Tag: ukraine

How Ukraine’s ‘Ghost of Kyiv’ legendary pilot was born

Ukraine’s fighter pilots are vastly outnumbered by the Russians, and have become legendary – thanks in part to the story of an alleged flying ace called the “Ghost of Kyiv”.

This hero is said to have downed as many as 40 enemy planes – an incredible feat in an arena where Russia controls the skies.

But now the Ukraine Air Force Command has warned on Facebook that the “Ghost of Kyiv is a superhero-legend whose character was created by Ukrainians!”.

“We ask the Ukrainian community not to neglect the basic rules of information hygiene,” the message said, urging people to “check the sources of information, before spreading it”.

Earlier reports had named the ace as Major Stepan Tarabalka, 29. The authorities confirmed that he was killed in combat on 13 March and honoured with a Hero of Ukraine medal posthumously.

Now, the air force stresses that “Tarabalka is not ‘Ghost of Kiev’, and he did not hit 40 planes”.

It describes the “Ghost of Kyiv” as “a collective image of pilots of the Air Force’s 40th tactical aviation brigade, who defend the sky over the capital”, rather than a single man’s combat record.

For weeks, Ukrainians did not have a name to go with the “Ghost of Kyiv” – but that did not stop the story going viral on social media.

It was used as a marketing brand by a Ukrainian model aircraft manufacturer, while Ukrainian Iryna Kostyrenko showed off a military badge inspired by the legend.

And the defence ministry tweeted a video celebrating Tarabalka’s heroism.

Keep reading

Ministry of Truth: Joe Biden’s New ‘Disinformation Board’ Director is a Ukrainian Govt Advisor Who Was ‘Pleased’ By The Censorship Of Hunter Biden’s Hard Drive.

The Executive Director of the Biden White House’s newly launched Disinformation Governance Board celebrated the censorship of news reports regarding Hunter Biden’s hard drive, appearing to describe the story as “Russian disinformation.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created the board to “coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security” focusing “on irregular migration and Russia,” according to POLITICO. The report also revealed that Nina Jankowicz – whose career has focused on partisan operations and advising foreign governments, rather than news reporting – will serve as its executive director.

Partisanship & Foreign Influence.

While participating in U.S. Congressional hearings, Jankowicz dismissed documented links between Ukrainian energy company Burisma and the Biden family, while calling for an increase in federally-funded media outlets and an “oversight” agency of social media platforms.

She described the well-documented business ties between the first son and Burisma as “perhaps the most well-known example of information laundering” and “unsubstantiated and misleading.”

Jankowicz is a former “disinformation fellow” at the partly government-funded Wilson Center, and even advised the Ukrainian government as recently as 2016.

Keep reading

PayPal Blocks Multiple Alternative Media Figures Critical Of US Empire Narratives

In what appears to be yet another escalation in Silicon Valley’s redoubled efforts to quash dissident voices since the beginning of the Ukraine war, PayPal has just blocked the accounts of multiple alternative media voices who’ve been speaking critically against official US empire narratives. These include journalist and speaker Caleb Maupin, and Mnar Adley and Alan MacLeod of MintPress News.

Just the other day MintPress published an excellent article by MacLeod titled “An Intellectual No-Fly Zone: Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the New Norm” documenting the many ways skepticism of the US government’s version of events in this war is being suppressed by Silicon Valley megacorporations, including financial censorship via the demonetization of YouTube videos that don’t regurgitate the imperial line on Ukraine.

Today, both MintPress and MacLeod have been banned from using the payment service that many online content creators have come to rely on to help crowdfund their work.

Keep reading

US Congress approves WWII-like weapons program for Ukraine

The US House of Representatives has approved a bill that would remove several constraints on sending weapons to Ukraine amid the ongoing Russian offensive. Adopted by the Senate earlier this month, the “Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act” revives the program Washington used to send military equipment to belligerents in WWII while officially staying neutral.

The final vote on Thursday afternoon was 417-10, with three members not voting. All of the Democrats voted in favor, while all of the ten members opposed were Republicans.

Introduced by Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), the bill was passed by the Senate on April 6, but the Democrat-dominated House adjourned for a two-week Easter recess before taking it up. 

It authorizes the White House to “lend or lease defense articles” to Ukraine or any “Eastern European countries impacted by the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine to help bolster those countries’ defense capabilities and protect their civilian populations from potential invasion or ongoing aggression.” 

Cornyn’s bill does not create a new program, but rather makes it easier for President Joe Biden to send weapons to Kiev by suspending limitations imposed by two existing laws, one of which caps the length of the aid at five years. 

Keep reading

The “New Israel”: The Irreversible Peril of Ukraine’s Militarization.

Traffic halts at the sight of a Ukrainian soldier holding a wooden cross. Drivers and passengers step out of their cars to pay their respects. Following behind the soldier is a contingent of armed servicemen carrying a coffin. 

A pedestrian kneels on the sidewalk as the column of troops turns to enter a graveyard where four more soldiers stand guard at an open grave. More than 200 civilians follow behind. Among them, dressed all in black, is the mother of 19-year-old Mykola Kuryk, whose body lies in the coffin, killed in battle at the end of March near Kyiv. 

“He was ready to go places where no one else dared to go,” said the leader of Kuryk’s unit, the volunteer battalion of the Sonechko UPA Special Forces. “Even people with more experience. He did not know fear.” 

Kuryk died on a special mission near the frontlines. Noting this, the Orthodox priest giving the final blessing observed, “There is no bigger love than to give your soul to your friends.”

