Moscow’s claim that Hunter Biden helped finance a US military 'bioweapons' research program in Ukraine is at least partially true, according to new emails obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com.

The commander of the Russian Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces, claimed there was a 'scheme of interaction between US government agencies and Ukrainian biological objects' and pointed to the 'financing of such activities by structures close to the current US leadership, in particular the investment fund Rosemont Seneca, which is headed by Hunter Biden.'

Intelligence experts say the Russian military leader's allegations were a brazen propaganda ploy to justify president Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and sow discord in the US.

But emails from Hunter's abandoned laptop show he helped secure millions of dollars of funding for Metabiota, a Department of Defense contractor specializing in research on pandemic-causing diseases that could be used as bioweapons.

He also introduced Metabiota to an allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas firm, Burisma, for a 'science project' involving high biosecurity level labs in Ukraine.

And although Metabiota is ostensibly a medical data company, its vice president emailed Hunter in 2014 describing how they could 'assert Ukraine's cultural and economic independence from Russia' – an unusual goal for a biotech firm.

Emails and defense contract data reviewed by DailyMail.com suggest that Hunter had a prominent role in making sure Metabiota was able to conduct its pathogen research just a few hundred miles from the border with Russia.

The project turned into a national security liability for Ukraine when Russian forces invaded the country last month.

Metabiota has worked in Ukraine for Black & Veatch, a US defense contractor with deep ties to military intelligence agencies, which built secure labs in Ukraine that analyzed killer diseases and bioweapons.

Earlier this month US officials warned congress that 'Russian forces may be seeking to gain control' of these 'biological research facilities', prompting fears that deadly and even engineered pathogens could fall into Russian hands.

Hunter and his colleagues at his investment firm Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP) routinely raised millions of dollars for technology companies, hoping the firms would take off and make them all fortunes.

Metabiota was one of those firms. Emails between Hunter and his colleagues excitedly discuss how the company's monitoring of medical data could become an essential tool for governments and companies looking to spot outbreaks of infectious diseases.

The president's son and his colleagues invested $500,000 in Metabiota through their firm Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners.

They raised several million dollars of funding for the company from investment giants including Goldman Sachs.

But emails show Hunter was also particularly involved in Metabiota's operations in Ukraine.

Hunter's pitches to investors claimed that they not only organized funding for the firm, they also helped it 'get new customers' including 'government agencies in case of Metabiota'.

He and his business partner Eric Schwerin even discussed subletting their office space to the firm in April 2014, their emails reveal.

That month, Metabiota vice president Mary Guttieri wrote a memo to Hunter outlining how they could 'assert Ukraine's cultural and economic independence from Russia'.

'Thanks so much for taking time out of your intense schedule to meet with Kathy [Dimeo, Metabiota executive] and I on Tuesday. We very much enjoyed our discussion,' Guttieri wrote.

'As promised, I've prepared the attached memo, which provides an overview of Metabiota, our engagement in Ukraine, and how we can potentially leverage our team, networks, and concepts to assert Ukraine's cultural and economic independence from Russia and continued integration into Western society.'

Former senior CIA officer Sam Faddis, who has reviewed emails on Hunter's laptop, told DailyMail.com that the offer to help assert Ukraine's independence was odd for a biotech executive.

'It raises the question, what is the real purpose of this venture? It's very odd,' he said.
Guttieri had a leading role in Metabiota's Ukraine operations, meeting with other company executives and US and Ukrainian military officials in October 2016 to discuss 'cooperation in surveillance and prevention of especially dangerous infectious diseases, including zoonotic diseases in Ukraine and neighboring countries' according to a 2016 report by the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine.

At the time, Hunter was serving as a board member of Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, owned by former top government official and allegedly corrupt billionaire Mikolay Zlochevsky.

Four days after Guttieri's April 2014 email, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi wrote to Hunter revealing that the then-Vice President's son had pitched a 'science project' involving Burisma and Metabiota in Ukraine.

'Please find few initial points to be discussed for the purposes of analyzing the potential of this as you called, 'Science Ukraine' project,' Pozharskyi wrote.

'As I understand the Metabiota was a subcontract to principal contactor of the DoD B&V [Black & Veatch].

'What kind of partnership Metabiota is looking for in Ukraine? From potential non-governmental player in Kiev? Rebuilt the ties with respective ministries in Ukraine, and on the basis of that reinstate the financing from the B&V? Or they look for partnership in managing projects in Ukraine, PR with Government institutions here, financing of the projects?'

Faddis told DailyMail.com that the attempt to get Metabiota to form a partnership with Burisma was a perplexing and worrying revelation.

'His father was the Vice President of the United States and in charge of relations with Ukraine. So why was Hunter not only on the board of a suspect Ukrainian gas firm, but also hooked them up with a company working on bioweapons research?' Faddis said.

'It's an obvious Russian propaganda attempt to take advantage of this. But it doesn't change the fact that there does seem to be something that needs to be explored here.

'The DoD position is that there's nothing nefarious here, this is pandemic early warning research. We don't know for sure that's all that was going on.

'But the question still remains: why is Hunter Biden in the middle of all this? Why is the disgraced son of the vice president at the heart of this – the guy with no discernible skills and a cocaine habit.'

Pozharsky said in his email to Hunter that he had encountered such biological research projects before in his former job as a Ukrainian government official, and claimed that B&V worked on 'similar or the same projects' as the proposed contract for Metabiota.

Government spending records show the Department of Defense awarded an $18.4million contract to Metabiota between February 2014 and November 2016, with $307,091 earmarked for 'Ukraine research projects'.

The US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) also commissioned B&V to build a Biological Safety Level 3 laboratory in Odessa, Ukraine in 2010, which 'provided enhanced equipment and training to effectively, safely and securely identify especially dangerous pathogens' according to a company press release.

Such labs are used to 'study infectious agents or toxins that may be transmitted through the air and cause potentially lethal infections,' the US Department of Health and Human Services says.

B&V was awarded a further five-year $85million contract in 2012.

In another sign of the deep ties between Metabiota and the Department of Defense, Hunter's RSTP business partner Rob Walker said he would 'have a friend reach out to DoD on the down low', in order to prove the company's bona fides to top prospective investors Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley in October 2014.

RSTP was a subsidiary of Rosemont Capital, an investment company founded by Hunter and former Secretary of State John Kerry's stepson Chris Heinz in 2009.

Metabiota also has close ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), suspected to be the source of the COVID-19 outbreak.

WIV was a hotspot for controversial 'gain of function' research that can create super-strength viruses.

Chinese scientists performed gain of function research on coronaviruses at the WIV, working alongside a US-backed organization EcoHealth Alliance that has since drawn intense scrutiny over its coronavirus research since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Researchers from the Wuhan institute, Metabiota and EcoHealth Alliance published a study together in 2014 on infectious diseases from bats in China, which notes that tests were performed at the WIV.

Shi Zhengli, the WIV Director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases who became dubbed the 'bat lady' for her central role in bat coronavirus research at the lab, was a contributor to the paper.

