Another Act of Terror. How the Media Do PR for
Biden and Zelensky
Coverage of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam
and Nord Stream pipelines shows a western media
willing to prioritize anti-Russiy an propaganda
over facts
By Jonathan Cook
June
19, 2023:
Information Clearing House--The hypocrisy gets starker by
the day. The same western media that strains to
warn of the dangers of disinformation – at least
when it comes to rivals on social media – barely
bothers to conceal its own role in purveying
disinformation in the Ukraine war.
In
fact, the propaganda peddled by the media grows
more audacious by the day – as two stories last
week from the frontlines illustrate only too
clearly.
Dominating headlines has been the environmental
catastrophe created by the destruction of the
Nova Kakhovka
dam under Russian control. Flood waters from the
Dnipro river have ruined vast swathes of land
downriver fromthe dam and
forced many tens of thousands to flee their
homes.
Rightly, the wrecking of the dam is being called
an act of “ecological terrorism” – the second
major one associated with the war, following
last September’s blowing up of the Nord Stream
pipelines supplying Russian gas to Europe.
The costs associated with keeping this war going
and avoiding peace talks so that Russia can be
“weakened,” as Biden administration officials
insist is the priority,
have grown much steeper than most people could
have imagined.
This is
why a clear understanding of what is going on –
and what interests are being served by fueling
the fighting rather than resolving the war – is
so vitally important.
There
have always been at least two narratives in
Ukraine, even if western audiences are rarely
exposed to the Russian one – outside of mocking
commentary from western reporters.
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
In the
immediate aftermath of the breaching of the
Kakhovka dam, the BBC’s Moscow correspondent,
Steve Rosenberg, visibly sneered as he reported
that Russian media were insisting Ukrainian
“terrorists” were behind the destruction.
Russians, he suggested, were being brainwashed
by their government and media.
He obviously failed to spot the irony that his
own reporting, like that of colleagues, has
served to reinforce the impression that the only
plausible culprit in the dam’s ruin – despite a
lack of evidence so far –
is Moscow. Like
the Russian media, Rosenberg has been hawking
precisely the line his own government, and its
NATO allies, want from him.
Pall of
fog
The BBC recently
launched its Verify service,
ostensibly to root out disinformation. In
similar vein, western media have started
appending to any report of Russian assertions
the warning:
“This claim could not be verified.”
Like a nervous tic, the media added just such an
alert to Russian statements that large numbers
of Ukrainian soldiers had been
killed in what
looked like the first stages of Kyiv’s so-called
“counteroffensive.”
But no
such warnings have been attached to Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s claims that
Russia blew up the dam.
Instead, reporters havebeen
quick to regurgitate, unverified, his
self-serving assertions that
Moscow caused the destruction,
supposedly to ward off the imminent
counteroffensive, and that only western help
evicting Russia from the areas it has occupied
can prevent further “terrorist” acts.
As has
so often been the case in this war, a thick pall
of fog is likely to shroud what happened at the
Kakhovka dam for the foreseeable future.
Which
means that, if the media is determined to
recycle speculation, what it should be doing at
this stage – apart from keeping an open mind and
investigating for itself – is applying the
principle of “cui bono?” or “who profits?”
And if
it bothered to do that properly, it might be far
more reluctant to pin responsibility on Russia.
Rallying
support
As Scott Ritter, a former US marine and United
Nations weapons inspector, has noted, the chief
beneficiary of the attack has been Ukraine, both
militarily and politically.
After all, the western media has been
documenting a series of fortifications – from
trenches and mines to concrete spikes – that the
Russian army has constructed along its front
lines during the long wait for the Ukrainian
counteroffensive. As has often been pointed out,
they are so extensive, they can easily be
seen from space.
And yet
if it did blow up the dam, Moscow just washed
away all its carefully built defenses in a key
area that Ukraine has set its eyes on
recapturing – and just at the time Kyiv is said
to be preparing for a dramatic military
offensive.
Further, the swollen river behind the dam was a
significant obstacle to Ukrainian forces
crossing the Dnipro river for many tens of
miles. It will be much less of a barrier now its
waters have receded as the river gushes into the
Black Sea. The dam explosion punches a surprise
hole in a key, natural part of Russia’s
defensive line.
Another critical concern for the Kremlin will be
that the explosion poses a direct
threat to water supplies
to the arid Crimean peninsula – the first piece
of Ukrainian territory Russia annexed. After a
US-backed overthrow of Ukraine’s government in
2014, Russia made a priority of securing Crimea,
long the site of a strategic, warm-water naval
base.
And to top it all, Russia’s control of the
Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, upstream of the
dam, has already come under
renewed international scrutiny
as questions are raised about Moscow’s ability
to cope with a possible meltdown there as water
supplies, needed for cooling, dramatically
diminish.
There are political advantages in the dam’s
destruction for Kyiv too. As
Ritter observes:
“There is a lot of ‘Ukraine fatigue’ right now.