His commander hands two medals to Kuryk’s father, honors for his son’s service. The coffin is lowered into the dark grave as the four soldiers standing guard fire a final salute. The smoke from the rifles vanishes into the blue sky as the coffin disappears below the earth.

Kuryk’s grave is next to several other newly filled ones. Much older graves, belonging to locals killed during World War II — the Great Patriotic War for Soviet veterans — are nearby. But there is room for many more.  

Kuryk’s life and his service were both short; but since his death, he has become a flash cult hero in Ternopil. His picture hangs on billboards around the city, offering a promise that martyrs like him — who volunteered to defend his country after the Russian invasion in February — will never be forgotten. He may not be, but he will be part of a growing crowd. 

This experience — the cycle of volunteering, fighting, dying, and honoring — is a demonstration of Ukraine’s new heavily militarized culture and martial social norms, a development that experts say will be hard to reverse even after the fighting stops and one that threatens to subsume all aspects of Ukrainian life. 

Keep reading

CIA Behind Secret Plots to Kidnap, Torture and Assassinate Ukrainian Dissidents for President Zelensky, says Ukraine Defector

Vasily Prozorov, a former officer with the Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) stated soon after his defection to Russia in 2018 that the SBU had been advised by the CIA since 2014.

“CIA employees [who have been present in Kyiv since 2014] are residing in clandestine apartments and suburban houses,” he said. “However, they frequently come to the SBU’s central office for holding, for example, specific meetings or plotting secret operations.”

Prozorov’s revelations take on extremely ominous implications in light of a new report by The Grayzone Project detailing the SBU’s participation in a campaign of assassination, kidnapping and torture overseen by Ukrainian President and Western media darling Volodymyr Zelensky.

Keep reading

Biden asking Congress for $33 billion in emergency aid for Ukraine against Russian invasion

President Biden will ask Congress on Thursday for $33 billion in new funding to support Ukraine as it fights off a renewed Russian assault, while simultaneously pushing a plan to make it easier to seize and sell the assets of Russian oligarchs.

A senior administration official said the funds will ensure Ukraine has the weapons it needs to fight its Russian attackers as well as replenish the U.S.’s own stockpile of weapons that have been rushed to Kyiv.

The amount, which is a combination of U.S. military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, is expected to last through September, which is the end of the government’s fiscal year.

Keep reading

Raytheon says it can’t keep up with Biden’s demand for Stinger missiles being sent to Ukraine: Arms company may not be able to replenish stock until 2023 as US keeps shipping weapons packages to Kyiv

The company producing the Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that have proved so effective in Ukraine said on Tuesday it will not be able to immediately resume production once existing stockpiles are depleted.

The news will be a blow to Ukraine‘s armed forces, which say they need hundreds every day to repel Russian invasion. 

But Raytheon Technologies, which makes the shoulder-fired weapons, wound down production in recent years – as the Pentagon looked to more modern systems – and faces hurdles in ramping it back up.

On a conference call with analysts, chief executive Greg Hayes said: ‘We have a very limited stock of material for Stinger production.’

The company may not be able to ramp up production until next year, following a surge in demand. 

‘We’ve been working with the Department of Defense for the last couple of weeks,’ he said.

‘Some of the components are no longer commercially available, and so we’re going to have to go out and redesign some of the electronics in the missile of the seeker head. That’s going to take us a little bit of time.’

The U.S. has shipped more than 1,400 Stingers to Ukraine.

The FIM-92 Stinger Man Portable Air Defense System entered service in 1981 and is used by the United States and 29 other countries. 

Keep reading

The Ukraine War is a Racket

“War is a racket,” wrote US Maj. General Smedley Butler in 1935. He explained: “A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”

Gen. Butler’s observation describes the US/NATO response to the Ukraine war perfectly.

The propaganda continues to portray the war in Ukraine as that of an unprovoked Goliath out to decimate an innocent David unless we in the US and NATO contribute massive amounts of military equipment to Ukraine to defeat Russia. As is always the case with propaganda, this version of events is manipulated to bring an emotional response to the benefit of special interests.

One group of special interests profiting massively on the war is the US military-industrial complex. Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes recently told a meeting of shareholders that, “Everything that’s being shipped into Ukraine today, of course, is coming out of stockpiles, either at DOD or from our NATO allies, and that’s all great news. Eventually we’ll have to replenish it and we will see a benefit to the business.”

He wasn’t lying. Raytheon, along with Lockheed Martin and countless other weapons manufacturers are enjoying a windfall they have not seen in years. The US has committed more than three billion dollars in military aid to Ukraine. They call it aid, but it is actually corporate welfare: Washington sending billions to arms manufacturers for weapons sent overseas.

By many accounts these shipments of weapons like the Javelin anti-tank missile (jointly manufactured by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin) are getting blown up as soon as they arrive in Ukraine. This doesn’t bother Raytheon at all. The more weapons blown up by Russia in Ukraine, the more new orders come from the Pentagon.

Former Warsaw Pact countries now members of NATO are in on the scam as well. They’ve discovered how to dispose of their 30-year-old Soviet-made weapons and receive modern replacements from the US and other western NATO countries.

While many who sympathize with Ukraine are cheering, this multi-billion dollar weapons package will make little difference. As former US Marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter said on the Ron Paul Liberty Report last week, “I can say with absolute certainty that even if this aid makes it to the battlefield, it will have zero impact on the battle. And Joe Biden knows it.”

Keep reading