Pro-Russia commentators are embracing white nationalist talking points to justify Russia’s war on Ukraine
After Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, displacing one million people and accelerating the climate change crisis further, right-wing pro-Russia commentators are absurdly justifying Russia’s war crimes.
Those Russian war crimes include but are not limited to: A cluster MLRS attack on a residential area in Kharkiv and the destruction of a school, a prominent TV and radio tower near a holocaust memorial site was hit by a rocket in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, the shelling of the Solnyshko Kindergarten in Okhtyrka, a bomb was dropped on Kharkiv’s Central square, troops dispersed a rally in Kupyansk with tear gas, and the bombardment of Chernihiv, Ukraine, today — likely an air strike — killing 33 people.
Jewish groups and institutions around the world denounced the airstrike in Kyiv, as the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center was in the area, where more than 33,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis over the course of two days.
Roma people and Soviet prisoners of war were also killed in mass shootings at the site throughout World War II.
Tuesday, The Times verified a video of two collapsed five-floor apartment buildings in the town of Borodyanka just northwest of Kyiv. Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister confirmed it was Russian airstrikes that devastated the buildings.
But before all of this, Aaron Maté justified Russia invading Ukraine after claiming Russia wouldn’t invade Ukraine.
On The Jimmy Dore Show, Maté argued that there’s “reasons” Russia invaded Ukraine: “Russia’s doing this on its borders, in a country where it has deep historical ties, and where there’s a whole people who speak Russian and identify with Russia.”
Maté talking about “a whole people who identify with Russia” is almost indistinguishable from white nationalists talking about how much they care about “white identity,” such as Jared Taylor, and Rebecca Hargraves.
From the Southern Poverty Law Center:
“But even target-wise, of course, Russia could kill many civilians, as we’re speaking right now, Russia has so far targeted military sites,” Maté claimed.
On March 1, the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu falsely claimed just like Maté: “Our army only hits military infrastructure with no civilians using high precision weapons.”
On February 25, RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan quoted Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s disinformation that the Russian military would not strike civilian residences in Kyiv.
“So far, as we’re speaking. When the US goes into Iraq, Libya, Syria, they’re not targeting military sites,” Maté said. “They’re destroying whole cities in Fallujah, in Raqqa, in Mosul, decimating them. Thankfully, we have not seen that inside Ukraine. Of course, there are some civilian casualties, some civilian buildings have been hit, but at least from how I understand it. And if I get this wrong, if I turn out to be wrong in the end I will totally apologize. But as of right now the main targets have been military.”
By March 1, Russia’s defense ministry had abandoned its claim that it’s not targeting civilian areas. Instead, saying it’s going to strike “psyops,” and communications targets in Kyiv, warning people living near them to leave their homes.
On February 22, pro-Assad Pedophile Groomer Richard Medhurst said that “Ukraine owes its existence to Russia,” and that “its DNA is Russian, fundamentally,” ridiculing the idea that Russia would invade: “They were saying there’s gonna be some huge invasion, and Putin is gonna mobilize 190,000 troops.”
Max Blumenthal told Dore in a video published on YouTube on February 24: “It’s so absurd when people say Putin is attacking an independent and sovereign Ukraine. It is a US neo-colony, that is all it is. That doesn’t in itself justify an attack, but let’s do away with this idea that Ukraine is somehow independent and we can talk about how peaceful it is. It’s far from that.”
The idea that Ukraine is a US neo-colony is a falsehood spread by the likes of War Room: Pandemic host and former Trump senior adviser Steve Bannon.
“Ukraine’s not even a country. It’s kind of a concept,” Bannon said. “It’s just a corrupt area that the Clintons turned into a colony where they can steal money out of.” (Vice, 2/25/22)
Bannon has said Kremlin-linked ideologue Alexander Dugin influenced him, in Dugin’s book “Foundations on Geopolitics,” published by white nationalist Arktos Media, Dugin writes: “Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning. It has no cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness.”
Dore and Blumenthal laughed hysterically at Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assuring that Canada will defend Ukrainian democracy, followed by Dore unleashing a homophobic slur on Senator Bernie Sanders.
On the same broadcast, Dore canceled the existence of the many ethnic groups in Ukraine, prioritizing Russians over them by proclaiming that “one in six Ukrainians is an ethnic Russian” just like how Moscow justified the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, which Dore glosses over, and the subsequent enforced disappearance of pro-Ukraine forces, including the Crimean Tatars.
Multiple media outlets have reported on Russia’s genocide of the Ukrainian people, and the Soviet Union’s genocide of the Crimean Tatars, which continued after Stalin’s death. Due to the Crimean Tatars’ support of Ukraine, they have slowly fled from their homeland to Ukraine or Turkey out of fear of reprisal from Russia, Middle East Eye reports.
Britannica: When Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, a policy of Russian in-migration and Ukrainian out-migration was in effect, and ethnic Ukrainians’ share of the population in Ukraine declined from 77 percent in 1959 to 73 percent in 1991. But that trend reversed after the country gained independence, and, by the turn of the 21st century, ethnic Ukrainians made up more than three-fourths of the population. Russians continue to be the largest minority, though they now constitute less than one-fifth of the population. The remainder of the population includes Belarusians, Moldovans, Bulgarians, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Roma (Gypsies), and other groups.
Middle East Eye: Man-made famines in the 1930s due to Soviet collectivisation efforts reduced the Crimean Tatar population, and in May 1944, immediately after reclaiming Crimea from Axis powers, Stalin accused the entire group of collaborating with Nazi Germany. As a result, he forced them into exile to Soviet Uzbekistan as a form of collective punishment. […] Even after Stalin’s death in 1953, tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars remained in Central Asia for decades after the deportations and a sizeable community still lives in Uzbekistan. […] A Ukrainian census in 2001 recorded just under a quarter of a million Crimean Tatars, almost all of whom lived in Crimea. Despite their long history on the peninsula, their numbers amounted to just 10 percent of the total population of the region.
Radio Free Europe: Some 13,000 people have been killed, a quarter of them civilians, and as many as 30,000 wounded in the war in eastern Ukraine since it broke out in April 2014, the United Nations says. […] OHCHR estimates the total number of conflict-related casualties in Ukraine…at 40,000–43,000" from April 14, 2014 to January 31, 2019, the statement said, including “12,800–13,000 killed.
Vice: The 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russian forces turned the region into a playground for war tourists, mercenaries, and far-right extremists from around the world. An estimated 15,000 foreign fighters flocked to that conflict between 2014 and 2019, 3,000 of them siding with Ukraine, versus around 12,000 who sided with the Russian-backed separatists, according to a report by the Soufan Center.
Article updated at 8:51 PM.
For transparency, I wrongly predicted that “Russia won’t invade Ukraine.”