in the news, look at Bucha. Now, you see pictures upon pictures of these people that were shot down. And right next to them is Russian humanitarian aid packages. Why would the Russian Army give people humanitarian aid packages, shoot them, and then leave the evidence that they were dealing with them? And these are people that had white arm bands on, you know, which means they’re neutral, they don’t want to be bothered. You know, you wave the white flag it means “I surrender,” or “I’m not fighting.” Kyiv, it was specifically Ukraine’s Azov Battalion that did that. In Donbas, the atrocities have just been mounting over the years. If you look at the Kramatorsk train station, Ukraine says, “Well, Russia did a missle attack there.” Well, they found a section of one of the missiles that had the serial numbers on it, and it came directly out of Ukraine stock piles. They have serial numbers from – missiles from different cities and they’re almost consecutive in numbers, they came out of Ukrainian stock piles. These are known inventories. And so, they’ve been doing this and blaming it on Russia, blaming it on Donetsk, blaming it on on Luhansk. And quite frankly, it’s a shame, it’s part of the information war that they’re getting away with it. It doesn’t get any more complicated than that.

GR: From your vantage point is there any evidence available to the crowds that the Ukraine forces are contributing to some if not all war crimes in the form of false flags?

GE:If you’re looking at shelling or rockets, the impact rate would show the direction they’re coming from. It’s very easy to figure it out. And where these groups are on a map, that’s known because that’s just military stuff, okay? They need to know. You know, let’s say at Kramatorsk, they fire the missile from 20 miles. Well, they have the direction because of impact. All right? So, they know the specific direction the rocket came from. And you take that line out, it’s just geometry to the next firing position. Whoever is there is the person or group that did it. Mariupol, they did this during the rocket attack there. Everybody was saying that Donetsk attacked Mariupol. It was a Russian section of the city that got attacked. It was people that supported Donetsk and wanted to get Azov Battalion to leave. Well, the actual attack was filmed on security cameras and apartment buildings. It showed the definite direction, you could see them coming in. And the angle of the dangle, the firing line, actually came from the Ukrainian position. It was, what, probably close to well, I’d say 120 degrees away from the nearest DNR position if I remember correctly. This is just what they do.

GR: You spoke of how, for Kyiv, this would not be a short-term endeavor, but one that is intended to play out over a long period of time. Could you explain that?

GE: Kyiv doesn’t plan on winning the war. Now, imagine going into a war knowing you’re going to lose it, and you’re okay with that, you’re good with that. The reason why is they want this to be a generational war. Kyiv is using this as a way to cleanse all ethnic Russians out of Ukraine. The way they look at it, now as I said, 100 years ago all of Ukraine all the way over to West Ukraine – what was called Galicia – were Russians. So, they’re looking at 1) ethnicity, 2) the big one is: Do you honour your grandparents that the Germans killed in World War II, or fought against the Germans? They want those people people gone. Kyiv is following Galician lines and Galician politics. They want to be free to honour the Waffen-SS Galician – what is it, the First Grenadier or Fourteenth Grenadier SS-Galician. They don’t want Soviet soliders or Soviet battalions or anything that glorifies the Soviet Union to exist. And so, all these people have to be rooted out. Right now, they’re conscripting them and throwing them against the wall on the front lines, no training: ‘Here’s a gun, 10 bullets’ — you know — ‘go get killed.’ They’re actually calling out the population this way. It’s just sick. But it’s happening, and it’s happening now. This consequence, over time, now they lose the war, then begin a guerilla war. You have three year olds right now that are being brought up to hate anything Russian. So, they grow up. It is in the best political interest of the country if they want to stay nationalist, to go into the next generation fighting because there wont’ be any people with Russian heritage or claim a Russian heritage left in the country. It will be totally free to be nationalist. They’re actually cosmopolitan fascists politically. And they want every mind, they don’t care if there’s 50 people left in Ukraine, at least they’re all Ukrainian fascists. And that’s the goal, make it – the whole country like-minded. No diversity. So, for them, it’s worthwhile.

GR: When it comes to the attacks on your region, Luhansk and the other – Donbass, what is the indication to the fascists or the Nazis that are the driving force behind that ideology?

GE: Okay, if I —

GR: (inaudible) —

GE: — understood the question right, you’re asking: ‘What’s the indication that there are fascists running this?’ That was the question?

GR: Yeah. Yes.

GE: Okay, if we go back to pre-1991, the government of Ukraine was in the diaspora, it was a government of Ukrainian in exile. Now, when the Soviet Union fell apart, Ukraine pulled out of it. They had to recognize Ukraine. They really didn’t want to, but the United States did. This government was the second generation from World War II. They were OUN Melnyk, that was what the government was. They called Kravchuk, they said, ‘Look, we’ll give you the symbols of state, the power of state. We’ll back you. We’ll be your lobby in the US and around the world. But you’re going to sign a contract that this will be a nationalist state based on the government of Symon Petliura, 1917, 1918.’ Kravchuk agreed, he’s from Galician stock. So, they signed a contract that the government would be a nationalist government. Every leader in Kyiv signs on to this nationalism. Now, the first – going up to the Orange Revolution – the diaspora really wasn’t happy because all these people were doing was grabbing money. They privatized everything and they were taking over everything and becoming very rich, but not developing a nationalist country. Well, they started building up: the diaspora leaders took over the kid’s groups. And this goes into what I mean about a 20-year war: from the Orange Revolution-forward to Maidan, they took over the kid’s groups and they raised up these groups to be nationalist, real nationalists. Like, 1930s nationalists. When they were ready for Maidan, they unleashed them on the world. That was that diaspora. One of them, her name is Slava Stetsko, she was – her husband was actually the guy that declared Ukraine a sovereign country in 1941 in Lviv, right after he had two pogroms, killed a bunch of Jews. And Adolf Hitler said, “No.” His wife became one of the leaders of the brand new Ukraine in 1991. Her bodyguard is a guy you might be familiar with. He was the leader of Pravyi Sektor, Dmytro Yarosh. He learned his politics directly from a World War II monster. And you have to bear in mind that this woman and the leaders around her were responsible for over 11 million murders during World War II. And in an interview, she had said she never lost a night of sleep over anything. Maidan happened. It was those people that took over. If you look at the UCCA, the Ukrainian Congressional Committee of America, and the UWC, Ukrainian World Congress in Canada, they have over 20 million people in a diaspora, and they support it very healthily. Just one business that was geared toward freeing Ukraine is worth over $110,000,000.00. That was in 2014. So, they set all this up to pump money in to do just this, and set up 1930s nationalism in 2014 going forward. Ukrainians never had the option to be asked about this, because they wouldn’t have chosen it. Native Ukrainians rejected this outright, but these guys had the guns; they had the tanks; they had the military. Donbass was the only group of people that really stood up to it on their own all this time.

GR: Thanks George, I’ve appreciated talking to you. Thanks for discussing these issues with us!

GE: It’s great talking to you, too.

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Notes:

1. https://congress.ucc.ca/
2. https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/campaigns/canadian-military-support-to-ukraine.html
4. https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/17/war-in-europe-the-rise-of-raw-propaganda/