Metabiota has been an official partner of EcoHealth Alliance since 2014, according to its website.

(New York) - A new law supposedly protecting U.S. servicemembers from the International Criminal Court shows that the Bush administration will stop at nothing in its campaign against the court.

U.S. President George Bush today signed into law the American Servicemembers Protection Act of 2002, which is intended to intimidate countries that ratify the treaty for the International Criminal Court (ICC). The new law authorizes the use of military force to liberate any American or citizen of a U.S.-allied country being held by the court, which is located in The Hague. This provision, dubbed the "Hague invasion clause," has caused a strong reaction from U.S. allies around the world, particularly in the Netherlands.

In addition, the law provides for the withdrawal of U.S. military assistance from countries ratifying the ICC treaty, and restricts U.S. participation in United Nations peacekeeping unless the United States obtains immunity from prosecution. At the same time, these provisions can be waived by the president on "national interest" grounds.

"The states that have ratified this treaty are trying to strengthen the rule of law," said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch. "The Bush administration is trying to punish them for that."

Dicker pointed out that many of the ICC's biggest supporters are fragile democracies and countries emerging from human rights crises, such as Sierra Leone, Argentina and Fiji.

The law is part of a multi-pronged U.S. effort against the International Criminal Court. On May 6, in an unprecedented move, the Bush administration announced it was "renouncing" U.S. signature on the treaty. In June, the administration vetoed continuation of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Bosnia in an effort to obtain permanent immunity for U.N. peacekeepers. In July, U.S. officials launched a campaign around the world to obtain bilateral agreements that would grant immunity for Americans from the court's authority. Yesterday, Washington announced that it obtained such an agreement from Romania.

However, another provision of the bill allows the United States to assist international efforts to bring to justice those accused of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity - including efforts by the ICC.

"The administration never misses an opportunity to gratuitously antagonize its allies on the ICC," said Dicker. "But it's also true that the new law has more loopholes than a block of Swiss cheese."

Dicker said the law gives the administration discretion to override ASPA's noxious effects on a case-by-case basis. Washington may try to use this to strong-arm additional concessions from the states that support the court, but Dicker urged states supporting the ICC "not to fall into the U.S. trap: the law does not require any punitive measures."

Human Rights Watch believes the International Criminal Court has the potential to be the most important human rights institution created in 50 years, and urged regional groups of states, such as the European Union, to condemn the new law and resist Washington's attempts to obtain bilateral exemption arrangements.

The law formed part of the 2002 Supplemental Appropriations Act for Further Recovery from and Response to Terrorist Attacks on the United States.

Elvictor:


We need miseducation in Nigeria, the UK have really dealt with us, the West have picture Russia as people who hate blacks, I wouldn't have known the first person to appear in space was actually a black man, that Russia projected.

I don't why I supported Russia, now I am proud of my rationality after reading this, thank you boss

sapientia:
Is USA fighting anyone currently

I know USA won't even give Serbia sanction if they join Russia

They don't want a humanitarian crisis

Elvictor:
We know what US are planning, them wan use back door put themselves there, UK and US are good at re-writing people history.

Thieves

Whipping themselves into a Freedom Fries-esque fit of censoriousness, a space industry conference has removed the name of celebrated Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to travel into space, from an event.

The nonprofit Space Foundation announced in a now-deleted note that “in light of current world events” it would be changing the name of a fundraiser from “Yuri’s Night” to “A Celebration of Space: Discover What’s Next” at its Space Symposium conference.

“The focus of this fundraising event remains the same — to celebrate human achievements in space while inspiring the next generation to reach for the stars,” the deleted update notes.

It’s a rather dubious show of solidarity with the Ukrainian people, especially considering that Gagarin worked for the USSR, a completely different country from modern day Russia. And the icing on the cake? Ukraine actually appears to be rather fond of Gagarin and his monumental achievement.

Erasing the name of the first person to ever fly to space while supposedly celebrating “human achievements in space” is bad enough.

But doing so in line with the milquetoast trend of disavowing all things Russian, including famous composers and food products, amid the country’s current invasion of Ukraine is just outrageous.

For instance, a 2011 Ukraine stamp commemorated the 50th anniversary of his pioneering space flight. And the recently-bombed Chernihiv Stadium was renamed by the Soviets as the “Yuri Gagarin Stadium” back in the 1960s, and is also still referred to as such by fans despite a new official name.

In a post published last year about Gagarin’s often-overlooked relationship with Ukraine, the country’s Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute noted that during his first and only visit to the capitol city in 1966, the cosmonaut had kind words to say about the country’s capital, which was part of the USSR at the time.

“My friend Pavel Popovich told me a lot about the beauty of Kyiv,” Gagarin reportedly said when visiting school children at a youth center, “but what I’ve seen with my eyes is incomparable to what I’ve heard!”

It’s far from the first time on-Earth geopolitics have affected the world of spaceflight — hell, NASA likely wouldn’t have made it to the Moon as soon as it did if it hadn’t been for the Cold War.

Space cooperation between the United States and Russia has led to decades of remarkable international unity and scientific research, even as politics have, on occasion, strained that delicate alliance.

Censoring Yuri Gagarin’s name will not help a single Ukrainian fend off Russia’s invasion, but it does serve as yet another reminder that fair weather activism often flies in the face of reality.

Event named after Yuri Gagarin, first human in space, is retitled amid Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine

Legendary cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin has been caught up in the global push to punish all things Russian amid the Ukraine crisis, despite having died more than half a century ago.

A major US space industry conference has censored Gagarin’s name, essentially canceling the first human to travel into outer space. The Space Foundation, a Colorado-based not-for-profit group led largely by aerospace industry executives, altered the agenda for its upcoming Space Symposium in April, renaming a fundraising party that used to be titled “Yuri’s Night.”

The group noted that “in light of current world events,” the fundraiser had been renamed “A Celebration of Space: Discover What’s Next.” That page was later deleted and replaced with an updated conference agenda that excluded the explanation for canceling Gagarin.

The annual Space Symposium is in its 37th year and costs nearly $3,000 to attend with a “premium access” pass. It typically attracts about 10,000 space-industry professionals from around the world. The focus of the renamed event remains the same – “to celebrate human achievements in space while inspiring the next generation to reach for the stars,” the foundation said.

Gagarin made such an achievement in April 1961, traveling in the Vostok 1 capsule in an orbit of Earth. The historic feat made him an international celebrity and earned him such honors as being granted the title ‘Hero of the Soviet Union,’ the nation’s highest award. A native of a small village west of Moscow, he died at the age of 34 in 1968, while serving as a flight instructor.

The cosmonaut becomes the latest Russian icon to be posthumously punished as the US and its NATO allies impose sweeping sanctions on Moscow over the war in Ukraine. For instance, a university in Milan canceled a course on novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, while the Cardiff Philharmonic in Wales nixed plans for a Tchaikovsky program.

