Natylie Baldwin's Blog, page 91

Chas Freeman: What Can We Learn from our Forever War in Ukraine?

By Chas Freeman, Website, 4/11/24

Remarks to the Massachusetts Peace Action Campaign

Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
Visiting Scholar, Watson Institute, Brown University
By video, 11 April 2024

It has been a while since the United States won a war.  It looks as though we are about to lose yet another one – the war in Ukraine.  This is a proxy war justified as an effort to “weaken and isolate” Russia.  Our strategic defeat in this effort now leaves us with three unpalatable alternatives.  We can continue to support Ukraine as Russia grinds it to bits and reduces it further in size and population.  We can escalate the war, as French President Emmanuel Macron has advocated, despite the Russian threat to answer us with counter-escalation, possibly to the nuclear level.  Or we can face up to failure and save what we can of Ukraine by negotiating with Russia.  I know which of these choices I would prefer, and I suspect you do too.  And, however this unwise and unnecessary war ends, we need to ensure that there are no more like it in future.

They say that a mistake is only a mistake if you don’t learn from it.  Our country has recently made a lot of mistakes in its foreign policies.  Sadly, we don’t seem to be learning much of anything from this experience.  We have instead invented something uniquely American called a “forever war.”  Such wars routinely fail.  Still, we keep launching them.

I want to speak to you this evening about why we do this, why we shouldn’t, and how we can stop doing it.  My focus will be the forever war with Russia in Ukraine.

Forever wars can take many forms.  They can be economic or technological, like the one the Trump administration kicked off against China and that the Biden administration has enthusiastically doubled down on.  They can be military, like our twenty-three year “global war on terrorism.”  That has taken us into combat in over eighty countries, killed over 900,000 people, and cost us an estimated $8 trillion.  Forever wars need not be direct, as our proxy war in Ukraine illustrates.  They can even be covert, as our multiple barely concealed interventions in Syria demonstrate.

What America’s forever wars have in common is that they involve:

muddled, open-ended objectives,movable goal posts,an intensely propagandized narrative to mobilize support for them,no quarter for those who challenge that narrative,no benchmarks for judging success or failure,no limits on the level of resources we must feed into them,no defined end state that would justify ending them,no strategy for their termination, andno vision of a feasible order if and when they end.

Sunzi argued that wars should implement strategies that achieve specific national objectives with the least destruction.  Carl von Clausewitz described war as the expedient continuation of politics by other means.  William Tecumseh Sherman said that the purpose of war was to produce a better peace.  Fred Iklé said every war must end.

But what if domestic political dysfunction prevents the definition of specific national objectives?  What if a country’s political culture dictates that the only effective way to impose its druthers on other countries is coercively, through warfare – economic or military?   What if such a country measures the success of punitive measures not by the extent to which they achieve desirable changes in foreign behavior but by the pain they inflict on foreigners?  What if such a country believes it can resort to the use of force with impunity whenever it judges that  less violent methods of bending foreigners to its will are less likely to do so?  What if that country’s wars routinely lead not to peace but to turmoil or anarchy?

Our “forever wars” are the product of applying hubris to two related national ambitions vis-à-vis the world beyond our borders: (1) the consolidation of a global American sphere of influence and (2) the foreign regime changes needed to realize this.  The Ukraine war exemplifies both elements of this hegemonic behavior.  It has been accompanied by wall-to-wall propaganda that confuses self-righteousness with truth, demonizes our adversary, and replaces analysis with wishful thinking and denial, leaving nothing certain and everything plausible.  As always, the most destructive lies are those we tell ourselves.

The Ukraine war is not – as is claimed – about democracy vs. authoritarianism.  It is about delineating the post-Cold War U.S. sphere of influence in Europe.

Our country invented the modern sphere of influence.  In the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary to it, we asserted a right to limit the freedom of maneuver of the countries of the Western Hemisphere and to demand their deference to our political and economic interests.  After World War II, Americans expanded our sphere of influence to include Western Europe and Northeast Asia.  In the post-Cold War period, Washington adapted the hegemonic principles of the Monroe Doctrine to the unipolar moment and extended our sphere of influence to the entire world beyond the borders of Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea.  In the end, the only countries bordering Russia other than those of Central Asia not in our sphere of influence were Georgia and Ukraine.  American neoconservatives saw these neighbors of Russia as vacuums to be filled by U.S. military power.

During the Cold War, NATO was a purely defensive alliance that effectively protected Western Europe from a predatory Soviet Union and its restive satellites.  But twenty-five years ago, at the end of the 20th century, after the USSR had disappeared, NATO began to launch offensive operations – first against Serbia, then in Afghanistan, later in Libya.  And as NATO expanded toward Russia’s borders, American troops and weapons aimed at Russia routinely established a presence on the territory of its new members.

At the 2007 Munich security conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin bluntly warned the United States and its European allies that his country would feel obliged to act if NATO – the instrument by which the U.S. has long exercised dominant politico-military influence in Europe – were further expanded.  His warning echoed that of his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin as early as 1994.

In 2008 as in 1994, Washington ignored these warnings and persuaded NATO to offer membership to Georgia and Ukraine, both of which border the Russian Federation.  As the Russians habitually say, it was no accident that shortly thereafter, war broke out between Georgia and Russia.  This was in part due to Georgia’s exuberant reaction to apparent open-ended American support for its nationalist ambitions.  More to the point, it was a calculated Russian signal of resolve to resist encirclement by the United States and NATO.  We dismissed the signal and portrayed Moscow’s defeat of Georgian adventurism as wanton Russian aggression that vindicated our determination to bring Russia’s neighbors into NATO.  Someone summed this up by declaring that the reason NATO still exists is to handle the problems that NATO’s continuing existence creates.

Coincident with the war in Georgia, the United States and NATO escalated the effort to re-equip, restructure, and retrain the Ukrainian armed forces to be ready for combat with Russia.  In 2014, Washington helped engineer a coup in Kyiv that overthrew the elected government and installed handpicked pro-American, anti-Russian successors in its place.  The new ultranationalist Ukrainian government then banned the use of Russian and other minority languages in education or for official business.  But almost thirty percent of Ukrainians are native speakers of Russian.  Russian-speaking secessionists in the Donbas region resisted forced assimilation and began a civil war with Ukrainian ultranationalists.  This soon became a proxy war between Russia and the West.

The United States reaffirmed its intention to bring Ukraine into NATO and stepped up our aid to the Ukrainian armed forces.  But if Ukraine entered NATO while Crimea was still part of it, the 250-year-old Russian naval base at Sevastopol would fall under the control of the U.S. and NATO.  In large measure to preempt this, Russia annexed Crimea.  It was able to do so without violence because Crimeans had made it clear on several previous occasions that they did not want to be part of Ukraine.  In 2014, a Russian-organized referendum revealed that the views of most Crimeans had not changed.  If they could not be independent, they preferred to be part of Russia.  It is utterly unrealistic to expect them ever to agree to place themselves again under Ukrainian sovereignty.

