One notable operative in all this, a lady named Nataliya Zubar had been instrumental in organizing the so-called “kill list” and an organization in Kharkov known as the Ukrainian Peacekeeping School, which was in turn funded by the British Embassy in Ukraine. We tracked Zubar down as the person who was, in fact, the technical director at Webby International Webhosting Inc. which had built and hosted the Peacemaker website. It’s interesting to note that as recently as October 2016, Zubar is still involved in countering so-called Russian media aggression at this same agency. According to an article on Zubar’s Maidan Monitoring Information Center (MMIC) has published in English recommendations for reform of Ukraine’s international information and communication security, with the purpose of counter-propaganda against Russia. Maidan.org is essentially a tool of the Poroshenko regime in much the same way Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty is a CIA and State Department arm of the US government.
Before I continue with the vital role Russia Insider played in countering US State Department messages, it is important to note how MMIC was and is still supported. A recent article by Alex Christoforou at The Duran, and republished at Zero Hedge details how George Soros was essentially in control of Ukraine via NGO vehicles like the International Renaissance Foundation.[13] IRF is one of the listed support mechanisms for MMIC,[14] which is in turn funded by a cadre of NGOs linked to; the Foreign and Common Wealth Office, U.K., the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and which can be easily connected to endeavors by British Petroleum (BP), Statoil, and other energy players.[15]
The Ukraine-Euromaidan side of these media was manned by a vast and well-funded array of anti-Russia operators, countered on the Russian side by loosely organized and largely unfunded zealots. While RT and other Russian media vied for air time against the trillion-dollar western media behemoth, a few dozen so-called “Putin fans” interrupted the Euromaidan’s revolutionary message. As the story continues, the reader will become better acquainted with the actors in this geopolitical drama. As a final note here, the role of the people and institutions mentioned in this “Peacekeeper” intrigue should be investigated by the appropriate tribunal, especially given the assassinations of Oles Buzina,[16] and Donbass commanders Arseny Pavlov (callsign Motorola) and Mikhail Tolstykh (callsign Givi). For now, though, we need to return to Bausman’s countermanding news outlet.
The role of Russia Insider as “Kremlin Troll Central,” if you will, cannot be understated here. Within a few days of my “Peacekeeper” revelation, the Euromaidan agents began labeling me and a big swatch of independent voices with this derogatory name tag. From January to December of 2015 a Russophobe named Andrew Aaron Weisburd (@webradius) created a website dedicated to “Kremlin Trolls,” which put me in the category, “entities with little or no deniability about relationships with the Russian Federation.”
In other words, the people behind Euromaidan considered me, New Eastern Outlook, Graham Phillips, RT’s Irish journalist Bryan McDonald and a few others number one enemies of the anti-Russia movement in Kiev. They even created an elaborate chart showing the loose connectivity in between alternative media, journalists, and embassies, etc.
For those of us identified on this chart and in diatribes at KremlinTrolls.com, being so named became a badge of honor. I’ll never forget my fellow social media expert Marcel Sardo saying how exasperated he was when he learned that he was only classified as a “Basic Kremlin Troll” instead of as one of us “Putin Praetorians”. In fairness to Sardo, the social media guru became one of the most vehement voices of dissent beginning, as I did, about the time of the Sochi Olympics. On his part, once again we find a common thread running through the pro-Russia activists. This quote from Sardo’s contribution for this book is telling:
“Since I was familiar with the historical and socioeconomic ties Ukraine and Russia had since hundreds of years my concern about the consequences of this “uprise” grew by the day — especially when the first western politicians began parading on the Maidan unleashing their usual bullshit phrases about “western values”, “freedom and democracy” “human rights”. Everybody who observed the geopolitical events in the last 25, 30 years with open eyes and a waking mind knew that those hollow words are code-speak that will trigger a tragic bloodshed in one way or the other.”
Sardo will reveal more in his Kremlin Troll autobiography presently, but it’s important for the reader to understand how the Euromaidan media and its megalithic western mainstream media support came into confrontation with an at first loosely knit group of Russia defenders. Sardo, like many of us, was “activated” by the unreal and often ludicrous messaging and imagery of the Kiev propagandists, and by the extremism of the Nazi Banderist thugs that were the shock troops of the illegitimate new Ukraine regime.
The separatists’ plight in the east of Ukraine, the Odessa Massacre, the shelling of innocent civilians in the Donbass, and the one-sidedness of the western media galvanized natural opposition. My perspective on this polarization now reveals the breadth and diversity of the “troll army” Putin was supposed to have deployed. On the one hand, independent media and volunteer communities sprung up, and on the other end of the spectrum individuals in business and from the private sector took up the gauntlet.
Sardo, who has been featured in Swiss media as “Putin’s media sniper,” was born in Grenchen in the Canton of Solothurn, Switzerland. The son of Italian parents, this prominent pro-Russian evangelist is in business as a media producer creating various products for the film, television, internet and mobile telephony sectors. The following is his exclusive contribution to this volume you are reading.
Why I Stand with Russia
by Marcel Sardo
I’ve been asked many times how I became part of the current information war, and why I stand with Russia. Here’s part of my story.
I began visiting Russia regularly in 2006 at a time where the country still was recovering from the catastrophic 90’s under then President Boris Yeltsin. Over the course, I observed carefully the first days of a new President named Vladimir Putin and took note of a certain progressiveness where Moscow was concerned. Just four years into the Putin presidency, the Russian capital I often visited was in some aspect still a post-Soviet city, with lots of gray and dusty areas and remnants of the decay that beset the USSR.
Then in the following 11 years of my frequent visits, I could see the transformation of the country for the better. I experienced firsthand how public infrastructure improved, how people made it into a modest middle-class standard of living, and how the country steadily opened to become a Russian version of the west. I saw Russia adopting cultural items from the west, while at the same time converting them to fit into a Soviet shaped environment. One good example from my own industry was the Russian Music TV Channel RU.TV. On this channel, viewers could find 24 hours of music videos from all sorts of styles and genres invented in the west including Rock, R&B, Hip-Hop, Dance and Eurodance, Jazz, and more. Interestingly and appropriately, you will never encounter one music video in English on this channel. The whole 24 hours of broadcasts consist of Russian artists singing in the Russian language — but using western music genres. This self-awareness of the Russians and Russian society, along with various other personal experiences made me fall in love with the country. It was these experiences that led me to become a true friend of Russia and of the Russians.
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