Of course, living Russians have also been targeted with sanctions and scorn, from President Vladimir Putin to opera stars to athletes. The fallout has extended even to Russian cats, which were banned from overseas competitions by the International Feline Federation in Paris.

Brits have been told they should cut speed limits and introduce car-free Sundays to fend off the biggest oil shock seen in decades.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) gave the advice as part of their 10-point plan to curb rocketing fuel prices sparked by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The IEA urged governments globally to reduce their speed limit on motorways by 10km per hour and consider banning cars in their major cities on Sundays.

They argued economies of developed countries comply with the measures, it could cut demand for oil by 2.7 million barrels per day within the next four months.

Among their suggestions was to increase working from home to at least three days of the week, cheaper public transport to incentivise uptake and increased car-sharing.

Using high-speed night trains instead of planes, avoiding business air travel and encouraging the uptake of electric and more efficient vehicles were also on the list.

Many countries introduced such measures to curb oil consumption during the 1970s OPEC crisis.

The Dutch government banned private motor vehicles on Sundays for three months in 1973. People started enjoying picnics on empty motorways and got around on foot, by bike and on horseback. Once the ban was lifted, petrol still needed to be rationed.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for prices, spiralled.

This was propelled by Boris Johnson's announcement that the UK would phase out Russian products by the end of this year and when President Joe Biden said the U.S. would ban imports of Russian energy.

Petrol prices hit another record high on Monday, the average price of a litre of petrol rose to 163.71p and diesel also hit a fresh record of 173.68p.

Dr Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said: “As a result of Russia’s appalling aggression against Ukraine, the world may well be facing its biggest oil supply shock in decades, with huge implications for our economies and societies.

“IEA Member Countries have already stepped in to support the global economy with an initial release of millions of barrels of emergency oil stocks, but we can also take action on demand to avoid the risk of a crippling oil crunch.

“Our 10-Point Plan shows this can be done through measures that have already been tested and proven in multiple countries”.

Tens of thousands of fans of Red Star Belgrade—Serbia's most popular soccer team—gave a pointed response to the supposedly anti-war west tonight as they held signs showing 20+ countries & the year of their overthrow/invasion by the US.

"All we are saying is give peace a chance!" https:///PkammGg2Aa

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. will bolster its conventional deterrence against China, establishing a network of precision-strike missiles along the so-called first island chain as part of $27.4 billion in spending to be considered for the Indo-Pacific theater over the next six years, Nikkei has learned.

They form the core proposals of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative that the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command has submitted to Congress and Nikkei has reviewed.

"The greatest danger to the future of the United States continues to be an erosion of conventional deterrence," the document said. "Without a valid and convincing conventional deterrent, China is emboldened to take action in the region and globally to supplant U.S. interests. As the Indo-Pacific's military balance becomes more unfavorable, the U.S. accumulates additional risk that may embolden adversaries to unilaterally attempt to change the status quo."

Specifically, it called for "the fielding of an Integrated Joint Force with precision-strike networks west of the International Date Line along the first island chain, integrated air missile defense in the second island chain, and a distributed force posture that provides the ability to preserve stability, and if needed, dispense and sustain combat operations for extended periods."

The first island chain consists of a group of islands including Taiwan, Okinawa and the Philippines, which China sees as the first line of defense. Beijing's "anti-access/area denial" strategy seeks to push American forces out of the East and South China seas within the first island chain.

[img][/img]
China also seeks to keep U.S. forces from approaching the "second island chain" in the Western Pacific, which runs from southeastern Japan out to Guam and south to Indonesia.

The Indo-Pacific Command submitted an investment plan for fiscal 2022 through fiscal 2027 to Congress this month.

For fiscal 2022, it has requested $4.7 billion, which is more than double the $2.2 billion earmarked for the region in fiscal 2021, and is close to the roughly $5 billion Washington has spent annually on dealing with Russia.

The six-year total of $27.4 billion represents a 36% increase over planned spending for that period as of fiscal 2020, reflecting growing alarm over Chinese activity surrounding Taiwan and the East and South China Seas.

In a speech at the Washington-based think tank American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, Adm. Philip Davidson, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said there are concerns about the next six years as a period when China may look to change the status quo in the region, such as with Taiwan.

He said there is "a fundamental understanding that the period between now and 2026, this decade, is the time horizon in which China is positioned to achieve overmatch in its capability, and when Beijing could, 'could,' widely choose to forcibly change the status quo in the region."

"And I would say the change in that status quo could be permanent," he said.

The plan is structured to "focus resources on vital military capabilities to deter China," according to the document. "The requirements outlined in this report are specifically designed to persuade potential adversaries that any preemptive military action will be too costly and likely to fail by projecting credible, combat power at the time of crisis," it says.

The proposal will be followed by discussions with lawmakers and with countries that would be involved in its implementation. China has in the past objected to U.S. attempts to place missile shields in allied countries, notably in South Korea.

The U.S. has about 132,000 troops stationed in the Indo-Pacific, according to a Japanese defense white paper.

The investment plan features "highly survivable, precision-strike networks along the first island chain" as a central element. This would mean expanded use of land-based batteries with conventional missiles, as the military has ruled out the use of nuclear warheads on such short- and medium-range missiles.

The U.S. has long based its China strategy around its naval and air forces. During the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, the U.S. dispatched aircraft carriers to project overwhelming military strength as a deterrent.

China's now holds a diverse missile arsenal with an eye toward blocking a U.S. military advance within the second island chain. This has made the U.S. strategy hinging on the Navy and Air Force less feasible.

China is strong in ground-based, intermediate-range missiles. While China holds an arsenal of 1,250 such missiles, according to the Pentagon, the U.S. has none.

This gap owes to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned the development of ground-based missiles with ranges between 500 km and 5,500 km. The agreement expired in 2019.

"The INF Treaty unnecessarily constrained the United States," Sen. Jim Risch, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Nikkei in a written interview.

The deployment of intermediate range missiles in the Indo-Pacific "is a great and increasingly necessary area of discussion for the United States and Japan to explore," Risch said.

A network of missiles countering China in the Indo-Pacific region "would be a plus for Japan," said a senior Japanese government official. This official said Tokyo has not discussed such a move with Washington.

American land, sea and air forces are stationed in Japan under the two countries' bilateral security treaty, which obligates Washington to defend Japan if it is attacked. There are now about 55,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan, the largest contingent of American troops abroad.

U.S. forces in Japan do not currently maintain missiles that could reach China. Japan's Defense Ministry has been building up its own long-range missile capabilities in the Nansei Islands, which include Okinawa.

But placing U.S. missiles on Japanese soil would be fraught with difficulty. Because such a move would affect the division of roles between the American military and Japan's Self-Defense Forces, Tokyo and Washington would need to discuss the details of any proposed deployment, including the locations and range of the missiles.

An opportunity is likely to come during negotiations on host-nation support for fiscal 2022 onward. Missile deployment "could be discussed as we talk about the course of the Japan-U.S. alliance," a senior Foreign Ministry official said.

