What I got wrong about Russia/Ukraine
What I got wrong and what I stand by on the Russia/Ukraine war.
One of the biggest problems with the mainstream media is that they will never admit what they got wrong. They have never accounted for their lies about Saddam’s WMDs or Russiagate. Since this substack was created as an antidote to the mainstream media, I will also correct when I was wrong. In my articles “You are being lied to about Ukraine” and “Cutting through the propaganda on Ukraine” I argued that Russia was not going to invade Ukraine and that this was being made up by the United States intelligence agencies. I was wrong about this, Putin has since launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that extends beyond the breakaway regions. I believed this to be an intelligence deception based on previous lies about Iraq, Libya, and Syria. I also thought this because of previous Russia-linked deceptions such as the Afgan bounty story or “Havanah Syndrome”. This time however I was wrong in my prediction. I stand by and am proud of my reporting within that article that examined how Western actions such as the backing of the 2014 Maidan coup and arming the Azov Battalion led to the current situation but retract my reporting that claimed no invasion would happen.
None of this of course is to excuse Russia’s war in Ukraine which is an illegal and offensive war that will only hurt working-class citizens in Ukraine and Russia. I think it is important for the Western anti-war left to oppose any further aggressive action that will provoke Russia and make the situation worse. I stand by my article published yesterday that examines the NATO expansion that led to the situation and criticized the lack of diplomacy on the part of the United States. I think the best thing to do forward is to oppose war-mongering on all sides. I respect and appreciate the anti-war protesters in Russia opposing Russia’s actions. The best way forward for those in NATO countries is to do the same and oppose any NATO or Western action that will only inflame war and conflict. This situation requires international anti-war action. Hopefully, it will not lead to a larger conflict.
I am quite sure that if the Ukrainians had not pushed towards their own invasion of the Donbas, your predictions would have come true. There is not just one side in this conflict. The Russians always made it quite clear they would use military/technical force to protect the ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine. Putin, I believe, sincerely offered diplomatic solutions that would enact Minsk II and at least slightly, deter NATO expansion. When the two things happened, Ukrainian attack, diplomacy refused, he was forced to act. If he had not, the Duma would probably have removed him.
Propaganda is not so much about downright lies or things untrue. It is about owing the narrative and shaping it in accordance with your goals.
The pushing of the predictive narrative that Russia was going to invade the Ukraine means that they who push it owe the narrative if it happens. So now it happened, they have the advantage of being right, and for most simple minds, being right on some point means to be right on everything (otherwise things become to complex and difficult to handle). The tactics of propaganda of the mainstream media from now on will be to frame the picture, to picture the invasion as also causing much suffering for the population (instead of only the military apparatus being hit). They are already doing this as we speak. The mainstream media itself does not mind to put fear in the minds of people so that they start hoarding as we have found out the last two years..., but now they are promoting narratives of a fearful population in the Ukraine hoarding stuff, being in rows etc, they are now full of empathy... More is to come, a whole campaign intended to frame how the Ukrainians are suffering under the invasion, whitewashing everything else.
If Russia would not have invaded the Ukraine, the mainstream would just focus on some other sensational thing. The issue of invasion would just vanish in the fire of some sensation to be found elsewhere in the world, very soon to be forgotten.