#Opinion

On the threshold of changes

By Oleg Karpovich and Mikhail Troyansky Pro-Rectors at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy

From the first minute, the information war accompanying the Russian Federation’s special military operation in Ukraine has bred distorted and far-fetched interpretations of the Russian party’s goals and motives, with global media outlets, particularly the Western media, circulating them. For many months and even years, Moscow tried to inform the international public at large about the real-life situation and Russia’s concerns. However, these attempts were deliberately ignored. Efforts to demonise Russia have become ridiculous in the past few days, with the aim of replacing the facts of the matter with emotions and propaganda clichés.

So, what was the real cause of the special military operation?

First of all, the crisis around Donbass exacerbated the situation. For many years, Kiev brought this crisis to a boiling point by sabotaging the Minsk agreements <...> Western countries, including France and Germany, ignored Kiev’s ostentatious reluctance to follow in the wake of the peace process, year after year. <...> Moreover, Kiev beefed up its military potential along the line of contact to the maximum possible extent.

Second, throughout Ukraine, and especially in the country’s southeastern areas, the Ukrainian authorities implemented their official line aimed at oppressing the Russian-speaking population and any opponents of the country’s linguistic and ideological unification. In 2014, dozens of activists from pro-Russian movements were eliminated in Kharkov, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk and some other cities. <...>

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The Ukrainian authorities had every opportunity to prevent a dramatic scenario, fraught with the sufferings of civilians, but they chose the road of confrontation. This confrontation must end as soon as possible, and this is now the only condition for de-escalating the protracted and explosive crisis around Ukraine.

#Opinion by Maria #Zakharova

A deep dive into the genesis of the Nazi comeback in Ukraine & how the West nurtured Nazi collaborators & their descendants.

💬 May 9, 1945. Berlin has surrendered, and the Nazi Reich has been condemned by the peoples liberated by Soviet soldiers and allied nations. Soon, the Nuremberg Trials will begin, condemning Nazism as a criminal and misanthropic ideology. Collaborators and Nazi accomplices in Ukraine are facing a difficult choice: should they continue fighting the Soviet regime on the liberated territory, or escape to the West?

<...>

Ukrainian Nazis that fled from fair trial 75 years ago have returned to the place they were expelled from by Soviet soldiers via their children and with direct support from the West.

👉 https://vk.cc/cbW1Jp

⚡️The Ukrainian crisis and Russophobia

#Opinion by Prof. Mark Neimark, Dr. Sc. History, Diplomatic Academy of the Foreign Ministry of Russia

💬 The US leadership should have taken heed of a far-sighted warning given 25 years ago by the authoritative diplomat and analyst George Kennan, known for his contribution to the development of the Moscow containment concept. He possessed unique knowledge of Russia’s capabilities and potential and, based on his awareness, warned that “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”

❗️It is clear that the West’s centuries-old pulsating fears of Russia are here to stay, as are the never-ending phantom pains of Russophobia.

👉 Read in full

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 A few bloggers have reported today that official Chanel brand stores abroad are refusing to sell their products to Russian nationals.

Allegedly, Chanel customers must sign a form saying that they will not take the items sold by the brand to the Russian Federation, as per some internal document of the boutique chain.

Seems like those running the legacy of the “great Coco” have found a way to join the Russophobic “cancel Russia” campaign.

Weird, right? What’s the link between Russia’s anti-Nazi operation and the French fashion house?

But the link is there. We just opened a closet to find some well-preserved 80-year-old skeletons.

During World War II, Coco Chanel herself was a collaborator and a Third Reich agent. She is widely known to have had connections to the occupation authorities in France. Baron Hans Guenther Freiherr von Dincklage, an attaché of the German government in charge of the Nazi propaganda in Paris, was among her dearest friends.

Coco Chanel, also known as informer F-7124 as per Abwehr records, supported the German masters of Paris so much that she took part in the attempts to organise secret negotiations between the Reich and the United Kingdom. One should say that the Germans valued Coco and had her live in a luxurious apartment at the Ritz hotel, while ordinary Parisians struggled to make ends meet under the German occupation, while the country’s economy was under enormous strain.

Moreover, the fashion designer accepted the help of the Nazis to reach her business goals. Before the war, she sold her Chanel No. 5 production facility to Jewish manufacturers. Then, she engaged the Germans to try and reclaim the rights to the perfume sale profits.

After France was liberated, she was called to answer for all of that. The fashion house does not advertise it but Coco was arrested at the end of the war. She was later released as a favour to Churchill (and here is London again) and was banned from France after the occupation was over, for years, residing in the “neutral” Switzerland.

