Space Alert interview with German activist Heinrich Buecker
Heinrich Bücker is the founder and operator of Berlin’s Coop Antiwar Cafe, a popular gathering place for leftist activists in the city. He has come under attack by the German government for his criticism of Germany’s role in the war in Ukraine.
In this interview Global Network coordinator Bruce Gagnon speaks with Heinrich Buecker from Berlin. They discuss the following:
Germany has been in the news a lot lately for giving tanks to Ukraine and also due to comments by Green Party foreign minister Annalena Baerbock who declared that Europe was ‘at war with Russia’. She has since withdrawn the words but the damage from them still remains.
Pulitzer prize journalist Seymour Hersh recently released a blockbuster article about how the Biden administration was responsible for the terrorist attack blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline. How are the German people reacting to that story?
How has the shortage of oil and natural gas and inflation impacted life across your country?
How many American troops are currently deployed in Germany? How would you respond to claims by many people that the US is responsible for forcing Germans into the current anti-Russian hatred?
Why is it so important for Germans to resist this new wave of anticommunism and Russophobia?
Were there similar waves of Russophobia in Germany before WW2?
On June 22, 2022 Heinrich Buecker gave a speech at an event hosted by Berlin’s Friedenskoordination (Peace Coordination) at the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park, in which, according to a statement on the antiwar cafe’s website, he said that “… it seems incomprehensible to me that German politics should again support the same chauvinistic and especially Russophobic ideologies on the basis of which the German Reich found willing helpers in 1941. The SS and Wehrmacht used Ukrainian national-fascist organizations as repressive and murderous squads against their own countrymen, including millions of Jewish men, women and children.”
Arguing in favor of sending tanks to Kiev, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Green Party) said EU countries were fighting a war against Russia. US and EU officials have previously gone out of their way to claim they were not a party to the conflict in Ukraine.
“And therefore I’ve said already in the last days – yes, we have to do more to defend Ukraine. Yes, we have to do more also on tanks,” Baerbock said during a debate at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). “But the most important and the crucial part is that we do it together and that we do not do the blame game in Europe, because we are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.”
Andrew P. Napolitano is a former professor of law and judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey.
Pulblished in the Washington Times February 15, 2023
Which is more destructive to personal liberty: a government that engages in secret acts of war, or a public and news media that are indifferent to it? In the current American toxic stew of anti-Russian hatred and beating the drums of war — in President Biden’s America — we have both.
Ray McGovern discusses Seymour Hersh’s story, “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline” on Garland Nixon and Wilmer Leon’s radio show, The Critical Hour. (With transcript).
Transcript
Garland Nixon
Sy Hersh has a piece at his Substack account entitled How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline. The New York Times called it a, quote unquote mystery. But the United States executed a covert C.I.A. operation that was kept secret until now. For insight into this, let’s turn to our first guest. He works with Tell the World, The publishing arm of the Ecumenical Church of the Savior in inner city Washington; has 27 year career as a C.I.A. analyst, serving as chief of the Soviet foreign policy branch and preparing the president’s daily brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, and he is, of course, Ray McGovern. As always, Ray, welcome back.
Ray McGovern
Thanks for having me.
Garland Nixon
So Sy Hersh writes, last June, the Navy divers operating under the cover of a widely publicized midsummer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that three months later destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines. This is according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.
What I’ll say, Ray, is usually when we hear of unknown sources, we tend to question the veracity or validity of the piece.
But if it’s Sy Hersh, I got to give it its due. Ray McGovern.
Ray McGovern
I know Sy Hersh.
Garland Nixon
I know you do.
Ray McGovern
I know him to be a meticulous reporter, winner of five Polk Awards, Pulitzer Prize, you name it. Back in the day when honest reporters were so honored. This piece has all the earmarks of Sy’s meticulous approach, and he clearly has a very good source who felt, well, he felt a constitutional obligation to honor his or her oath to the Constitution of the United States, which is the supreme oath any of us take. And that is to make sure that you tell the truth, especially when the Constitution is being violated.
Now, this was an act of war, pure and simple. Curiously enough, it was against Germany. And curiously enough, President Joseph Biden, at a press conference in the presence of the chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, said this is going to happen if Russia invaded Ukraine. And, of course, he was asked, well, how do you do this? I mean, how can you how can you be so confident that Nord Stream will be killed and Biden said, well, just, you know, trust me, it’s going to happen.
