Tag: russia

German Investigators Find Nord Stream Evidence Points To Ukraine

Seven months after explosions severed three of Russia’s four Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, German investigators are now pursuing leads that point to Ukraine as the responsible country. At the same time, a multinational consortium of European investigative journalists has also found leads pointing to Kiev. 

A long-running Western propaganda campaign — abetted by media that’s credulous at best and complicit at worst — would have us believe Russia blew up pipelines that took the country 15 years of construction — and painstaking diplomacy to overcome U.S. interference — to bring to reality.

According to The Times of London, Germany’s Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) has investigated Russian naval movements that have been declared “suspicious,” but found nothing that suggests Moscow is responsible for the attack.

Rather, BKA investigators are now focusing on a yacht that sailed from the German port of Rostock weeks before the explosions. That 15-meter yacht — the Andromeda — was hired from a Polish company, and docked at a tiny Danish island near the blast site. Most strikingly, investigators found traces of “military-grade and underwater-deployable” explosives on the vessel. 

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“INDEPENDENT” UKRAINIAN “KILL LIST” ACTUALLY RUN BY KIEV, BACKED BY WASHINGTON

Late last year, my name was added to a blacklist published online by the Ukraine Center for Countering Disinformation. I joined over ninety others deemed to be “speakers who promote narratives consonant with Russian propaganda.“

These included Manuel Pineda and Clare Daly, both leftist Members of the European Parliament (MEP); Also counted are people on the right, such as Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute, neocon and former IDF officer Edward Luttwak, a slew of rightist MEPs; Ex CIA officer, Ray McGovern; former military and intelligence figures such as Scott Ritter and Douglas McGregor, as well as academics such as John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs. Journalists on the list included Glenn Greenwald, Tucker Carlson and Eva Bartlett, Roger Waters from Pink Floyd, and even actor Steven Seagal.

What was my crime? It said my “pro-Russian narrative” was claiming that “NATO’s proxy war with Russia is taking place in Ukraine”. Of course, a NATO proxy war is exactly what is happening there, as this article will only further confirm.

The listing helpfully provided a link with the evidence, an article I wrote for Mayadeen English called “How disinformation works: Western intelligence agencies global war on the left.” It contained a single, 176-word  paragraph on Ukraine titled “‘Russian Disinformation’ or Ukrainian lies?” It recounted several examples of Ukrainian misinformation and concluded that “Anyone who mentions any particular truth is derided for echoing Putin’s ‘talking points’.” In the event I was actually denounced as an “information terrorist” who might be guilty of “war crimes.”

Being added to the blacklist concentrates the mind wonderfully on the forces ranged against the possibility of truth and justice in the crisis-ridden West. When I was first accused, over a decade ago now, of antisemitism, my response was to intensify my research and writing activities on the organizations involved in defaming me. Since then I have produced a long catalog of work on the Zionist movement as well as on Western propaganda activities. Of course, the defamatory attacks encourage an atmosphere where social media threats can be made. But the issue of Nazism in Ukraine will be seen in retrospect as a defining issue of our era and it is important to remember that the reason I and many others are threatened by the Ukraine government and their NATO backers is because we in turn threaten to expose them for what they are: Nazi collaborators.

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Ukraine Expands Weapons Training For Children As Bakhmut Reportedly Falls

Only two months ago the mainstream media widely circulated a video which they said showcased “shocking footage” of Russian school children training with military weapons in programs designed to prepare them for the military.  The programs were widely criticized as “indoctrination.” 

Of course, Ukraine has also been involved in weapons training for children and these efforts have only increased in recent months as the city of Bakhmut, an epicenter of the fighting for many months, has reportedly fallen to Russia’s Wagner Group.  CNBC has briefly reported on the “Defense of Ukraine” program at the military-patriotic center for schoolchildren in Lviv.  The center was opened this month with plans to open dozens of other training facilities for children across the country in the near future. 

The western city of Lviv has been a primary relocation point for children escaping the war in the east, so it’s not surprising that the Ukrainian government would seek young recruits for the war effort there.

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Kyiv Residents Who Posted Footage of Russian Air Attack on Social Media Threatened With Jail

Six Kyiv residents who posted shocking night-time footage of missiles flying through the air which quickly went viral could face up to eight years in prison if charged with breaking wartime censorship rules.

While in an age of social media saturation, it may seem natural to record and post something extraordinary happening outside your bedroom window, that is presently illegal in Ukraine, as six locals — including a locally famous Instagram model — are finding out.

Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said the Kyiv City Prosecutor’s Office have launched “comprehensive measures” to “establish all the circumstances of the crime and bring the guilty to justice” after footage showing the night-time sky of Kyiv during Tuesday’s “exceptional ” air raid was published online. Russian ‘hypersonic’ missiles and suicide drones were among the 18 incoming shot down in the raid, according to the Ukrainian government.

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Russian porn star added to Ukrainian ‘kill list’

A notorious Ukrainian government-linked website that tracks purported enemies of the state has added Russian-born porn star Eva Elfie to its “hit list.” According to the Mirotvorets database, the adult film actress is guilty of “legitimizing the occupation of Crimea.”

Mirotvorets publishes profiles of public figures and private citizens whom it considers to be enemies of Ukraine, marking those have died by any causes as “eliminated.” It is also known to dox its targets whenever it obtains their personal data. Some of the people blacklisted by Mirotvorets have been murdered.

The website took issue with Elfie, whose real name is Yulia Romanova, traveling to Crimea for a photo shoot 2018, just as her adult entertainment career was taking off. The Siberian-born actress’s popularity was given a boost in 2021, when she received the ‘Best New Foreign Starlet’ accolade at the adult movie industry’s prestigious AVN Awards.

According to an anonymous Mirotvorets editor, Elfie was blacklisted after she became “the number one porn actress in the world.”

A screenshot posted by Elfie in November of her Pornhub profile showed that she was ranked first on the adult website, with over 870 million views and 1.9 million subscribers. In April, she received a Pornhub award for ‘Most Popular Female Performer Chosen by Women’.

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CIA Releases Highly-Produced Video To Recruit Russian Spies

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has utilized social media platforms to release a video aimed at providing Russians with a secure means of communication. The video assures individuals that their safety will be safeguarded if they choose to share information about the Ukraine war and other relevant details with American intelligence operatives.

A CIA representative stated, “Our objective is to reach out to courageous Russians who are compelled by their government’s unjust war and encourage them to engage with the CIA, ensuring their security throughout the process.”

The CIA shared the video on Telegram, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.

The narrator of the Russian-language video emphasizes, “Those around you may be unwilling to hear the truth, but we are here to listen. You possess the power to make a difference. Connect with us securely.”

In response to the video, Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin, commented, “I am confident that our intelligence services are closely monitoring this platform.” A spokesperson from the Russian Foreign Ministry added it’s “a conveniently traceable resource for applicants.”

The meticulously crafted two-minute video, accompanied by dramatic music, portrays Russians deep in thought as they gaze out of windows or sit on park benches, seemingly contemplating a significant decision. One individual, carrying a briefcase, enters a government building and discreetly displays an identification card. The fictional characters in the video appear lost in contemplation as they examine family portraits, reflecting on the future of their children. Towards the conclusion of the video, the Russians make contact with the CIA via their phones.

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St. Petersburg Uhuru members speak for first time since indictment

It’s a matter of free speech, says Omali Yeshitela, the longtime leader of the St. Petersburg-based Uhuru Movement and founder of the African People’s Socialist Party.

Yeshitela was indicted by a federal grand jury in Tampa last month and accused of working with Russian nationals to sow discord in the United States, spread pro-Russian propaganda and influence elections, along with two other members of the Uhuru Movement, Penny Joanne Hess and Jesse Nevel.

On Wednesday, the three Uhuru members spoke to the press for the first time since their indictment.

“I believe in free speech,” Yeshitela said at the news conference. “If I didn’t believe in free speech, I would never have said anything because they kill Black people for talking in this country.”

Yeshitela founded the African People’s Socialist Party in 1972. The Uhuru Movement is the party’s activist branch, started in the 1990s. The group supports reparations for Black people and has protested racism, colonialism and capitalism for decades. Hess and Nevel are the chairpersons of groups for white allies under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement, respectively.

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U.S. meddling contributed to the Russia-Ukraine war, it’s time we stop meddling around the world

The United States should end involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war, call for a cease-fire and begin negotiations immediately.

No matter what the War Party claims about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s supposed desire to reinstate the Soviet Union or Russian empire, the fact is that this war was provoked by the United States, and — no surprise — particularly the neoconservatives.

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama overthrew the government of Ukraine twice in 10 years, with their astro-turfed fake Orange and Maidan so-called “revolutions” of 2004 and 2014 because the people of Ukraine kept voting for the wrong guy.