The world is just tired of Ukraine, of funding
Ukraine… What Ukraine needs is a catastrophic
event that rallies international support around
Ukraine by blaming Russia for something big.”
The dam
blast does just that. It thrusts the war back
into the spotlight, it casts Moscow as a
“terrorist” threat not just to Ukraine but to
wider humanity, and it will prove a very
effective tool to justify yet more weapons and
aid to “weaken” Russia, even if Ukraine’s
counteroffensive proves a damp squib.
Reckless
‘test’ strike
The
western media has not only largely ignored these
factors, it has also drawn a veil over its own
recent reporting that might implicate Ukraine as
chief culprit in blowing up the dam.
As the Washington Postreported
back in December, the Ukrainian military had
previously considered plans to destroy the
Kakhovka – in other words, to carry out what is
universally understood now as a major act of
ecological terrorism. At the time, the plan
barely raised an eyebrow in the West.
The preparations included what now looks like a
reckless “test strike”
with a HIMARS missile – supplied courtesy of the
US – “making three holes in the metal [of the
floodgates] to see if the Dnieper’s water could
be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but
not flood nearby villages.”
“The
test was a success,” the Post reported
Maj. Gen. Andriy Kovalchuk, a Ukrainian
commander, saying back in December. “But the
step [of destroying the dam] remained a last
resort.”
Might
that “test” or a similar one – possibly in
preparation for a Ukrainian offensive – have
accidentally undermined the dam’s integrity,
making it gradually crumble from the pressure of
the water?
Or
could the dam’s destruction have been
intentional – part of Ukraine’s offensive –
spreading chaos to areas under Russian control,
either to force Moscow to redirect its energies
away from countering a Ukrainian attack, or
deflect western public attention away from any
difficulties Kyiv may have launching a credible
military operation?
And
why, anyway, would Moscow decide to destroy the
dam, forfeiting control over water flow, when it
could have simply opened the gates to flood
areas downstream at any time of its choosing,
such as when faced with an attempt to cross the
river by the Ukrainian military?
These
questions aren’t even being posed, let alone
answered.
James Bond
mission
There
has been an established pattern with the media
during the Ukraine war, one that may serve as a
guide in understanding how the story of the
breaching of the dam will unfold.
The reticence of western outlets to ask basic
questions, contextualize with relevant
background, or pursue obvious lines of inquiry
has been equally glaring in another act of
ecological terrorism: the explosions on the
Nord Stream pipelines
back in September. They released enormous
quantities of the prime global-warming gas
methane.
Again, the media spoke as one. First, they
echoed western officials in ascribing
the explosions to Moscow,
without a shred of evidence and even though the
blasts were a huge blow to Russia.
The
Kremlin lost the bountiful income stream that
came from supplying Europe with natural gas.
Meanwhile, diplomatically, it was stripped of
its chief leverage over its biggest energy
customer, Germany – leverage it might have used
to induce Berlin to break with the West’s
sanctions policy.
All of
this was hard to obscure. Soon the western media
simply dropped the Nord Stream story entirely.
Interest surfaced again only much later, in
March, when the
New York Times
and a German publication,
Die Zeit,
published separate and quite preposterous
accounts, based on unnamed intelligence sources.
According to these accounts, a group of six
rogue Ukrainians chartered a yacht and blew up
the pipelines off the coast of Denmark in a
James Bond-style mission. The story was widely
amplified by the western media, even though
independent analysts
ridiculed it as
wildly implausible and technically unfeasible.
‘Ukraine
did it’
The problem the media has faced is that a very
much more plausible account of the Nord Stream
blasts had already been produced by the
legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh
in February. His unnamed intelligence source
offered a far more credible and detailed
account, and one that
blamed the US itself.
The
circumstantial evidence for US responsibility –
or at least involvement – was already
substantial, even if the media again ignored
it.
From Joe Biden downwards, US officials either
expressed a determination beforehand to stop
more Russian gas from reaching Europe through
Nord Stream or
celebrated the pipelines’ destruction
after the fact.
The
Biden administration also had a prime motive for
blowing up Nord Stream: a desire to end Europe’s
energy dependence on Russia, especially when
Washington wanted to line up Moscow and Beijing
as the new targets in its permanent “war on
terror.”
Hersh’s
source argued that the explosives were placed by
special US Navy divers, with Norwegian
assistance, during an annual naval exercise,
BALTOPS, and remotely detonated three months
later.
The
media studiously ignored this version. When it
was referenced on the odd occasion, the story
was dismissed because it was attributed to a
single unnamed source. None of the media,
however, appeared to have similar reservations
about the fantastical yacht version, also
supplied by an unidentified intelligence
source.
Hersh’s
account has refused to go away, gaining ever
more traction on social media so long as no
credible alternative emerged.
And so
– bingo! The fantastical claim that a group of
amateurs was able to locate and blow up the
pipelines deep on the ocean floor has been
dropped.