And so she, bilingual, the Reuters reporter, turned to Scholz – and this is not widely available now for obvious reasons – and she said, well, I mean, do you agree with that? I mean, hello, how do you feel about this? And this hack, this political hack said: we do everything together. We do everything together. We will be together on this now. So that’s available now. It’s available. Not Sy Hersh’s piece yet, but that interview is available in Germany.
You know, I describe Olaf Scholz as kind of the epitome of the abused spouse. Stands there and is abused not only by his master, Joe Biden, but also by this hack that he has as foreign minister. Her name is [Annalena] Baerbock. She is the the most vociferous of all the people saying that we are at war. That’s what she said. We are at war with Russia.
So the question will be: it has been 90 years, count them, nine zero years since the Nazis were making a push for power in Germany. What happened? The Reichstag, the German parliament building was burned down at the end of January, 1933. What happened? The Germans caved. The Nazis didn’t have a majority, but they scared the living daylights out of German citizens.
First of all, Social Democrats gave in. Next to fall, the Zentrum party, the Catholic Party. No one spoke up. We know the rest of the story. All right. Now, sometimes history is replete with ironies. Here it is exactly to the month, 90 years later. Will the German people acquiesce in their industry, and then their bodies being frozen out this winter? Or will they rise up and say: “Look, Mr Scholz, you don’t know what the hell you’re doing, and neither does Baerbock. Get out of here!”, and replace that government?
Now, the key to all this, of course, is the fact I have already mentioned. Sy Hersh’s piece has not been published in Germany. The New York Times hasn’t published it. The major media haven’t published. Where did Sy have to publish this? On Substack. Now, at one point he had a friend at the German newspaper, Die Welt, and they published an incredible exposé on Syria. It turned out to be true, but Sy couldn’t get it published anywhere else. He used to publish in The New York Times, then in The New Yorker. He has been banned.
So the question is, will it be possible to inform not only the American people, but more important, the German people that they’ve been had? Okay? This is depriving them of livelihoods and industry. Will they, unlike 90 years ago, act like adults, stand up and say: “Now we’ve had it. Blowing up our our gas pipeline, that’s too far. We’re going to look at things differently. First and foremost, our involvement in Ukraine.”
Garland Nixon
Ray, domestically. Here. In this piece, if it is to be believed – which, I believe it and it certainly warrants an internal investigation here – the Biden administration admitted that what they were doing was an act of war, which means they understood that only Congress could, in fact, constitutionally clear that action. And they, with malice and aforethought, took action to mitigate their accountability to the Constitution and Congress.
And Joe Biden was the head guy there. He was the man that… eventually they decided rather than just put explosives on it, apparently Biden wanted to give the word for when it was done. This is an impeachable offense. This is a requirement of Congress, to act on it. Your thoughts on Congress not acting on it? I don’t suspect they will. And if there will be ultimately in the long term, any ramifications for that? Your thoughts on that anyway Ray.
Ray McGovern
Well, again, if the big tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it fall, does it make a sound? It is incredible how The New York Times – actually I’ve taken to calling The New York Times The New Yellow Times, after yellow journalism, which as most people know is what you do when you exaggerate or slant things beyond the truth.
The New Yellow Times can prevent this from being heard, and more important now, prevent corroboration from being a voice. We have corroboration now from Gil Doctorow in Brussels, Larry Johnson in Tampa, it’s coming in. And so I applaud the source that told Sy Hersh all this information. I believe it implicitly. Sy has never been wrong on really important issues like this. As I say, he’s meticulous, and he was distraught – and I know this personally – distraught at all this stuff about Russiagate.
He and Bob Parry used to – my mentor, Robert Parry, Consortium News– used to commiserate on the phone and, you know, what’s happened to the to the media? So here again, we have the media right in the middle of this thing. Only Tucker Carlson has had the cajones so far to play this story. Will it go further? I suspect… well, I don’t know but I like to try to be the optimist. Can The New York Times and the major media suppress this indefinitely? Well, I suppose they can. They’ve suppressed other stories, equally important, like the fact that the Russians are proven not to have hacked into the DNC, and that the ‘Russian offensive’ there with Facebook amounted to nothing.
