A lot of misinformation about Ukraine

Marți Hari of Finnish intelligence, in his fascinating talk on Russianness on December 3, 2018, to which I linked before, says it is certain that the Malaysian Airline Flight 17  was shot down by a missile from the Russian 53rd Air Defence Brigade and says the uprisings in 2014 in Lugansk and Donetsk were staged by Russian soldiers who sometimes forgot to take off their armbands. This is what I had read years ago but it is good to have it confirmed, because there are a lot of unreliable things churning around in conversations in real life and on the net, repeated, sometimes by people you'd not expect. 

We know, because the Daily Mail has told us so, that there were biolabs in Ukraine funded by Americans and Hunter Biden made a large amount of money helping arrange finance. Trump's friend Roger Stone (he was sentenced to 40 months but received a presidential pardon) thinks this means the Americans or Ukrainians were preparing chemical or biological weapons. I am sure this is not true, but you, gentle reader, can decide for yourself. 

This is not to say that we should trust the mainstream media very far (remember their long, mendacious record from Kosovo and Iraq to Covid and Hunter Biden) and still less the Ukrainian side of the story - even the good guys use propaganda in war. 

Many people repeat Russian propaganda uncritically, but there are insights to be gleaned from some contrarians, such as Scott Ritter or the man Donald Trump wanted to be his Ambassador in Berlin, retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor, whose interesting latest interview is here. 

Douglas Macgregor compares the propaganda in America in this war with the misinformation that led the USA to war with Spain in 1898, argues that Putin is in control of the situation, Ukraine will be defeated in a couple of weeks, a bloodbath is possible and Joe Biden is in trouble. He has created a close partnership between China and Russia, backed by India and the Gulf states.  

Many European governments will fall as a result of this war, he says in a throwaway remark. Mr Zelensky is not far off being a dictator and Ukraine is horribly corrupt. The world, he says, is becoming bored by being bullied by America.

Certainly it's good to have all sides of the story, not just the Washington and London side. If I had time to follow much of Mr Ritter's and Colonel MacGregor's stuff I'd say more. I've only heard a little of both these men.

I'd like to know most of all what the Indian press is saying and shall take a look.

This joke is more optimistic than Douglas MacGregor.


Konstantin Kisin
@KonstantinKisin
·
36m
Joke doing the rounds in Russia. Wife & husband talking:


W: What's this "special military operation"?
H: It's a proxy war - Russia vs. NATO.
W: How's it going?
H: We lost 15k troops, 8 generals, 500 tanks and 100 planes.
W: Wow. What about NATO?


H: They haven't showed up yet.

Back to Marți Hari's talk on Russianness. 

"Global recession is not really a problem to Russia since they are in recession all the time."