Eric Zuesse

Newsweek magazine headlined on February 5th, “‘Biggest NATO Reinforcement Since Cold War’ Sets Frontlines Against Russia,” and reported that, "According to general Charles Wald, former-deputy commander of U.S. European Command, … 'The question for Europe is: is Putin creeping further and further west?’” Wald is quoted as saying that the case of Ukraine especially worries him. This article continues: "'Is this a precursor to Russia moving into Moldova? Nagorno Karabakh has been bubbling up, and the Georgia issue is still unresolved. NATO has essentially set these [new military] bases in its frontline states,' Wald says, referring to the countries’ proximity to Russian territory.”

So: Russia is moving too close to NATO countries, according to the U.S. ‘Defense’ Department.

But it’s a blatant lie.Actually , since 1999, 11 former members of the Warsaw Pact, countries, which had been allied with Russia during the communist Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, have switched to the U.S. military alliance against their former ally Russia, NATO: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Albania.

So: Russia hasn’t been moving at all, not an inch; but the U.S. certainly has — by surrounding Russia with its NATO missiles.

This Newsweek story is ‘news’ that’s published in a mainstream U.S. ‘news’ source, which people pay bad money for — it’s worse than a waste, it’s their being charged for U.S.-Government propaganda.

Here is authentic news, from an authentic news source — news which had been posted just four days earlier than that Newsweek lie, on February 1st — news that was posted at the Fort Russ blog, which not only is free, but it’s the most thorough and reliably truthful news site of all on the Ukrainian conflict:

“NATO is moving closer to Russia and blaming Russia for being close to NATO.” A video is shown there.

This video, which was posted to youtube on 17 October 2014, shows a Pentagon spokesperson being asked at a press conference about 'Defense’ Secretary Chuck Hagel’s accusation, that Russia’s army is “on NATO’s doorstep”; and the (extremely unusual, skeptical American journalist) questioner then asks “Why is that?”

Hagel’s press spokesperson insists there that it happens because Russia has been seizing nations and thus moving closer to NATO; he refuses to acknowledge that NATO has instead been expanding up to Russia’s very border, bringing U.S. weapons surrounding Russia’s periphery. How would the U.S. react if, say, Russia had tried to install nuclear missiles in, say, Cuba — like the Soviet Union tried in 1962?

Here’s that video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LexhW8SCM2c.

There are lots of reader-comments to that video, many of which are from fools who are treating Russia as being evil and dangerous, and ignoring the insult to their own intelligence that came forth from Chuck Hagel’s spokesperson in this video, which they had just watched.

However, Fort Russ reports this videoed statement without comment, as being instead a self-evident lie from the U.S. Government, and it is that; not as being (like Newsweek does) a supposed truth from the U.S. Government, a supposed truth that’s being unchallenged by Newsweek’s ‘journalist,’ though if Newsweek had been an authentic news-source it would have reported that the U.S. Government was simply lying there — since that’s the actual fact.

As regards the reader-comments to this Newsweek article, here’s a typical sequence of these reader-comments, so that you can see how American readers responded to this piece of sheer American propaganda:

COMMENTS:
----Bong Valencia · Don bosco academy pampanga
Everybody needs to stop calling Ukraine's enemies as Russian[backed rebels. Let's call a spade a spade. Let's call them Russians! They came from and were sent by Russia.
· 24 · February 5 at 7:57pm
----Kevin Quinn · Top Commenter
But they LIVE in what's called 'eastern Ukraine' and have been there in some cases for centuries. That is Kyiv''s main point. And theirs. Some have received military training in the Soviet forces, as well as the UA. Some of the younger have been trained in 'militia camps' - safe in Russia.
• · 3 · February 6 at 10:57am
----Sergy K · Top Commenter · Harvard Kennedy School
Kevin Quinn there are at most 15% of locals, 85 % came from Russia, and the military organizers came from Moscow
• · 1 · February 6 at 12:54pm
----Михаил Бочаров · Top Commenter · МОПИ им. Н.К. Крупской
Sergy K, Where did you take those percentage from? Maybe from The History Of Russian State by N.M.Karamzin or Primary Chronicle Where Did Russian Land Come From or The History Of Kiev Rus? Look these books through in the Harvard Kennedy School Library or at least use Google "Russian-speaking population in Ukraine".
• · February 10 at 5:06am
----El D Den · Top Commenter
My hope is NATO destroys Russia once and for all.
· 9 · February 5 at 10:36pm