So if they can deceive the American people, as the American people are willing to be deceived, then you know this will not have its desired effect. The fact that that Sy had to go on Substack to do this is really a lurid manifestation of the fact that not even the most prized, the most meticulous investigative reporter in the United States, could not get this published elsewhere.
That speaks volumes.
Garland Nixon
Part of this piece, Sy discusses meetings that Victoria Nuland and Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan held in the executive office of the President, where they debated options for an attack on the pipeline. And he writes that the C.I.A. argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. And at the time, the C.I.A. was directed by Bill Burns, as Sy describes him, a mild mannered former ambassador to Russia. I know you know Burns well. He says that Burns quickly authorized a C.I.A. working group whose ad hoc members included someone who was familiar with the capacity of these Navy deep sea divers. Your thoughts on Burns’s involvement in this?
Ray McGovern
I do know Burns. He let me, well, in effect shame James Clapper by pointing out to an audience that Clapper had admitted that he fudged the evidence on weapons of mass destruction before the attack on Iraq. Burns was, some of us hoped, that he might be the adult in the room, but Burns is the epitome of a cog in the wheels of the system. He’s a state Department type. He got to be number two in the State Department and you don’t get to be number two in the State Department unless you salute. Whether it’s a harebrained scheme or not you salute. Well, here you have the epitome of a harebrained scheme. Did did Burns salute? Yes, as soon as the president said do it. He turned to his people and he said, Do it.
And they they rubbed their hands and said: Oh, man, this is going to be fun! We can do this. We can work with the Navy. We can do it. Okay. Now, what do the analysts say? Well, Burns didn’t give a rat’s patootie about what his analysts say, but Sy Hersh includes the notion that some of them said: You know, this is really crazy, this is really stupid. This is going to come back to bite us.
That’s what we always used to say on cockamamie schemes like this. What’s the point here? The point here is that the operations people at C.I.A. get all the money, get all the attention and get all the influence over whatever director comes in and another side lesson here is that if you’re going to pick a director for the C.I.A., don’t go to the State Department for a yes man. You don’t go to the Congress for somebody who compromises, for God’s sake. You find somebody like Admiral Stansfield Turner, four star, who had made his own his own mark on life and was not going to take any crap from nobody else, is going to tell the truth. He’s the last guy we had like that. God forbid we keep having these, well, these bureaucrats that salute when the president says jump.
Garland Nixon
One thing I did want to ask you, I had some thoughts. You know, the last – interesting – the last sentence where, you know, whoever the source is says, Oh, yeah, they did this thing. It was a brilliant operation, blah, blah, blah. He says the only flaw was the decision to do it. Here’s what it seems to me. I’m guessing it seemed like it came from somebody in the Pentagon, based on the knowledge. They basically said: You know, these idiots in the executive department, they have not a good move.
And C.I.A. was not real smart. State Department, bad move. The Pentagon wasn’t mentioned. And there are generally, I have heard recently, there are some pragmatists. It almost seems like there may. Well, anyway, your thoughts on the origins of this, if you have any?
Ray McGovern
Well, all I can say is that Sy Hersh has proven for about 40 years now that he is a trusted journalist. And when someone – and I suspect it aptly pertained to this particular source – when someone sees that an act of war has been has been committed by our government against all the… well, against the Constitution, maybe not against the U.S. designed “rules based order,” but, you know, we all swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Now this guy took that seriously. I suspect he went to that little corner in that bar where Sy meets his – I know where that is – meets his sources and told him this whole story. Sy said it only took him three months. I believe that. And American people… it’s eminently believable. The question is the fallout and whether the mass media can prevent this story from sneaking into the consciousness of Americans who have been taught, who have been brainwashed over the last seven years. Okay? Seven years now, to hate Russia.
Okay. Will Rogers had that wonderful aphorism, the comedian way back a century or two ago. Will Rogers put it this way. He said: “The problem is this: it’s not what people know. It’s what people know that ain’t so.” That’s the problem. And the people think that the Russians are just evil to the core. That Putin… Here’s an example. Okay? At the time when Sy Hersh’s story is going out, here’s The New York Times on February ninth. A yellow journalism piece by a fellow named Constant Méheut – a Frenchman, apparently – and it shows that Vladimir Putin was personally responsible for killing the 298 aboard Malaysian Airlines MH 17 over Ukraine in July of 2014. Now it says that in the title; it says that in the first paragraph; and third paragraph it says: Well, we can’t prove that Putin was really… Give me a break! Okay. So this is a day when they should have been featuring Sy’s research. They’re still at it. Blackening Putin, first and foremost, the rest of the Russians, and, you know, this was consequential.
