Eyewitness Reports Indicate Ukrainian Army Fired First Shots in War with Russia

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Western Media did not report that the population in Eastern Ukraine had been begging Vladimir Putin to send Russian troops to save them from American-backed invaders and Neo-Nazi militias

Russian forces launched “special military operations” in Ukraine on Thursday morning, including cruise and ballistic missile attacks targeting infrastructure near major cities such as Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Dnipro, according to media reports.

Russian president Vladimir Putin said that he did not intend to occupy UKraine but wanted to “demilitarize and de-nazify Ukraine.”

U.S. President Joe Biden issued a written statement saying that Russia had chosen a “premeditated war that will bring catastrophic loss of life and human suffering,” adding that “the prayers of the entire world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces.”

Biden’s assessment is wrong-headed if we consider that Russia has been repeatedly provoked–over the last eight years.

In February 2014, the U.S. supported the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanulovych after he spurned an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan that came with conditions detrimental to Ukraine.

Aerial view of Maidan square protests that resulted in Yanukovych’s ouster. [Source: nbcnews.com]

The U.S. has since provided extensive military aid and training to Ukrainian armed forces as they brutalized the people of Eastern Ukraine who voted to secede after the 2014 coup.

The U.S. has also applied extensive sanctions on Russia–tantamount to an act of war.

Biden’s claim that the Russian invasion was unprovoked is further undercut by the fact that Ukraine precipitated the war by attacking the breakaway eastern provinces in violation of the Minsk peace agreements.

Russia reported on Monday that it had captured a Ukrainian soldier and killed five others after they crossed into Russian territory in Rostov, just over the border with Ukraine. Several hundred American mercenaries were also reported to have arrived in Ukraine in the last week.

American mercenary in Donbass [Source: wprost.pl]

Photojournalist Patrick Lancaster provided photographic evidence of Ukrainian army shelling of a school in the Donbass earlier this week.

Lancaster’s report is corroborated by Organization For Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) maps, which show that shellings that violate ceasefire arrangements have indeed been carried out mostly by the Ukrainian government.

Source: consortiumnews.com

A resident of the Kyivsky district of the city of Donetsk whom Lancaster interviewed, Zoya Tumanova, said that the Ukrainians had shelled her village often since 2015 and burned half of it down. She asked Lancaster: “when will it end, when will Putin come? When will he come to save us?”

Tumanova’s viewpoint is completely absent from the U.S. media. It contradicts the official narrative of Vladimir Putin as a maniacal aggressor, leaving the impression that the people of Eastern Ukraine want Putin to send Russian troops to save them from the real aggressors.

A second-grade teacher at the school in Donetsk that was shelled, Marusina Ludmila, told Lancaster that she knew it was the Ukrainian army behind it because “they don’t let us live for eight years already; they have been shelling us constantly.”

Asked if Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky was telling the truth when he said that Ukraine did not shoot at civilians, she said:

“they always lie. We know it is them shelling because no one can but them—though I don’t know how they can do that to their own Ukrainian people, we used to live together and communicate.”

President Zelensky pays first working visit to Donbas (Photos) | UNIAN

Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky at the front. [Source: unian.info]

Below is a commentary by Don Hank, a professional translator and Russian speaker who studied Russian language and literature at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania and studied at Leningrad University in the early 1970s.

Ukraine shells schools in Donbass 

As I have shown before, based on numerous reports and videos on the seemingly senseless attacks on Donbass civilians and civilian infrastructure, there is more than one explanation for this phenomenon.

1—For one thing, since the U.S.-led West and U.S.-puppet regime in Kyiv have de facto very effectively censored most news reports about the atrocities of the Kyiv army and Neo-Nazi militias, there was never any chance that the average news consumer in the U.S.-controlled West could possibly have any knowledge about these atrocities. (Let me point out, however, that Putin, in his speech relating to the recognition of the Donbass republics, does point out that Kyiv has been constantly attacking innocent civilians in that region since 2014.)

Azov demonstration with flag

Members of the Azov battalion in Kiev. [Source: vox.com]

This censorship served the insidious purpose of making the Western public think Russia is the source of all ills in Ukraine (and elsewhere) and that the U.S. was “supporting” Ukraine.