Noting the claim of one reader there (“Sergy K”) to be from Harvard’s Kennedy School, the present reporter looked to see whether there is, actually, any “Sergy K” who has been associated with that supposedly august and supposedly authoritative School. This is what I came up with:

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/experts/203/sergei_konoplyov.html

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/disc_paper_99_08.pdf

So: apparently, an ‘expert’ at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and even one whose sole published work deals with Ukraine, does, indeed, actually think that 85% of the fighters against the Kiev-based Ukrainian Government’s invasion of Ukraine’s Donbass region are Russian soldiers, not residents.

On that matter, here is the actual evidence (there’s lots of it, but these are perhaps the most striking):

http://rinf.com/alt-news/featured/ukrainian-government-russian-troops-fighting-us/

http://ukraina.ru/news/20150213/1012102730.html

http://ukraina.ru/news/20150213/1012102730.html

http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/heres-the-ukrainian-delegation-that-gave-misleading-photos-t#.rdzqJPe5X

Furthermore, to the exact contrary of all the similar allegations by the U.S. Government (which say that Russia wants to add to Russian territory the land where Ukraine’s pro-Russia rebels live), the present reporter had headlined on 19 September 2014, “Russia’s Leader Putin Rejects Ukrainian Separatists’ Aim to Become Part of Russia,” and reported that not only did Putin reject it verbally, but that the Ukrainian separatist leaders took his statement as being his final word on the subject, and so decided “We will build our own country.”

In other words: the only reason why the Obama Administration is pushing the fraudulent line that Putin is trying to seize the Donbass region of Ukraine away from Ukraine, is because Barack Obama needs to portray his own sponsorship of an ethnic-cleansing operation to get rid of the residents in Donbass (the rebellious region of Ukraine) as being instead an “Anti Terrorist Operation” by the Government against rebel fighters who (as the Harvard Kennedy School ‘Expert’ said) “85 % came from Russia.”

We’re supposed to be this stupid, and this misinformed, by a propaganda-line that doesn’t even make sense — the line that says the people who are bombing the residents in Donbass and destroying the region, are the invading Russian army, and/or the residents who live there (the “Terrorists,” as the Ukrainian Government calls them), instead of being the Government forces that are trying to exterminate the residents there, and who are actually terrorizing those residents in order to get them to die or else to leave Ukraine.

As to the reason why Obama wants to get rid of those residents, look at this map. It shows the results in the final nationwide Ukrainian Presidential election, the one that was held in 2010 and which pitted the pro-Washington Yulia Tymoshenko against the pro-neutral-Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. As you can see, the dark purple area is the region that voted 90% for Yanukovych. That’s also the area which the Ukrainian Government has been bombing. If the voters who live there, ever again vote for a President of Ukraine, then Obama’s February 2014 coup which overthrew Yanukovych will be elected out of office: the Obama coup-regime will end. That’s why Obama wants those voters to either die or else leave Ukraine. He needs them gone. (And official Washington wants this mass-murder of them to increase; and this genocidal push isbipartisan , both Republicans and Democrats.)

No wonder why the U.S. Government keeps lying, and its propaganda-organs (virtually the entire U.S. press) are lying. The press are controlled by the same aristocracy that control the Government. But, in order to do this, they are playing the American people for suckers. Maybe enough of the American public are, but that’s no justification for what America’s aristocracy are doing. The people who are being slaughtered aren’t Americans at all, but are instead the entirely innocent residents in the Donbass region of the former Ukraine.

Prior to Obama’s February 2014 Ukrainian coup, that entire country was a democracy, and there was no ethnic cleansing there. But Obama has the nerve now to accuse Russia of “aggression,” when in fact it is he that is the aggressor. And that’s the sole basis for the economic sanctions that Russians now suffer.

What a massive crime: a war-crime that would be worthy of being tried as such at Nuremberg — but, this time, not by Americans. Obama is instead the anti-FDR President. An American President like this would make Franklin Delano Roosevelt turn over in his grave.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .