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Former News Exec. Reveals the Government ‘Warning’ Given to Networks to Air Covid Propaganda | Trending Politics

By Kyle Becker

The Covid pandemic response beginning in 2020 was one of the most sweeping cases of media propaganda in world history. Governments not only lied to the masses (“15 days to slow the spread,” e.g.) and made dubious claims based on poor evidence (“mask up” to end the pandemic), but it censored even civilians for doubting the mainstream narrative.

Now, a former news executive at international network Sky News, as well as a veteran of ITV, has come forward to reveal what news audiences have only previously been able to surmise: Some news networks must have been ordered to adhere to the government’s pandemic narratives or risk serious consequences (such as losing broadcasting licenses and other reprisals).

Mark Sharman revealed his disturbing insights into the astoundingly coordinated media coverage of the Covid pandemic in a sit-down interview on British channel GBN’s “The Lockdown Inquiry” with host Dan Wootton.

“I know this is quite a big deal for you to come out from behind the camera where you’ve been an executive in the industry for so long,” Wootton began. “But I know you want to do it because you have been so disturbed by the coverage of many of your former colleagues, the organizations that you to work for over the course of the pandemic. So can you just start by explaining this chilling warning that Ofcom gave near the start of the pandemic and how you think that may have impacted the coverage?”

“I, well, I definitely think it impacted, it’s not so much an Ofcom regulation,” Sharman said. “It was advice or a warning actually.’

“Like a little bulletin, wasn’t it?” Wootton said.

“Yeah,” Sharman said. “It was a warning to basically say, ‘do not question the official government line.’ Now to be fair to them, they said, you can have opposition voices on, but you must present as ‘must intervene’ if there’s any danger of harmful or misinformation.”

“So did that essentially turn presenters at the BBC, Sky News into, essentially, representatives of the government?” Wootton asked.

“I think it did,” Sharman answeed. “Not just on-air talent. I think, I think that warning affected all broadcasters. Most of the major broadcasters followed it and actually it was only the one or two little smaller ones who wouldn’t have that backup power who got caught.”

“I mean, a field community radio was censored for putting something out,” he added. “But actually, I think what it’s led to, I think it’s created an environment which will lead to the biggest assault on freedom of speech and democracy I’ve known in my lifetime. I’ve never seen a warning from Ofcom like that. I’ve never seen the broadcasters toe the line and rather than question the government, they became cheerleaders for the government.”

“And why, Mark, why?” Wootton pressed. “That is the question I always ask myself because surely the job of the BBC, ITV News, Sky News to have, you know, the places where you used to work, surely, the first job as a journalist is to question the government and to question the official narrative. So why did they not do that? When it came to lockdown in process.”

“It is the first job,” Sharman responded. “I mean, we’ve all been trained to ask, give both sides of a story and let the viewer decide. But clearly all the way through the pandemic, only one side of the story was given and the media, actually broadcasters and newspapers, picked up the thought that had been created by these behavioral psychologists and created this fear. The broadcasters picked it up with relish and that they really were spreaders of panic and fear.”

“They bought into the propaganda,” Wootton remarked.

“They did, they bought absolutely into the propaganda,” Sharman replied. “And I think it was very dangerous, but I think you have to probably look beyond Ofcom and beyond this country, because as you said this was a worldwide lockstep occurrence. And in parallel with media, you had big tech, new media who were censoring everything.”

In December, scientists who were implemental in spreading Covid hysteria around the globe –nearly as fast as the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself – came forward to express regret for furthering the ‘totalitarian’ agenda.

The members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour, a group of British scientists, confessed that public health authorities were pursuing an agenda to control populations with fear.

“Scientists on a committee that encouraged the use of fear to control people’s behaviour during the Covid pandemic have admitted its work was ‘unethical’ and ‘totalitarian’,” the Telegraph reported.

“Members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour (SPI-B) expressed regret about the tactics in a new book about the role of psychology in the Government’s Covid-19 response,” the report noted.

One scientist warned that “people use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise… We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in.”

In the United States, this process may have been different than what was experienced in the U.K. The U.S. government paid millions of dollars to media outlets to run ads that pushed the desired narrative. But the chilling effect on free speech was essentially the same.

Source: Becker News & Trending Politics

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Russia sets fixed gold price as it restarts official bullion purchases | Kitco

By Anna Golubova

Russia’s central bank resumed its gold purchases from local banks on Monday, but it set a fixed price on the precious metal.