By 2021, with our help, Ukraine had acquired a NATO-trained and equipped army larger than the armed forces of Britain, France, and Germany combined.  Not surprisingly, Moscow viewed this huge hostile force on its western borders as a serious national security threat.  Recent attacks deep into Russia by Ukrainian forces have inadvertently validated Russia’s concerns about the consequences of Ukraine joining an alliance hostile to it.  Just as Soviet forces stationed in Cuba in 1962 menaced Washington, U.S. forces stationed in Ukraine could reduce the warning time of a strike on Moscow to about five minutes.

So, in December 2021, Moscow massed troops on the Russian border with Ukraine and demanded negotiations to resolve its security concerns.  It insisted on Ukrainian neutrality, respect for the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine, and a discussion of a new European security architecture that would threaten neither Russia nor the members of NATO.  The U.S. and NATO responded by rejecting negotiations while warning – in an instance of self-fulfilling paranoia – that Russia planned to invade Ukraine.

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, put it this way: “President Putin … sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement.  That … was a pre-condition for [Russia] not invad[ing] Ukraine.  Of course we didn’t sign that.”  In fact, the U.S. and NATO refused to discuss it at all, leaving Russia with the choice of either accepting NATO membership for Ukraine and the eventual deployment of U.S. forces there or using force to prevent this.  This unwelcome choice was the proximate cause of Moscow’s fateful decision to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022.  The Russian invasion of Ukraine was clearly illegal under international law, but to say that it was “unprovoked” defies credibility.

Could a negotiation with Russia have prevented war?  We have at least two solid pieces of evidence to suggest that it might have.  Despite Moscow’s sympathy and support for the Russian-speaking secessionists in the Donbas, it agreed in the Minsk accords of 2014 and ’15 that their region should remain part of Ukraine, provided their linguistic autonomy was guaranteed. (The Minsk accords were subsequently repudiated, not by Russia but by Ukraine, France, and Germany.)

Then, too, six weeks after it invaded Ukraine, Moscow agreed to a draft treaty with Kyiv by which it would withdraw from Ukraine in return for Ukraine renouncing NATO membership and proclaiming neutrality.  This treaty was to have been signed on April 15, 2022, but the U.S., U.K, and NATO objected to it.  In early April Ukraine repudiated its earlier agreement to the terms of the treaty.

As the war has ground on, Russia has repeatedly reiterated its willingness to talk, and the U.S., NATO, and Ukraine have consistently rejected doing so.  The refusal to discuss a formula for peaceful coexistence between Ukraine and Russia, between NATO and Russia, and between Ukrainian and Russian-speaking Ukrainians has had grave consequences, most of all for Ukraine.

The war has not only imposed huge costs on Ukraine but also greatly weakened its bargaining power in any future negotiation with Russia.  If there is an agreed end to this war, it will be on largely Russian terms and vastly less favorable to Ukraine than the peace the U.S. and NATO persuaded Kyiv to reject in April 2022.  Ukraine, the U.S., and NATO are now in the final stages of a humiliating strategic defeat.

In 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the population of Ukraine was about 32 million.  Since then, it has fallen to about 20 million.

One-third of Ukraine’s people have been dislocated.  Over 2 million have fled to Russia and 6 to 8 million to the West and elsewhere.  The number of Ukrainian casualties is a closely guarded secret, but indications are that it may be around half a million.  Ukraine’s industrial base and infrastructure have been devastated.  As the war began, Ukraine was the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe.  Now it is even poorer and more corrupt.

The Biden administration has regularly described the proxy war with Russia as designed to “isolate and weaken Russia” and pledged to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”  Prominent American politicians have extolled the benefits of having Ukrainians rather than Americans fight Russians.  Ukrainians have done so with remarkable bravery.  But so many have died that Ukraine can no longer mount an adequate defense, let alone go on the offensive.

The war has devastated Ukraine without either isolating or weakening Russia.  It has cut Europe off from Russian energy supplies and reoriented Russia toward China, India, Iran, the West Asian Arab countries, and Africa.  Russia’s economy has grown, not contracted.  Moscow’s defense budget has doubled, and its armaments production is now three times that of the US and NATO combined.  Like Ukrainian casualties, those of Russia are hard to estimate.  But with a population four to five times larger than Ukraine’s, Russia can sustain many more casualties than Ukraine can.

The U.S. and NATO expected an easy victory over Russia.  But both now face a humiliating military defeat.  The war has greatly weakened Ukraine’s bargaining position in any future negotiation with Russia.  Germany now feels sufficiently threatened for it have begun a debate on whether to acquire nuclear weapons.

As a result of U.S. sanctions and the sabotage of Russia’s undersea gas pipeline to Germany, Europe has lost its access to cheap Russian energy supplies.  These have been replaced by imports from the United States that are as much as four times as expensive.  European energy-intensive industries are no longer internationally competitive.  Germany, Europe’s core economy, is being deindustrialized.  Current trends are raising disturbing questions about the future of the EU.

The Ukraine war, combined with other bellicose actions, has cost the United States and the West the moral argument internationally.  We cannot have it both ways – condemning Russia’s illegal actions in Ukraine while actively supporting Israel’s even more lawless and lethal actions in Palestine.  The West has inadvertently put its hypocrisy and double standards on dramatic display.

We are told by our leaders and their political straphangers that Ukraine and other current and potential “forever wars” are about defending democratic values.  But as we build a domestic national security state to support our wars, we are sacrificing ever more of the civil liberties and respect for due process and the rule of law that are central to constitutional democracy.  As Benjamin Franklin wisely pointed out, a nation prepared to trade its freedoms for its security puts both in jeopardy.  And, in this case, it is not even our security that is at stake but that of others.  The “domino theory” was nonsense in Southeast Asia.  It is equally fallacious in Eastern Europe.  Our wars are wars of choice, not necessity, and have little or no direct connection to Americans’ security and wellbeing.

It is said that U.S. credibility with allies and adversaries is at stake in Ukraine.  But our policies and actions there have not bolstered confidence in American steadfastness so much as shaken confidence in our judgment and cast doubt on the efficacy of our military doctrines and weaponry.  The West now suffers from “forever war” fatigue.  American and European taxpayers are becoming reluctant to keep sending money to a cause that they increasingly perceive as both futile and corrupt.  And we are being reminded that, as the 20th century demonstrated, there can be no peace in Europe based on ostracizing Russia or any other European great power.

As the war proceeds, Russia’s bargaining position continues to strengthen.  If there is ever an end to this war, it will be on terms far less favorable to Ukraine than the peace the U.S. and NATO persuaded it to reject in April 2022.  Meanwhile, inept American diplomacy continues to push Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea together in a loose anti-American entente and to increase the danger of one or more nuclear wars.

