Shamefully transformed into a propaganda leaflet of the US Department of State, the New York Times published on its front page such an article about the presidential elections in Ukraine, which has become an almost perfect quintessence of the false view of the crisis by official Washington."Special elections were called by parliament to elect a replacement for Viktor Yanukovych, who fled 21 from Kiev in February after an unsuccessful but bloody attempt to suppress the civil uprising, whose overthrow from the presidency marked the beginning of the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea," wrote one of the invariably tendentious reporters David Gershengorn (David M. Herszenhorn)
Not much in the New York Times presentation is true and balanced. At best, this is a one-sided story about the turbulent events of recent months in Ukraine, in which there is no context by which newspaper readers could get a more accurate picture of the crisis.
In fact, such a false statement, which took root and became the generally accepted point of view in America, itself turned into a threat to American interests, because if you believe the chosen storyline, then we will start supporting aggressive countermeasures that can create dangerous and counterproductive consequences.
In addition, there is a greater danger to American democracy when leading news organizations begin to engage in this kind of propaganda on a regular basis. In recent years, the American state has repeatedly waged wars in distant lands under far-fetched and false pretexts, inflicting losses on the local population, arousing deep hatred of the United States, draining the national treasury, and killing and mutilating American soldiers.
That is why it is important for journalists and news organizations to do everything possible in order to properly present the events, and not just to please the powerful of the world.
The true chronicle of events in Ukraine
As for Ukraine, the situation there is much more complicated and ambiguous than we see in the materials of the New York Times. The reasons for the ongoing crisis lie in the events of last year, when the European Union rashly offered Ukraine to sign an association agreement, and President-elect Yanukovych began to ponder this proposal.
But when the International Monetary Fund began to insist on a strict plan of austerity and self-restraint measures, which would make the Ukrainian people’s life difficult, and when Russian President Vladimir Putin offered Kiev a more generous aid package for 15 billion dollars, Yanukovych refused the deal with the EU and the IMF.
This provoked demonstrations in Kiev, in which many Ukrainians from the west of the country took part, advocating closer ties with Europe and tired of widespread corruption, which is a real disaster for Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the course of capitalist “shock therapy”, when a bunch of oligarchs began to plunder the wealth and resources of the country.
Most of the protesters were guided by the desire to achieve better governance and the hopes that an association with Europe would improve their economic prospects. But a significant part of the crowd on the Maidan consisted of neo-Nazis and representatives of other extreme right-wing forces, who for their own reasons hated Yanukovich and his Russian electorate. The reasons are rooted in history Ukraine, where during the Second World War there was a split into supporters of the Nazis and the Soviet government.
US officials instigated more violent protesters and US-funded nongovernmental organizations pushed them to take more action. Some of these organizations are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, whose neoconservative president Carl Gershman (Carl Gershman) in September last year called Ukraine "the biggest prize" and the main tool for weakening Putin's position in Russia.
Neocon Victoria Nuland, Deputy State Secretary for European Affairs, who worked as adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, personally pushed the demonstrators and even distributed pastries on the Maidan. In one of her speeches, she told Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested 5 billions of dollars in their “European aspirations”.
Nuland also got caught in a telephone conversation with the American ambassador to Ukraine, Jeffrey Payette, during which she explained who she wanted to see as head of the government after Yanukovych’s departure. Her choice fell on Arseniy Yatsenyuk, aka “Yats”.
Another prominent neocon, Senator John McCain, inspired protesters on the Maidan, standing next to the banner of the Freedom party, on which words of praise were written about Nazi accomplice Stepan Bandera. It was his military detachments during World War II that helped the Nazis expel and destroy tens of thousands of Poles and Jews.
Putsch
Contrary to the stereotypical statement of Gerschengorn, cruelty and violence showed not only the Ukrainian authorities who had been trapped. Neo-Nazi militants who have taken in hand weapon and who created teams of hundreds of people, repeatedly attacked the police and burned several policemen with incendiary bottles.
20 February, when the clashes intensified, the mysterious snipers opened fire on demonstrators and police, killing about 20 people, which led to a dangerous escalation of the confrontation. Although the Western press hastily concluded that Yanukovych was to blame for everything, he denied claims that he had ordered to shoot, and EU representatives later began to suspect the opposition in organizing the shooting, believing that this was done with a view to provocation.
As the British Guardian reported, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet told EU Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton: “There is a growing understanding that there was not a new coalition behind the snipers, but someone from the new coalition.”
February 21 Yanukovych tried to extinguish a wave of violence by signing an agreement with representatives of Germany, France and Poland, agreeing to early elections (to leave the post as a result of voting) and to restrict presidential powers. He also led the police back.
But as soon as the militia units left, the neo-Nazi militants of February 22 organized a coup, seizing government buildings and forcing Yanukovych and his subordinates to flee, saving their lives. In fact, the fighters of the assault detachments began to manage the Ukrainian state.
Foreign diplomats in Kiev at that time told me how Western countries realized that they had no choice but to immediately start working with a shocked parliament to form a provisional government. Otherwise, the power would remain in the hands of bandits.
Therefore, Yanukovych was quickly subjected to impeachment proceedings during an illegal process bypassing the Ukrainian constitution, and the parliament created a new government that, in recognition of the important role neo-Nazis played in the coup, gave them four ministries, including the Security Service of Ukraine.