Starting this week, the Russian central bank will pay a fixed price of 5,000 roubles ($52) per gram between March 28 and June 30, the bank said on Friday. This is below the current market value of around $68.

The central bank added that the resumption in buying will ensure supply and uninterrupted production of local gold.

Two weeks ago, Russia’s central bank announced that it was halting its official gold purchases from local banks due to a surge in demand from regular consumers. 

This is because Russians went on a gold buying spree in March to protect their savings as the ruble collapsed. Major banks in Russia reported a rush of consumers investing in bullion and coins.

Sberbank, Russia’s largest financial institution, reported that demand for gold and palladium has quadrupled in the last few weeks. Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Finance also referred to gold as an “ideal alternative” to the U.S. dollar.

Setting a fixed price for gold reminds some analysts of what the U.S. did during the “gold standard” years. The period between 1879 and 1914 is known as the classical gold standard era, during which one ounce of gold would represent $21. Then in the 1930s, the U.S. banned gold ownership and raised the value of the dollar in gold from $20.67 to $35 per ounce.

That price remained fixed until 1971 when Richard Nixon put a halt on the U.S. dollar’s convertibility into gold, which meant that other countries could no longer redeem dollars for gold. In 1973 the gold standard was scrapped.

“I am reminded of what the U.S. did in the middle of the Great Depression. For the next 40 years, gold’s price was pegged to the U.S. dollar at $35. There is a precedent for this. It leads me to believe that Russia’s intention would be for the value of the ruble to be linked directly to the value of gold,” Gainesville Coins precious metals expert Everett Millman told Kitco News. “Setting a fixed price for rubles per gram of gold seems to be the intention. That’s pretty important when it comes to how Russia could seek funding and manage its central bank financing outside of the U.S. dollar system.”

Gold is one of the most logical international currencies to use when you are trying to get around sanctions, Millman added.

Sanctions against Russian gold

Last week, the U.S. Treasury banned all gold transactions with Russia’s central bank.

“U.S. persons are prohibited from engaging in any transaction — including gold-related transactions — involving the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the National Wealth Fund of the Russian Federation or the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation,” the Treasury said on its website.

These types of sanctions could be effective to an extent, said Millman. “It can have a significant impact if for no other reason than to force other partners to shy away from doing transactions with Russia in gold. At the same time, knowing that the global gold market can be rather opaque, it would be much more difficult to enforce that type of restriction or regulation,” he explained.

In response to escalating sanctions from the West for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow said that “unfriendly” countries could be required to pay for Russian gas in rubles or gold, according to the chair of Russia’s Duma Committee on energy.

“If they want to buy, let them pay either in hard currency, and this is gold for us, or pay as it is convenient for us; this is the national currency,” Pavel Zavalny said at a news conference on Thursday.

Russia is also considering accepting Bitcoin for its oil and gas exports and being more flexible in general regarding payment options with “friendly” countries.

“We have been proposing to China for a long time to switch to settlements in national currencies for rubles and yuan … With Turkey, it will be lira and rubles,” Zavalny said. “You can also trade bitcoins.”

Source: Kitco

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Ukraine crisis marks the end of globalization says BlackRock CEO Larry Fink | Russia Times (RT)

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, whose firm oversees investments equivalent to about half of US GDP, has predicted that efforts to punish Russia over its invasion of Ukraine would lead to the unraveling of globalism as decision-makers reconsider their foreign vulnerabilities.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades,” Fink said on Thursday in a letter to investors. “We had already seen connectivity between nations, companies and even people strained by two years of the pandemic. It has left many communities and people feeling isolated and looking inward. I believe this has exacerbated the polarization and extremist behavior we are seeing across society today.”

Western nations responded to the Ukraine crisis by launching an “economic war” against Moscow, including the unprecedented step of barring the Russian central bank from deploying its foreign currency reserves, Fink noted. Capital markets, financial institutions and other businesses have gone beyond the sanctions imposed by their governments, cutting off their Russian ties and operations.

“Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and its subsequent decoupling from the global economy is going to prompt companies and governments worldwide to re-evaluate their dependencies and re-analyze their manufacturing and assembly footprints – something that COVID-19 had already spurred many to start doing,” Fink said. As a result, he added, companies will move more operations to their home countries or to neighboring nations, leading to higher costs and prices.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has “upended the world order” that has been in place since the Cold War ended and will require BlackRock to adjust to “long-term structural changes,” such as deglobalization and higher inflation, Fink said. He added that central banks will have to either accept increased inflation – even beyond the 40-year high that was set last month in the US – or reduced economic activity and employment.