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty stipulates that “an armed attack against one or more [NATO member states] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”  This is an unequivocal commitment to defend any and all NATO members against attack.  But the United States and other NATO members have already demonstrated that we are not in fact prepared to respond directly to an armed attack on Ukraine by Russia.  In response to just such an attack, we have resorted to evasions and a proxy war pitting Ukrainians – but not us – against the aggressor.

If Ukraine were a member of NATO, Article 5 would require the president to ask Congress to declare war on the world’s most formidable nuclear power.  Vladimir Putin has threatened to conduct such a war at the nuclear level.  He may not be the demonic figure our propaganda makes him out to be.  But bravado aside, calling his bluff is an insane risk for us to take for ourselves, our allies, and the world at large.

As in other “forever wars,” we have inhaled our own propaganda about Ukraine.  Our quixotic attempt to exploit Ukrainian nationalism to “weaken and isolate” Russia or engineer regime change in Moscow has been a catastrophe for Ukrainians and a strategic defeat for the West.  It has brought the U.S. and NATO to the point at which we must either enter the fray directly, watch Russia grind Ukraine to bits, or accept a negotiated outcome that addresses Russian interests and objectives.

Moscow has described those interests and stated those objectives clearly and consistently.  They do not include invading NATO territory.  Claiming that they do is threat mongering designed to mobilize popular support in the West for our proxy war in Ukraine, to boost U.S. and NATO defense budgets, and to fatten the profits of the military-industrial complex.  Moscow has conducted a limited war – a so-called “special military operation” – in Ukraine.  It has not marshalled the forces necessary to subdue, occupy, or annex all of Ukraine.  Russia’s battlefield performance has not demonstrated any capacity to invade the West, and Moscow has expressed no ambition to do so.

It is time to stop attributing objectives to Russia that it has not stated and does not have.  Moscow’s professed aims have been and remain: (1) to restore the neutrality of Ukraine and prevent the deployment of U.S. and other NATO forces and installations to Ukraine; (2) to restore and ensure the linguistic and other rights of Ukraine’s large Russian-speaking minority; and (3) to negotiate a new European security architecture that can alleviate the threat Russia and other European states pose to each other by crafting a durable peace between them.

In the absence of diplomacy, the use of force has once again failed.  Far from weakening Russia, the Ukraine war has strengthened it.  Far from isolating Russia, the Ukraine war has forced it into the embrace of China and Iran and boosted its ties with India, the Arab world, and Africa.  Ukraine’s economy has been eviscerated, its population reduced, its military capacity gutted, and its territory diminished.  If the war is allowed to continue, this will only wreak more havoc in Ukraine, kill more Ukrainians as well as Russians, and further shrink Ukraine’s territory, possibly leaving it landlocked.

The proponents of our militarized foreign policy asked us once again to give war a chance.  We foolishly did.  This has now left us with no alternative to trying diplomacy.  We cannot hope to regain at the negotiating table what we have lost on the battlefield, but we must now strive to compose a peace with Russia that enables Ukraine to be both a buffer and a bridge between Russia and the rest of Europe.  That – not NATO membership – is the prerequisite for the emergence of a prosperous and democratic Ukraine, untainted by corruption.  And that – not NATO membership for Ukraine – is the prerequisite for peace and stability in Europe.

Col. Daniel Davis Interview with David Sacks on Ukraine

YouTube link here.

Andrew Korybko: Russia Hopes To Influence Ukraine’s Possibly Impending US-Backed Regime Change Process

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 5/7/24

Russia’s foreign intelligence service revealed on Monday that the US has reportedly entered into talks with Petro Poroshenko, Vitaly Klitschko, Andrey Yermak, Valery Zaluzhny, and Dmytro Razumkov as possible replacements to Zelensky. The US is allegedly worried about public sentiment turning against his regime in the event that Russia soon breaks through the front lines like the GUR deputy chief recently warned might happen in a reaffirmation of the Ukrainian Intelligence Committee’s winter warning.

Zelensky himself had earlier tried to preemptively discredit potentially forthcoming protests against him in that scenario as well as the related one of him clinging to power on legally dubious pretexts after his term expires on 21 May. Russia’s decision a few days back to put him, Poroshenko, and a few other past and present Ukrainian officials on its Interior Ministry’s wanted list was analyzed here as signaling that it wouldn’t recognize their legitimacy if he remains in power or those figures end up replacing him.

That’s not a symbolic policy either but a substantive one since Russian representatives couldn’t hold talks with those individuals due to their country’s charges against them, thus making it impossible for Ukraine to resume negotiations out of desperation if Russia soon breaks through the front lines. Pairing this insight with its foreign intelligence service’s latest revelation, which builds upon these two here and here from December, Russia hopes to influence Ukraine’s possibly impending US-backed regime change.

The purpose is to create a political environment that would be more conducive to a sustainable peace in the scenario that Russia breaks through the front lines, Ukrainians rise up against Zelensky after he clings to power on legally dubious pretexts, and a new American-installed regime resumes peace talks. Replacing Zelensky with Poroshenko would simply lead more to of the same even if he’s experiencing a renaissance in popularity among some Ukrainians since he was responsible for the failed Minsk Accords.

That’s why the Russian Interior Ministry placed him on its wanted list and their foreign intelligence service just revealed that he’s being considered by the US as his successor since they want the American and Ukrainian elite alike to know that no peace talks could be resumed under his leadership. The supplementary reason behind Monday’s disclosure is to exacerbate divisions within Zelensky’s regime with the expectation that they might tear each other apart and thus facilitate the rise of “fresh blood”.

Zelensky was supposed to play that “black horse” role as proven by his campaign promise to implement the Minsk Accords with a view towards ending the then-civil war and ultimately normalizing ties with Russia. Regrettably, he was co-opted by the US and Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist military-intelligence members shortly after entering office, who combined to transform him into a much more Russophobic leader than his predecessor ever was and thus made the ongoing special operation inevitable.

President Putin candidly acknowledged his prior naivete last December a year and a half after speaking from the heart in summer 2022 when he told his foreign intelligence service not to indulge in wishful thinking when conducting strategic forecasts. He’s therefore not going to be duped again by the West simply swapping Zelensky with Poroshenko or another puppet as a pretext to resume peace talks for the purpose of buying time to rearm and recommence the conflict sometime later from a better position.

These experiences are why Russia hopes to influence Ukraine’s possibly impending US-backed regime change through its Interior Ministry’s updated wanted list and foreign intelligence service’s revelation in order to ideally create a political environment that would be more conducive to a sustainable peace. The odds of this succeeding are admittedly slim, but forthcoming developments on the ground – especially regarding the growing possibility of NATO-Russian clashes – could reshape the dynamics in its favor.

Oliver Boyd-Barrett: De-Escalation, The Need For (Excerpt)

By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 5/8/24

Apologies for the multiple posts recently but a lot is happening and I’m trying to keep up with it. – Natylie

As indicated in my previous post, Russia has reacted sharply to reports over the weekend that France had already sent troops into Ukraine, was about to send more, while the House leader of the Democratic Party of the US indicated that the US would have to send in troops in the event that Russia broke through Ukrainian fortifications (which it has been doing, regularly).

