The New Observer Uncategorized The British media’s culpability in the deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainians

The British media’s culpability in the deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainians

The story is we love Ukraine and we are saving them. The Ukrainian flag is all over the place. Their extreme nationalist leader is feted in parliament. This story is a heart-warning narrative. It is no more real than the latest Disney film. It is a feel-good story, but not a true one.

The problem is that the story is one thing and the reality another. This is probably why we aren’t seeing the images of the morgues and wards full of the mutilated. The cost to European economies receives a lot less coverage than the (often hyped) accounts of cost to the Russian economy. Not much is said about how we, in Britain, but also other European countries are giving Ukraine vital pieces of military equipment only for it to be burnt up in Ukraine – while the frontline moves inexorably further into Ukraine. Some of the equipment may be being retired but a lot of it is brand new. We (the UK) gave Ukraine approximately 6% of our Challenger tanks. We’ve given them lots of Brimstone missiles and light anti-tank weapons, all of which would be useful in any modern conflict we might have to fight. Some rather fancy air-defence missiles “Lightweight Multirole Missile”, have recently been provided. The Brimstone missiles in particular seem lovely pieces of advanced kit; they can hover above a target area and pick their own target.

What is the culpability of the British media? The culpability is that they, virtually, uniformly tell the same central sheer lie about Eastern Ukraine. Here is one example from today; it occurs in a heart-warming story about a Ukrainian nationalist poet.

It is hardly surprising, given the extreme pressure Ukrainians are living under, more than two and a half years into Russia’s fullscale invasion. Tsilyk’s husband, the novelist Artem Chekh, is in the armed forces. He fought in the war that began in 2014 after the Russian-backed takeovers in the Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. His 10 months in the trenches back then were intensely difficult for the couple. So was its aftermath after the initial euphoria of his return, Tsilyk tells me. [1]

One could find a million examples. “full-scale invasion” and “Russian-backed takeovers in the Donetsk and Luhansk” The false narrative is endlessly repeated, as if by the sheer repetitiveness of this they can make it true. There was and is no “full-scale invasion”. Putin has no intention of taking the whole of Ukraine, (let alone Poland and the Baltics!). The initial force was certainly not large enough for a “full-scale invasion”. There has been no announcement of that as an aim, though there has been a clear announcement relating to the 4 specific provinces in Eastern Ukraine they want to take. It is hard to see how Russia could suppress the strongly anti-Russian Western population in Ukraine. The “full-scale invasion” line has nothing to do with reality; it is a line in a propaganda operation. Its function in the propaganda narrative is to mask Russia’s actual reasons for its operation in Ukraine, (which has, now, become, a full-scale war). There are two principal reasons for Russia’s operation in Ukraine. They have been clearly stated by the Kremlin. They are entirely in line with the historical record and political facts on the ground. Firstly; Russia sees Ukraine joining NATO as a red-line. It has been this way since the policy was announced and pushed by George Bush in 2008. [2] It is worth highlighting that this Guardian article from 2008 openly admits that “For many Ukrainians, joining NATO is not a priority. Only 30% of respondents in the former Soviet state support the move”. It is also recalling that this is the same George Bush who made a Freudian slip and referred to the 2003 US attack on Iraq as “a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion”. He launched one “brutal and unjustified invasion” and laid the groundwork for another war. [3] The Guardian article about Bush’s push to put Ukraine in NATO in 2008 is worth reading in full. It already contains references to the Russians pointing out that such a move negatively impacts on strategic stability in Europe. (Code for: this is a critical red-line for us, one that we would be ready to go to war over). The second main reason for Russia’s operation in Ukraine was to protect the Russian linked population in Donetsk and Luhansk. The fact is that in these Eastern provinces of Ukraine there is a large population which is, loosely speaking, pro-Russian.

There is an overwhelming amount of evidence which supports the claim that a large part of the population in Eastern Ukraine are indeed “pro-Russian”, and that they felt despised and/or threatened by the nationalists who came to power post Maidan in Kiev. 38% of the population in Donetsk and Luhansk are (were) ethnically Russian. [4] Others are Russian-speaking. I have reviewed elsewhere some of the additional demographic evidence and polling evidence (from Ukrainian or Western sources) that clearly supports the basic proposition of a region which was ready-made for autonomy. The case is beyond argument. (One of the tragedies of this war is that had Kiev been able to implement Minsk, which would have taken strong EU pressure and support, then half the reasons for the war would have been removed. Unfortunately, the EU put them under no pressure at all and allowed Zelensky to bow to pressure from his own hard-line nationalist factions [5] to block Minsk). In recent months Western journalists have moved into Eastern Ukraine and are able to interview “the waiting ones” – a translation of a Ukrainian word used to refer to people who do not want to evacuate in the face of the Russian advance. Some of these people may simply not want to; but many are, indeed, waiting to be “liberated” by Russia. This is now seeping out in news reports. This [6] is quite a good example, on UK government TV station Channel 4, but it is one of many. The transcript is:

