By Eric Zuesse
On January 7th, Britain’s Guardian, which used to be a fine newspaper but isn’t now, started what will necessarily be a long road back to reality, after nearly a year of their intermittent inattention and Western propaganda on Ukraine — finally realistically reporting the war there as being what it is and always was: an attempt by the post-coup Ukrainian Government to destroy the area in Ukraine where the residents had voted 90% for the Ukrainian President who was overthrown in the February 2014 coup.
Oleg Orlov headlined “Ukraine’s Forgotten City Destroyed by War,” and he described a city in ruins from the intensive bombings during July and August.
Though most of his article avoided the key question as to which side was to blame for this, no one can deny that the invaders here were the Ukrainian Air Force and Army, and that the defenders were troops of irregular fighters who lived in the invaded region. So, anyone with an IQ above 50 would have no difficulty figuring out that the Ukrainian Air Force and Army were to blame for bombing this city — that the Government was bombing and trying to exterminate the residents there while claiming to be their rightful Government (and which Government still remains supported by the West in that war against the former Ukrainians who live, and have always lived, there).
Here is the way that Orlov reported it:
“Towards the end of July, Ukrainian troops approached Pervomaisk but ran into stiff resistance and could not take it. A massive artillery bombardment began that would continue into August. Most people fled.”
He described the damage he viewed:
“Some blocks of this city, situated 50 kilometres west of Luhansk, have been practically wiped off the face of the earth by Ukrainian artillery barrages. Hardly any houses have escaped unscathed. We had seen such complete devastation in eastern Ukraine only [once before], in the villages of Khryashchuvate and Novosvitlivka, a few kilometres southeast of Luhansk. On that occasion, though, it was LNR (Luhansk People’s Republic) and possibly Russian artillery that opened fire in August [in order to] dislodge Ukrainian troops from the villages.”
Ultimately, he acknowledged that the Government were the invaders:
“The ‘Commandant’ of Pervomaisk (the mayor, appointed by the armed men who control the city) has a grisly collection of photos on his computer that were taken at that time. The rebels, though, had set up camp not only on the outskirts of the city but also smack in the centre, goading the Ukrainian forces into firing on Pervomaisk. But that in no way justifies strikes against populated areas by multiple launch rocket systems.”
However, again, only a fool would think otherwise. The situation is hard for propagandists such as the Obama Administration to even refer to.
It should also be pointed out that when Orlov asserted that, the rebels’ having “set up camp not only on the outskirts of the city but also smack in the centre” was “goading the Ukrainian forces into firing on Pervomaisk,” he was saying that even merely defending the City constituted shared responsibility, along with the attackers, for the City’s having been destroyed. This is like saying that a woman’s attractiveness constitutes her shared responsibility for her having been raped by her attacker.
Orlov then goes on to say:
“In November, strikes on the city resumed, although they were less intense than in the summer. We talked to the staff of a maternity hospital that had been hit by a bomb on 15 November, with a further five bombs exploding next to the building. A baby girl born two months premature was in the hospital at the time: it was a miracle that she survived, the doctors say.”
Then:
“When, the following morning, a ‘repair brigade’ went to [clear away the rubble], a new barrage began and one worker was killed. They showed us some one-storey houses that were destroyed on 23 November by strikes from a Grad rocket launcher. People crowd tightly into the bomb shelters when they are under fire [but] there were no bombardments during our visit and the huddled figures were those of permanent residents who no longer have anywhere else to live.”
He describes the desperate condition of the people that the Ukrainian Govenment’s bombings (which are financed by the West) has produced:
“The worst thing is the acute shortage of food in Pervomaisk. Although there are several shops in town, many people have no money left to buy anything. The city authorities – the Commandant, mayor and Cossack, Yevgeny Ishchenko and his comrades-in-arms – are trying to keep people alive somehow.”
Perhaps because of the requirement in the West to blame Russia for these things, the article closes:
“When we were in Pervomaisk, an eighth humanitarian aid convoy crossed over from Russia into eastern Ukraine. On our way back to Moscow, we discovered that no [food or supplies] from this convoy found their way to Pervomaisk. We appealed to the Commissioner for Human Rights and the Presidential Human Rights Council. We hope that the Russian government will wield its influence and convince the LNR authorities to send some of the humanitarian aid they receive from Russia to those who need it most – the people of Pervomaisk.”
He ignores this reality: The Ukrainian Government was blocking aid convoys. The Government is trying to starve the residents there to death. To blame Russia for any of that failure of food to reach the starving is obscene. But at least this article by Orlov is a start. That’s more than one can yet say for such newspapers as The New York Times, and Washington Post — or any in America.
After all: It was Obama who installed the current Ukrainian Government. David Cameron did not. If the business of journalism is to cover-up for one’s own Government’s international crimes, then newspapers such as The New York Times, and Washington Post are authentic journalistic institutions, not mere propaganda-organs. But the Guardian is making a step away from that type of ‘journalism’ — at least to the extent that Britain is partly responsible for the February 2014 Ukrainian coup, which is a very small extent. Perhaps that’s why the ‘news’ media in Britain are a bit freer to report the truth of that war than ours are.
Only in America is the lying by media about Ukraine’s war so pervasive. That’s because it’s basically America’s war, even though the American public is overwhelmingly opposed to it. The American Government serves the American aristocracy — no longer the public.
Maybe the British aristocracy don’t hate Russians as much as America’s do; but, for whatever reason, they’re not so committed to the destruction of Russia as Obama and the American aristocracy he represents are. That American aristocracy control America’s ‘news’ media, but they fortunately do not also control Britain’s.
If one reads the American press about Ukraine now, after the coup, then one is reading lies, distortions, and propaganda: myths, not history.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
09 January, 2015
Countercurrents.org