A decision by Japan to host American missiles would be certain to anger China, complicating diplomacy between the two economically intertwined neighbors. And Tokyo is likely to encounter local opposition around potential deployment sites, including in Okinawa, where around 70% of American forces in the country are concentrated.

Budget concerns may arise as well. Washington "could ask us to shoulder maintenance and other costs associated with missiles deployed in Japan," a Defense Ministry official said.

sapientia:


I don't believe in committing crime because another did
Shebi Russia is a world power
Why not use he influence to get USA to answer for their crimes
That is where Putin has been outsmarted
USA never move alone even with all her powers
Putin didn't do his ground work very well

WWII was instigated by Hitler and Stalin but Hitler betrayed him after he conquered Poland

Countries that share border with Russia are running away from him towards west and you a Nigeria whose country don't have light even in peace time is blabbing what you don't know

Was it NATO that scattered Warsaw Pact or hunger?
Why didn't China join Warsaw pact?
Russia is an overated country with nuclear weapons

MangekyoAlt:
Op don't mind brainwashed pro western asslickers on this forum. They barely have any grip on reality. If they did, they would've known that the USA is the biggest bully in the world. The same USA that brushes off ICC as irrelevant wants ICC to step a foot into russia in search of Putin that is bigger than their entire existence

Australian whistleblower David McBride just made the following statement on Twitter

"I’ve been asked if I think the invasion of Ukraine is illegal.

My answer is: If we don’t hold our own leaders to account, we can’t hold other leaders to account.

If the law is not applied consistently, it is not the law.

It is simply an excuse we use to target our enemies.

We will pay a heavy price for our hubris of 2003 in the future.

We didn’t just fail to punish Bush and Blair: we rewarded them. We re-elected them. We knighted them.

If you want to see Putin in his true light imagine him landing a jet and then saying ‘Mission Accomplished’."

As far as I can tell this point is logically unassailable. International law is a meaningless concept when it only applies to people the US power alliance doesn't like. This point is driven home by the life of McBride himself, whose own government responded to his publicizing suppressed information about war crimes committed by Australian forces in Afghanistan by charging him as a criminal.

Neither George W Bush nor Tony Blair are in prison cells at The Hague where international law says they ought to be. Bush is still painting away from the comfort of his home, issuing proclamations comparing Putin to Hitler and platforming arguments for more interventionism in Ukraine. Blair is still merily warmongering his charred little heart out, saying NATO should not rule out directly attacking Russian forces in what amounts to a call for a thermonuclear world war.

They are free as birds, singing their same old demonic songs from the rooftops.

When you point out this obvious plot hole in discussions about the legality of Vladimir Putin's invasion you'll often get accused of "whataboutism", which is a noise that empire loyalists like to make when you have just highlighted damning evidence that their government's behaviors entirely invalidate their position on an issue. This is not a "whataboutism"; it's a direct accusation that is completely devastating to the argument being made, because there really is no counter-argument.

The Iraq invasion bypassed the laws and protocols for military action laid out in the founding charter of the United Nations. The current US military occupation of Syria violates international law. International law only exists to the extent to which the nations of the world are willing and able to enforce it, and because of the US empire's military power — and more importantly because of its narrative control power — this means international law is only ever enforced with the approval of that empire.

This is why the people indicted and detained by the International Criminal Court (ICC) are always from weaker nations — overwhelmingly African — while the USA can get away with actually sanctioning ICC personnel if they so much as talk about investigating American war crimes and suffer no consequences for it whatsoever. It is also why Noam Chomsky famously said that if the Nuremberg laws had continued to be applied with fairness and consistency, then every post-WWII U.S. president would have been hanged.

This is also why former US National Security Advisor John Bolton once said that the US war machine is "dealing in the anarchic environment internationally where different rules apply,” which "does require actions that in a normal business environment in the United States we would find unprofessional."

Bolton would certainly know. In his bloodthirsty push to manufacture consent for the Iraq invasion he spearheaded the removal of the director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a crucial institution for the enforcement of international law, using measures which included threatening the director-general's children. The OPCW is now subject to the dictates of the US government, as evidenced by the organisation's coverup of a 2018 false flag incident in Syria which resulted in airstrikes by the US, UK and France during Bolton's tenure as a senior Trump advisor.

The US continually works to subvert international law enforcement institutions to advance its own interests. When the US was seeking UN authorization for the Gulf War in 1991, Yemen dared to vote against it, after which a member of the US delegation told Yemen’s ambassador, “That’s the most expensive vote you ever cast.” Yemen lost not just 70 million dollars in US foreign aid but also a valuable labor contract with Saudi Arabia, and a million Yemeni immigrants were sent home by America’s Gulf state allies.

Simple observation of who is subject to international law enforcement and who is not makes it clear that the very concept of international law is now functionally nothing more than a narrative construct that's used to bludgeon and undermine governments who disobey the US-centralized empire. That's why in the lead-up to this confrontation with Russia we saw a push among empire managers to swap out the term "international law" with "rules-based international order", which can mean anything and is entirely up to the interpretation of the world's dominant power structure.

It is entirely possible that we may see Putin ousted and brought before a war crimes tribunal one day, but that won't make it valid. You can argue with logical consistency that Putin's invasion of Ukraine is wrong and will have disastrous consequences far beyond the bloodshed it has already inflicted, but what you can't do with any logical consistency whatsoever is claim that it is illegal. Because there is no authentically enforced framework for such a concept to apply.

As US law professor Dale Carpenter has said, "If citizens cannot trust that laws will be enforced in an evenhanded and honest fashion, they cannot be said to live under the rule of law. Instead, they live under the rule of men corrupted by the law.” This is all the more true of laws which would exist between nations.

You don't get to make international law meaningless and then claim that an invasion is "illegal". That's not a legitimate thing to do. As long as we are living in a Wild West environment created by a murderous globe-spanning empire which benefits from it, claims about the legality of foreign invasions are just empty sounds.

BritishNaija:



I did not watch the whole video as it was centred about the War in ukraine, don't do a runner yet, I went back to the main video you sent initially, which was a cut out from the long video and where the specific question was asked.
There is no where in her Answers that she stated the lab belongs to US, instead Russia is planning another false flag to unleash chemical weapon in ukraine.
I'm too educated to be boxed with twisted false facts.

BritishNaija:


The answer to the question to her was succinct. Ukraine and not US have a chemical weapon research lab, and US is working with them now, to make Sure Russia does not get their hands on the research materials.

If US wants to build chemical weapon or research, Which i know they have anyway, They do not need Ukraine territory to do that.

BritishNaija:

Give me link to the video.

BritishNaija:



What was the question asked and her reply? Did She say US owns it?

BritishNaija:


Is either you want to be mischievous or you can not read. The lab belongs to Ukraine and not US as Russia claimed.

It's for research purpose and US is now working with Ukraine to make sure the research materials do not fall Into the hands of Russians.

Learn how to detect Russia propaganda, And it becoming obvious they are trying to create another false flag to use chemical weapons.