Let me remind you that after the coup in Kiev, after the annexation of Crimea, the U.S. could still not get the Europeans to shoot themselves in the foot by sanctions. It was only after Malaysian Airlines MH 17 was downed – according to The New York Times, by Vladimir Putin himself – that they could get real sanctions that bit the Europeans more than they bit anyone, including the Russians. So this was consequential. This was the beginning of really strict sanctions. And I just wonder if the West Europeans and the East Europeans will wake up and say: “You know, this is a this is a bad deal to get involved with, what the U.S. wants, because they want war with Russia. And this is going to come to, as the Chinese used to call it, a no good end.”
Garland Nixon
Ray McGovern, as always, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate that analysis and we look forward to having you back.
Ray McGovern
Aye and most welcome.
The views expressed are solely those of the speakers and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Dear veterans and friends,
Today, we are celebrating one of the most important, fateful dates in the history of our country and the world. Exactly 80 years ago, here on the banks of the great Russian Volga River, the hated, cruel enemy was stopped and sent into irreversible retreat, bringing to a conclusion the long, arduous, fierce battle for Stalingrad.
This was not merely a battle for a city – the very existence of a tormented but unvanquished country was at stake, as was the outcome of not only the Great Patriotic War but of World War II as a whole. Every person in the trenches and on the home front felt and understood this. And so, as it has happened repeatedly in our history, we united in the decisive battle and won.
The Battle of Stalingrad justifiably went down in history as a turning point in the Great Patriotic War. In addition to defeating the largest Wehrmacht group and its satellites, the will of the entire Hitler coalition was broken. The European vassals and accomplices of Nazi Germany, many of which fought at Stalingrad, representing practically all countries of subjugated Europe, began feverishly looking for ways to flee, to evade responsibility and shift the blame onto their former masters. Everyone realised what the Soviet people knew from the start – the Nazi plans to destroy our country and Nazi ideas about global domination were doomed to fail.
For 200 days at Stalingrad, two armies fought to the death amid the ruins of this legendary city. The army that proved stronger of will prevailed. The fierce resistance of our soldiers and their commanders, exceeding what is humanly possible, can only be understood and explained by their loyalty to the Motherland, their firm, absolute belief that the truth was on our side. The willingness to go beyond for the sake of the Motherland and the truth, to do the impossible, has always been and remains in the blood, in the character of our multi-ethnic people. This is what defeated Nazism.
Stalingrad has forever become a symbol of the invincibility of our people, of the very power of life. This city, its suburbs and nearby villages had to be rebuilt from the ground up, as hardly a tree or intact building was left standing in the city by February 1943.
The exceptional endurance and self-sacrifice of the defenders and residents of Stalingrad still move us to the core, evoking feelings of the deepest gratitude and respect. It is our moral duty – primarily to the victorious soldiers – to faithfully honour the memory of this feat, to pass it down the generations, and not to let anyone devalue or distort the role of the Battle of Stalingrad in the victory over Nazism and in liberating the entire world from this monstrous evil.
Now we are seeing that unfortunately, the ideology of Nazism – this time in its modern guise – is again creating direct threats to our national security, and we are, time and again, forced to resist the aggression of the collective West.
However incredible, it is a fact – we are again being threatened with German Leopard tanks with crosses on board. There is again a plan to fight Russia on Ukrainian land using Hitler’s successors, the Banderites.
We know that despite the efforts of official bodies and the corrupt propaganda of the unfriendly Western elites, we have many friends all over the world, including the Americas, North America, and Europe.
However, those that are dragging European countries, including Germany, into a new war with Russia, and especially those that are irresponsibly talking about it as a fait accompli, those who are hoping to defeat Russia on the battlefield, apparently fail to understand that a modern war against Russia will be a completely different war for them. We do not send our tanks to their borders but we have what to respond with, and it is not limited to the use of armour. Everyone must realise this.
