Thierry Meyssan
Voltairenet.org
Tue, 07 Jun 2022 00:00 UTC

The war in Ukraine is only taking place because of the ignorance of the Westerners of what was happening in Ukraine and because of a series of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. The Westerners, focused on themselves, unable to think like their interlocutors, kept making mistakes. Finally, when the military operations end and the Russians have achieved their publicly stated objectives from day one, they can even persuade themselves that they have won. In the end, the only thing that matters to the West is not saving human lives, but having the conviction that they are on the right side of history.

The war in Ukraine is interpreted very differently depending on whether one is Western or Russian. Each person’s previous experience conditions their interpretation of words and events. In fact, no one reacts to the same things and seeks the same information as the others. In the end, the two camps no longer have the same perception of reality. This succession of misunderstandings and misconceptions leads to a misunderstanding that can unintentionally lead to major conflict.

THE BANDERISTS

The two sides, who fought side-by-side against Nazism, had completely different experiences during this period and therefore have different memories of it.

The Russian press does not distinguish between Banderists and Nazis. It is a question of awakening the memory of the “Great Patriotic War” (known in the West as “World War II”). When Germany attacked Russia in June 1941, the latter was not at all ready. The shock was disastrous. Stalin only managed to unite his people by allying himself with the Orthodox Church, which he had previously fought, and by freeing his political opponents who had been sentenced to the Gulag. To evoke this period today is to commit oneself to recognizing the place of each person as long as he defends the Nation.

The Russians perceive the contemporary Banderists/Nazis as existential dangers to their people. In doing so, they are right because Ukrainian nationalists consider that they are “born to eradicate Muscovites”.

Therefore, all Western attacks on the person of Vladimir Putin are out of place and ineffective. For Russian opponents, this is no longer the issue. Whether they like him or not, Putin is their leader, just as Stalin was from June 1941.

The Western press also equated the Banderists with the Nazis, but this was to put its importance more easily into perspective. In the memory of the people of Western Europe, Nazism threatened only minorities. First the mentally ill, the terminally ill and the old, then the Jews and the gypsies were separated from the pack and disappeared. On the contrary, the Slavs remember armies advancing, razing one-by-one all the villages they took. No one could survive. Not only is Nazism less frightening to Western Europeans, but the Anglo-Saxons are quietly suppressing symbols that might revive this memory. For example, British communications advisers changed the Azov regiment’s crest at the end of May. They replaced the wolf’s hook (Wolfsangel) associated with the SS Das Reich division with three trident swords evoking the Ukrainian National Republic (1917-20). In doing so, they removed a Nazi insignia and replaced it with an anti-Bolshevik insignia. In the Western European imagination, however, the Soviet Union is equated with Russia, ignoring the fact that the majority of Soviet leaders were not Russian.

British communication advisors assure that the Ukrainian Banderists/Nazis are comparable to the present-day Western Nazis: fringe groups of rabid people. They do not deny their existence, but suggest that they are not important. So they make disappear both the traces of their parliamentary and governmental activity since independence in 1991 and the images of the monuments to them that have since then been erected all over the country.

From 1991 to 2014, the world’s newspapers ignored the slow reformation of the Banderists in Ukraine. However, in February 2014, during the overthrow of elected president Viktor Yanukovych, all journalists covering the “Revolution of Dignity” were struck by the central role of far-right militias in the protests. The world’s media reported on these strange “nationalists” with swastikas. But the Western press abruptly stopped investigating a month later when Crimea, refusing to allow these extremists to take power, declared its independence. To continue to report on the drift of Ukraine would have been to give reason to the Russian Federation which had accepted its attachment. From then on and for 8 years, no Western media investigated, for example, the accusations of kidnapping and torture on a large scale that were spread throughout the country. Because they deliberately ignored the Banderists during this period, they are no longer able to assess their political and military role today.

This blindness continues with the evolution of Ukrainian power during the war. The Western press ignores everything about the dictatorship that was put in place: confiscation by the state of all media, arrest of opposition figures, confiscation of property of people who mention the historical crimes of the Banderists and the Nazis, etc. On the contrary, the Russian press does not miss anything of this sudden development and is mourning for having closed its eyes for years.

For our part, we have written – belatedly – the history of the Banderists; a subject to which no book has been devoted, a sign that Ukraine from this angle did not fascinate anyone. Our work, translated into a dozen languages, has finally touched many Western military officials and diplomats. They are now putting pressure on their governments to stop supporting these enemies of humanity.

THE CREDIBILITY OF WESTERN AND RUSSIAN LEADERS

There are two ways to assess the credibility of a leader: one looks at his good intentions or his record. Western Europeans, who have placed themselves under the protection of the United States, are convinced that they are no longer making history, but rather undergoing it. They therefore no longer need political leaders as they did in the last century. In fact, they only elect managers who present themselves as having good intentions. On the contrary, the Russians, after the collapse of their country during the Yeltsin years, wanted to restore their independence and finally cut with the US liberalism they had believed in for a decade. To do this, they elected and re-elected Vladimir Putin, whose effectiveness they are checking. Their country has opened up to foreigners while becoming self-sufficient in many areas, including food. They interpret NATO sanctions not as punishment, but, given that the Atlantic Alliance represents only 12 per cent of the world’s population, as a closure of the West to the rest of the world.

Regardless of political regimes, civilian leaders who seek to unite their people as widely as possible refrain from lying to maintain the confidence of their fellow citizens, while those who serve a minority to exploit the majority are obliged to lie in order not to be overthrown. On the other hand, military leaders, if they tend to take their dreams for realities, and therefore to lie, in times of peace, are obliged to stick as close as possible to realities in times of war in order to win.

Westerners are marked by a very strong trauma experienced during the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the appearance of the US Secretary of State, General Colin Powell, before the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003. They shook their heads during the New York attacks, seeing people jumping out of windows and then towers collapsing, before realizing that the explanations they were being given did not hold water. A mistrust was created between them and the leaders who pretended to believe in this nonsense [1]. Then they believed what a general told them because a military man could not lie about a very serious security threat. Finally, they became depressed when they realized that all this staging was only an excuse to overthrow a government that was resisting the US and to seize the oil and financial wealth of its country. General Powell’s speech [2] was written by civilian politicians, the Straussians of the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), as he shamefully admitted later. This misplaced trust cost the lives of more than a million people [3]. Since 2003, Westerners no longer trust the word of their leaders; a phenomenon that is somewhat less pronounced in France, which was the only country to publicly contradict General Powell.

On the contrary, the Russians make a distinction between those of their leaders who speak the same language as the others and those who defend the collective interest. In the 2000s, they initially believed in the Western discourse and hoped that they too would experience freedom and prosperity. But they experienced a terrible collapse while watching a few thugs take over their collective wealth. They then turned to safe values: fellow citizens concerned with the general interest and trained by the KGB. They live today hoping to be delivered from what remains of this period of misguidance: oligarchs installed abroad and a certain globalist bourgeoisie in Moscow and St. Petersburg. They see the former as thieves and are happy that their assets, already lost to the country, are being seized by Westerners. As for the latter, they know that they do not exist only in their country, but everywhere in the globalized world. They see some of them leaving without regret. For the Russians, President Putin and his team have managed to solve the food problem and put them back to work. They have restored their army and are protecting them from the resurgence of Nazism. Of course, everything is not rosy, but it is much better since they are in charge.

Read the whole article and be educated!
https://www.sott.net/article/468590-Ukraine-Misunderstandings-and-misunderstandings