“Russia never lost the Cold War… because it never ended.”
The Sochi media debacle usurped my time so much that it took a few days for me to catch up with the events surrounding Euromaidan in Ukraine. “In shock” is the best way for me to describe my reaction to Ukrainians killing their own countrymen. The Kiev spectacle was surreal, highlighted by US officials like Senator John McCain looking on from hotel rooms like luxury sky boxes at a Super Bowl game. If the 2014 Winter Olympics displayed creepy poor sportsmanship, the carnage on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (“Independence Square”) was societal destruction. The mix of graphic violence, the strange blend of celebrity with politics, and the western media bias were unbelievable. When I revisited the scene later to conduct research for this book, the moment still seems surreal.
Before the 2014 Ukraine revolution, I had sworn off political writing for good. I was determined to let my degree in political science collect dust because of the seeming hopelessness of world politics. The endless philosophizing that political scientists seem to thrive on seemed futile then, and it still does now. The political systems of the past two millennia represent for me humanity’s most flawed endeavors, redeemed only by the fact that we have been unable to come up with any better solutions.
However, the Ukraine coup d’état represented a dire wound to the flesh of the “Rus”. The sociopolitical damage we saw taking place had catastrophic implications. I recall having just written a travel piece about Ukraine, and I thought of colleagues from Ukraine and Russia whose families were caught up in the cruelty of the violent revolution there. To remain neutral in the wake of those terrible events, given my understanding of geopolitics, would have been cowardice.
At the moment of regime change in Ukraine, I had no media outlet or collaboration with which to share my opinions. At the time, my partner and I were in negotiations for selling our most influential media property Everything PR News. So, no matter what my research or opinions might be worth, there simply were all too few portals to write for. Nonetheless, on February 26, I decided to address this revolution via one of the most influential social media outlets of the time, Social Media Today.[1] In my report, I attempted to raise public awareness to both sides of the arguments. I recall now that President Obama called for “calm”, while of course US agents in Ukraine financing the foreign fascist elements and directing the coup only made matters worse. At the time of this posting I had not considered the possibility that pro-Russia narrative might cause my business any difficulty. Later, I would learn that Silicon Valley and the ecosystem the technocrats had created would shun any such prerogatives.
Throughout the spring of 2014, most of my own effort to report on the war in the Donbass and the overall geopolitical spectrum was via social media. My family and our travel news team were in Crete for the whole month of April and part of March, and the intensity of news out of Ukraine was felt less. Even after our crew returned to Germany, we felt a kind of helplessness over the awful killing in Ukraine. We were especially struck by the escalation of political tensions in the US, Britain and Europe towards Russia.
Added to this frustration was the fact that mainstream media I was writing for were not even looking for moderate news on Russia. Outlets like Huffington Post and Epoch Times were either mute or anti-Russia from the start. So, I continued along the contextual path via Everything PR News. In June, a piece entitled “On Ukraine: A People Caught In a New ‘Lebensraum’” got a good deal of syndication by independent media like World News Daily.
The republishing of my Everything PR News story following the election of Petro Poroshenko showed me there was grassroots opposition to the western narrative. My story said, “old hatreds, fears, and divisions have been awakened”, and that observation resonated. However, a quote from my Russian photographer friend from Sochi, Pasha Kovalenko, best characterized the injustice of Euromaidan:
“We are not part of Europe or America, yet we were taught that they are friends. This is why we always meet and greet these people, either here or on their land, with bread and smiles. Look how American culture has been adopted in our everyday life. We wear the jeans and sweatshirts, go to see the movies, and adore freedom like the Americans do. How can Russians now be cast as enemies?”
I cannot put enough stress on the fine character of this young Russian artist, and cadre of other unbelievable Russian youth who helped us tell about the real Sochi Olympics. Pasha is a good kid, a dedicated young talent with a beautiful family, who trusted an American, sight unseen. It is vital that the reader understands how true-blue most Russians we’ve come into contact with really are. While praising the Russian people is not what this book is all about, the motivations and reasoning behind pro-Russia activists from abroad do hinge on this. Pasha and his contemporary RIA photographer Nina Zotina exemplify all that is right with Vladimir Putin’s country.
Looking back on the report, it was one of the best analytical pieces I had written since college. It was at this point the pro-Kiev media started labeling me as a “Putin apologist” and later an “MH17 truther” because of my research and analysis of the MH17 provocation and tragedy. When MH17 was shot down, all hell broke loose in mainstream media in the west. Russia and Vladimir Putin were immediately blamed, and a new kind of war began in earnest.
In the interim between Sochi and MH17, the ghastly imagery of the Odessa Massacre angered and captivated many of us. Not having access to the so-called “free press” to speak out about Ukrainian Nazis murdering unarmed protesters by burning them alive, I turned once again to contextualizing the event on our Everything PR News. It was at this point that I became acquainted with people who would become the most influential faces of the Ukraine/Crimea crisis via social media.
The Everything PR story about Odessa was a reach and, collaborating with many of these voices as a way to express my own distaste for the Kiev supported slaughter, it became clear a kind of “brotherhood” of moderators came in to being. By reflecting each other’s research, views, and sometimes even ire, this budding community came to be in massive conflict with what was once called “traditional media.”
Reporters like Graham Phillips, with his gripping videos, Marcel Sardo on Twitter, and the authors and volunteers from media outlets like Russia Insider, The Vineyard of The Saker, and Dr. Michel Chossudovskys’ Global Research, all began to gravitate to the same spheres of conversation and information gathering. After a time, most of us who had been used to watching CNN or BBC started tuning to RT and shows like Peter Lavelle’s CrossTalk, Abby Martin’s Breaking the Set, and Anissa Naouai’s In the Now.
As the diversity of views at western media outlets narrowed, those of us with dissenting views coalesced naturally toward the more open and transparent information channels. Yes, RT is a Russian state-funded broadcast company, but compared with Germany’s ARD and other similar Western media, the Russian version of government TV was and is the voice of reason. A poignant anecdote here should suffice to show this.
Sometime in 2016 my colleague Holger Eekhof and I had a Skype call with RT news producer Maria Kvantrishvili about a news story Eekhof had uncovered. Maria, who was the producer the ever-popular RT show In the Now with my friend Anissa Naouai, was quizzing Eekhof and I about a Brussels parliament fiasco. Ever the smart and funny spirit, Maria is possessed of so many warm traits, one of the sweetest being a touch of what Americans would call “blondeness”, even though she has stunning dark hair. In a Skype exchange regarding a possible RTTV story we were pitching, we related to Maria how Brussels had created its own “Fake News”. The conversation revolved around the documentation EU parliamentarians were using to justify establishing an agency to counter alleged Russian anti-EU propaganda, which included only American and European sources for justification. After Eekhof and I suggested that the EU parliament was apparently operating just like CNN, Maria solemnly asked, “Don’t they double check their facts?”
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