Obviously, those who are threatening us do not understand a simple truth: all our people, we all grew up and absorbed the traditions of our people at our mothers’ knee – generations of winners who built our country with hard work, sweat and blood, and passed it on to us as a legacy.
The fortitude of the defenders of Stalingrad is the most important moral and ethical guideline for the Russian Army, for all of us. Our soldiers and officers are loyal to this. The continuity of generations, values, traditions is what distinguishes Russia, makes us strong and self-confident, makes us believe in our rightness and in our victory.
I warmly congratulate everyone here, all defenders of the Motherland today, all Russians, and compatriots abroad on the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Battle of Stalingrad.
Happy anniversary to you. Happy celebrations of the triumph of life and justice.
On January 25 Germany and the United States decided to provide Ukraine with Leopard 2 and Abrams tanks totaling 45 (respectively: 14 + 31). Some European countries also intend to join these supplies that could reach around 300 main battle and light tanks during this year. The Pentagon official said that collected ‘the armor basket’ could include 300 tanks and ACV/APC during 2023. It will be 28th ‘basket’ of lethal military supplies of the transatlantic alliance to Ukraine that started on a massive scale in 2022.
1. Unlike fascist Germany, current Germany openly declared a war against Russia on January 25
Arguing in favor of sending NATO tanks and ACV/APC to Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said EU countries were fighting a war against Russia. US and EU officials have previously gone out of their way to claim they were not a party to the conflict in Ukraine. It is a wrong statement. The USA and NATO began arming and training Armed Forces of Ukraine soon after the demise of the USSR in 1991.
This is a quotation from what Baerbock has stated at PACE.
“And therefore, I’ve said already in the last days – yes, we have to do more to defend Ukraine. Yes, we have to do more also on tanks,” Baerbock said during a debate at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on January 25. “But the most important and the crucial part is that we do it together and that we do not do the blame game in Europe, because we are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.”
It means that unlike fascist Germany that started undeclared war against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, current German state openly declared a war against Russia.
If she has not been sacked so far from the German Government, it means that her statement is fully shared by the FRG Government and the Parliament.
It also means that the FRG has radically changed its foreign policy and once again is unleashing the next World War – the Third one.
It means that German tanks again will appear in Ukraine and Russia like in 1941-1945.
It also means that pro-Nazi coalition supports ultra-nationalist regime in Kiev that began its own and unprovoked aggression – initially against Donbass in April 2014, and later against Russia in October 2022.
It means that since January 25, 2023 current joint Ukrainian-NATO actions in Ukraine can be politically and juridically labelled as “a declared direct combined Ukrainian-NATO aggression against the Russian Federation”.
Such Ukrainian-NATO aggression has purely offensive nature.
Its aim is a three-fold:
1) to kill more and more Ukrainians and Russians (in Donbass only April 2014 till January 2023 nearly 20,000 civilians have been killed partly by US/NATO ammunition);
2) to support endlessly ultra-Nazi regime in Ukraine,
and 3) to dismember and destroy entirely the state named “The Russian Federation” and gradually many other states not bowing to NATO and the USA.
Report # 146. Breaking news: The majority voted to live in Russia
September 27, 2022
1. The majority of voters in four regions expressed their wish to live in Russia
Four separate referenda held in two independent republics in Donbass and in two regions in southern Ukraine, namely Kherson and Zaporozhye Oblast or Regions between September 23-27 ended at 16:00 hours local time on September 27th, 2022.
According to preliminary results (with 15% of ballot papers counted by 17:00 Moscow time) overwhelming majority of voters have OKeyed admission of all these regions to the Russian Federation as equal subjects.
All referenda have been recognized as valid. They have witnessed very high level of participation of voters despite permanent heavy shelling of the residential areas in all four regions by heavy weapons, including the U.S.-made MLRS HIMARS, by Armed Forces of Ukraine in violation of the UN Charter, the OSCE decisions and the EU basic principles.
The preliminary results in full will be announced on September 28th, and final results – some days later.
Such fantastic returns ran counter to Mrs Annalena Baerbock, German Foreign Minister’s allegations, who in a Marcus Lanza’s TV program have disseminated false information about the referenda by claiming that the voters are shot, they are raped, and then they have to put crosses for three days while soldiers with Kalashnikovs [assault rifles] in their hands stand next to them.
