NOTE: The US does not possess any new information that would suggest a missile that killed two people in Poland on Tuesday could be anything other than a Ukrainian one, the National Security Council’s spokesperson, Adrienne Watson, said in a statement on Wednesday. Washington remains convinced that Russia is to blame, she added.
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Nebenzia noted that Western coverage of the situation is typified by “a huge number of ‘fakes’ about the activities of the [Russian] military, as well as about the goals, objectives and motives” of its campaign in Ukraine.
Whole world suffers from Western propaganda – Russia
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"Speaking at a presentation at the UN of the RT documentary ‘Journalists Under Fire,’ the top diplomat spoke of the massive media pressure on his country, especially since the Ukraine conflict escalated in February.
Nebenzia noted that Western coverage of the situation is typified by “a huge number of ‘fakes’ about the activities of the [Russian] military, as well as about the goals, objectives and motives” of its campaign in Ukraine.
“It’s no secret that the West has launched a real information war against us, which affects not only the residents of Russia and Ukraine but also people around the world,” he reiterated.
He went on to compare Western media coverage with actual Ukrainian bombings of civilian infrastructure. “Just as Western weapons are now targeting cities in the Donbass and the liberated territories, Western propaganda is firing ‘information shells’ at its own citizens,” he claimed.
According to Nebenzia, the media onslaught is harmful to ordinary people, who “are losing touch with reality, become distressed and confused” when being overwhelmed with an endless barrage of falsehoods. They also lose the ability to think critically, he claimed.
After Russia launched its military operation against Ukraine, Western countries unleashed an unprecedented crackdown on Russian media abroad, with the European Union banning RT and Sputnik channels. Moscow has repeatedly criticized the move, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claiming that it has shown the world the true worth of so-called Western values."
US says Russia ‘ultimately responsible’ for Poland missile incident
The US does not possess any new information that would suggest a missile that killed two people in Poland on Tuesday could be anything other than a Ukrainian one, the National Security Council’s spokesperson, Adrienne Watson, said in a statement on Wednesday. Washington remains convinced that Russia is to blame, she added.
"We have seen nothing that contradicts President [Andrzej] Duda’s preliminary assessment that this explosion was most likely the result of a Ukrainian air defense missile that unfortunately landed in Poland," Watson said, adding that the US would not carry out its own investigation of the incident and would rely on the results of the ongoing Polish probe.
Washington is "in close touch" with both Warsaw and Kiev and has "full confidence" in the Polish investigative efforts, the spokeswoman said, vowing to provide new information on the incident "as it becomes available."
Despite agreeing with Duda’s conclusion that the missile was most likely a Ukrainian one, the White House still believes it is Moscow and not Kiev that should bear the "ultimate" blame for the incident, regardless of the probe results.
"It is clear that the party ultimately responsible for this tragic incident is Russia, which launched a barrage of missiles on Ukraine specifically intended to target civilian infrastructure," the statement read, adding that Ukraine has "every right to defend itself."
On Tuesday, Russia launched a large-scale missile attack on Ukraine. At the time, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said that 85 missiles had struck Ukrainian territory, while Energy Minister German Galushchenko called it the "most massive shelling" of the nation’s energy system.
Late on Tuesday, Polish media reported on a blast that hit a grain dryer in Poland not far from the Ukrainian border, killing two people. The blast was then blamed on a "stray missile" strike. Kiev then immediately rushed to accuse Russia of being behind the incident and called on NATO to retaliate. The Russian Defense Ministry denied any responsibility. Poland and the US took a more reserved stance at that time, as they avoided pointing fingers at any side.
On Wednesday, Ukraine admitted firing an air defense missile near the Polish border in an attempt to intercept a Russian projectile, according to CNN.
"Who is winning the war in Ukraine depends on who is doing the talking.
Predictably, Russia says that it is winning as planned, while the United States says Ukraine is pulling a surprise win, thanks to its steadfast resistance and Western support.
On the face of it, authoritarian Russia cannot be trusted with the facts, let alone the truth about the war, while the liberal West inspires greater credibility as it allows for a free and independent inquiry. But in reality, as Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu said, “all warfare is based on deception”. Neither side could or should be trusted to reduce the fog of war, because both are fully engaged in psychological warfare, which is key to winning the overall war in Ukraine.
In fact, both sides are propagating their own selective facts and myths, while censoring counterclaims, as each needs to maintain an appearance of progress in order to justify big sacrifices in blood or treasure. And both sides need to up the ante in order to harden public resolve behind their goals, which thus far have excluded any serious effort towards a diplomatic solution.
Russia hopes to degrade the morale of the Ukrainian resistance and deflate European support for a war that cannot be won, while the US wants to shore up Ukrainian and European enthusiasm for a winnable war, even if privately, US officials doubt Ukraine could recover all its occupied territories.
✓ While the Russian media has little or no choice but to parrot the official line, Western media has a choice but chooses to trust NATO and Pentagon briefs and reports, regardless of their intentions. Take for example the declaration of an anonymous (why anonymous?) senior Pentagon official that: “Russia has committed nearly 85 percent of its military to the war in Ukraine” and “has removed military coverage from other areas on their border and around the world”; Russia “still has not figured out how to use combined arms effectively”; Russia is “taking hundreds of casualties a day”. Among Russia’s military fatalities have been “thousands” of lieutenants and captains, “hundreds” of colonels, and “many” generals.
Now I have no clue if any of this or other such claims are true, and nor I suspect do the officials propagating it or the journalists spreading it. But it is out there, shaping the opinions of the public, the elites and the experts, most of who believe Ukraine is able to pull off some sort of an upset if not an outright victory against its largely more powerful neighbour. But the Western and especially Anglo-American media seems to suffer from short, or should I say selective memory when it takes the official line at face value, as if the official deception during yesterday’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq or Vietnam, has no bearing on covering today’s war in Ukraine.
In 2019, the Washington Post newspaper revealed that senior US officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable. In other words, they lied. But media outlets, think-tanks and influential pundits continued to rely on these “officials”; even after it was revealed that they have also lied about another war – the Iraq war, which was also fought on false pretence and fabricated evidence.
Official deception was even worse during the Cold War. For example, the “Pentagon Papers” published about half a century ago revealed that the US government was guilty of an enormous cover-up regarding the terrible losses in the Vietnam war, which led to some 55,000 American and more than a million Vietnamese deaths. Any expectation that US media and the public’s trust in the government’s take on wars was “forever diminished”, turned out to be premature, as official lies about the “dirty wars” in Asia and Central America continued to be widely reported as facts.
Even today, as US Special Operation Command covertly deploys special forces across Africa to fight “shadow wars”, it blatantly preaches “free and transparent press”. One does not know whether to laugh or cry."
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