Mariupol Liberated… Western Media Silence Amid Their Big Lie Exposure
The Western news media were made to look like laughing stocks this week with the evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, the Black Sea port city in southern Ukraine.
Not just laughing stocks, but actually proponents of deceitful war propaganda. This should be a matter of excruciatingly deep shame for the Western media and indeed the basis for future prosecution over war crimes complicity.
Up to 100 civilians were released from the sprawling industrial factory and taken into care by Russian forces in conjunction with United Nations rescue officials and the International Red Cross. Their testimonies flatly contradict the claims that were being blared by Western news media for several weeks.
Amplifying the narrative of the NATO-backed Kiev regime, the Western media had been making out that the civilians were voluntarily in the Azovstal plant to help defend it along with Ukrainian soldiers. The Russian military surrounding the factory was said to be besieging the site and threatening the safety of civilians.
However, it turns out, based on their own testimonies, that the civilians were being held hostage as human shields by the Ukrainian combatants. While the Western media had been extolling the “heroic” defenders of the Azovstal factory, it has now become apparent that these “heroes” were grossly violating laws of war by systematically using non-combatants as human sandbags to deter a Russian assault.
We should not be surprised by the criminal and degenerate conduct. For the “brave defenders” at the Azovstal plant that the Western media have been eulogizing are none other than the Nazi-affiliated Azov battalion. These militants are the frontline troops of the Ukrainian armed forces. They have been trained and armed by NATO powers, including the United States, Britain, Canada, and Poland. There is speculation that there may even be NATO special forces still holed up in the steel plant along with their Azov battalion charges.
It remains to be seen what the residual 1,000 militants in the factory will do now that their siege is finally doomed. One of the fighters even put out a bizarre appeal this week to SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk to help mediate their escape. How appropriate for the weird times we live in!
Contrary to Western media claims, the Ukrainian forces have been routinely using schools, hospitals, residential apartments, and other civilian centers as cover for fighting against Russian troops.
The sudden fall-off in Western media coverage this week is in stark contrast to the near-hysterical saturation reporting in previous weeks when it was being claimed that the Ukrainian port city was cruelly besieged by Russian forces. Consumers of Western media were led to believe that Russia’s military was about to perpetrate a heinous crime of mass murder. The hysteria being generated is part of the manufacturing of consent from the public for Western governments to funnel taxpayer money and military aid to prop up the Kiev regime. This week, the Biden administration is set to send a $40 billion military aid package to the Kiev regime; this largesse is while one million Americans have died from the Covid-19 pandemic.
For anyone who has been seriously following the conflict in Ukraine it is obvious that Western governments and media have been a total travesty in what they are claiming about that country. The regime in Kiev that seized power in 2014 through a CIA-backed coup against an elected president has actually been an international disgrace only given cover by the Western media and fawning Western governments. The regime may currently have a Jewish president as a figurehead, but for eight years it has been infested with Nazis, fascists and other anti-Russian radicals. This regime and its foot soldiers in the Azov battalion and other such formations openly glorify the memory of Second World War collaborators with the Third Reich in the prosecution of its Final Solution genocide.
The Western media had previously acknowledged the “Nazi problem” in Ukraine. But since the US-led NATO bloc ramped up its war agenda against Russia over the past six months, all such pejorative mention of the Kiev regime has been expunged. The Western public is inculcated to believe that Washington and its European allies are defending democracy in Ukraine. The conflict has been completely shorn of any factual context, from the origins of the Kiev coup to the past eight years of relentless deadly aggression against the Russian-speaking people in the breakaway Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
A major reason why Moscow ordered the military intervention into Ukraine on February 24 was to defend the Russian people of the southeast Donbass region from the ravages of the NATO-backed Kiev regime forces and their Nazi hatred.
Nearly three months on, the Donbass provinces have been largely liberated by the Russian military. The Azov Nazis have been pushed back. The southern port city of Mariupol is a key strategic gain to link up the Donbass territory under the control of Russian forces in alliance with the armies of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
The Western media tell their consumers that Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has been a failure; that it has involved massive war crimes; that the “brave defenders” are holding out.
The facts are that the Kiev regime has callously and cynically used its own population as cannon fodder to cling on to power and as emotive pawns to facilitate the NATO weaponizing of the country as a catspaw against Russia. That is exactly what the NATO powers want. The United States and its NATO accomplices – the ultimate architects of this conflict – are funneling tens of billions of dollars into the Ukraine, supplying covert forces and military intelligence that is recklessly risking a direct conflict with nuclear-armed Russia.
One can be bamboozled by the cornucopia of narratives and propaganda. The Bucha (false-flag) massacre that allegedly happened in March was a classic example of media gaslighting psyops, as was the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol – all covertly perpetrated by NATO-backed Nazis but blamed on Russia by the Western media.
But perhaps the clearest test case of lies from facts surely is the liberation of Mariupol by Russia. The city is returning to normal after weeks of heavy fighting. Humanitarian aid is being provided by Russian forces in coordination with the UN and Red Cross. As with other parts of liberated Donbass, civilians are expressing relief and gratitude for having gotten rid of militants who had been holding them under siege with their hateful Nazi ideology.
There is a vivid parallel with Syria’s northern city of Aleppo when it was liberated by Russian forces in late 2016 from jihadist militants. Recall how for weeks before Aleppo was retaken, the Western media were declaring that a bloodbath was imminent against innocent civilians and “brave rebels”.
Just like Mariupol and the rest of the Donbass, the civilian population has been liberated from a siege of terror that Western-backed proxies had imposed. In the case of Aleppo, Western media conspicuously did not follow up on their tall stories and wild claims. When did they ever visit Aleppo to find out what became of the civilians under siege?
It is therefore fitting – albeit damning – that Western media have suddenly dropped their coverage of Ukraine this week. It is truly astounding how such Western media have reacted. There is a mass denial of reality because otherwise, they are exposing themselves as the liars and purveyors of propaganda that they shamelessly are. Why aren’t the BBC and CNN and so on in Mariupol, Donetsk and Lugansk to enquire about people’s conditions and views? That’s because the Western media would be exposing themselves as witting conduits of war propaganda. It is more prudent for them to simply just shut up and pretend nothing has happened.
The dogs bark and the Western media caravan trundles on… to some other dutiful destination.
Is it any wonder that Western governments are massively censoring all critical, independent media? Searching the internet now just brings up approved Western media sources. Hardly any Russian media views are permitted and neither are critical, independent Western perspectives. This draconian suppression of free speech and information by the West is part of their war propaganda campaign aimed at giving the warmongering media free rein to spout their preposterous and pernicious lies unchecked. The implications are shocking. Western states are devolving into totalitarian regimes that at the same time have the audacity to pontificate about democracy and freedom. They largely get away with this absurd audacity because the profiteering corporate media are bought and paid for to be dutifully dumb and obsequious. There is an increasingly vicious circle of toxic Western militarism aided and abetted by so-called media that more accurately should be referred to as the “ministry of truth”.
There are many nails going into the coffin of Western corporate-controlled media as far as their public credibility and respect are concerned. Another nail just slammed in this week from the exposure of their Big Lie about Mariupol.
- Source : Strategic Culture