The Kremlin (1) hauled in French and British abassadors to Moscow for a dressing-down, (2) threatened retaliatory action outside of Ukraine on those who would send weapons to Ukraine that could be used to fire on targets in Russia (which, in effect, has been happening for some time, ond now augmented with the upsurge of Storm Shadows, ATACMS and other long-range missiles, perhaps soo to include German Taurus, in the inventories so kindly provided by the West to Ukraine), and (3) initiated exercises for the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

The Russisan reaction appeared to have some immediate effect. France claimed (either falsely or misleadingly, nor both) not to have any French foreign legionnaires in France, nor any plans to do so. Further it said that it recognized Putin as legitimate leader of Russia (so too did the White House, which has previously said that it does not consider the recent elections free or fair) and even sent its ambassador to the Presidential inauguration ceremony that took place yesterday May 7th. Interestingly, Greece also did, and Malta; Russia’s “NATO” allies, Serbia and Hungary also sent their ambassadors. The USA and Germany called their ambassadors home to avoid having them attend.

Since Macron has been the most aggressive NATO leader in his threats of pushing towards a direct war between NATO and Russia, it was appropriate that Macron did most of the backing down. Dima of the Military Summary Channel sees this less in terms of France backing away from nuclear war and more about negotiation between Russia and France about the prohibition of the Russian flag at the upcoming Olympic Games. Since this would put Russia in a position of weakness, I think the former explanation is by far the more convincing.

The Italian foreign minister has disassociated Italy from Marcon’s tactics saying, even, that it would not send troops to Ukraine. I don’t know about Britiain, other than noting what is now a customary “free” media silence about anything that might remotely embarrass the ever-Churchillian British wannabess of the boomer generation. The Independent, however, did float a story about how destruction of the Kerch bridge was now no longer necessary, given that satellite photos had confirmed that the bridge was no longer being used for military ordnance. Interestingly, and perhaps in anticipation of the alliance’s total collapse in the event of a catastrophic failure in Ukraine, not unlikely, it is reported today that Austria will not be joining NATO.

Tarik Cyril Amar: What if Russia does not win the Ukraine War soon?

By Tarik Cyril Amar, Website, 5/6/24

At this moment (and for quite a while already), Russia clearly has the initiative in the war between it, on one side, and Ukraine and – de facto – the West on the other. High Ukrainian officials and military officers – including the commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky and the deputy head of Kiev’s military intelligence service Vadim Skibitsky – are admitting publicly that their country is in deep trouble. Realistic observers in the West, such as Brian Berletic and the Duran’s Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou, correctly point out that the West’s injections of aid cannot turn this situation around, partly because there is no way to compensate for Kiev’s lack of manpower and partly because the West itself does not, actually, have industrial resources to render support at a scale that would make an effective difference.

We also know that Russia has built up large reserves, which it has not yet committed to the fight. Moreover, there has been an intriguing shift in Russian terminology: While the term “offensive” has been avoided for a long time – with Russia categorizing its territorial gains as the result of a strategy of “active defense” – it has now popped up officially. The Russian Minister of Defense is reported to have spoken of the need to step up supplies to the front in order to “maintain the required pace of the offensive.” This may or may not have been a deliberate signal. It could also be a simple way to keep Ukraine and the West guessing. Yet, taken together with recent Russian advances and other operations – such as air strikes on Odessa and Kharkov/Kharkiv – it could mean that Moscow will launch a major offensive either this spring or summer, as many observers are expecting.

In one scenario, then, the war could end this year, with a Russian victory. The extent and precise political shape of that victory cannot be predicted. Capturing all of Ukraine east of the Dnepr/Dnipro River (plus those parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions (oblasts) to its west? Seizing major cities such as Odessa and Kharkiv? Another strike at the capital Kiev/Kyiv? Likewise, we can’t forecast what kind of Ukraine would emerge from such a Russian victory: A neutralized and regime-changed rump state? A rump state bent on revenge and continuously subsidized by the West?   

In a highly unlikely – given the West’s persistent refusal to consider a real compromise as a way out – the war could end with a negotiated peace, which, given the realities on the ground, would have to be shaped in Russia’s favor and thus would amount to victory by another name.

But it would be unwise to rule out a third possibility. It is true, that the West does not have the means to make Ukraine win. Yet it is crucial to distinguish between this fact and what Western leaderships are ready to acknowledge. The West, in short, is not rational, and it has displayed an enormous capacity for wishful thinking.

Hence, we should pay close attention to signs that the West is seeking to prolong this unnecessary war for years by any means it can. Recently, in particular, there have been several such worrying signs. Here, I would like to highlight three of them:

First, the Biden administration National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has declared that Ukraine should, in essence, hold out this year, so that in 2025, the West can use it again to launch another offensive against Russia. The Ukrainian president Volodymyr/Vladimir Zelensky has also spoken of trying to attack again, provided his country will receive more Western weapons. Both statements are unrealistic – not a first from either Sullivan or Zelensky – suggestion, but let’s set that aside for a moment. Our question here is what harm policies based on unrealistic assumptions can still do.

Second, the Italian newspaper Republicca has published an article – most likely based on deliberate leaks – that purports to report internal NATO thinking on “red lines” in Ukraine. That is, under what circumstances NATO would intervene directly – and, conversely, under what circumstances it would not do so. In essence, the reported “red lines” – as summarized in the Ukrainian publication Strana.ua boil down to two: NATO, so this article claims, considers intervening directly, if Belarus joins the war on Russia’s side (or if Russia launches another major attack from Belarussian territory) or if Russia goes beyond Ukraine’s borders to attack either a NATO member state (duh, frankly) or Moldova, which is not a member but a target of NATO expansion policy. Once again, let’s not immediately get sidetracked by dismissing these purported NATO “red lines” as nothing but a reflection of NATO’s exaggerated sense of its own capacities. They may well be that, but that does not mean that they are not meant seriously or that they can’t do great damage. As they are, they seem to reflect a desire to keep the war in Ukraine and to deter Russia from one of its most devastating conventional options, namely a fresh strike on Kiev/Kyiv from Belarus. That points to an intention to both “cage the war in” and keep it going.

Third, the USA is continuing its push to confiscate Russian state assets of about 300 billion dollars that are currently frozen in Western banks. It has not yet succeeded in persuading the Europeans to join this operation, and on its own, Washington cannot seize – really, steal – more than a few billion. It is, however, the intention that counts here, and that is to find the equivalent of a fairytale pot of gold to go on paying for the proxy war in Ukraine.

Taken together, such Western signals remain hard to read with confidence: They could be no more than a façade of bluffs, meant to distract Russia from pursuing its clear advantage on the ground to full extent. In that interpretation, this is, in essence, a desperate West trying to cheat its way out of a clear, incontrovertible, and very discrediting defeat.

