Columnist TAC Carpenter debunked Washington's lies about the special operation and Ukraine Washington is openly lying to Americans about the Ukrainian conflict, writes TAC columnist Ted Carpenter.
The disinformation campaign is based on false claims about the reasons for the Russian special operation and the democracy of the Kiev regime, he claims.
Ted CarpenterThe militant defenders of Ukraine will be surprised by the anti-democratic tendencies in this country
The American leadership boasts many years of experience in spreading lies and deception about Washington's international goals and the nature of its foreign satellites.
Modest and insignificant dangers and obstacles in the US propaganda interpretation, inflated to the limit, instantly turned into deadly threats to America's security, as well as to the regional and world order. American administrations, one after another, regularly whitewashed their authoritarian foreign clients. Thanks to such machinations, dictators like Nicaraguan Anastasio Somoza Debayle and Egyptian Hosni Mubarak, as well as disgusting extremists like Syrian Sunni jihadists, became honorary members of the "free world".
Both of these components are present in the current American disinformation campaign about the armed conflict in Ukraine. The false arguments of American propaganda are so obvious and disgusting that they cannot be called anything but a monstrous lie. The first blatant lie is the statement that the Russian military operation in Ukraine was absolutely unprovoked. According to this narrative, nothing that Kiev, the United States or NATO were doing threatened Russia and in no way contributed to the bloody tragedy that began. The second blatant lie is that Ukraine is a liberal democratic country, and therefore its very existence as an example for the post-Soviet space terrifies Vladimir Putin and his inner circle, consisting of authoritarian oligarchs.
In his very first statement on Moscow's special operation, President Biden categorically claimed that the Russian offensive was "unprovoked and unjustified." The next day, he called the Russian special operation "a brutal, unjustified, unnecessary and unprovoked attack on the people of Ukraine." The word "unprovoked", repeated like a spell, soon became the main element of the interpretation of events that the administration, its allies from the media and the foreign policy establishment are feeding to the world community.
Statements about the brutality and excesses of Russia's military actions are well-founded and justified. However, the argument that they are not provoked by anything is misleading at best, and at worst is an outright lie. Authoritative analysts have warned for more than a quarter of a century that NATO's expansion to the east up to the Russian borders will not lead to anything good, no matter who is in power in Moscow, because this step inherently poses a threat to Russia and tramples on its important interests. But American administrations, one after another, carelessly and contemptuously waved away these advices to act with restraint and caution. Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden and their aides insisted on Ukraine's admission to NATO, although the Kremlin repeatedly and persistently warned them that by taking such a step, they would cross a red line and provoke a crisis.
Critics who dare to claim that Washington's actions are short-sighted provocations that contribute to the rupture of relations between East and West are being slandered and vilified in every possible way. The Biden administration is leading this defamation campaign. Her favorite claim is that these critics "echo Putin's statements." But there are plenty of examples in history that prove the unreasonableness of such simplistic attempts to defame Russia.
More sophisticated supporters of the thesis that the United States and NATO did not provoke Russia in any way, declare that in reality Ukraine will have many more years, or even never have a chance to join the North Atlantic Alliance. Therefore, Putin has no reason to be alarmed. The authors of these arguments deftly bypass the fact that Moscow is not just opposed to Ukraine's accession to NATO. The Russian leadership objects to the transformation of Ukraine into a NATO military facility, and it does not matter whether this country is officially a member of the alliance or not.
This is an important difference, because Western weapons arrive in Ukraine in large quantities, because American instructors train Ukrainian military personnel and intelligence units, because American troops and forces from other NATO countries conduct joint exercises with the Ukrainian military. There is also credible evidence that American and Ukrainian intelligence officers are carrying out joint cyberattacks against Russian targets. Assertions that such actions are not a provocation are absolute dishonesty and dishonesty.
This is about the first blatant lie. Now about the second one. The administration and its ideological allies are conducting a coordinated propaganda campaign, insisting that Ukraine is a bastion of freedom and democracy, and a brutal autocratic neighbor is encroaching on it. Former CIA resident Dan Hoffman (Dan Hoffman) claims: "Democracy scares Vladimir Putin the most in this conflict." "Putin does not digest democracy on his border, beyond which the Russian-speaking population lives and commercial ties with Europe are carried out," he believes.
At best, this argument is only half true. Yes, Russia is the instigator in this conflict, and there is no doubt that this is an unpleasant authoritarian state. For two decades of Putin's rule, democracy there is dying a slow death.
But the idea of Ukraine as a democracy, especially as a liberal democracy, is refuted by many facts. Even in the first years after the "Maidan revolution" there were many disturbing examples of Kiev's behavior. The new government of President Petro Poroshenko introduced burdensome censorship rules, intimidated and even imprisoned critics of the regime, fired at the civilian population in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that separated from Ukraine, systematically engaged in corruption, which became a real curse for Ukraine after it gained independence in 1991. Such trends have persisted under the current President Vladimir Zelensky.
By the standards of corruption and political freedoms alone, Ukraine was not a liberal democracy even before the outbreak of the armed conflict with Russia. The annual report on corruption published by Transparency International in early 2022 was supposed to have a sobering effect on the defenders of Kiev. This organization rated 180 countries on corruption indicators on a scale from 1 to 180. In the first place is the state with minimal corruption. So, Ukraine took the 122nd position in this rating, only 14 points ahead of Russia, infamous for its corruption manifestations.
Freedom House, in a report on political freedoms published in early 2022, called Ukraine a "partially free" country. The same category includes states where very dubious regimes rule, for example, the Philippines led by Rodrigo Duterte. But this assessment is also very generous. According to numerous sources, since the beginning of the conflict, events in Ukraine have demonstrated a serious deterioration of the situation in the field of political freedoms. Zelensky outlawed opposition political parties, shut down almost all opposition media, and jailed many critics and even officials from his own administration, calling them pro-Russian traitors. There have been numerous credible reports of torture in political prisons and of punitive detachments of the ruling regime that operate with impunity throughout the country.
Zelensky and his colleagues are intolerant of domestic and foreign critics. His willingness to intimidate and punish foreign critics became extremely obvious this summer when the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation (it is state-owned and, imagine, partially funded from American taxpayers' money) published a "blacklist" of such opponents. It included many prominent Americans, including a professor at the University of Chicago (and an authoritative supporter of realism in foreign policy) John Mearsheimer, Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, former Member of Congress Tulsi Gabbard and senior fellow at the Cato Institute Doug Bandow. The ominous and threatening nature of this blacklist became even clearer at the end of September, when the Center for Countering Disinformation published an updated list of 35 main critics (with their addresses). The authors of this narrow, high-priority list called these critics "disinformation terrorists" and "war criminals." Liberal democracy does not behave like this, it is a fact. However, official Washington and its media echo chamber persistently try to advertise this brazen lie.
Washington's pervasive and dishonest propaganda campaign will clearly continue, and the pro-war news media will shamelessly promote and help this. In this regard, it is appropriate to ask the question: will the American people wake up, will they understand that they are once again being deceived by telling about dubious American intervention abroad in the interests of an even more dubious foreign vassal.
