Fast Forward to the year 2014, it was in mid-January 2014 that I returned to Switzerland from Saint Petersburg, where I had spent Christmas and New Year with Friends. This was the eve of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and the beginning of a smear campaign against Russia using the so called “Sochi-Memes” and “Sochi-Fail.” Having had quite a substantial experience with Russia and Russians, I knew that most of this allegation of those “failings” were fabricated and/or simply exaggerated. I instinctively jumped into the discussions on different readers forums of Swiss and German Newspapers and defended Sochi and Russia against these false allegations both by journalists and readers. At some point, I figured out that there was a huge debate happening on Twitter, and so I reactivated my old — virtually unused Twitter account, which barely had two dozen followers. It was now I began engaging via tweets too, and debating and fending off smears and lies surrounding the Sochi Olympics under the Hashtag #SochiFails. At this point, the whole online “battle” was a bit sportive and revolved around instances like the “Toilet-Compartments with two toilet seats.” “Stray Dogs in the Media Center,” “Missing Light Bulbs” and similar not-so serious problems of humanity. All in all, in retrospect, it was a funny short period where people banged on each other’s heads with jokes and counter-jokes, fought a Meme with a Meme and a saucy insult with a digital middle finger. And then came the Maidan.
I experienced the outbreak and escalation of the Maidan mostly by sitting at my desk in my Zurich office and watching live streams from the Square on side monitors, while I worked. 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 “uprising” grew by the day — and especially when the first western politicians began parading on the square unleashing their usual bullshit phrases about “western values”, “freedom and democracy” and preaching “human rights”. Everybody who has observed the geopolitical events in the last 25, 30 years with open eyes knows that those hollow words are code-speak that often trigger terrible bloodshed in one way or the other. After all, who among us can forget the “humanitarian bombing” of Yugoslavia, the “liberation of Iraq” from a “brutal dictator” and the eternal happiness, freedom, and prosperity that subsequently came upon the Iraqi population? And of course, the pinnacle success of nation building in Libya after imposing a “no fly zone” over that country, which magically turned into an “only NATO fly zone,” is a lesson in exported democracy for all. The coup that was to ensure “fundamental human rights” for the Libyan people — was burned into history just as Gaddafi got sodomized to death in front of running cameras. But what alarmed me most on the Maidan was the fact the coverage of events in the western mainstream media never corresponded with what I was watching on various Live-Streams or what I was reading on myriad independent forums and blogs from Ukraine and Russia. It was here it dawned in me that this was the perfect moment to stage a mass deception of the western audience over the events in Ukraine (or rather in Kiew) by those in control of the Western mainstream media. Simply by using the advantage of the language barrier, most people in the west would be unable to consult primary sources or to get first-hand reports. So, people in North America and Europe proper could only rely on what their media was reporting. In this way, the media in cahoots with the forces behind Maidan for their “truth” on the matter. As it happened, westerners were never informed about grassroots resistance to the Maidan uprisings, so viewers thought “the whole of Ukraine” was in rebellion. (Thus, the often-used phrase: “The people of Ukraine made their choice”…). In this way, the language gap was to become the wide-open backdoor that allowed the contravening forces in the west to spin and disseminate the desired narrative and to spread it almost uncontradicted to westerners. Enter the strength of blogging desperados.
When the Maidan reached its climax in February 2014 the western propaganda gates were flung wide open, and the cooperate, and government media from the west flooded the airwaves with half-truths, distortions and straight out lies. A sticky spider’s web of false narratives was spun out over the brains of the public in the west: Crimea was “invaded,” “Terrorists occupied” the Donbas, and the Attack of the Ukrainian Army on its own population was rebranded as an “anti-Terror Operation.” Scores of Videos emerged from down on the ground, stories of atrocities (The Korsun Massacre) and crimes against the population of Donbass were reported in Russian and Ukrainian blogs too — and everything was well documented in words, pictures and videos — but all this was conveniently ignored by western MSM or decried as “Russian Propaganda” one. This was the moment when I decided to get involved and to do something. As a media producer myself, I figured out the best way I could serve the truth would be to engage in confronting the media and in breaking the silence. In short, I decided to do what I can do best, to propagate the other side of the story. Together with Gleb Bazov and 3 other social media activists, I created a blog named slavyangrad.org where we would engage in translating blog entries and videos from the battle zones provided by the Russian and Ukrainian side into English, Spanish, and German. Though we were a small voice in a vast sea of worldwide media messages, we did serve as one small force of resistance against the unified wall of silence and lies that was set up by the established Western media.
Enthusiasm was great at the beginning, none of us got paid, and most of us invested all their free time in this venture. We created blogs, YouTube channels, we created Skype Chat Groups where we exchanged information and coordinated translation, and we engaged in readers forums and comment sections to post our resources and fight against the general propagated narrative spread by the corporate media. As the western narrative more and more became a tool in the hands of the globalists and NATO, we were shocked to discover we were one of the only sources to have created a space where the other side of the events could be published and distributed. People like KAZZURA who translated and subtitled scores of videos from the battle fields in Donbas emerged out of nothing. Collectives like VOX POPULI EVO or SOUTHFRONT, DONI News, individuals like Graham Phillips and others who reported directly from the ground led the truth narrative from Donbass. For whatever reason and motivation all these people and collectives engaged in what they were doing — they were doing because they wanted to give those in the Donbass a voice, and the right to be heard — a right that was taken away from them by the forces of evil who have taken over the corporate media under their control and turned it into a tool of mass deception. We all knew we are on the right side of history. We all knew we were doing the right thing. I will look back to this time of my life as the time of awakening from lifelong slumber where I allowed the corporate media and established normalcy to delude me with their lies. It was the time when I liberated myself from being fed the news, and the time I learned how to search for the truth. This was the radicalizing effect of the #OdessaMassacre.
Once again, the now familiar thread of sincere indignation as the cause of activism is evident. Marcel Sardo, like other pro-Russian voices mentioned so far, entered the political fray because of the imbalance and the untruths. All throughout my experiences in the ranks of alleged Kremlin puppets, I’ve found this thread of incredulity and reflexive resistance to the injustices heaped upon the Russians. Right or wrong, the clear bias in reporting news from Ukraine served the Russian cause better than any state-owned media or diplomat.