Yet, despite the fact that all of these ideas are deeply unsound, they could also reflect an earnest intention to drag this war out. Behind this could be an idea that Russia’s successful economic mobilization also has costs and may, in its current form, not be sustainable for years. That is, incidentally, the message of a recent Financial Times article that, we may be confident, does not lack political inspiration. The key fantasy here is, in short, to make the war last long enough so that the West can turn the logic of attrition against Russia.

Once again, the key question – in terms of the harm all of this can do – is not, actually, if it could “work.” It very probably cannot. The key question, instead, is what can happen while the West tries such a policy, and it fails. And there the greatest single risk is that if Moscow should ever come to believe that the West might succeed in applying a new combination of proxy war and long-term attrition, it would be sorely tempted to cut that scheme short, including by a limited nuclear strike to make clear that it will simply not accept such “new rules of the game.”

Once a “small” nuke is used, there is, of course, no telling where the escalation will end. It is a bizarre idea to think that we could end much of humanity because Ukraine needed to have an “open door” to NATO through which, however, it was not really supposed to actually ever walk. 

I started writing this post before I saw a new piece of news: The Russian President has just ordered forces near Ukraine to drill for the launch of tactical nuclear weapons. I cannot say I am surprised. But we should all be very scared indeed. And, ideally, we should finally sit down and negotiate a realistic compromise.

Mark Episkopos: What a Russian ‘victory’ would actually look like

By Mark Episkopos, Responsible Statecraft, 5/7/24

Mark Episkopos is a Eurasia Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also an Adjunct Professor of History at Marymount University. Episkopos holds a PhD in history from American University and a masters degree in international affairs from Boston University.

The Biden administration’s Ukraine policy, though it lacks a coherent strategy, is at least centered on an explicit guiding principle: Russia must not be allowed to win in Ukraine. This sentiment is widely shared by U.S. allies across the Atlantic. “I have a clear strategic objective,” said French President Emmanuel Macron in a recent interview. “Russia cannot win in Ukraine.”

But, even in this consensus position, there is a major fly in the ointment: there has not been enough serious consideration of what a Russian victory in Ukraine would look like. The discussion has, instead, centered on alarmist predictions that obfuscate more than they reveal about Russian intentions and capabilities. “Who can pretend that Russia will stop there? What security will there be for the other neighboring countries, Moldova, Romania, Poland, Lithuania and the others?” said Macron, echoing the unfounded narrative that Russia’s ultimate goal is to attack NATO states.

While it is true that Russia’s victory in this war broadly contradicts U.S. interests, a closer look at Moscow’s possible endgame scenarios in Ukraine reveals that total victory — even if it were possible — is not in Russia’s interests and is probably no longer expected or desired by the Russian leadership.

Moscow, according to Western officials, can win this war simply by defeating Ukraine’s Armed Forces (AFU) on the battlefield. At first blush, it seems like a reasonable enough interpretation of a belligerent state’s wartime objectives, but this simplistic framing of the conflict quickly falls apart upon further examination.

What would really happen if the AFU’s lines collapsed — a prospect that, though not yet imminent, appears increasingly less distant by the day — and Russian forces found themselves in a position to steamroll Ukraine?

Even if Ukrainian forces are conclusively routed on the frontlines, besieging such Ukrainian strongholds as Kharkiv and Zaporizhia — let alone Kyiv and Odessa — will prove immensely taxing. Months of drawn-out fighting over the much less significant cities of Mariupol and Bakhmut over a small, yet nonetheless harrowing preview of what these sieges would entail.

Occupying all of Ukraine would be prohibitively expensive for Russia even in the short term, let alone for a prolonged or indefinite period. The West would likely do its best to dial up these costs by funding and coordinating partisan activities all across Ukraine, but especially in the country’s western half. There is, after all, ample historical precedent for such activity in the form of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which resisted Soviet authorities for up to five years following the end of World War II.

Prior to Russia’s invasion, commentators urged Western leaders to turn this conflict into “Putin’s Afghanistan,” with Ukrainian partisans playing the role of 1980s mujahideen fighters. These suggestions were tabled because the Ukrainian government did not, in fact, collapse in the fateful weeks following the invasion, but it remains the case that any Russian attempt to control all of Ukraine would likely precipitate a prolonged insurgency campaign and incur terrible costs as a result.

Ukraine’s collapse likewise amplifies the risks of a direct clash between Russia and the West. The establishment of a de facto boundary between eastern Poland and Russian-occupied western Ukraine would create a dangerous flashpoint that, in the absence of meaningful deconfliction channels, could erupt in a shooting war on NATO’s eastern flank.

Nor would such a war necessarily be inadvertent on the part of the West; a total Ukrainian collapse would likely spark calls among the Baltic states and at least several major European powers for direct Western intervention on the ground, whether in the form of a NATO expeditionary force or a coalition of the willing drawn up from individual NATO members. Macron has openly and repeatedly stated that the West should not rule out an intervention along these lines; though his proposal was soundly rejected by the U.S. and Germany, it can be expected that political pressure to “do something” to stop Russia will build in Europe and the United States if Kyiv’s defeat becomes imminent.

The Kremlin is well aware that it cannot unilaterally achieve its wartime goals no matter how well it does on the battlefield. Indeed, its goals extend well beyond Ukraine, though not quite in the way that Macron and the Biden administration believe. There is no evidence that Moscow has any intention of launching wars of conquest against Poland, the Baltics, or other NATO states, but it is certainly seeking to extract a host of strategic concessions from the U.S. and its allies in areas including prohibitions against eastward NATO expansion and limitations on force deployments along NATO’s eastern flank.

The war that Russia is waging in Ukraine is thus a proxy for the Kremlin’s larger coercive strategy against the West, though it is not at all clear that conquering Ukraine will bring Moscow any closer to getting its desired concessions. The AFU’s collapse would certainly induce a state of panic in Western capitals. Yet it is difficult to see how this panic can be translated into a concrete willingness by the Biden administration and other Western leaders to strike the kind of grand security bargain Moscow seeks.

In fact, considering how politically invested current Western governments are in Ukraine’s war effort, there is a chance that Ukrainian collapse could produce the opposite reaction and render Western leaders even less likely to enter into substantive talks with Moscow.

Simply put, Russia has little to gain and much to lose by “winning” in Ukraine, if winning is defined as occupying the entire country. Instead, Russia’s incentive is to use its growing advantages as a lever for negotiating with the West. The Kremlin, in light of these conditions, has previously hinted at establishing demilitarized buffer zones in Ukraine that are not under Russian control.

Regardless of what happens on the battlefield in coming weeks and months, Moscow has started something it cannot unilaterally finish. This gives the U.S. tremendous inherent leverage in shaping the outlines of war termination — Washington and its allies should use it now to bring an end to this war on the best possible terms for the West as well as Ukraine.