READ MORE: ‘The Americans are no longer the masters of planet Earth’ – ex-Russian president

New York-based BlackRock handles $10 trillion in assets, making it the world’s largest money manager, so Fink’s views are closely watched by investors. In fact, the billionaire wields so much financial clout that his thoughts can be self-fulfilling, to some degree. Among other implications, he said he sees the Ukraine crisis accelerating the development of digital currencies and speeding the shift away from fossil fuels.

“The ramifications of this war are not limited to Eastern Europe,” Fink said. “They are layered on top of a pandemic that has already had profound effects on political, economic and social trends. The impact will reverberate for decades to come in ways we can’t yet predict.”

Although Fink and Russian leaders don’t see eye-to-eye on the Ukraine conflict – the money manager blames Moscow for causing the crisis – they agree that the world order is changing. Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that sanctions against Moscow mark the end of an era, portending an end to the West’s “global dominance” both politically and economically. Ex-President Dmitry Medvedev echoed those comments this week, saying, “The unipolar world has come to an end.”

Source: Russia Times (RT)

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The road to Ukraine started with 1999’s Kosovo War | Russia Times (RT)

By Nebojsa Malic, a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now a senior writer at RT.

Supporters of NATO’s war on Yugoslavia have no right to talk about law, sovereignty or borders

Pretty much everyone who has spent the past month moralizing about the sanctity of borders, sovereignty of countries, and how unacceptable it was for great powers to “bully” smaller neighbors – thinking of Russia and Ukraine – paused on Thursday to sing praises to a woman that championed all of those things back in 1999. Except since it was NATO doing them to Yugoslavia, Madeleine Albright was a hero and an icon, obviously.

On March 24, 1999, NATO launched an air war against Serbia and Montenegro, then known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The publicly stated aim of Operation Allied Force was to compel Belgrade to accept the ultimatum given at the French chateau of Rambouillet the month before: Hand the province of Kosovo over to NATO “peacekeepers” and allow ethnic Albanian separatists to declare independence. 

When the bombers failed to achieve that within a couple of weeks, the narrative changed to NATO acting to stop a “genocide” of Albanians its cheerleader press claimed was taking place. That narrative also credited the first-ever female US secretary of state for the “humanitarian” bombing, calling it “Madeleine’s War.” 

In the end, it took 78 days and a negotiated armistice for NATO troops to enter Kosovo wearing the fig leaf of a UN peacekeeping mission. They promptly turned the province over to the “Kosovo Liberation Army” terrorists, who proceeded to burn, loot, murder and expel over 200,000 non-Albanians. A real campaign of terror, intimidation, ethnic cleansing and pogroms began – and the very same media that covered for NATO by making up atrocities during the bombing now turned a blind eye, for the same reason.

READ MORE: NATO’s bombing of Serbia: A tragedy in three acts

Whatever its outcome, however, it was an evil little war, launched because the US felt it could. Because Washington wanted to get rid of the restraints posed by the UN to its new global hegemony, articulated just a few years earlier by Bill Kristol and Victoria Nuland’s husband Robert Kagan. Because the rising American Empire wanted to send a message to Eastern Europe that no dissent would be tolerated, and to Russia that it was no longer a great power worth respecting. 

A legalistic mind might point out that the attack violated Articles 2, 53 and 103 of the UN Charter, NATO’s own charter – the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 (articles 1 and 7) – as well as the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 (violating the territorial integrity of a signatory state) and the 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, for using coercion to compel a state to sign a treaty. 

Ah, but being a world empire means making its own “rules-based order” to supplant inconvenient laws. So an “independent commission” of cheerleaders was put together to declare the operation “illegal but legitimate,” arguing it was justified because it “liberated” the Kosovo Albanians from Serb “oppression.”

The actual oppression of non-Albanians as NATO troops stood idly by – including during the vicious pogrom of March 2004 – doesn’t count, obviously. The important thing is that Bill and Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and British PM Tony Blair got monuments, streets, and even children named after them.

