A blog for sufferers of Ukraine Brain - where to begin?
Hello. Thanks for looking at my blog! I started it as a means to vent my own frustrations about the inconsistencies and outright falsehoods I see constantly in mainstream reporting on the Ukraine conflict, and I hope that it might help other people to see this reality for what it is. Getting over the huge stigma of talking about it objectively and honestly, is the first and biggest step.
This condition was never resolved, it just became part of a general psychic malaise. I went on to also suffer 'Pete Buttigieg Won the Iowa Democratic Primary Brain' and 'Jeremy Corbyn Allows Antisemitism in the Labour Party Brain'; both clear enough examples of all mainstream media agreeing to talk about something that had no basis in fact as if it were newsworthy, largely by reporting on their reporting of the topic, on the grounds that the media buzz surrounding it forced them to do so. The most recent, persistent and damaging mutation of this condition is 'Ukraine Brain', and it really is detrimental to one's physical and mental health, leaving one unable to focus or prioritise in the rest of one's day-to-day life. It's also detrimental to one's relationships, because sufferers and non-sufferers are bound to find themselves disagreeing almost immediately on what has happened and continues to happen in Ukraine, when it started, and who can be believed on any subject.
Ukraine Brain sufferers who have spent time finding out about the subject find it hard to explain any individual part to non-sufferers, because each part sounds so far-fetched in isolation, and there are so many of them. Murderous Neo-Nazis in Ukraine? Trained by the Canadian Army, the British Army and the CIA? Partially funded by a Jewish(!) media oligarch, one who also put the Jewish President in power and gave Hunter Biden a job at Burisma? They've been shelling civilians in the Donbass for the last 8 years (including dropping banned 'petal' mines on civilian areas), and certainly before February 24th this year? Ukraine has a hit-list website called Myrotvorets (meaning 'Peacemaker' and based in Langley, Virginia 🤔) listing people deemed enemies of the state, which includes Roger Waters (dared to speak critically of Ukraine), Elon Musk (floated the idea of stopping Ukraine using his Starlink satellites), many journalists and some children? Many of the people on this list have been killed, including Daria Dugina (daughter of philosopher Alexander Dugin) killed in a car bombing in August 2022? Western journalists who have dared to report from Donbass have been sanctioned and faced criminal charges in their home countries, and even been victims of at least one attempted assassination?
And our media chose not to tell us about it because they're part of it too? Yeah, right... Sounds like you need to take it easy on the old "wacky baccy" mate.
So if you're reading this, I have to warn you that there are some assumptions I'm making as to your level of open-mindedness, and if you can't entertain the possibility that the following could be true, then you might well find the blog frustrating, maybe even offensive:
- Putin is not an evil warmongering madman. In western media, Putin has invaded Ukraine for no other reason than to restore his beloved USSR and to subjugate the Ukrainian people. No mention of the US/NATO training troops in Ukraine since at least 2015, in clear violation of Putin's demand that Ukraine not join NATO, which came after NATO had already expanded to Ukraine's western border in violation of the famous "not one inch east" promise of 1991. Putin's been in power since 2000 and he didn't occupy Afghanistan for 20 years or murder a million Iraqis. He is popular in Russia - but that assumes that you trust the validity of Russian democracy, which many people don't.
- It hasn't just been Russia fighting in the east, in fact it's been mostly the militias of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics (considered by Russia to be part of Russia since their referenda in September 2022) fighting on the ground and suffering casualties. These are what is referred to by the Russians as the 'Allied' forces; ironically Ukraine, which has attracted foreign fighters, weapons and funding, has to remain notionally independent to avoid directly involving any NATO countries in the conflict. The fact that NATO countries have been arming Ukraine and have 'military advisers' there doesn't count, but when Iran sells drones to Russia, it does.
- The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) and the various National Guard paramilitaries (the various 'nationalists' as Russia refers to them, some of whom proudly identify as Neo-Nazis and who answer to the Interior Ministry rather than the AFU) are constantly attacking their own people and blaming Russia, and our news reports whatever they say. Our media is getting all their information from the Ukrainian authorities, and no matter how many times their lies are exposed (the 13 brave defenders on Snake Island, the non-existent Ghost of Kiev, Russian soldiers raping babies) our media will never question them, or even remove a story after it's shown to be fabricated.
- Russia is not committing war crimes in Ukraine. The Mariupol drama theatre, Bucha, the attack on Kramatorsk train station, the intense shelling of Donetsk, the missile strike on Yelenovka prison, the shelling of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (supposedly by Russia, even though they were somehow also defending it); all of these clearly conducted by Ukrainian forces, probably under the guidance, if not at the direct instruction of, British and American forces. Allied (i.e. Russian) forces have no motivation to commit any of these atrocities, but Ukraine's leadership have a huge motivation to convince us that they do - that being the continued aid and support from the west, to combat 'Putin's barbaric aggression' in Ukraine. The US is currently paying upwards of $5B a month for Ukraine to continue to exist as a state, on the basis that it is under attack by Russia.