Bodmum:
Did you mean usa needs the permission from the invaders to operate a biolab?

Northernblood5:
Stop listening to twisted news. The lab has been existing and it's not a secret

“There are biological research facilities in Ukraine, and we fear that Russia will take control over them.” - U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland at a congressional hearing

⚡️The US is working with Ukraine to prevent biological research facilities from falling into the hands of Russians — Nuland https:///dDr9VHQVao

Found 30 biological labs in Ukraine, possibly for bioweapons, claim Russian forces
The Russian military claims to have uncovered 30 biological laboratories in Ukraine.

Igor Kirillov, the chief of the Russian Armed Forces' radiation, chemical, and biological defence, told reporters that the laboratories were reportedly involved in biological weapons production.

"The Russian Defense Ministry has repeatedly drawn attention to the military biological programs that are being implemented by the Pentagon in post-Soviet countries, including on the territory of Ukraine, where a network of more than 30 biological laboratories has been formed, which can be divided into research and sanitary-epidemiological ones," Kirillov said.

The Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) is the project's customer, and a corporation linked with the military department, notably Black and Veatch, is involved in project implementation, he stated.

Kirillov noted that the work is being done in three primary areas.

The first is, according to the Pentagon, the monitoring of the biological situation in the proposed areas for the deployment of military contingents from NATO member states.

The second is the collecting of harmful microbe strains and their transfer to the United States.

According to him, the third direction is research into prospective biological weapons agents that are peculiar to a given place, have natural foci, and may be transmitted to humans.

Kirillov gave the following example: since 2021, the Pentagon has been implementing the project "Diagnostics, Surveillance and Prevention of Zoonotic Diseases in the Armed Forces of Ukraine" with a total funding of $11.8 million; in 2020-2021, the German Defense Ministry conducted a study of pathogens of the Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic disease in Ukraine. fever, leptospirosis, meningitis, hantaviruses as part of the Ukrainian-German initiative to ensure biological security at the external borders of the European Union.

Under the pretext of testing means for the treatment and prevention of the coronavirus infection, several thousand samples of serum from patients, primarily those belonging to the Slavic ethnic group, were taken from Ukraine to the Walter Reed Research Institute of the US Army, he added

China urges Pentagon to open up about ‘biolabs’ in Ukraine
Beijing said that the US defense department controls 336 laboratories around the world
China urges Pentagon to open up about ‘biolabs’ in Ukraine

China’s foreign ministry has called on the US to disclose information on the Pentagon’s alleged biological laboratories in Ukraine “as soon as possible”.

On Monday, the Russian military said Ukrainian authorities had been destroying pathogens studied at its laboratories. Moscow claimed that 30 US-financed Ukrainian biolabs have been actively cooperating with the American military.

Kiev has denied developing bioweapons. According to the website of the US embassy in Kiev, the US Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program only “collaborates with partner countries to counter the threat of outbreaks” of infectious diseases. In 2020, the embassy called such theories about US-funded biolabs in Ukraine "disinformation."

Speaking at a press briefing on Tuesday, however, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian claimed that, according to his country’s information, the laboratories in Ukraine are just “a tip of an iceberg” and that the US Department of Defense “controls 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries around the world.” This is done under the pretext of “cooperating to reduce biosecurity risks” and “strengthening global public health,” Zhao said.

It is the first time that Beijing has disclosed the alleged figure. Zhao said that according to data “released by the United States itself,” there are 26 US laboratories in Ukraine. In light of Russia’s military offensive in the country, he urged “all parties concerned” to ensure the safety of the labs

“In particular, the United States, as the party which knows these laboratories best, should publish the relevant details as soon as possible, including which viruses are stored and which research has been carried out,” he said.

He claimed the US “has been exclusively obstructing” the establishment of an independent verification mechanism. Such behavior, Zhao said, “further aggravates the concerns of the international community.”

According to a report in The Rio Times, the US embassy in Ukraine deleted all information about Pentagon-financed bio-labs in the country from its website on February 26. However, journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva claimed embassy staff forgot to remove a document showing that the Pentagon is funding two new biolabs in Kiev and Odessa.

“Ukraine has no control over the military biolabs. The Ukrainian government is not allowed to release sensitive information about the program,” the Brazilian news outlet claimed.

Over the past 20 years, the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine, jointly established with the United States, invested over $285 million in about 1,850 projects carried out by scientists who, according to Gaytandzhieva, previously worked on the development of weapons of mass destruction.

US authorities are yet to comment on the latest claims.

KingEverest:
I read the first 3 headings it's too long

alBHAGDADI:


Sadly, Africans are foolishly blackmailing themselves by saying the West is a lesser evil and should be chosen over Russia, China and North Korea. No, we shouldn't chose any at all. Don't side a system because it is a lesser evil. Don't side any evil at all because the one you consider to be lesser evil might have disguised himself as such. When you finally embrace it, it devours you

If this war should lead to a world war, just know that you siding with Russia or Ukraine are in for war too. Satan will battle every corner of the earth until humans submit to him, except Saved Christians. Then everyone will now turn against Saved Christians to kill them. This will lead to the war of Armmageddon

Russia's military offensive against Ukraine is an act of aggression that will make already worrisome tensions between Nato and Moscow even more dangerous. The west’s new cold war with Russia has turned hot. Vladimir Putin bears primary responsibility for this latest development, but Nato’s arrogant, tone‐​deaf policy toward Russia over the past quarter‐​century deserves a large share as well. Analysts committed to a US foreign policy of realism and restraint have warned for more than a quarter‐​century that continuing to expand the most powerful military alliance in history toward another major power would not end well. The war in Ukraine provides definitive confirmation that it did not.

Thinking through the Ukraine crisis – the causes
“It would be extraordinarily difficult to expand Nato eastward without that action’s being viewed by Russia as unfriendly. Even the most modest schemes would bring the alliance to the borders of the old Soviet Union. Some of the more ambitious versions would have the alliance virtually surround the Russian Federation itself.” I wrote those words in 1994, in my book Beyond Nato: Staying Out of Europe’s Wars, at a time when expansion proposals merely constituted occasional speculation in foreign policy seminars in New York and Washington. I added that expansion “would constitute a needless provocation of Russia”.

What was not publicly known at the time was that Bill Clinton’s administration had already made the fateful decision the previous year to push for including some former Warsaw Pact countries in Nato. The administration would soon propose inviting Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary to become members, and the US Senate approved adding those countries to the North Atlantic Treaty in 1998. It would be the first of several waves of membership expansion.

Even that first stage provoked Russian opposition and anger. In her memoir, Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s secretary of state, concedes that “[Russian president Boris] Yeltsin and his countrymen were strongly opposed to enlargement, seeing it as a strategy for exploiting their vulnerability and moving Europe’s dividing line to the east, leaving them isolated.”

Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state, similarly described the Russian attitude. “Many Russians see Nato as a vestige of the cold war, inherently directed against their country. They point out that they have disbanded the Warsaw Pact, their military alliance, and ask why the west should not do the same.” It was an excellent question, and neither the Clinton administration nor its successors provided even a remotely convincing answer.

George Kennan, the intellectual father of America’s containment policy during the cold war, perceptively warned in a May 1998 New York Times interview about what the Senate’s ratification of Nato’s first round of expansion would set in motion. “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” Kennan stated. ”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.”

He was right, but US and Nato leaders proceeded with new rounds of expansion, including the provocative step of adding the three Baltic republics. Those countries not only had been part of the Soviet Union, but they had also been part of Russia’s empire during the Czarist era. That wave of expansion now had Nato perched on the border of the Russian Federation.

Moscow’s patience with Nato’s ever more intrusive behavior was wearing thin. The last reasonably friendly warning from Russia that the alliance needed to back off came in March 2007, when Putin addressed the annual Munich security conference. “Nato has put its frontline forces on our borders,” Putin complained. Nato expansion “represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?”

In his memoir, Duty, Robert M Gates, who served as secretary of defense in the administrations of both George W Bush and Barack Obama, stated his belief that “the relationship with Russia had been badly mismanaged after [George HW] Bush left office in 1993”. Among other missteps, “US agreements with the Romanian and Bulgarian governments to rotate troops through bases in those countries was a needless provocation.” In an implicit rebuke to the younger Bush, Gates asserted that “trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into Nato was truly overreaching”. That move, he contended, was a case of “recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests”.

The following year, the Kremlin demonstrated that its discontent with Nato’s continuing incursions into Russia’s security zone had moved beyond verbal objections. Moscow exploited a foolish provocation by Georgia’s pro‐​western government to launch a military offensive that brought Russian troops to the outskirts of the capital. Thereafter, Russia permanently detached two secessionist‐​minded Georgian regions and put them under effective Russian control.

Western (especially US) leaders continued to blow through red warning light after a red warning light, however. The Obama administration’s shockingly arrogant meddling in Ukraine’s internal political affairs in 2013 and 2014 to help demonstrators overthrow Ukraine’s elected, pro‐​Russia president was the single most brazen provocation, and it caused tensions to spike. Moscow immediately responded by seizing and annexing Crimea, and a new cold war was underway with a vengeance.

Could the Ukraine crisis have been avoided?
Events during the past few months constituted the last chance to avoid a hot war in eastern Europe. Putin demanded that Nato provide guarantees on several security issues. Specifically, the Kremlin wanted binding assurances that the alliance would reduce the scope of its growing military presence in eastern Europe and would never offer membership to Ukraine. He backed up those demands with a massive military buildup on Ukraine’s borders.

The Biden administration’s response to Russia’s quest for meaningful western concessions and security guarantees was tepid and evasive. Putin then clearly decided to escalate matters. Washington’s attempt to make Ukraine a Nato political and military pawn (even absent the country’s formal membership in the alliance) may end up costing the Ukrainian people dearly.

The Ukraine tragedy
History will show that Washington’s treatment of Russia in the decades following the demise of the Soviet Union was a policy blunder of epic proportions. It was entirely predictable that Nato expansion would ultimately lead to a tragic, perhaps violent, breach of relations with Moscow. Perceptive analysts warned of the likely consequences, but those warnings went unheeded. We are now paying the price for the US foreign policy establishment’s myopia and arrogance.

March 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. nuclear power industry is lobbying the White House to allow uranium imports from Russia to continue despite the escalating conflict in Ukraine, with cheap supplies of the fuel seen as key to keeping American electricity prices low, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The United States relies on Russia and its allies Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for roughly half of the uranium powering its nuclear plants - about 22.8 million pounds (10.3 million kg) in 2020 - which in turn produce about 20% of U.S. electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the World Nuclear Association.

Washington and its allies have imposed a series of sanctions on Moscow in the past week as Russian forces pushed deeper into neighboring Ukraine, though the sanctions exempt uranium sales and related financial transactions.

The National Energy Institute (NEI), a trade group of U.S. nuclear power generation companies including Duke Energy Corp (DUK.N) and Exelon Corp (EXC.O), is lobbying the White House to keep the exemption on uranium imports from Russia, the sources said.

The NEI lobbying aims to ensure that uranium is not caught up in any future energy-related sanctions, especially as calls intensify to sanction Russian crude oil sales, the sources said.

"The (U.S. nuclear power) industry is just addicted to cheap Russian uranium," said one of the sources, who declined to be named, citing the sensitivity of the situation.

Duke and Exelon, two of the largest U.S. utilities, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Washington-based NEI said that it supports a diversity of uranium supply, including the development of U.S. facilities to produce and process the fuel.

"While Russia is a significant global supplier of commercial nuclear fuel, U.S. utilities contract with a worldwide network of companies and countries for their fuel requirements to mitigate the risks of potential disruption," said Nima Ashkeboussi, NEI's senior director of fuel and radiation safety.

The Biden administration has said it is working to keep American energy costs low.

"We are listening to all inquiries from industry and will continue to do so as we take measures to hold Russia accountable," a White House official said when asked about the uranium lobbying.

Uranium is used as a fuel inside reactors to achieve nuclear fission to boil water and generate steam that spins turbines to generate electricity.

There is no uranium production or processing in the United States currently, though several companies have said they would like to resume domestic production if they can sign long-term supply contracts with nuclear power producers. Texas and Wyoming have large uranium reserves.

Australia and Canada also have large reserves of uranium and there is ample processing capability there and in Europe. But Russia and its satellites are the cheapest producers.


The U.S. nuclear power industry's use of Russian uranium is likely to spark further questions about where and how the United States procures the materials needed to supply high-tech and renewable-energy products, a dependency that President Joe Biden singled out last week as a national security threat.

Russia's uranium production is controlled by Rosatom, a state-run company formed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2007. The company is an important source of revenue for the country.


Former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2020 proposed spending $150 million to create a strategic uranium reserve, and Biden administration officials have expressed support for the idea.

Other utilities around the globe have already begun looking beyond Russia for supply. Swedish power company Vattenfall AB (VATN.UL) said last week it would stop buying Russian uranium for its nuclear reactors until further notice, citing the Ukrainian conflict.

Bulgaria's defence minister has been dismissed after stating the Russian invasion of Ukraine should not be called “war”.
Stefan Yanev sparked a backlash over a post on Facebook in which he called for people "not to use lightly the term 'war'".
Instead, he suggested that it be labelled a "military operation," echoing the language of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Yanev - who had served as Bulgaria's caretaker prime minister last year -- had nevertheless condemned Moscow's "unacceptable aggression".
But Bulgaria's Prime Minister Kiril Petkov confirmed on Monday that Yanev had been dismissed from his post.
The decision is to be ratified later today by an extraordinary council of ministers and then by parliament on Tuesday.