Other reasons to stay, if you’re one of the “waiting ones”, part of the Russian-speaking population here, content to wait for the arrival of Moscow’s troops. Some people we spoke to feel abandoned by Kiev. A long-standing narrative in parts of the Donbas now turbo-charged as the frontline comes to their backyard. [my italics]

The Channel 4 journalist then interviews a woman selling vegetables on the street. She says (Channel 4’s translation improved in one part by me):

No one cares about us. Not our government or our own people. [She means the people in the West]….. Everyone wants to spit on us. Kiev wants to spit on us. Western Ukraine wants to spit on us. In all the cities they want to spit on us. [6]

There is no reason to think that this woman is an outlier. It is plausible to think that her views are representative of a certain constituency in Eastern Ukraine. I saw, some time ago, and no longer have the reference, a media clip in which a Ukrainian soldier spoke very dismissively about the backwardness of the people in the East of Ukraine. This woman is not making things up.

The evidence is absolutely clear; many people, possibly a majority, at least in Luhansk and Donetsk, wanted to break away from the nationalist regime in Kiev which came to power post Maidan. This is not surprising; the elected President who was toppled in the Maidan coup took more of his support from the East. A 2021 survey by the Washington Post found that, “In contrast, in the breakaway territory controlled by the DPR/LNR and funded by Russia, over half of the respondents want to join Russia, either with or without some autonomous status.”. [7]

None of this means that Russia has a “right” to annex Donetsk and Luhansk. But; it does show that the Russian claims about “liberating” these provinces are well-founded in a real story. A majority of the population in Donetsk and Luhansk wanted to be part of Russia. Ukraine is a split country. “Generally analysts draw a line along the Dnieper river dividing the country into a Russified and heavily industrialised East and a more ethnically Ukrainian Western-orientated West”. [8] They felt “spat on” by Kiev. Given the numbers and the strength of feeling it is also clear that Minsk was the best chance to resolve the question peacefully. Once the decision was taken to ignore Minsk (and even if Merkel’s claims about “buying time” should not be taken seriously, it is clear that no European leader did anything to put serious pressure on Kiev to implement Minsk), war was inevitable. And; this is just one half of the problem. We haven’t even talked about NATO. The Western media cover up this story. (It is just beginning to seep out a little in individual news reports here and there). They align their narrative with a false one told by the nationalist regime in Kiev. The narrative that everything that happened in Donetsk and Luhansk was instigated by Russia. In doing this the Western media, at the editorial level, obtain for themselves culpability in this war and have direct responsibility for tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths, wounded and untold destruction.

Why do they do this? Because this is what the State Department wants them to do and, at the editorial level in the Western media, they have long-since understood that it is their job to support the State Department narrative. However myopic they have to be to do so.

Notes

  1. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/01/film-maker-poet-iryna-tsilyk-captures-surreal-life-in-ukraine
  2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/01/nato.georgia
  3. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/01/nato.georgia
  4. https://web.archive.org/web/20111217151026/http://2001.ukrcensus.gov.ua/eng/results/general/nationality/
  5. But the most passionate opposition to Zelensky’s initiative came from hardline Ukrainian nationalists. Thousands of protesters gathered on Kyiv’s Maidan Square under the slogan ‘No capitulation!’55 More menacingly, several Ukrainian nationalist militias, including the Azov Battalion that was then fighting in the Luhansk region of Donbas, refused to accept the agreement. Andriy Biletsky, the leader of the far-right National Corps and first commander of the Azov Battalion, accused Zelensky of ‘disrespecting’ veterans and of acting on behalf of the Kremlin.56 Zelensky met Biletsky and other militia leaders in an attempt to convince them to surrender their unregistered weapons and accept the peace accord. They refused, and the referendum plan collapsed – and with it any realistic chance of peace in Donbas. Matthews, Owen. Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin and Russia’s War Against Ukraine (p. 149). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.
  6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=DJSKaLy1FTE from 4.00
  7. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/12/new-survey-ukraine-russia-conflict-finds-deeply-divided-views-contested-donbas-region/
  8. Quoted in: https://thenewobserver.co.uk/some-people-in-ukraine-want-to-be-part-of-or-linked-to-russia/