The “independent” Kosovo – proclaimed in 2008, in a move about as legal as the 1999 war – can’t actually do anything without the permission of the US ambassador. A great triumph of human rights, law and order, and democracy, everyone!

READ MORE: Kosovo: A decade of dependence

NATO never cared about saving Albanian lives. If it did, it wouldn’t have partnered with the KLA, which made a point of murdering ethnic Albanians who wanted peace with the Serbs. It wouldn’t have repeatedly bombed refugee columns, then declaring it was really the Serbs’ fault somehow and that pilots dropped their bombs “in good faith” – literally something NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said on one occasion. 

Twenty years on and nothing has changed. Having obliterated a family in Kabul by a drone strike last August, the US offered blood money, but refused to so much as reprimand anyone involved. Being an empire means never having to say you’re sorry. This mindset propelled the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Meanwhile, failure to overthrow the government in Belgrade through war led to a “color revolution”in Serbia instead. It was then exported to other places – including Ukraine, twice. That 2014 coup in Kiev literally started the conflict in eastern Ukraine, of which the current events are but the latest phase.

In March 1999, I was a student in the American Midwest, and had been (almost) successfully brainwashed into believing the platitudes about freedom, democracy, tolerance, objectivity, rules and laws, and how the US was a “force for good” in the world. Then, overnight, people I thought had been my friends called me a monster and believed every single bit of propaganda that came off the TV screens and newspaper pages. 

READ MORE: Experts warned for decades that NATO expansion would lead to war: Why did nobody listen to them?

I’ve made justice and remembrance something of my life mission since then, seeking to explain that rather than a good, noble and humanitarian war, Kosovo represented everything wrong about the modern world: “A monument to the power of lies, the successful murder of law, and the triumph of might over justice,” as I wrote in 2005, and repeated every year since.

The twist this year is that the people shrieking about human rights, international law and the sanctity of borders – when it comes to their client regime in Ukraine, that is – were all cheering for NATO back in 1999. Even now, they won’t apologize for it, much less disavow. So it seems it’s not really about what is being done, only who is doing it to whom. While I understand their anger as the world their lies propped up comes crashing down, they hardly have standing to complain.

Source: Russia Times (RT)

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Vaxxed: The Movie That Inspired a Movement | Highwire

How is it that The HighWire’s reporting on Covid has been so far ahead? How did we know so much about the public health players, and the games they would play with lockdowns and vaccines? Because, they’ve done it all before. The HighWire presents “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe,” the movie that exposes one of the biggest public health scandals of all time. They say ‘vaccines don’t cause autism,’ but they never told you this.

Source: Highwire

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West’s global political and economic dominance ends says Putin | Russia Times (RT)

The Russian president says the “myth of the Western welfare state, of the so-called golden billion, is crumbling”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has opined that the latest rounds of unprecedented sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and its allies over the Kremlin’s military campaign in Ukraine, mark the end of an era. According to Putin, from now on the West will be losing its “global dominance” both politically and economically.

Speaking on Wednesday, the Russian head of state proclaimed that the “myth of the Western welfare state, of the so-called golden billion, is crumbling.” Moreover, it is the “whole planet that is having to pay the price for the West’s ambitions, and its attempts to retain its vanishing dominance at any cost,” Putin said.

The president predicted food shortages across the world as Western sanctions against Russia are adversely affecting the entire global economy.

Touching on the decision by several Western powers to freeze Russia’s central bank assets, Putin claimed that this would only serve to irreparably undermine trust in those nations, and make other countries think twice before placing their reserves in the care of those countries. According to him, nearly half of Moscow’s assets were “simply stolen” by the West.

READ MORE: Russia will respect private ownership unlike the West – Putin

Addressing people in the West, the Russian leader said the massive sanctions imposed on Russia were already backfiring on the US and Europe themselves, with governments there trying hard to convince their citizens that Russia was to blame.

Putin warned ordinary people in the West that attempts to portray Moscow as the primary source of all their woes were lies, with a lot of those issues being the direct result of the Western governments’ “ambitions” and “political short-sightedness.”

The Western elites, according to Putin, have turned their countries into an “empire of lies,” but Russia will keep on presenting its own position to the whole world, no matter what.

Source: Russia Times (RT)

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Putin reveals conditions for offensive in Ukraine to stop | RT.com

The Russian president told his Turkish counterpart that nationalists use civilians as human shields

Kiev must cease fighting and fulfill all of Moscow’s demands in order for the Russian invasion of Ukraine to stop, President Vladimir Putin told Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday.