At the head of the interim government put Yatsenyuk, who first launched the austerity plan of the IMF, rejected by Yanukovych. The frightened parliament also imposed a ban on the use of the Russian language as an official, although it was later abandoned.
In other words, the New York Times is misleading its readers, summing up the events with the words that Yanukovych “fled 21 from Kiev in February after an unsuccessful but bloody attempt to suppress a civil uprising.”
Aftermath
After the coup, the Russians in the east and south of the country were outraged at the fact that the president they had elected was illegally overthrown by force. In Crimea, in the south of Ukraine, the local parliament voted to hold a referendum on secession in order to reintroduce Crimea to Russia, to which it belonged since the beginning of the 18 century.
Russia did not “invade” the Crimea, because it already had 16 000 military personnel stationed there on the peninsula in accordance with the Russian-Ukrainian agreement on the lease of a historic naval base in Sevastopol. Indeed, Russian troops supported the Crimean authorities when they organized a referendum, which showed that the overwhelming majority of the population favored secession.
Another common point of view in the United States was that the referendum was “rigged” because the turnout was high, and 96 percent of the participants voted for the separation. However, polling data from polling stations showed approximately the same convincing figure - 93 percent. And no serious person would doubt that the majority of Crimeans chose to secede from an insolvent Ukrainian state.
Then Russia agreed to accept Crimea into its federation. So, although the Crimean referendum was hastily organized, it demonstrated the will of the people and became for Russia the main reason for returning this historical peninsula.
But the New York Times described these events as “the Russian invasion and annexation of the Crimea”, creating the impression that the Russian hordes had crossed the border and seized the peninsula against the will and desire of the people.
If Gershengorn and his newspaper had written such disorienting material about events in Ukraine or other hot spots for the first time, they could have been forgiven, calling these reviews hasty and inaccurate. But this is only the latest example of the serious prejudice of the New York Times, which for many years has been keeping pace with gosdepovskoy propaganda.
The failures of the newspaper on the eve of the catastrophic Iraq war gained scandalous fame, especially the story of Michael Gordon (Michael R. Gordon) and Judith Miller (Judith Miller) about the "aluminum tube". The New York Times demonstrated a similar bias in covering the Syrian conflict, including the debunked last year’s “vector analysis”, when the newspaper “tracked” the rocket of sarin, pointing to the Syrian military base, although the missile launch range was three times less than the distance from the base to the target.
However, the prejudice of the New York Times in covering the Ukrainian crisis has become even more blatant. Everything that the newspaper writes about Ukraine is literally soaked through with the poison of propaganda, and for a correct understanding of events a very powerful filter is required, as well as supplements from more independent information sources.
From the very first days of the coup, the New York Times is essentially behaving like a propaganda body of the new regime in Kiev and the State Department, blaming Russia and Putin for the crisis.
Awkward bloopers
In a hurry to fulfill its propaganda task, the newspaper admits memorable journalistic mistakes. For example, in its material on the first page, the newspaper in every way extols the photographs, which allegedly show Russian special forces in Russia, and then the same soldiers were allegedly taken in eastern Ukraine. She puts forward this as evidence that the popular resistance to the Kiev coup in the east is simply a poorly disguised Russian aggression.
Any serious journalist immediately sees the gaps in this story. After all, it is completely incomprehensible where these pictures were taken, and indeed, whether or not the same people were actually taken on these blurry photos. But these little things did not bother the newspaper, and she continued to let out one informational duck after another.
But after only a couple of days, the sensation broke to smithereens. It became clear that the main photograph, in which a group of soldiers in Russia was allegedly shot, later declared in Ukraine, was actually taken on Ukrainian territory. The main premise of this whole story has been refuted.
Now that Ukrainian voters, with the exception of residents of the revolted eastern regions, have chosen the businessman-billionaire Petro Poroshenko as the new president, the question arises whether the distorted and distorted statement of events in the American press will prevent President Obama from taking pragmatic steps to resolve the crisis.
Poroshenko, who was doing business in Russia and personally acquainted with Putin, seems ready to unlock the crisis in relations with the Ukrainian neighbor. After the Sunday elections, he promised to improve relations with Russia and with Putin, who himself makes conciliatory statements about the recognition of the voting results.
“It is likely that the meeting with the Russian leadership will be held in the first half of July,” Poroshenko said. “We must be fully prepared tactically for holding this meeting, because first we need to work out an agenda, we need to prepare documents so that all this is not limited to handshakes.”
Poroshenko also expressed his readiness to expand federalism, as a result of which the regions in the east of Ukraine can receive certain powers of self-government. In addition, there are tentative plans for the Obama-Putin meeting on June 6 in Normandy at a ceremony in honor of the 70 anniversary of the landing of the allied forces.
Despite these few positive developments, the violence in eastern Ukraine is still increasing. On Monday, during clashes at the airport in Donetsk, a large number of Russian separatist insurgents and Ukrainian servicemen died.
However, there remains one serious obstacle to reconciliation and the resolution of the Ukrainian crisis, and this is extremely tendentious coverage of the events in the New York Times and other leading American publications, which continue to insist that this story has only one side.