- A big chunk of the money Ukraine is supposedly receiving in aid, is actually going to arms manufacturers to pay for weapons that Ukraine will receive at some point in the future. CBS got in trouble for reporting that, of the arms that do get through, only 30% are going to the front line. Evidence suggests that cryptocurrency exchange FTX was laundering money through Ukraine, maybe for the US Democratic Party. The Ukraine war is a giant grift, but it can only continue while Ukraine keeps forcing tens of thousands of men to die in Donbass to perpetuate the fantasy that they can still win. 'Aid to Ukraine' comes with the condition that Ukraine cannot negotiate or surrender - Denis Kireev learnt that to his cost.
- Russia is not really fighting Ukraine - they are fighting NATO (i.e. the US), who are using Ukrainian forces as a proxy. The US has been preparing Ukraine for a confrontation with Russia and encouraging them for years, showing complete disregard for the Minsk Accords. Recently Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande - who were signatories to the Minsk Accords! - even admitted that they were intended to buy time for Ukraine to build up its armed forces, which Russian officials have stated should be grounds for an international military tribunal.
- Russia is conducting a humanitarian mission in Ukraine. When they liberate areas, they bring tons of food and medicine to the civilian population. They also know that when they leave a town they have controlled and it falls back under the control of Ukrainian forces, the civilian population is almost certain to suffer recriminations (see Bucha, Izyum, Kherson). They are not targeting civilians, but...
- The AFU and nationalist battalions have been routinely using the local population as a human shield, and garrison civilian buildings. Ukrainian soldiers are not afraid to share photos and videos of themselves frolicking in schools and kindergartens, but strangely none of this gets reported in the news. Instead, the news talks about Russia targeting schools and kindergartens. In Volnovakha (DPR), according to the manager of a hospital, Ukrainian forces occupied his hospital, kicked out the patients to make space for their own injured men, then when they were forced to leave, killed their injured men so they couldn't talk to the Allied forces. It seems that now, after 6 months of this kind of horror, Amnesty International may have noticed.
- The Western powers (US/EU/UK) believed that the
sanctions they have imposed on Russia since March, including
disconnecting Russian banks from SWIFT, would destroy its economy,
isolate the country and force Putin from power. Unfortunately they
didn't bank on Russia having prepared for this exact contingency, so not
only was the Russian ruble able to recover (it did drop in value from
75₽/$ to 150₽/$ in March 2022, but then went up to 60₽/$ or higher from May until October, and has since returned to ~70₽/$), Russia has shown that it can survive without exports to Europe just
fine, and countries like China and India have shown that they are more
than happy to buy commodities in currencies other than the dollar.
Thanks for getting this far. In case it wasn't apparent, I am not suggesting any of the following:
- That there is no fighting in Ukraine, or that the conflict is 'fake' in some way. There is a lot of fake or misrepresented content out there, though.
- That all, or even many, Ukrainians are 'Nazis'. However, there are definitely significant groups of Ukrainian nationalists who take pride in their country's fight against Russia during WW2. Some of them proudly sport Nazi iconography, such as swastika tattoos, SS stripes on helmets, and the Black Sun, also popular with mass shooters. Many foreign fighters ('mercenaries' in the Russian parlance) seem to be fully integrated into this culture of hatred for Russia and Russians, for their own dubious reasons. The 'Misanthropic Division' attracts a variety of people, with its nihilistic black-metal philosophy.
One particularly infuriating response I've had to talking about the conflict on Facebook, was the suggestion that I'm accusing the Ukrainians of "doing this to themselves" - the respondent even said that what I was saying amounted to suggesting that the Jews did the Holocaust to themselves. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to reply that actually, it's like saying that a lot of the Jews (and others) whom the Germans killed in the 1930s and 40s were themselves German. I guess he has never heard of such a thing as 'ethnic cleansing'.
To clarify: if being Ukrainian is defined by your country of residence and not the language you speak, then practically all of the victims of these 'Nazis' (who are themselves mostly Ukrainian) are Ukrainian, or they were before the 4 regions in the east voted to join Russia. Of course, the Ukrainian nationalists don't see Russian-speaking Ukrainians (who made up ~40% of the population before 2014) as Ukrainian, and those people may identify as Russian themselves, so for the nationalists they are Russians - which makes them de facto part of the occupying forces. And even 'real' Ukrainians can become legitimate targets if they are so much as accused of collaborating with the 'orcs'. Our media often seems to agree with them, or at the very least not question their reasoning.
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