Where she has got this false information? Nowhere. Such cases have not been recorded during the referenda. More than 200 foreign observers who have arrived to these regions have not confirmed such false allegations. And no local citizen has lodged any respective complaint, by the way.
The German Ambassador in Moscow should be summoned to the Russian MFA to give explanations why Baerbock has used such unverified propaganda with a very bad smell. She has undermined her political carrier by many coarse and unverified false statements earlier.
This is one more and the latest vivid example of her wrong behavior. Shame that she still represents Germany as the head of the German diplomatic service.
2. Why the majority of citizens in four named regions have voted for joining Russia?
No long arguments and explanations – there are plenty of them to catalogue them here. No time. Later. Just official figures:
In LPR
Since 2014 till February 24, 2022:
killed – 1771 (here and in all other cases atrocities have been done by Armed Forces of Ukraine); wounded – 3350; children killed – 38; children wounded – 91; social infrastructure buildings destroyed – more than 7200; social infrastructure buildings damaged – more than 26000
Since February 24 till September 23, 2022:
killed – 91; wounded – 292; children killed – 7; children wounded – 26; social infrastructure buildings destroyed – 252; social infrastructure buildings damaged – 2846.
Again this year, the campaign “Stop the Ramstein Air Base” aims to expose the threat of war that emanates from this US military base at Kaiserslautern.
The Ramstein Air Base plays the central role in NATO warfare and all the covert and open aggression that the United States has in the Middle East. Whether drones to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen, arms supply for the terrorists in Syria, the threat of war against Iran – nothing works without Ramstein. From here, from German soil, war is going out!
Surely the drone war out of Ramstein as a way station is superficially in the focus of public attention. This is also very justified, because this permanent murder without declaration of war and without court sentences is barbaric and scandalous. However, it should not be forgotten that the overall threat caused by the Air Base is many times greater.
In recent years and months, NATO has stationed a chain of new headquarters and weapons depots, battalions, and “spearheads” along the Russian border. NATO tanks are rolling through Germany to the “Eastern Front,” as the German media write without restraint, without inhibitions or scruples. With the Allied Air Command, the command center of a war against Russia lies in the US Ramstein Air Base.
Perhaps it is indeed the most European values: no one from the German TV channels showed an interest in the documentary of the journalist Mark Bartalmai, who is living in Donetsk since 2014, and impartially documented events in the People’s Republics. The truth about Donbass appeared to be uninteresting for central media, and instead of this they released the hounds on the journalist.
Mark Bartalmai is the only German journalist who, except for small breaks, is in Donetsk for such a long period of time, since 2014. None of his colleagues can brag about such experience. For example, the famous propagandist of ARD TV channel Golineh Atai mostly gives her reportings about Donbass from Kiev, receiving information on the conflict from the “hands of the enemy“: such an approach has little in common with qualitative journalism, writes the German website Telepolis.
Mark Bartalmai repeatedly offered his works to central TV channels and news services, however all of them were rejected. And as if that seemed to be not enough, in July of last year the ARD TV channel showed a reportage, the aim of which was to discredit the journalist.
Most likely, this programme was a reaction to the first film of Bartalmai under the name “Ukrainian agony – The concealed war”. Despite the fact that the author of the film was branded “Putin’s propagandist”, the film gained success, then the journalist was engaged in fund raising for further work.
The new movie of the journalist “Frontline City Donetsk – Republica Non Grata”, first of all is a classical documentary, which after viewing the watcher can create their own opinion on the events. And it is due to this fact that this film has an advantage over the first film, where the conflict in Ukraine was shown more from the point of view of global interests.
It should be immediately noted that the film doesn’t describe the “camouflaged Russian army, which oppresses the local population with assistance of insurgents lusting for power”. Instead, the film describes those people who, in May, 2014, in their vast majority voted for separation from Ukraine, because, for them, the Kiev coup and the course on friendship with NATO was unacceptable.
Now, nearly three years later, the German media began to pay less and less attention to the crisis region. Meanwhile, the film of Bartalmai shows how consumers of news in the West are deprived of honest and realistic reportings from the place of events.
In the documentary the process of reconstruction of civil buildings in Donetsk is shown: houses, hospitals, schools destroyed by the Ukrainian artillery in 2014-2015 – i.e. in the hottest phase of the war.