"No minister in this government has the right to his own foreign policy, especially on Facebook," Petkov said in a statement.
"No minister can tell the government that his stay is a function of cabinet stability," the Prime Minister added.
"This government will not pursue stability, it will pursue the right actions and principled positions."
NGOs had been calling for Yanev's resignation for several days over his "inappropriate" behaviour, while an online petition had gathered thousands of signatures.
Petkov added it was not in Bulgaria's national interests to be "silent" on Russia's invasion of Ukraine and stated the government should "clearly express a position that condemns these policies and actions".
"When we see that one Slavic country is attacking another Slavic country in a fratricidal war, without a real reason, we must state clearly - this war must stop," Petkov told reporters on Monday.
"We, as the EU, must do everything possible to end this," he added.
In December, Yanev had been reluctant to welcome NATO troops on Bulgarian soil, arguing that "this would increase tensions in the region".
The former military general is also a close ally of Bulgarian President Rumen Radev and had previously served as deputy prime minister, before being handed the caretaker PM role last April for several months.

Sofia’s military chief has been sacked for calling Russia’s conflict in Ukraine a ‘military intervention’ rather than a ‘war’

Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov has fired defense chief Stefan Yanev over his word choices in describing the Russia-Ukraine conflict, calling the situation a “military intervention” or an “operation” rather than a “war.”

“My defense minister cannot use the word operation instead of the word war,” Petkov told reporters on Monday. “You cannot call it an operation when thousands of soldiers from the one and the other side are already killed.”

The prime minister added that “the Bulgarian interest is not in bending our heads down.” Rather, “When we see something we do not agree with, something so obvious, we cannot keep quiet.”
All four parties in Bulgaria’s ruling coalition agreed to call for Yanev’s resignation, Petkov noted. A new defense minister – reportedly Todor Tagarev, who held the position in 2013 – will be appointed in an extraordinary session of Parliament that will be held on Tuesday.
The firing came in reaction to a Facebook post by Yanev. Commenting on the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the defense minister warned against using the word “war.” He said there was no need for Bulgaria to side with Russia, the US, or European allies in the conflict, adding, “Our suffering motherland does not deserve to be sacrificed in the game of the great powers.

Petkov chided him for the post, saying, “No minister can attempt to do foreign policymaking on his own, especially on Facebook.” Yanev argued that he was being targeted for removal so the government could install a defense minister who will be more willing to serve foreign interests, in some cases at the expense of Bulgaria’s security.

Bulgaria was for long a close ally of Russia and was a Soviet satellite as a member of the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. However, the country joined NATO in 2004 and became part of the European Union in 2007. Petkov has said that standing in solidarity with Western allies is the best way to ensure Bulgaria’s security.

Moscow last week closed its airspace to flights from Bulgaria, after the Balkan country blocked Russian air carriers from its territory in response to the attack on Ukraine.

dawnomike:
@cloudseth thanks for posting this unbiased article... This war is all about perspectives. Both countries have valid points for standing and not shifting grounds.
America is the real cause of all this problem... The is the aftermath pf the dealings of NED and Mccain in Ukrain

The US Wouldn’t Tolerate What Russia Is Expected to Accept
Much has been written about the Russian buildup on the Ukraine border. Reports of the buildup have been intensified by US intelligence officials’ warnings of an attack. Media often echo the claim of an inevitable invasion. The Washington Post editorial board (1/24/22) wrote that “Putin can—and will—use any measures the United States and its NATO allies either take or refrain from taking as a pretext for aggression.”
But Putin has been clear about a path to de-escalation. His main demand has been for direct negotiations to end the expansion of the hostile military alliance to his borders. He announced, “We have made it clear that NATO’s move to the east is unacceptable,” and that “the United States is standing with missiles on our doorstep.” Putin asked, “How would the Americans react if missiles were placed at the border with Canada or Mexico?”
In corporate media coverage, no one bothers to ask this important question. Instead, the assumption is that Putin ought to tolerate a hostile military alliance directly across its border. The US, it seems, is the only country allowed to have a sphere of influence.
The New York Times (1/26/22) asked: “Can the West Stop Russia From Invading Ukraine?” but shrugs at the US dismissal of Putin’s terms as “nonstarters.” The Washington Post (12/10/21) reported: “Some analysts have expressed worry that the Russian leader is making demands that he knows Washington will reject, possibly as a pretext for military action once he is spurned.” The Post quoted one analyst, “I don’t see us giving them anything that would suffice relative to their demands, and what troubles me is they know that.”
Audiences have also been assured that Putin’s reaction to Western expansionism is actually a prelude to more aggressive actions. “Ukraine Is Only One Small Part of Putin’s Plans,” warned the New York Times (1/7/22). The Times (1/26/22) later described Putin’s Ukraine policy as an attempt at “restoring what he views as Russia’s rightful place among the world’s great powers,” rather than an attempt to avoid having the US military directly on its border. USA Today (1/18/22) warned readers that “Putin ‘Won’t Stop’ with Ukraine.”
But taking this view is diplomatic malpractice. Anatol Lieven (Responsible Statecraft, 1/3/22), an analyst at the Quincy Institute, wrote that US acquiescence to a neutral Ukraine would be a “golden bridge” that, in addition to reducing US/Russia tensions, could enable a political solution to Ukraine’s civil war. This restraint-oriented policy is considered fringe thinking in the Washington foreign policy establishment.
The Memory Hole
All of this missing context allows hawks to promote disastrous escalation of tensions. The Wall Street Journal (12/22/21) published an opinion piece trying to convince readers there was a “Strategic Advantage to Risking War In Ukraine.” The piece, by John Deni of the US Army War College, summarized the familiar hawkish talking points, and claimed that a neutral Ukraine is “anathema to Western values of national self-determination and sovereignty.”
In a modern rendition of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Afghan Trap, Deni asserted that war in Ukraine could actually serve US interests by weakening Russia: Such a war, however disastrous, would “forge an even stronger anti-Russian consensus across Europe,” refocusing NATO against the main enemy, result in “economic sanctions that would further weaken Russia’s economy” and “sap the strength and morale of Russia’s military while undercutting Mr. Putin’s domestic popularity.” Thus escalating tensions is a win/win for Washington.
Few of the recent wave of Ukraine pieces recount the crucial history given above. Including the truth about US foreign policy goals in the post-Cold War era makes the current picture look a lot less one-sided. Imagine for one second how the US would behave if Putin began trying to add a US neighbor to a hostile military alliance after helping to overthrow its government.
The economic imperative for opening foreign markets, the NATO drive to push up against Russia, US support for the 2014 coup and the direct hand in shaping the new government all need to be pushed down the memory hole if the official line is to have any credibility. Absent all of that, it is easy to accept the fiction that Ukraine is a battleground between a “rules-based order” and Russian autocracy.
Coverage Opinion
Indeed, the Washington Post editorial board (12/8/21) recently compared negotiating with Putin to appeasing Hitler at Munich. It called on Biden to “resist Putin’s trumped-up demands on Ukraine,” “lest he destabilize all of Europe to autocratic Russia’s advantage.” This wasn’t the only time the paper has made the Munich analogy; the Post (12/10/21) ran a piece by former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen headlined “On Ukraine, Biden Is Channeling His Inner Neville Chamberlain.”
In the New York Times (12/10/21), Trump NSC aide Alexander Vindman told readers “How the United States Can Break Putin’s Hold on Ukraine,” and urged the Biden administration to send active US troops to the country. A “free and sovereign Ukraine,” he said, is vital in “advancing US interests against those of Russia and China.” Times reporter Michael Crowley (12/16/21) also framed the Ukraine standoff as another “Test of US Credibility Abroad,” after that credibility was supposedly damaged after ending the war in Afghanistan.
In a New York Times major feature (1/16/21) on Ukraine, the US role in bringing tensions to this point was completely omitted, in favor of exclusively blaming “Russian Belligerence.”
As a result of this coverage, the interventionist mentality has trickled down to the public. One poll found that, should Russia actually invade Ukraine, 50% of Americans support embroiling the US in yet another quagmire, up from just 30% in 2014. Biden, however, has said that no US troops will be sent to Ukraine. Instead, the US and EU have threatened sanctions or support for a rebel insurgency should Russia invade.
The past few weeks have seen several failed talks between the US and Russians, as the US refuses to alter its plans for Ukraine. The US Congress is rushing a “lethal aid” package to send more weapons to the troubled border. Perhaps if the public were better informed, there would be more domestic pressure on Biden to end the brinkmanship and seek a genuine solution to the problem.

