Week in Review: Terror attack has NATO roots; Kiev's war on Christianity; U.S. reporter arrested as spy; Russian flag rises in Bakhmut
As an antidote to NATO disinformation, I'm highlighting four major news topics from the past few days, and sharing my insight, experience and analysis.
Terror attack against popular Russian journalist has NATO roots
Yesterday, a terrorist detonated a bomb in a crowded St. Petersburg cafe, killing war correspondent Maksim Fomin (aka Vladlen Tatarsky) and injuring 32 more. The terrorist who brought the bomb to the cafe was identified as 25-year old Darya Trepova. Moscow blames Ukraine’s secret services for the attack, but Kiev most likely acted with NATO assistance. (Everything that Kiev does is with NATO assistance).
Maksim Fomin was a Donbass native who knew very well about Kiev’s crimes over the past nine years. He joined the rebel Donbass army in 2014 to stop Kiev’s invasion. His outspoken and popular writings were a threat to NATO and Kiev. He was a devout Orthodox believer and understood the spiritual aspect to NATO’s war against Russia.
Terrorism is an integral tactic of NATO strategy. According to a June 2022 report in the New York Times, NATO trains Ukrainian sabotage and terrorist groups, and they’ve stepped up attacks in the new regions of south Russia, killing and maiming innocent civilians, such as in Melitopol. These frequent attacks rarely make headlines.
Finally, let’s not forget that NATO’s Ukrainian troops still use artillery attacks to terrorize civilians in the city of Donetsk and smaller towns, killing and maiming hundreds. NATO is an unabashed supporter of terrorism and its reckless eastward expansion is precisely why the Kremlin ‘invaded’ Ukraine a year ago.
This is the second high-profile killing of a Russian journalist by pro-NATO/Ukrainian militants. Daria Dugina was assassinated in August in Moscow with a car bomb. Why do they target journalists? To scare and silence people. A major part of NATO/ Ukrainian strategy over the past nine years has been to prevent the world from knowing the truth about the ethnic cleansing of Russians in Donbass.
Of Spies and Journalists
On March 29, Evan Gershkovich, an American writing for the Wall Street Journal was arrested in the city of Yekaterinburg on charges of spying, accused of trying to obtain information about local defense industries. He faces 20 years in prison.
Yekaterinburg is a center of Russia’s defense industry. Snooping on defense factories can get you in hot water in any country. And when your country (the U.S.) plays a key role in a war that’s killing Russians, you need to think carefully. If Gershkovich was indeed writing about Russia’s defense industries then he showed poor judgement.
Back in 2001, I was at a ceremony and official dinner in St. Petersburg. Sitting across from me were two FSB officials. I asked them if I could write about defense industries for the New York Times. They advised me not to, “unless you want problems”. I took their advice. And back then, Russia and the U.S. were friends.
I noticed one peculiar fact in Gershkovich’s biography — from 2017 to 2020 he worked for the internet newspaper, The Moscow Times. What a coincidence — For three months in autumn 2016, I worked long-distance for The Moscow Times, (I was in the U.S.). As an editor and writer, my goal was to be objective and fair.
Russia’s military operation in Syria was one topic that I covered a few times. However, when the articles were finally published I noticed that they had been rewritten to align with U.S. propaganda, citing dubious social media accounts with Pentagon ties. Eventually in frustration, I left The Moscow Times.
So, it is peculiar that Gershkovich spent four years at a propaganda outlet such as The Moscow Times. Next, I took a look at his articles for the WSJ — Sure enough, they closely align with Pentagon propaganda. What a coincidence. Is he a spy? I don’t know. Does he spread disinformation that fosters U.S. foreign policy goals? Yes.
Before 2001, if you aspired to be an American journalist your reporting had to be in opposition to the Pentagon. Today, it’s a very different profession, to put it mildly.
Zelensky’s Repression Against Ukraine’s Orthodox Church
With Orthodox Easter two weeks away, Zelensky’s regime has unleashed religious repression not seen in Europe for a hundred years. Ukrainian Orthodox priests are beaten and arrested; churches mobbed by thugs, desecrated and torched; and the faithful are harassed and jailed by local police, with many apparently disappearing.
