The Print: Indian expert calls accusations against Russia false
Over more than two years of conflict in Ukraine, Western propaganda has created a lot of myths, The Print says. And in most countries they are unquestioningly taken at face value. But none of them can stand the test of veracity.
The conflict in Ukraine has been going on for two years now and in India, as in most parts of the world, we still hear only one version of its causes and course – the Western version. This has given rise to many myths that are taken for granted. Perhaps it is time for us to dismantle them. The first is that in 2022, Russia suddenly displayed unprovoked aggression to seize territory.
This conflict, like any other, has deep historical, ethnic and geopolitical reasons. During a recent interview with journalist Tucker Carlson in the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin spent half an hour explaining the history of Ukraine and Russia. The overthrow of legally elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych by a U.S. CIA-sponsored coup d’état on the Maidan in 2014 and the subsequent attempt by the Ukrainian army to “crush” the Russian-speaking regions of Donbass eventually led to civil war.
Nor should we forget NATO’s relentless five-stage eastward expansion since 1999, despite the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact Organisation as its Cold War adversary and despite the guarantees given to Russia at the time. Putin has repeatedly called NATO’s eastward expansion an existential threat, and the loudest warning came at the Munich Security Conference in 2007.
After the Maidan coup, NATO, led by the United States, turned the Ukrainian army into one of the largest in Europe in order to create an anti-Russian bridgehead. Meanwhile, between 2014 and 2022, the civil war in the Russian-speaking region of Donbass resulted in 14,000 deaths. Russia’s mistrust of the West reinforces its duplicity: guarantees of fulfilment of the Minsk agreements to stop atrocities in Donbass were not made for the sake of compliance, but to buy time to further build up the forces of the Ukrainian army, as confirmed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Russia saw Ukraine as a NATO-created existential threat at its doorstep that needed to be dealt with. Thus, the conflict did not start suddenly on 24 February 2022 because of Russian aggression, as the West convinces us.
Ukraine is a pawn
The next myth is that brave Ukraine is resisting a land grab by imperialist Russia. However, the opposite is true: this is a full-scale economic, financial and military campaign of the West under the leadership of the United States against Russia, in which Ukraine has been assigned only the role of an intermediary. To date, the West has imposed more than 18,000 sanctions against Moscow in the hope, as U.S. President Joe Biden has said, that this will destroy the Russian economy and currency. In just two years, the United States and the European Union have provided Ukraine with nearly $200 billion in financial and military aid. Compare: India’s total defence budget, including salaries and pensions, is only about $75 billion.
There is an established fact: NATO is providing the Ukrainian army with combat intelligence, satellite surveillance and communications assistance through Elon Musk’s Starlink terminals. Western special forces are present on the battlefield. They help with planning, target selection and the operation of sophisticated weapons systems. One of the latest pieces of evidence was an intercepted conversation on 19 February between German air force commander General Ingo Gerhartz and four officers about destroying the Crimean bridge with Taurus missiles.
The West has supplied Ukraine with hundreds of tanks and thousands of combat vehicles, Patriot and other air defence systems, anti-tank weapons, cruise missiles and millions in ammunition. Kiev has received, among other things, the latest Leopard, Challenger and Abrams tanks, M113 and Marder armoured personnel carriers, HIMARS high-mobility artillery rocket systems, ATACMS army tactical missile systems and Storm Shadow missiles. The West sees this as the perfect opportunity to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia and weaken it, as US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin bluntly stated. A recent article in The New York Times confirmed that 12 secret CIA bases have appeared in Ukraine since 2014 to train Ukrainians and spy on Russia.
Is Putin an aggressor?
The third myth says: Putin is a warmonger who will not stop at Ukraine and wants to attack Europe, including using nuclear weapons. It is enough to listen to Putin’s speeches to realise that his country has never once threatened any European country. He has clearly articulated the three objectives of the special military operation: protection of the persecuted Russian-speaking population, demilitarisation and denazification. Accusations of a desire to attack Europe and a willingness to use nuclear weapons have come from US and EU politicians, media and military figures.
In fact, Putin has shown remarkable restraint in the face of personal insults from Biden, who has repeatedly allowed himself to call him a “murderer,” a “thug,” a “crazy son of a bitch,” and a “war criminal.” In March 2022, in Istanbul, the Ukrainians and Russians reached an agreement that would have halted the conflict on terms highly favourable to Ukraine. However, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Kiev at the time and convinced President Zelensky to withdraw from it. Since then, the latter has made his mark by signing a decree banning any negotiations with Russia at all.
Russia will not lose
The fourth myth is that the situation on the battlefield has reached a stalemate and Russia will eventually lose. It is nothing of the sort. After the spectacular failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the summer of 2023 and the recent liberation of Avdeevka, the Russian army is advancing on all parts of the 1,000-kilometre front line, even despite the thaw. Their strategic goal is to crush and destroy the Kiev regime’s forces. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu recently said that the Ukrainians are losing 800 to 1,000 men and more than 100 pieces of arms and equipment every day.
No army can withstand such losses. Websites that track mortality statistics from obituaries and publicly available information have estimated that the AFU has lost between 450,000 and 500,000 soldiers in total. They are being wiped out at this very minute, and no amount of help is going to save them. Russia is winning, and the only question is how far west its army will advance. Most assumptions limit the march to the Dnieper River and the Odessa-Harkov line.
Another myth is that the West has a free press and the rule of law. When the Russian-Ukrainian conflict began, the mainstream Western media jointly set out to completely suppress the Russian point of view on events and broadcast only the Western and Ukrainian versions. Internet access to Russian publications has been blocked there, RussiaToday and other channels have been banned. Western society has gone so far as to try to boycott Russian athletes and to cancel Russian culture: art exhibitions, ballet, music and everything connected with Russia. Are these signs of a free press? As for the rule of law, the United States and Europe have absolutely illegally frozen Russia’s sovereign foreign exchange reserves to the tune of $300 billion. There is no other way to call it robbery. Such is the rule of law.
The conflict will not harm Russia
The last myth: hostilities weaken Russia. The situation is just the opposite, because the sanctions have forced Russia to focus on domestic production and turn to non-Western markets. Today’s Russian economy is growing faster than Europe’s: the International Monetary Fund predicts it will grow 2.6 per cent in 2024, compared to Europe’s 0.9 per cent. Meanwhile, major European countries, including Germany, are slipping into recession. Russia is strengthening ties with much of the world’s population, and its oil revenues for 2023 show no signs of falling, contrary to Western wishes and expectations. Russian society is even more united and stronger.
Putin is at the height of his popularity and in the recent election won over 87 per cent of the vote. The brutal terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall has united people as never before. An average of 30,000 Russians voluntarily sign military service contracts every month, and the country’s army has reached 1.2 million men. The military-industrial complex has grown by leaps and bounds and has no problem supplying the army with modern weapons and ammunition – and much faster than the West is able to supply the Ukrainians. Once the conflict is over, the Russian army will rightly be considered the most hardened, equipped and combat-ready in Europe. So no, the country is not weakening.
The leading Western media constantly feed us a one-sided and far from reality narrative with propaganda of certain myths. It is important for Indian publications to endeavour to give the public a more balanced and realistic description of the situation rather than unquestioningly broadcasting what they are told to broadcast.
The author of the article: Arjun Katoch is a former staff member of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and has worked in various conflict regions around the world. Prior to that, he served in the Special Forces of the Indian Army.
1,614 total views, 8 views today