The brand’s management has always emphasised that the Chanel house traditions are as strong as ever. Well, no doubt about that now. Investigative reporter Hal Vaughan wrote about the founder of the fashion house: “The Nazis were in power, and Chanel gravitated to power.”

The brand was never bothered by such things as concentration camps, mass killings and war crimes perpetrated by the SS and Gestapo divisions.

We are a very patient and forgiving country. We have forgiven everyone for everything, turned the page and cleared the way for the future.

But if the way turns out to be a ring road, we will break the vicious circle.

And the Chanel house can get back to square one and support Nazism, just like its founder did. But now everyone will know.

#Chanel #NaziChanel #TruthAboutChanel

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

Medvedchuk’s spouse Oksana Marchenko appealed to the British government and people: “I appeal to the relatives and friends of Aiden Eslin and Shaun Pinner: Angela Eslin, Nathan and Shannon Wood, Derby and Evan Pinner. It's in your power to ask the Prime Minister of your country, Boris Johnson, to influence the Ukrainian leadership and achieve the release of Aiden and Sean by exchanging them for the Ukrainian opposition politician detained by the Kiev authorities, my husband Viktor Medvedchuk.”

💬 Maria Zakharova: UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who recently went to Kiev, must be aware of the developments with Her Majesty’s subjects. He is sure to reply, isn’t he?

Meanwhile, Liz Truss might take the opportunity to reveal what exactly the British nationals were doing there [in Mariupol, with Neo-Nazis] anyway.

💬⚡️ #Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 Boris Johnson has urged the Russian government to treat the Briton detained in Mariupol while fighting on the side of the Ukrainian government forces “humanely and compassionately.”

Here is what we have to say in this respect.

Boris, we know that you personally and your Government have disavowed the British subjects who have fallen victim to British propaganda and went to Ukraine as mercenaries to kill people there.

Don’t pretend to be worried. You are utterly unconcerned about the fate of Britons in trouble. They didn’t drink champagne with you at Downing Street, and so they can wait for your protection till kingdom come.

I would like to tell the following to those Britons who are concerned about their compatriots: Don’t worry, Russia is taking care of them. They are given food and drink, as well as any other assistance they may need, just as the other foreigners who have surrendered or have been detained.

Unlike the Ukrainian fighters who brutally kill prisoners and torture civilians, the Russian Armed Forces are committed to humanitarian law. If there were no media censorship in Britain, everyone there would know this.

At the same time, we urge the British authorities to treat the citizens of Ukraine “humanely and compassionately,” as Boris Johnson said, by stopping the delivery of weapons to Ukraine. The more weapons London is sending to Ukraine, the more citizens of Ukraine die as a result. But the BBC will never tell Britons about that.

⚡️ #Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 Gonzalo Lira, a video blogger, author and famous film director and a citizen of Chile and the United States, has not been in contact since April 15 after he went missing in Kharkov. He was where the action was, actively commenting on the events in Ukraine, first in Kiev and later in Kharkov. He honestly and professionally reported about the causes of the crisis and the ongoing outrages, including the Nazis’ atrocities. His video reports have helped many people in the West see the truth. The far-right radicals hated what he did and he started receiving threats.

The liberal queers and “honest” Western journalists, which is often one and the same, echoed the neo-Nazis’ threats. And now these “members of the public” are merrily discussing Gonzalo’s disappearance and are openly threatening their colleagues who dare to speak out openly about the events in Ukraine without mincing words.

‘Patrick [Lancaster], you next,” tweeted a transgender journalist from Las Vegas, who is reporting from Kharkov and often takes photos with the thugs from the so-called territorial defence forces.

They are doing their best to cancel and cross out those who disagree with them.

Sergey Korotkikh, aka Botsman, a chieftain of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, has hinted that his neo-Nazi confederates could be involved in Gonzalo’s disappearance: “It is ironic that Gonzalo Lira, a Chilean, has been captured by the man whose alias is Chile. Anyway, hope to see a beheading video on Telegram soon.” How do you like that? Incidentally, Chile is one of those who murdered and tortured Russian servicemen.

The tweet has been deleted, because Lira is a US citizen, but nothing can be deleted from the internet without a trace.

This is fresh proof that the cannibalistic liberal logic is so closely interconnected with the Nazi ideology that it is sometimes impossible to tell which is which. This is indicative.