The images from Ukraine are horrifying. Zelensky seeks to destroy the Orthodox Church, (many of Ukraine’s hardcore nationalists are Uniate-Catholics that serve the Vatican). Of course, the western media and NATO support Zelensky because he apparently upholds the ‘rule of law’ and ‘liberal values’.
But the truth is that Ukraine is now Europe’s most repressive state. There are no opposition parties, no free press, and no right to assembly. Nationalist death squads abduct, jail and execute people for not being sufficiently ‘Ukrainian’. Finally, there’s no freedom of religion.
Zelensky says the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is a tool of Moscow, but he has no evidence to support such a claim. The Church’s real ‘crime’ is that it wants peace. It wants the two Slavic neighbors to stop killing each other. The Ukrainian Church wants unity among Christians, which, by the way, is exactly what Jesus Christ calls for.
Last week, the Ukrainian secret police and its thugs descended on the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, one of Orthodoxy’s most sacred sites. Thousands of Ukrainian believers, such as this little girl above, turned out to protect the Lavra. Zelensky risks igniting a new civil war, (Kiev’s war on Donbass started as a civil war).
Metropolitan (Senior Arch-Bishop) Pavel, the abbot of the Kiev Lavra, has been placed under house arrest and tagged with an ankle bracelet on accusations of “inciting religious hatred” and “justifying” Russia’s military operation to protect ethnic Russians in Donbass. But Ukrainian prosecutors have not presented any evidence.
Yesterday, I was curious what the BBC World Report had to say about religious repression in Ukraine. I could only find a report about the Vatican’s Pope Francis not feeling well. Several minutes were dedicated to the Pope’s cough and sniffles.
How odd that the BBC, which is the main state media in a country that’s led the charge against Catholicism for 500 years, is now concerned with the Pope’s health. I began to wonder — had the British royal family converted overnight to Catholicism?
The western media — which is obsessed with even the smallest human rights violation in Russia — suddenly becomes blind and clueless when one of its favorites, such as Zelensky, violate human rights and civil liberties on a mass scale, and commit ethnic cleansing. This is censorship by omission.
Russian troops raise flag over Bakhmut city hall
Evgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner private military company, said on Sunday night that his forces had taken Bakhmut as he raised the Russian flag over city hall in honor of the murdered war correspondent Maksim Fomin. The war-torn city has been occupied by the UAF (Ukrainian Armed Forces) for almost nine years.
Prigozhin admitted that the city’s western section remains in UAF hands, and fighting will continue for some weeks. Over the past few months, in order to eject the enemy from Bakhmut and to minimize their casualties, the Russians have fought house-to-house. This slow, calculated advance is deliberate.
Earlier this year, Prigozhin admitted that his strategy is to make Bakhmut a trap for the UAF; to suck in as much of their forces as possible and then obliterate them. For weeks, Prigozhin taunted Zelensky and his generals, as if waving a red flag in front of a mindless bull that then recklessly charges. Indeed, in Bakhmut, the UAF has paid a very high price in terms of men killed and equipment destroyed.
One only has to look at a battlefield map to see that Prigozhin speaks the truth and that indeed he has turned Bakhmut into the perfect trap. The UAF is surrounded on three sides; Russian artillery and aviation have free rein and pound anything that goes in and out of Bakhmut. Zelensky and his obtuse generals took the bait. Well, they’re not the ones fighting. They’re safe in Kiev.
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley lied last week during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Bakhmut. Milley described the situation as a “slaughter” for Russian troops, and that they “haven’t made any progress whatsoever” because they “make frontal assaults into machine gunners”.
Really, General Milley? How much longer will you lie to Congress and the American people? I understand - your job is to protect Biden’s $120 billion investment in Ukraine. But reality is catching up quickly.
It’s going to be a very hot summer, especially when the Donbass battlefield will be littered with UAF corpses and blasted Challengers, Leopards, and Bradleys. The White House has taken the bait; Donbass is a trap. And General Milley’s lies are helping to make this happen. I wouldn’t be surprised if Moscow bestows an award on Milley for misleading Congress and helping to secure a Russian victory.
Thank you for great article, John! Your insight and analysis always explains a lot to me.