There is a lot of disinformation floating around about Russia’s threats to Ukraine and Putin false-flag operations. So much so that even American claims about Russia having a list of Ukrainians “to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation” brings evokes memories of Dick Cheney feeding disinformation to the press to build a case for the U.S. invading Iraq.
The difference, Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel.net) told The Nicole Sandler Show on Monday, is the Bush II administration was trying to justify invading Iraq. The Biden administration is leaking intelligence to prevent an invasion of Ukraine. The press should demand evidence for Biden’s claims [timestamp 30:00], of course. But the audience for them is not the U.S. or Europe, but Putin himself.
There are sufficient public sources and commercial satellite data to corroborate the intelligence Biden has not released.
“What Biden is trying to do [timestamp 33:30] is he is trying to undercut the ability of a false-flag operation to actually work…. Some of these stories are the same stories [Putin] used with Georgia in 2008 and with Ukraine in 2014…. And Biden is just trying to [make sure] it’s harder to create any confusion about what’s going on here.” And to make it easier to impose sanctions Germany and France can join.
It is a lengthy conversation covering Donald Trump’s legal woes, John Durham’s sham investigation, and how all of it ties back to Russian influence with Trump and his cronies. Worth your time. If nothing else, for Wheeler’s hour-long disquisition on complex topics without notes. “She knows her shit!” Sandler tweeted last night.
Last night, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the United Nations Security Council just what the U.S. thinks of Putin’s surreal claims about his recognition of Ukraine provinces as independent states. He signed security agreements with them on Monday to justify advancing troops to their borders with Ukraine. It’s not as if Putin is invading anew. Russian forces (sans uniforms) and proxies have controlled these regions since 2014.
“He calls them peacekeepers,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “This is nonsense. We know what they really are.”
Putin wants his Russian Empire back, she continued (emphasis mine):
And then, President Putin asserted that Russia today has a rightful claim to all territories – all territories – from the Russian Empire; the same Russian Empire from before the Soviet Union, from over 100 years ago. That includes all of Ukraine. It includes Finland. It includes Belarus and Georgia and Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. It includes parts of Poland and Turkey. In essence, Putin wants the world to travel back in time. To a time before the United Nations. To a time when empires ruled the world. But the rest of the world has moved forward. It is not 1919. It is 2022. The United Nations was founded on the principle of decolonization, not recolonization. And we believe the vast majority of UN Member States and the UN Security Council are committed to moving forward – not going back in time.
“Colleagues, President Putin is testing our international system, he is testing our resolve and seeing just how far he can push us all,” Thomas-Greenfield reminded the council.
For a more succinct explanation of where Putin stands and how he/we got here, Chris Murphy explains.
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