Moscow’s ‘special operation’ in the neighboring country “will come to a halt only if Kiev stops its military action and fulfills the demands of Russia, which are well known,” Putin explained during the phone call, according to the Kremlin’s press service.

The president assured Erdogan that Russia is ready for dialogue with the Ukrainian side, as well as with foreign partners, in order to find a peaceful solution to the conflict.

However, he warned that any attempts to drag out the negotiations, which could be used by Ukraine to regroup its forces and assets, will be “self-defeating.

The Russian military does everything possible to protect the lives of civilians, only carrying out surgical strikes on Ukrainian military facilities, Putin added. “In this context, the actions of the nationalists – the neo-Nazi units – look particularly cruel and cynical as they continue intensive shelling of Donbass and use civilians, including foreigners, who are basically taken hostage, as a ‘human shield’ in Ukrainian cities and towns,” he said.

According to Erdogan’s office, he tried to persuade Putin that an urgent general ceasefire is necessary in Ukraine in order to provide humanitarian aid to the population and to create the conditions for a political solution.

“Let’s pave the way for peace together,” the Turkish president urged his Russian counterpart on the phone.

Erdogan reiterated Turkey’s eagerness to contribute to the settlement of the crisis through mediation and other diplomatic means. Ankara has remained in close contact with Kiev and other countries on the issue, he added.

Turkey, which is a Black Sea nation like Russia and Ukraine, enjoys good relations with both Moscow and Kiev. Though a NATO member, Turkey has been trying to maintain a neutral stance since Russia sent its troops into Ukraine last Thursday to “denazify” and “demilitarize” the country, which it blames for “genocide” in the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Kiev and its Western allies claim the attack was completely unprovoked.

Turkey has condemned the Russian invasion and supported Ukrainian territorial integrity, but also opposed the harsh international sanctions, designed to isolate Moscow. The government in Ankara is hoping to stage talks between the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers next week in southern Turkey. So far, the idea has been welcomed by Moscow and Kiev.

Source: RT.com

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Weapons-Makers Fueled NATO Expansion from 16 to 30 Members | Antiwar.com

When the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991, U.S. weapons makers saw their Cold War gravy train grind to a halt. By 1993, the big weaponeers like Boeing, Raytheon, Northrup and Lockheed stemmed the bleeding by gobbling up the smaller players, acquiring new economic muscle in a dwindling domestic market.

To keep profits booming they turned eastward, all the way to the former Soviet republics. Their brilliant scheme was to bring these nations into NATO so they could sell them endless billions in weaponry. Weapons hawkers flooded these new markets while their lobbyists flooded Congress, making defense contractors among the most prominent supporters of NATO expansion. They had plenty of help from NATO expansionists in Congress, the military and the pundit class.

It didn’t matter the US promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that if Russia allowed German reunification, NATO would not move one inch eastward toward Russia. The munition giants weren’t subtle about their plan. Lockheed V.P. Bruce Jackson became president of the US Committee to Expand NATO. Congressman on the hunt for free goodies and campaign cash were an easy mark to forget the US promise to Gorbachev. 

Beginning with Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary in 1999, NATO added 14 former Central and Eastern European countries in an alliance right up to Russia’s borders. These countries have now purchased over $16 billion in Western weaponry, with endless more to come. 

Overall, defense contractors’ efforts to shut down the peace dividend in 1991 has been a smashing success. For Ukraine, Russia, Europe, the US, indeed the world, it helped provoke an illegal, murderous war that may spiral into a smashing catastrophe for mankind.

Source: Antiwar.com

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Media Coverage of Russia’s Criminal Invasion of Ukraine | Antiwar.com

By Ron Forthofer

The recent appalling Russian invasion of Ukraine must be condemned. It’s yet another atrocious aggression in a long series of violations of international law by several countries including the US, Britain, Russia and Israel. It is terribly disappointing that humanity has failed to advance beyond the use of warfare (military, economic and cyber) to settle problems. Lobbying by the merchants of death, that is, the military-industrial complex, certainly plays a role in this disastrous failure. 

US hypocrisy on international law

Many nations and their media, particularly Western nations, have rightly emphasized this horrific violation of the rule of law by Russia. Ironically, it is the US – arguably the nation that has done the most to undermine international law through its widespread military aggressions, support for coups, illegal use of economic warfare (unilateral sanctions), protection of Israel from sanctions, and non-participation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) – that now proclaims most loudly the sanctity of international law.