P.S. We sincerely hope that the media mayhem raised by Azov Nazis and Western propagandists is nothing more than theatrics and that Gonzalo and his family are all well.

https://t.me/MariaVladimirovnaZakharova/2443

#Opinion by Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

Nuclear DisInfo (Read in full)

Mechanisms for information attacks with a new thesis that target the public space have been launched in the West at the highest level in a transboundary and trans-format manner. The premise is primitive and completely horrifying: the Russians are threatening a nuclear war, and the Russians are waving the nuclear stick.

⁉️ Do I even need to say that this thesis is absolutely incorrect and false? Apparently, I do.

They are pushing this exact thesis because it plays on basic human fears, the experience of the older generation, which throughout the second half of the 20th century was bracing for the Third World War against global communism, and Western youth, for which their respective governments have come up with a new mechanism called “cancel culture” (cancelling everything Russian this time). Moreover, the West absolutely does not care what Moscow really says, and the meaning of words is distorted and outwardly perverted.

Let’s consider the specifics.

Two days ago, in his answer to a question by Dimitri Simes during an interview, Sergey Lavrov said literally the following 👉 full quote

What are the takeaways?

1. It was Russia that, with great difficulty, convinced the United States during lengthy talks to reaffirm the Gorbachev-Reagan formula that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.

2. It was Russia that persuaded the group of five nuclear nations to adopt a statement with the same content.

3. There are risks; they should not be blown out of proportion or underestimated.

We did everything possible to prevent a nuclear war, to create all the necessary obstacles on the way to slipping into this scenario (fortunately, they justified themselves during the Cold War and are working today), because we understand the real risks and threats posed by irresponsible behaviour in this area. We cannot allow the very thought of a nuclear war.

Now acting in the worst traditions of disinformation, Western officials are feeding the media, in a coordinated effort, fake news about Moscow’s alleged nuclear threats. The foreign ministries from the NATO countries started convincing the people in their countries that the Russians were “rattling their weapons.”

<...>

Notice how clumsy this was in terms of media work. First, all the put-up quotes against our country were repeated by the journalist, and then they were again mentioned by Ned Price. A presentation designed for a not too sophisticated public. No one even paid attention to what the Foreign Minister said about the risks and Russia’s attempts to prevent the unthinkable.

It’s unthinkable to us, but, mindful of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is, unfortunately, possible for our colleagues from overseas.

The next day, the media started mass brainwashing. The British tabloids (the Daily Mail and others) and the high-quality analytical US press, French television and German tabloid magazines started talking with one voice that Moscow was threatening with a Third World Nuclear War. And this was already being discussed in Europe; French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that the Russian Foreign Minister’s words were the “rhetoric of intimidation.”

I would like to ask this Frenchman whether he at least saw what Sergey Lavrov said? We have translated the interview.

Our country is against any nuclear war, and this is exactly what the Russian Minister said, and this is what guides our diplomacy in its work.

Could it be that the Western capitals read the interviews as presented by the Western media? This is the only thing that can justify their words. To avoid that, one should simply DON'T turn off alternative sources of information, and listen to what Russia has to say close to the original text, rather than as interpreted by your media under NATO guidelines.

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova:

💬 Speaking at the Davos World Economic Forum, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “And if we notice that our world is becoming multipolar, then that has to spur us on: to even more multilateralism! To even more international cooperation! In this multipolar world, very different countries and regions are demanding greater political participation in line with their growing economic and demographic influence”.

☝️ This is blatant plagiarism. Worse, it shows a failure to understand trivial truths.

Back in 1996 when Yevgeny Primakov was Foreign Minister, our foreign service proceeded from the assumption that the world was becoming multipolar in contrast to the bipolarity of the Cold War era. Mr Primakov’s view of our foreign policy goals was enshrined in the Foreign Policy Concept of 2000, and has been the foundation of how we have built international relations.

❗️ EACH YEAR, for over 15 years, Sergey Lavrov as Foreign Minister has spoken about a multipolar and polycentric world.

👉 QUOTES BY YEAR 👈

If it has taken Berlin up until now to realize this, we can only offer our condolences. Still, better late than never.

☝️ Perhaps, the situation in and around Ukraine will one day be as clear to Olaf Scholz as the issue of multipolarity.

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 Washington has started recruiting “cyber warriors” for the army. On August 27, Brian Vile, Commandant of the US Army Cyber School (by the way, Vile stands for evil or foul) announced on his official Twitter account that they were hiring “nation state hackers”.

In fact, the United States has been doing this recruitment for a long time, but the term “nation state hackers” – hackers who serve the state and carry out attacks on its behalf – was openly used for the first time.