W. announced at Bucharest in 2008 America’s determination to bring both Ukraine and former-Soviet Georgia, both of which border Russia, into the NATO alliance, just as he had overseen the addition of the Baltic States, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in 2004. This led to war in Georgia just a few months later when their American-installed regime attempted to reconquer two provinces lost during the breakup of the Soviet Union.

W. also began installing anti-ballistic missile systems in Romania and Poland, which are launched from the dual-use Mark-41 launchers, which can also fit Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can be fitted with hydrogen bombs, thus violating at least the spirit of Ronald Reagan’s great Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty of 1987, which President Donald Trump tore up in 2019.

The Obama administration — led by Robert Kagan’s wife, former Dick Cheney advisor Victoria Nuland — supported the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government in 2014, with neo-Nazi and far-right groups taking an active role in the overthrow. Soon, the new regime threatened to kick the Russians out of their only year-around, warm-water port at Sevastopol, Crimea, leading to Ukraine’s loss of the entire peninsula and the outbreak of war in the far-eastern Donbas region, which was majority ethnic Russian and had supported the recently ousted president.

After France and Germany struck the Minsk peace deals of 2014 and 2015 between Ukraine and Russia, Obama and Trump sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons to Kiev, incentivizing their continued violation of the peace deals.

After eight years of so-called “low-level” proxy war in the east, Putin demanded the full implementation of the Minsk agreements and a new treaty with the United States promising not to integrate Ukraine into NATO or station missiles there.

Instead of negotiating in good faith, the Biden administration said they were looking forward to replicating U.S. support for the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s. They would bog Russia down and bleed them to bankruptcy just as the Soviets had helped do to the United States in Vietnam and our own government has been helping Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda do to us for the last 20 years in the Middle East.

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This Is What Dystopia Looks Like

So U2 singer Bono is doing illustrations for the imperialist propaganda rag The Atlantic now, because that’s the sort of thing that happens in a dystopian civilization during the death throes of a globe-spanning empire.

A Washington Post article, “Bono likes to sketch Atlantic covers, so the magazine hired him,” reports that “Bono is into Atlantic cover fanfic — so much so that he was invited to illustrate the magazine’s June cover featuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.” 

Bono’s latest contribution to the mountain of cringe-inducing Zelensky moments we’ve been seeing for the past year provides a cover image for an article by lifelong war propagandists Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg.

The article endorses a Ukrainian offensive to recapture Crimea, which experts largely agree would be the move most likely to trigger a nuclear war in this conflict.

Here’s a paragraph from Applebaum and Goldberg’s article, just to give you a taste of the infantile “Good Guys vs Bad Guys” framing that Western liberals are being fed by mass media war propagandists these days:

“Sometimes, the war is described as a battle between autocracy and democracy, or between dictatorship and freedom. In truth, the differences between the two opponents are not merely ideological, but also sociological. Ukraine’s struggle against Russia pits a heterarchy against a hierarchy. An open, networked, flexible society — one that is both stronger at the grassroots level and more deeply integrated with Washington, Brussels, and Silicon Valley than anyone realized — is fighting a very large, very corrupt, top-down state. On one side, farmers defend their land and 20?something engineers build eyes in the sky, using tools that would be familiar to 20?something engineers anywhere else. On the other side, commanders send waves of poorly armed conscripts to be slaughtered — just as Stalin once sent shtrafbats, penal battalions, against the Nazis — under the leadership of a dictator obsessed with ancient bones. ‘The choice,’ Zelensky told us, ‘is between freedom and fear.’”

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‘No proof’ US landed on moon – Ex-Russian space boss

The former head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, has expressed doubt that the US Apollo 11 mission really landed on the Moon in 1969, saying he has yet to see conclusive proof.  

In a post on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Rogozin said he began his personal quest for the truth “about ten years ago” when he was still working in the Russian government, and that he grew skeptical about whether the Americans had actually set foot on the Moon when he compared how exhausted Soviet cosmonauts looked upon returning from their flights, and how seemingly unaffected the Apollo 11 crew was by contrast.  

Rogozin said he sent requests for evidence to Roscosmos at the time. All he received in response was a book featuring Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov’s account of how he talked to the American astronauts and how they told him they had been on the Moon.  

The former official wrote that he continued with his efforts when he was appointed head of Roscosmos in 2018. However, according to Rogozin, no evidence was presented to him. Instead, several unnamed academics angrily criticized him for undermining the “sacred cooperation with NASA,” he claimed. 

The former Roscosmos chief also said he had “received an angry phone call from a top-ranking official” who supposedly accused him of complicating international relations.  

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