Glenn Greenwald: The War on Terror Mindset Returns

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, our constitutional rights were undermined particularly those pertaining to privacy and the right to be free of illegal searches and seizures. The recent onslaughts against the first amendment rights to free speech, press and assembly are a natural progression, unfortunately. But that doesn’t make them any less distressing. – Natylie

YouTube link #1 here.

YouTube link #2 here.

He Was In Russia During The Recent Terror Attack, What He Saw And Heard: Kim Iversen Interviews Patrick Henningsen

YouTube link here.

Some More Info on Claims of French Troops in Ukraine and Related Issues

The following is an excerpt from Oliver Boyd Barrett’s post today. Barrett is a university professor who specializes in media and propaganda studies. I have embedded links that support his various points. Time will tell whether the reporting of Stephen Bryen turns out to have merit. He insists that it does in this updated post from today. – Natylie

Over the past 24 hours we have had reports of French intentions to send between 6,000 and 12,000 troops to Ukraine [The French Foreign Ministry has denied the claims in this Asia Times report by Stephen Bryen – Natylie], and a report that the leader of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives has said that the US will have to send troops if Russia beaks through Ukrainian lines. Which lines exactly are being referred to is a mystery to me as it seems to me Russia is frequently pushing against and breaking through fortifications. If all other NATO troops were to send in detachments we could easily be talking about a combined force of over 100,000 troops, many of whom are already on Russia’s borders because of an ongoing anti-Russian exercise. Such a force, poorly equipped, could easily be countermanded by Russia.

Russia is commencing an exercise of its nuclear-equipped forces. In the event of a major NATO aggression or clear threat of one I believe Russia will strike at the NATO forces with relatively low grade, low radiation missiles. In an ensuing tit for tat nobody knows who or at what point the exchange will cease. Over Gaza the West has shown that there is no evil it will not contemplate to secure its hegemony. In the meantime there will be great pressure on Chinese President Xi Jinping who is now in talks with French President Macron. Xi has said he will do what he can but I think we should expect that his conditions on the West will be onerous. It is always open to the West to stand down, of course. Possibly the West is engaging in a major subterfuge to force a frozen conflict solution which, for Russia, will offer few advantages.

Russia has issued the equivalents of arrest warrants for Zelenskiy, who will lose legitimacy in two weeks, and former President Petro Poroshenko who deliberately deceived the world over the Minsk accords, on his own confession.

Lee Fang: U.S. Funds Ukraine Groups Censoring Critics, Smearing Pro-Peace Voices

By Lee Fang, Substack, 4/11/24

This investigation was reported in collaboration with RealClearInvestigations.

Ukraine’s American-backed fight against Russia is taking place not only in the blood-soaked trenches of the Donbas region but also on what military planners call the cognitive battlefield – to win hearts and minds.

A sprawling constellation of media outlets organized with substantial funding and direction from the U.S. government has not just sought to counter Russian propaganda but has supported strong censorship laws and shutdowns of dissident outlets, disseminated disinformation of its own, and sought to silence critics of the war, including many American citizens.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs, commentator Tucker Carlson, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer are among the critics on both the left and the right who have been cast as part of a “network of Russian propaganda.”

But the figures targeted by the Ukrainian watchdog groups are hardly Kremlin agents. They simply have forcefully criticized dominant narratives around the war.

Sachs is a highly respected international development expert who has angered Ukrainian officials over his repeated calls for a diplomatic solution to the current military conflict. Last November, he gave a speech at the United Nations calling for a negotiated peace.

Mearsheimer has written extensively on international relations and is a skeptic of NATO expansion. He predicted that Western efforts to militarize Ukraine would lead to a Russian invasion.

Greenwald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning independent journalist who has criticized not just war coverage but media dynamics that suppress voices that run counter to U.S. narratives. “What they mean when they demand censorship of ‘pro-Russia propaganda’ is anything that questions the US/EU role in the Ukraine war or who dissents from their narratives,” Greenwald has observed.

There’s no evidence of Kremlin influence over their viewpoints, but their comments alone are enough for a network of U.S.-backed Ukrainian media groups to tarnish these experts as Russian propagandists. 

U.S. taxpayer dollars are flowing to outlets such as the New Voice of Ukraine, VoxUkraine, Detector Media, the Institute of Mass Information, the Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine and many others. Some of this money has come from the $44.1 billion in civilian-needs foreign aid committed to Ukraine. While the funding is officially billed as an ambitious program to develop high-quality independent news programs; counter malign Russian influence; and modernize Ukraine’s archaic media laws, the new sites in many cases have promoted aggressive messages that stray from traditional journalistic practices to promote the Ukrainian government’s official positions and delegitimize its critics.

VoxUkraine has released highly produced videos attacking the credibility of American opposition voices, including Sachs, Mearsheimer, and Greenwald. Detector Media, one of the most influential media watchdog groups, similarly produces a flow of social media and posts branding American critics of the war as part of a Russian disinformation operation. The outlets are also devoted to domestic disputes. Detector Media’s broadcasts have lampooned critics of Ukrainian government moves to shut down opposition media outlets.

It’s not only dissident voices targeted by the USAID-funded groups.

Detector Media went after the New York Times in February over a news report about hundreds of Ukrainians in the battle for Avdiivka who were captured or missing. The Ukrainian fact-check site offered little in terms of a rebuttal. Detector Media only cited a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Defense Forces disputing the Times’ story, which it labeled “disinformation.” The New Voice of Ukraine quoted a Ukrainian official describing the Times story as a “Russian Psyop,” a term for psychological warfare.

Unlike similar media development programs that the International Agency for International Development (USAID) has led throughout the Middle East, Ukrainian outlets tend to produce a great deal of English content that trickles back into the domestic American audience and explicitly targets American foreign policy discourse.

The New Voice of Ukraine syndicates with Yahoo News. VoxUkraine is a fact-checking partner with Meta, which assists in removing content deemed “Russian disinformation” from Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Detector Media has similarly led a consortium of nonprofit groups pressuring social media platforms to aggressively remove content critical of Ukraine.

Above: VoxUkraine, a USAID-funded group, produced videos and attacks smearing Americans such as economist Jeffrey Sachs as an agent of Kremlin propaganda. Sachs is a proponent of resolving the Ukraine-Russia war through diplomacy.

“It makes more sense to have it in English because one of the things that happens is that the narrative that one encounters in the mainstream media in the West is referenced as the official Ukrainian voices,” said Nicolai N. Petro, a professor specializing in Russian and Ukrainian affairs at the University of Rhode Island.

“These then become the known Ukrainian voices, although they’re actually only an echo of the voice that we are projecting into Ukraine,” Petro added.

Congress is now weighing a new supplemental funding measure, with approximately $60 billion earmarked for the war in Ukraine. A small portion of the emergency spending package is devoted to continued USAID programs in the country.