While earlier, Washington at least made an effort to keep such malicious activity quiet, preferring to remain in the background, now American officials are more open about their own “cyber exploits.” Major General Paul Stanton recently shared that America was training “offensive cyber personnel” to carry out hacker attacks. In turn, four-star General Paul Nakasone, head of the US Cyber Command, admitted on Sky News that US military hackers actually existed and were conducting offensive operations against Russia, in support of the Kiev regime.

This is all part of the US strategy to establish global offensive cyber forces and prepare for a full-scale war in cyberspace. We have mentioned more than once that they were working on this. Obviously, the West’s militarisation of the information space and attempts to turn it into an arena of interstate confrontation can lead to the most unpredictable consequences.

By the way, we reported in March that Russia – and even specifically the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – has been targeted by a series of cyberattacks on an unprecedented scale. State institutions, critical and social infrastructure facilities, and servers that store the personal data of our citizens and foreigners living in Russia are being attacked.

Their attempts to cover the tracks and deflect blame onto others by attacking Russian targets through Chinese computer networks have led to no avail. We know that the West is behind this. This is cyber aggression, and part of it involves the capabilities of the Kiev regime. Washington and its satellites are cynically using Ukraine, its infrastructure and human potential as a tool in their confrontation with Russia.

All this is unfolding against the backdrop of the third substantive session of the UN Ad Hoc Committee to Elaborate a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes that began in New York. The Russian delegation is attending despite the obstacles put up by the Americans.

📖 #Opinion #Θέση Το άρθρο «Η Σοβιετική Ατλαντίδα»

#Opinion by Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

MSM quotes Kirill Budanov, head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, from an interview with Yahoo News when asked about about Kiev's possible involvement in the murder of Darya Dugina:

“All I will comment on is that we’ve been killing Russians and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine.”

💬 Maria Zakharova: This is a direct blow to the White House. The Kiev regime has basically announced that the Biden administration is sponsoring terrorism.

#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

“The Russians are dying... it’s the best money we’ve ever spent,” US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said with a pleased smirk during his meeting with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.

💬 During the Nuremberg trials, Reichsminister of Economics Hjalmar Schacht claimed that the Third Reich was sponsored, among others, from abroad, naming two major American corporations – Ford and General Motors. An unspoken deal was made with Schacht: freedom in exchange for keeping silent. Despite Soviet representatives’ protests, he was released and lived to the age of 93.

Just to remind: the man who embodied the American dream, the legendary Henry Ford, was a recipient of the Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle. His plants operating in Germany not only produced up to 70,000 lorries per year for the Wehrmacht, but also used prison labour to this end, including in Auschwitz.

Opel, the icon of the German automotive industry, was owned by General Motors. Researcher Bradford Snell described the corporation’s role as follows: “General Motors was far more important to the Nazi war machine than Switzerland. Switzerland was just a repository of looted funds. GM was an integral part of the German war effort. The Nazis could have invaded Poland and Russia without Switzerland. They could not have done so without GM.”

At its Germany-based plant, the Kodak company manufactured fuses for aerial bombs, without shunning the use of POW labour.

The Coca-Cola plant in Cologne, even before it was nationalised by the German government, regularly supplied German soldiers with drinks, while the famous Fanta was invented by the Nazis.

The oil giant Standard Oil, through its subsidiaries, supplied Hitler with petroleum products amid shortages, and was involved in the development of synthetic rubber and synthetic fuels. IBM, a company popular with IT specialists across the globe, manufactured accounting and monitoring devices for the Nazis, including those for oil production. The company's equipment was used, among other things, to monitor schedules for trains destined to extermination camps.

And, of course, how can we not mention banks: JPMorgan Chase & Co – Chase National Bank back then – was also involved, performing multibillion dollar transactions, while Berlin had the opportunity to purchase dollars and carry out transactions overseas. Chase National Bank even cooperated with the German bank Allianz in providing insurance for facilities and workers at concentration camps during the time of the Third Reich.

So, Senator Graham has something to make comparisons with. One of the US investments led to World War II and the Holocaust.