Last week the Washington Post reported
that an unnamed European intelligence service
had warned the Biden administration of an
impending attack on the Nord Stream pipelines
three months before it took place. According to
this account, a small crack team sent by the
Ukrainian military
carried
out the
“covert” operation – again acting, it was
stressed, without Zelensky’s knowledge.
The
Post reported that “officials in multiple
countries” confirmed that the US had received
advance warning.
White
House lied?
The
story raises all kinds of deeply troubling
questions – none of which the media seem
interested in addressing.
Not
least, if true, it means that the Biden
administration has blatantly lied for months in
promoting a fiction: that Russia carried out the
attack. The White House and European capitals
knowingly misled the western media and publics.
If
Biden officials have indeed conspired in
maintaining a grand lie about such a momentous
act of industrial terror – one that caused
untold environmental damage and is contributing
to a mounting recession in Europe – what other
lies have they been telling? How can anything
they claim about the Ukraine war, such as who is
responsible for the Kakhovka dam’s destruction,
be trusted?
And yet
the western media – which, according to this new
account, was deceived for months – seems
completely unconcerned.
Further, if Washington knew of the impending act
of terror – which was directed at European
energy sources as much as at a nuclear-armed
Russia – why did it not intervene?
The
media’s coverage of this new version largely
frames the US as impotent, incapable of stopping
the Ukrainians from blowing up the pipelines.
But
Washington is the world’s sole superpower.
Ukraine is entirely dependent on its support –
financially and militarily. If the US withdrew
its backing, Ukraine would be forced to engage
in peace talks with Russia. The idea that
Washington could not have stopped the attack is
no more credible than the claim a group of
sailing enthusiasts blew up the pipelines.
If this
latest account is true, Washington had the
leverage to stop the attack on Europe’s energy
infrastructure but failed to act. By any
reasonable assessment, it should be considered
to have willed the pipelines’ destruction,
despite the devastating toll on Europe and the
environment.
And
thirdly, based on this account, Ukraine – or at
least its military – has proven itself quite
capable of committing the most heinous act of
terrorism, even against its allies in Europe.
Why should anyone, least of all the media, now
be so dismissive of Russian claims of Ukrainian
war crimes, including destroying the Kakhovka
dam?
‘Good
Nazis’
The
truth, however, is that the western media are
not concerned by the implications of this latest
account, any more than they are by Hersh’s
earlier one – not if it means turning the US and
its allies into the bad guys. The story was
reported cursorily, and will be filed away as
another piece of a puzzle no one has any
interest in solving.
The
western media’s role in foreign affairs is to
prop up a narrative that turns our leaders into
good people doing their best in a bad world, one
that forces on them difficult, sometimes morally
compromised choices.
But
what if Biden and Zelensky aren’t really heroes,
or even good people? What if they are just as
ignoble, just as callous and inhumane, as the
foreign leaders we so readily dismiss as the
“new Hitler”? It’s just that they receive far
better public relations from our complicit
media.
Coverage of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam
and Nord Stream pipelines alludes to a double
problem: that western leaders and their allies
may be implicated in the most terrible crimes,
but we can rarely be sure because our media are
so determined not to find out.
This week, the New York Times finally
admitted on its pages something that it and the
rest of the western media once openly
acknowledged but have cast as a taboo since
Russia’s invasion: that the Ukrainian military
is awash
with
neo-Nazi symbols.
However, even as the paper of record admitted
what it had previously condemned as
“disinformation” whenever it appeared on social
media, the New York Times insisted on an
absurd distinction.
Yes,
the paper agreed that Ukrainian soldiers are
proud to decorate themselves in Nazi insignia.
And yes, much of wider Ukrainian society
commemorates notorious Nazi figures from the
Second World War such as Stepan Bandera. But no,
Ukraine’s prolific use of Nazi symbols does not
translate into any attachment to Nazi
ideology.
This is the argument being made by western
publications that at the same time have taken
seriously claims that a rock star, Roger Waters,
is antisemitic for performing a track from his
four-decade-old album The Wall
satirizing a fascist dictator…
dressed as a fascist dictator.
Waters’
real crime is that now Jeremy Corbyn has been
ousted from the Labour Party, he is the most
visible supporter of Palestinian rights in the
western world.
If the
New York Times and the rest of the
western media are willing to give Ukrainian
Nazis a makeover, making them look good, what
are they doing for Biden, Zelensky, and European
leaders?
One
thing we know for sure: we cannot look to the
western media for an answer.
Jonathan Cook is
the author of three books on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of
the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for
Journalism. His website and blog can be found at
www.jonathan-cook.net.
This originally appeared in the
Middle
East Eye.
Views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
Registration is not necessary to post comments.
We ask only that you do not use obscene or offensive
language. Please be respectful of others.
See
also
Search
Information Clearing House
The views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)