President Volodymyr Zelensky, in an  this week with Politico, argued that legislators were skeptical of the aid package and were under the influence of Russian propaganda.

“They have their lobbies everywhere: in the United States, in the EU countries, in Britain, in Latin America, in Africa,” Zelenskyy said of Russian influence, without naming names. “When we talk about the Congress — do you notice how they work with society in the United States?”

The pro-Russian pressure groups, the Ukrainian president added, relied on “certain media groups, citizens of the United States.”

Information control is a central dynamic playing out in the Ukraine-Russia war. U.S. media have provided wide coverage of President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to clamp down on critical news outlets, enacting new criminal penalties for those publishing “false information” about the conflict. Many independent outlets in Russia have been forced to close, including the left-leaning radio station Ekho Moskvy. The Russian government has also blocked Russian-language news sites based in the West and arrested at least 22 journalists, including the Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich.

But far less attention has been paid to the Ukraine government’s crackdown on independent and opposition media, a push aided by the U.S.-backed network of anti-disinformation groups. Even as Washington’s efforts to censor information at home is drawing greater scrutiny, its support of Ukraine’s efforts reflects the increasingly global reach of the American government’s propaganda arms.

“There’s an information war going on between Russia and Ukraine, and the United States is not a disinterested party – we’re an active participant,” said George Beebe, a director with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “The U.S. government has been trying to shape perceptions, and it’s very difficult to separate what’s intended for foreign audiences from what seeps into the Anglosphere media, if you want to call it that, including here in the United States.”

American influence in Ukraine’s media environment stretches back to the end of the Cold War, though it has intensified in recent years. Since the outbreak of the war, USAID support has extended to 175 national Ukrainian media entities.

Over the last decade, efforts to crack down on speech have been increasingly justified as an effort to protect social media from disinformation. The U.S. helped set up new think tanks and media watchdogs and brought over communications specialists to guide Ukraine’s approach. Nina Jankowicz, the polarizing official whom President Biden appointed to lead the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board to police social media content, previously advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on its anti-disinformation work.

In response to questions about the U.S.-backed anti-disinformation groups in Ukraine targeting Americans, the U.S. State Department provided a statement saying it defines disinformation as “as false or misleading information that is deliberately created or spread with the intent to deceive or mislead.” It added, “We accept there may be other interpretations or definitions and do not censor or coerce independent organizations into adopting our definition.” 

While noting that the U.S. “provides funding to credible independent media organizations to strengthen democracies in the countries we work in around the world,” the statement declared, “We do not control the editorial content of these organizations.”

However, disclosures indicate that the U.S. government and its contractors tasked with reforming Ukraine’s institutions have directly set the agenda for Ukrainian outlets. Immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago, the USAID dispensed emergency grants to its media partners, partly through the Zinc Network, a contractor based in London that has been accused of setting up covert public relations campaigns on behalf of the British government.

The grant description notes that the money went to the Zinc Network and Detector Media to assist the Ukrainian government with strategic communications and to “undermine Kremlin information operations.” Far from independent reporting, the grant instructions asked the recipients to provide “quick, effective PR and media engagement.” In addition to countering Russian disinformation, the money was intended to “maintain public morale” and “bolster international support for solidarity with Ukraine.”

Above: Zinc Network’s Open Information Partnership coordinates the activities of anti-disinformation watchdogs funded by NATO countries, particularly the U.S. and U.K.

Last September, journalist Jack Poulson reported on a leaked report from the Zinc Network’s Open Information Partnership, which helps coordinate the activities of several anti-Russian disinformation nonprofits around Europe backed by NATO members, including Detector Media.

The lengthy report defines disinformation as not only false or misleading content but also “verifiable information which is unbalanced or skewed, amplifies, or exaggerates certain elements for effect, or uses emotive or inflammatory language to achieve effects which fit within existing Kremlin narratives, aims, or activities.”

In other words, factual information with emotional language that simply overlaps with anything remotely connected to Russian viewpoints is considered disinformation, according to this U.S.-backed consulting firm helping to guide the efforts of Ukrainian think tanks and media.

Many of the broad narratives the report identified as Russian disinformation follow this vague rubric. These included allegations that NATO is using Ukraine as a pawn in a proxy war against Russia and concerns that Ukrainian politicians are corrupt.

The report goes on to blame many British and American experts who “portray the West as being divided, corrupt, or nefarious” as part of the Russian disinformation system. The document names liberal journalists Max Blumenthal and Newsweek’s Ellie Cook, as well as Republican figures such as former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs, as voices that end up featured in Russian propaganda and disinformation.

The Open Information Partnership report suggests new legislation to counter “malign foreign actors” and for European intelligence agencies to “do more” and provide a “unified approach” against the dangers of disinformation. Zinc Network did not respond to a request for comment.

Ukraine’s government has also worked with U.S. government officials and others to censor its American critics. One prominent example is Aaron Matė, an independent journalist who has criticized U.S. policy regarding Ukraine in other outlets. Following the Russian invasion, Twitter, under its old ownership, flagged Matė to be censored after the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the Ukrainian intelligence agency, included him on a list of accounts sent to the FBI that were “suspected by the SBU in spreading fear and disinformation.”

Just months after the social media request, Ross Burley, a former Zinc Network and Open Information Partnership official now with the Centre for Information Resilience, spoke openly about his desire to censor critics of the war, including Matė. Burley, who “designed, implemented, and led several of the UK Government’s counter disinformation programmes,” according to a now-deleted profile, discussed the rise of independent media critical of the Ukrainian government and Western support for a war that has devastated that country. He discussed the conflict at the Opinion Festival in Tallinn, Estonia, in August 2022.

Burley argued that social media platforms needed more “responsibility” regarding what types of content to allow. “Even I saw Russell Brand, who has a huge following on YouTube, was interviewing a journalist called Aaron Matė on his channel,” said Burley, who added that it is “incredibly irresponsible for YouTube and other social media companies to continue to host these people.”

Above: The National Endowment for Democracy touts pro-NATO political upheaval in Ukraine and credits its long-term investments in local media and journalism.

The organizations supported by the U.S. government have also sought to silence critics inside Ukraine.  Before the war, in one of President Zelensky’s first controversial acts to stifle political opposition, he moved in February 2021 to close television channels 112, NewsOne, and ZIK – stations owned by Viktor Medvedchuk and his associate Taras Kozak, former lawmakers with the Opposition Party of Life, a bloc opposed to Zelensky – over allegations of Kremlin ties.

“The sanctions against TV channels of Mr. Medvedchuk are not about media and freedom of speech at all,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky’s chief of staff. “This is only about effective countermeasures against fakes and foreign propaganda.”

Later that year, in December 2021, the United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights released a statement that criticized the Ukrainian crackdown on journalists and peaceful expression. The report cited the closure of opposition television channels and other media.