At the very beginning of the film, the journalist asks a question – and who actually is a separatist? In the documentary numerous examples are shown of how actions of the Ukrainian authorities simply didn’t leave the people of the DPR another choice except how to create their own state.
The people living on that side of the blockade could hardly do something other than create their own structures for the maintenance of civilized life. Thus, it is possible to understand why decisions on nationalization of the enterprises creating additional profit were adopted: now the profit ceased to go into the pockets of Ukrainian oligarchs, and goes towards providing life for the people of Donbass.
Bartalmai draws a portrait of young society, which created – if to measure by international standards – their own apparatus of justice and police, which has its own car registration plates, passports, and committee on the defence of human rights, which is in continuous contact with OSCE and other structures. It is possible to say that the DPR is an even more constitutional State than Ukraine itself.
All this completely contradicts the image of “Russian occupation”, which so willingly is distributed by our (German) media. Thus, in the film the significant role of Russia isn’t denied: after the Ukrainian market disappeared, the traditional market – Russia – became the main supplier for the DPR. In addition, Russia regularly sends humanitarian convoys to the Republic.
At the end of the film the author convincingly shows that the destiny of the civilian population of Donbass in reality doesn’t especially interest neither western governments, nor the OSCE.
Somewhere it is even possible to assume that the German government realized already a long time ago that in the case of Ukraine it made a huge mistake, however it can’t recognize its own failure. Of course, it is difficult if you always present actions as non-alternative.
The documentary of Mark Bartalamai would have appeared on central German TV channels, however our news, obviously, declared Donbass “nobodies land”. And it is precisely for this reason that we need this film, summarizes Telepolis.
“The secret service calls the reporting of Russian media and their German offshoot ‘hostile.'”
This is reminiscent of President Richard Nixon’s (and other U.S. officials) view of the media. Shining a light on government policies and officials is unacceptable to them. Any factual reporting is ‘hostile’. Whistleblowers are ‘hostile’. Constitutions, laws, and public welfare are thrown out the window when they are inconvenient.
German Intel services: no evidence for a Putin disinformation campaign
German intelligence agencies, in extensive investigations, have reportedly failed to come up with clear evidence for a Russian disinformation campaign against the federal government.
Despite this result, the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) and the Federal Office for Constitutional Protection (BfV) do not see any reason for an all-clear, reported Süddeutsche Zeitung, WDR and NDR on Monday.
The media relied on the results of almost a year’s investigation. “We have not found any smoking gun,” according to the media in government circles, about the attempt to find striking evidence of Russia’s political interference. Such a document would have been presented by the government to warn Russia about this type of action.
Originally the secret services had planned to at least partially publish the investigation, which was categorized as a secret classified, the media reported. However, in the face of missing evidence, publication is not considered useful. This would have put a further strain on the already tense relationship with Russia.
However, the chancellor’s office ordered the facts to be further investigated: the report of the special analysis of “Sputnik” by BfV and the BND working group “psychological operations” is, from the government’s point of view, not an acquittal the media report.
Yet the secret service report documents a “more confrontational course” between Russia and Germany since 2014 and calls the reporting of Russian media and their German offshoot “hostile.”…
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has cut a working visit to Germany amid the increased fighting between pro-Kiev forces and local militias in the region of Donbass in eastern Ukraine.
Heavy clashes and artillery duels in the area have been reported since January 28, inflicting casualties on the warring sides and to the infrastructure in the areas south and southeast of Donetsk, a capital of of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).
A spokesman for the Ukrainian President said that the situation around the Kiev-controlled settlement of Avdeevka “an emergency situation verging on a humanitarian disaster,” ignoring that a large scale-attak on DPR forces launched by the Ukrainian Armed Forces and pro-Kiev paramilitary groups was launched from this direction.
Poroshenko’s working visit to Germany was clearly synchronized with the advance of pro-Kiev forces in Donbass. Thus, the only reason of the move was to come in focus of the mainstream media and to blame DPR forces and Russia for an alleged violation of the international agreements.
The Poroshenko regime urgently needs to attract attention of foreign players to itself and to get their assistance amid the ongoing political and economical crisis in Ukraine.
Considering that, the Kiev regime has repeatedly show that it’s ready to violate any international, humanitarian and moral norms to achieve own political goals, there are little doubts that the observed escalation was a planned act.
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