Selective coverage of attacks

The Western media were less critical of other violations of international law by the US, Britain and Israel. For example, the US and Britain lied about the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. In 2003, they led a coalition of nations in a unspeakable war crime that devastated Iraq, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and led to the destabilization of the Middle East. Iraqis are still suffering horrendous consequences of this years-long war crime. The US media certainly didn’t emphasize that this unprovoked aggression was a violation of international law. In addition, the corporate-dominated US media didn’t call for then President George W. Bush and other members of his administration to be investigated by the ICC for war crimes. This US media hypocrisy seriously undercuts its credibility and shows that it’s a key component of the US propaganda system. In addition, the US media’s failure along with the cowardice of European nations about pointing out US violations have contributed to the undermining of international law.

Lack of context

Returning to today, the media have failed to provide any context for this shameful Russian war crime. The context doesn’t justify Russia’s use of force, but it’s important to understand how we arrived at this awful situation. Unfortunately, this terrible war crime was the predictable result of lies and actions by the US and NATO and their unwillingness to take Russia’s legitimate security concerns seriously.

Promise not to expand eastward

Russia, with documentation from numerous investigations by Western sources, has reminded the world of the 1991 US, German, UK and French promise not to expand NATO one inch to the east in exchange for the Soviet Union allowing the reunification of Germany. Given previous devastating invasions by Western European nations, one can understand why the Soviets might want this promise. For example, during WWII, estimates are that the Soviet Union lost over 26 million people, about 13% of its 1939 population. 

George Kennan, architect of the U.S. containment policy towards the Soviet Union, was interviewed by Thomas Friedman in 1998 about NATO’s eastward expansion. Kennan said: ”I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.”

Even before there was any expansion, Russia made clear its concern over the expansion to no avail. NATO has since expanded eastward from 16 members to 30 members today. NATO weapons are not far from Russia’s borders, in some areas approximately the same distance as Soviet weapons in Cuba were from the US. The US risked nuclear war to deny Cuba’s sovereignty over having Soviet weapons. Hence Russia’s demands about keeping NATO weapons away from its borders shouldn’t be a surprise

A predicted crisis

In 2008, then US Ambassador to Russia William Burns, now director of the CIA, warned US officials about the danger of holding out the prospect of NATO membership to Ukraine. He warned that it could lead to civil war and present Russia with a crisis on its border in which it could be forced to intervene. Instead of trying to prevent this situation from happening, the US acted in ways that resulted in this predicted crisis occurring. 

For example, in 2014 the US played a major role in a coup against the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych who was viewed as pro-Russian. The US was then influential in the selection of the new Ukrainian leaders. Most Ukrainians in western Ukraine were ecstatic whereas many Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine, particularly in the Donbas area and Crimea, viewed the new government as being illegitimate. 

The predicted civil war then happened in the Donbas area when the new Ukrainian government almost immediately targeted the use of the Russian language. This language policy was quickly overturned, but the damage had already been done. Additional violent acts by neo-Nazi forces led to protests by people in Donbas. In addition, Russia took control of Crimea and the residents of Crimea subsequently overwhelmingly voted to join Russia.

The coup government militarily moved to stop the protests in the Donbas area causing the predicted Russian intervention there. Fighting has been going on in this area at a low level for much of the past 8 years despite the Minsk II accords that were agreed to in 2015 but not implemented. 

Negotiations are the key

Unfortunately, this totally unnecessary conflict between Russia and the US turned into a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine when Russia invaded. The people of Ukraine are paying a terribly high price serving as an (unwitting?) proxy for the US. Ordinary Russians, who had no say about the criminal attack, are also facing a much harsher life as a result of this war crime against Ukraine. In order to avoid an escalation into a much broader and more deadly conflict, both sides must quickly make some uncomfortable compromises. Otherwise …

Ron Forthofer is a retired professor of biostatistics, having taught at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston. Since retirement in 1991, has been an activist for peace and social justice. He ran for Congress and for governor of Colorado for the Green Party.

Source: Anti-War.com

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Short History of Russia-Ukraine Conflict | Facebook Video

Editor’s Note: For people who love freedom and wish to update their understanding of European history with respect to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, watch the following video: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1088681511975159

Source: Facebook