The USAID-funded Ukrainian media network, however, was quick to defend the Zelensky government. The decision to close the outlets, wrote Detector Media, was “not an attack on freedom of speech” because the channels, the group argued, provided “informational support of Russian aggression against Ukraine.”

In May 2022, the Zelensky government widely expanded its efforts to outlaw the political opposition. Zelensky moved to ban 11 political parties over alleged ties to Russia. The largest of which was Medvedchuk’s Opposition Party of Life, which previously held 44 seats in the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament.

Later that summer, other bills to crack down on media rights that had failed to pass in the past over civil liberty concerns were brought back into consideration. Mykyta Poturayev, a Ukrainian legislator and close ally of Zelensky, re-introduced the On Media Law.

The legislation features provisions to penalize hate speech and disinformation, as well as broad powers to limit certain forms of foreign influence. Among its most contentious provisions is the power granting a council controlled by Zelensky and his allies to ban media outlets without a court order. 

Before Zelensky signed the bill in December 2022, many journalists spoke out against the legislation. The European Federation of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists denounced it as an extreme violation of journalistic freedom. Ukraine’s National Union of Journalists described the bill as the “biggest threat to free speech in independent [Ukraine’s] history.”

Again, the USAID-funded media groups provided pivotal support amid a tightening on journalistic freedom. The push to support the bill was largely led by U.S.-government-backed think tanks and media outlets. As the Ukrainian legislature moved forward, Detector Media reported a new statement from select journalists and nonprofits who supported the controversial legislation. The statement argued that the Zelensky-appointed council overseeing media was an “independent regulator” and urged the adoption of the law as a tool to counteract foreign aggression.

The statement was organized by Ukraine’s Center for Democracy and Rule of Law. In 2022, the group received 76.67% of its budget from USAID, USAID’s contractors, and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a U.S. government-funded nonprofit that was spun out of the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1980s.

The other signatories of the statement included the Laboratory of Digital Security and Human Rights Platform – both funded by USAID and Internews, a California-based USAID contractor that manages much of the agency’s Ukraine media work. Internews Ukraine, the company’s in-house Ukraine media outlet, also signed the statement supporting the On Media Law.

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Internews is a significant pillar of USAID’s $35 million Ukraine media program. Other European governments and private sector donors, led by billionaires Pierre Omidyar via the Omidyar Network and George Soros via the International Renaissance Foundation, have financed the network of media and activists working with the USAID groups.

Disclosures suggest other supplemental funding has been rushed to local Ukrainian media. In 2021, before Russia’s invasion, Detector Media received 35.1% of its nearly $1 million budget from Internews. New data released by the federal government shows that USAID provided a $2.5 million direct grant to Detector Media last year.

In a report titled “Long-Term Investments Pay Dividends in Ukraine,” NED noted that U.S.-backed groups have been pivotal in reshaping the country’s law. It pointed to a coalition of nonprofits led by the Coalition Reanimation Package of Reforms, a USAID-backed group that mobilized civil society to lobby for legal and legislative changes. The group was pivotal in the push for the On Media Law. The group hailed the law’s passage, calling it one of the major achievements of reforms passed during the war.

After the legislation was passed, Detector Media attacked “Pro-Russian Telegram channels” for spreading “fakes and manipulations” about the law. One fact-check published by the group claimed that the law “had to be adopted in the context of Ukraine’s European integration.” The post countered claims that the law introduces authoritarian forms of censorship by pointing to the fact that “media professionals and members of the public were involved in its development.”

NED, the former CIA arm, has publicly touted the effort to pass the On Media Law for its work in reshaping Ukraine’s media landscape. In a report written in collaboration with Detector Media, the group discusses the law with respect to bolstering efforts to “rid the Ukrainian information space of harmful Russian propaganda.” The report noted some journalistic criticism of the proposal, concluded that it was “supported by the majority of media related civil society organizations and international donors for its expansion of democratic accountability in the information space.”

Unmentioned in NED and Detector Media’s claims of widespread media support for the law is its own central role and that of other USAID-backed groups.

Above: Samantha Power, the administrator of USAID, was interviewed on July 20, 2023, by the Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine, also known as Suspilne, Ukrainian for “Public.” Suspilne has received significant funding from USAID over the last decade.

In the midst of the first months of the Russian invasion, many in Ukraine readily accepted the need for emergency government influence. The Ukrainian government condensed the major television channels into a single “United News” national broadcast that continues today. Many journalists voluntarily paused critical reporting of the Ukrainian government to focus on coverage of the Russian invasion.

Now, over two years into the conflict, reporters are facing new difficulties in reporting on routine issues. Journalists taking a critical look at the government are facing intimidation and threats.

The Columbia Journalism Review has chronicled the precarious situation independent journalists face in today’s Ukraine. In January, a pair of thugs went to the home of Yuriy Nikolov, a prominent investigative journalist who has uncovered scandals involving military catering contracts. The men tried to break down Nikolov’s door, and according to his mother, who was home, called him a “provocateur” and a “traitor.”

That same month, an anonymous video released videos from hidden cameras showing journalists with Bihus.Info – a local media outlet that has extensively reported on Ukrainian government corruption – using illegal drugs in private. Denys Bihus, the head of the site, has reported on Ukraine’s intelligence service’s involvement in the surveillance and intimidation of his media outlet.

Anatoly Shariy, a controversial Ukrainian blogger living in exile over repeated death threats, has clashed repeatedly with USAID’s network of media outlets. Shariy is known for his blistering criticism of the 2014 Maidan Revolution that toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych and set Ukraine on a path to alignment with NATO. The SBU, the Ukrainian intelligence agency, has accused him of “high treason” over alleged ethnic slurs targeted towards the people of the western region of Ukraine.

In July 2023, the agency added new charges, claiming Shariy distributed staged videos of Ukrainian prisoners under detention by Russian forces. The SBU has attempted to extradite Shariy, who has moved from the Netherlands to Spain and reportedly to Italy for asylum.

Online reporting in English, though, is dominated by USAID media outlets. A search for Shariy’s name returns half a dozen articles by VoxUkraine, Detector Media, the Institute of Mass Information, and the New Voice of Ukraine. The articles trash Shariy as a pro-Russian propagandist and criminal, guilty of a variety of speech-related crimes.

“In his Telegram posts, Shariy tries to emphasize that Russia is more united and stronger than Ukraine,” Detector Media claimed. “He rejects the severing of any ties between Ukraine and Russia. Even in the face of proven Russian lies and evidence of their crimes, Shariy continues to promote narratives favorable to Russia and disseminate disinformation.”

The Detector Media article provides little substance in terms of any illegal actions beyond Shariy’s viewpoints. But expressing viewpoints that run counter to Ukraine and NATO policies with respect to the war is enough to make an individual an enemy of the state.

Header Photo: Brigadier-General Oleksii Hromov, Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine speaks during a press conference of representatives of the Security and Defense Forces of Ukraine at the Military Media Center in Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 13, 2023. (Photo by Vladimir Shtanko/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)