This despite the fact that the year after the U.S. invasion of the Maidan Square in Kyiv in 2014, Kyiv fell to the very last rank in GDP—becoming the poorest country in Europe! Only a skilled—though diabolical—news manipulation on a 24/7 basis could have portrayed good as evil and evil as good to such a complete degree.

Ukraine is Europe’s poorest nation with $220 average monthly wage

Scene from Post-Maidan Kiev. [Source: rt.com]

The U.S. pressured the successive Kyiv regimes to cut all of the old lucrative business contracts with Russia and gradually shut down the Soviet-built factories, making Ukraine a debt slave of the IMF—now a permanent status.

See the link below to details on the Ukraine since 2014 that you are being denied by a U.S.-controlled Western press that systematically pushes an anti-Russia narrative with the ultimate aim of weakening Russia economically and politically in hopes of seeing it disintegrate to the level of the 1990s.

Censored details of Ukraine history since Feb 2014:

Now, should you be surprised that the U.S. Establishment would deceive you to this degree?

Yes and no.

A person with the skill and ambition to fight their way out of the government-imposed ignorance to which the West is subjected could, with a herculean effort of will, dig up all the information necessary to gain an objective overview of the numerous ways the U.S. Establishment has deceived its citizens time and time again since the 1800s for the purpose of wresting illicit gain from foreign countries and even from citizens of the U.S., and for the purpose of excusing inexcusable wars and sanctions on people who are absolutely not the enemies of the American people.

But if you don’t feel up to a Herculean effort of will, here is a rather complete catalog of deceptions in the msm that led to war or other disasters.

2—I have a sneaking suspicion that the Kyiv puppet regime has literally no control over the radical nationalists and Neo-Nazi militias that Kyiv has now foolishly integrated into its military.

Nazi symbol on Ukrainian soldier’s helmet [Source: nbcnews.com]

While it is clear that Biden wants war in Ukraine so bad he can taste it, though it is not in the interests of Kyiv to escalate the Ukrainian attacks on civilians.

Yet there is no let up. The attacks are escalating, even in the face of a potential major retaliatory offensive by Russia.

I had read at one time that the Ukrainian central government, if it can be called that, has no control over the radical elements and that the war has a mind of its own.

If that is the case, then of course we are going to witness this kind of insanity and at some point, Putin will give the order and put an end to it.

Putin signing decree recognizing Luhansk and Donetsk on Monday [Source: consortiumnews.com]

Of course, at the same time, this escalation is to the Biden regime’s benefit, so we have two possibilities:

1—The puppeteers in Washington are behind this escalation, which provides a distraction from the abysmal performance of this White House and all the irremediable problems with the economy and the rampant fuel prices, and

2—the crazy Neo-Nazis are acting on their own.

Or both.

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So what will be the consequences of the sanctions that the U.S. is imposing?

Well, we can safely predict that gas prices will go through the roof now that brain dead Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced he was suspending the certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Dmitry Mdvedev, Deputy Chair of the Russian Security Council, tweeted:

“German Chancellor Olaf Scholz ordered to halt the certification of the Nord Stream 2. Well, welcome to the new world where Europeans will soon pay 2,000 euros per thousand cubic meters of gas.”

And for those who are awaiting the glorious day when “green” and “clean” energy makes Russian gas superfluous, here is a little cold water for you:

It turns out that green energy without nuclear (which Germany renounced years ago) simply cannot replace fossil fuel. It’s too expensive. And so what do the incompetents in Europe do about that?

They set themselves up for economic Armageddon.

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Don Hank is a professional translator and Russian speaker living now in Panama who studied Russian language and literature at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania and studied at Leningrad University in the early 1970s. Don can be reached at [email protected].

Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). Jeremy can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image: Russian intelligence agency video of what it says is a Ukrainian tank after being hit on Russian territory Monday. The location would indicate that Ukraine invaded Russia first and not vice versa. [Source: consortiumnews.com]


Articles by: Don Hank and Jeremy Kuzmarov

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