US Officials Were Caught Picking the New Government
On February 6, 2014, as the anti-government protests were intensifying, an anonymous party (assumed by many to be Russia) leaked a call between Assistant Secretary of State Nuland and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. The two officials discussed which opposition officials would staff a prospective new government, agreeing that Arseniy Yatsenyuk—Nuland referred to him by the nickname “Yats”—should be in charge. It was also agreed that someone “high profile” be brought in to push things along. That someone was Joe Biden.
Weeks later, on February 22, after a massacre by suspicious snipers brought tensions to a head, the Ukrainian parliament quickly removed Yanukovych from office in a constitutionally questionable maneuver. Yanukovych then fled the country, calling the overthrow a coup. On February 27, Yatsenyuk became prime minister.
At the time the call leaked, media were quick to pounce on Nuland’s saying “Bleep the EU.” The comment dominated the headlines (Daily Beast, 2/6/14; BuzzFeed, 2/6/14; Atlantic, 2/6/14; Guardian, 2/6/14), while the evidence of US regime change efforts was downplayed. With the headline “Russia Claims US Is Meddling Over Ukraine,” the New York Times (2/6/14) put the facts of US involvement in the mouth of an official enemy, blunting their impact on the audience. The Times (2/6/14) later described the two officials as benignly “talking about the political crisis in Kiev” and sharing “their views of how it might be resolved.”
The Washington Post (2/6/14) acknowledged that the call showed “a deep degree of US involvement in affairs that Washington officially says are Ukraine’s to resolve,” but that fact rarely factored into future coverage of the US/Ukraine/Russia relationship.
Washington Used Nazis to Help Overthrow the Government
The Washington-backed opposition that toppled the government was fueled by far-right and openly Nazi elements like the Right Sector. One far-right group that grew out of the protests was the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary militia of neo-Nazi extremists. Their leaders made up the vanguard of the anti-Yanukovych protests, and even spoke at opposition events in the Maidan alongside US regime change advocates like McCain and Nuland.
After the violent coup, these groups were later incorporated into the Ukrainian armed forces—the same armed forces that the US has now given $2.5 billion. Though Congress technically restricted money from flowing to the Azov Battalion in 2018, trainers on the ground say there’s no mechanism to actually enforce the provision. Since the coup, the Ukrainian nationalist forces have been responsible for a wide variety of atrocities in the counterinsurgency war.
Far-right influence has increased across Ukraine as a result of Washington’s actions. A recent UN Human Rights council has noted that “fundamental freedoms in Ukraine have been squeezed” since 2014, further weakening the argument that the US is involved in the country on behalf of liberal values.
Among American neo-Nazis, there’s even a movement aimed at encouraging right-wing extremists to join the Battalion in order to “gain actual combat experience” in preparation for a potential civil war in the US.
In a recent UN vote on “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism,” the US and Ukraine were the only two countries to vote no.
As FAIR (1/15/22) has reported, between December 6, 2021, and January 6, 2022, the New York Times ran 228 articles that refer to Ukraine, but none of them reference the pro-Nazi elements in Ukraine’s politics or government. The same can be said of the Washington Post’s 201 articles on the topic.
There’s a Lot More to the Crimean Annexation
The facts above give more context to Russian actions following the coup, and ought to counter the caricature of a Russian Empire bent on expansion. From Russia’s point of view, a longtime adversary had successfully overthrown a neighboring government using violent far-right extremists.
The Crimean peninsula, which was part of Russia until it was transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954, is home to one of two Russian naval bases with access to the Black and Mediterranean seas, one of history’s most important maritime theaters. A Crimea controlled by a US-backed Ukrainian government was a major threat to Russian naval access.
The peninsula—82% of whose households speak Russian, and only 2% mainly Ukrainian—held a plebiscite in March 2014 on whether or not they should join Russia, or remain under the new Ukrainian government. The Pro-Russia camp won with 95% of the vote. The UN General Assembly, led by the US, voted to ignore the referendum results on the grounds that it was contrary to Ukraine’s constitution. This same constitution had been set aside to oust President Yanukovych a month earlier.
All of this is dropped from Western coverage.
The US Wants to Expand NATO
In addition to integrating Ukraine into the US-dominated economic sphere, Western planners also want to integrate Ukraine militarily. For years, the US has sought the expansion of NATO, an explicitly anti-Russian military alliance. NATO was originally billed as a counterforce to the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War, but after the demise of the Soviet Union, the US promised the new Russia that it would not expand NATO east of Germany. Despite this agreement, the US continued building out its military alliance,growing closer and closer to Russia’s borders and ignoring Russia’s objections.
This history is sometimes admitted but usually downplayed in corporate media. In an interview with the Washington Post (12/1/21), professor Mary Sarotte, author of Not One Inch: America, Russia and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, recounted that after the Soviet collapse, “Washington realized that it could not only win big, but win bigger. Not one inch of territory needed to be off-limits to full NATO membership.” The US “all-or-nothing approach to expansionism…maximized conflict with Moscow,” she noted. Unfortunately, one interview does little to cut through the drumbeat of pro-NATO talking points.
In 2008, NATO members pledged to extend membership to Ukraine. The removal of the pro-Russian government in 2014 was a giant leap towards the pledge becoming a reality. Recently, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg announced that the alliance stands by plans to integrate Ukraine into the alliance.
Bret Stephens in the New York Times (1/11/21) maintained that if Ukraine wasn’t allowed to join the organization, it would “break the spine of NATO” and “end the Western alliance as we have known it since the Atlantic Charter.”

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