Now, billions of US dollars are pouring down the insatiable throat of the neo-Nazi Kiev regime. In this regard, I would like to remind the senators and all US beneficiaries how the previous venture ended.

https://t.me/MariaVladimirovnaZakharova/5521

#Opinion

💬 Το αρθρο "«Γλωσσική δικτατορία» στη σύγχρονη Ουκρανία: Το «απαρτχάιντ» κατά της ρωσικής γλώσσας σήμερα"

#Opinion

💬 Το αρθρο "Όλες οι αποχρώσεις του γκρι" της κλασικής φιλολόγου Ευγενίας Κριτσέφσκαγια για το βιβλίο του M.Galeotti "Μικρή ιστορία της Ρωσίας. Από τον παγανισμό στον Πούτιν": http://avgi-anagnoseis.blogspot.com/2023/07/blog-post_30.html

#Opinion

✍️ Article by Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy Vice-Rectors Oleg Karpovich and Mikhail Troyansky

The end of the era of hypocrisy

• The explosive intensification of the crisis in Gaza has once again revealed the depths of the decline of the US-EU establishment, which is sacrificing the last shred of its respectability right before our eyes and parting with its liberal image as “citizens of the world” concerned with human rights and the common good.

❗️Instead of working toward de-escalation and steering the process to a negotiating track, politicians, primarily from Anglo-Saxon countries (followed by others), have begun to support Israeli authorities in their more forceful actions against Palestinians.

• We believe that manipulating UN Charter principles in the process is absolutely unacceptable, especially as the United States and its satellites quite recently were conveniently using this trick to unilaterally and selectively leverage some of the UN Charter principles to promote their own interests.

• Importantly, we fully understand and share the sorrow of the Jewish people who endured a horrible tragedy on October 7. However, in a situation where many decisions are made emotionally, responsible global players should attempt to de-escalate the situation, rather than pit the sides against each other.

• The West has all too willingly turned a blind eye to the suffering of civilians time and again, and is taking an extremely irresponsible approach to international crises.

• We can only hope that the tragedy of Israel and Gaza will serve as an important lesson for the collective West that got entangled in its own games and machinations and is losing credibility with the Global South right before our eyes.

☝️ The era of double standards that underpin the “rules-based order” is fading into the past.

Read in full

#Opinion

✍️ Article by Mikhail Rostovsky, MK media-group columnist under the Editor-In-Chief

Putin in the Labyrinth: how Moscow can avoid losing in the Middle East

🔹 Each new Middle East crisis is one of a kind, similar to the previous ones - both in the sense of its impact on the region itself and on outside world.

🔹 It is in Moscow's best interest to pursue a balanced line in the Middle East because any tilt in one direction or another will seriously jeopardize its national interests.

🔹 Big politics in the Middle East has consisted, and continues to consist, of such nuances hidden from prying eyes, secret layers. Ignoring this fact in an attempt to pursue a policy in the region based on binary logic, where there are those who are for us and those who are against us, dooms even a great power to the role of an object that is manipulated by everyone.

🔹 When choosing between the conflicting sides in the Middle East, Moscow must invariably choose itself, no matter how this might hurt the feelings of its partners in the region and beyond.

🔹 The view that what happened on October 7 was a colossal failure by Israel’s intelligence services is just a banality now. Lying behind this failure is an even bigger catastrophe - a failure of political strategy, erroneous long-term calculations by the top Israeli leadership.

🔹 Israel has no idea how to strategically solve the problem of the Gaza Strip. The military action it has taken is just a strategic improvisation.

🔹 Based on its status as an influential global and regional player, Russia must contribute to the establishment of peace in the Middle East, and at the same time prevent itself from becoming another "Middle East."

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#Opinion

✍️ Eduard Popov, Director of the Independent Non-Profit Organisation "Center for Public and Information Cooperation "Europe"

Ukrainian Nazism today: origin and ideological and political typology

Key points:

💬 The current-day Ukrainian nationalism / Nazism partly dates back to the early 1990s. Its rise can be traced to the Nazi proponents and social engineering technologies being "exported" to Ukraine [from the West], which became an independent state following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

• The world does not understand the nature of modern Ukrainian (neo)Nazism. The West prefers not to notice it and to stigmatize any considerations concerning this problem as a "Russian propaganda".

☝️ After the coup d'état on February 21, 2014, carried out by the US, UK and a number of EU countries, the state OF Ukraine as such does not exist. It is more correct to speak about the state IN Ukraine. Ukraine as a state has been abolished and is under external administration.

State institutions responsible for ideology and education have adopted the slogans and ideologemes of the Ukrainian Nazis. For example, the Nazi slogan "Glory to Ukraine!" adopted by the so-called Ukrainian Insurgent Army – Nazi cronies and war criminals, who later sponsored by the West waged terrorist attacks against civilians in Soviet Ukraine – is now officially used in the Ukrainian armed forces. Nazi collaborators Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych are officially included in the list of heroes. The state authorities in Ukraine are pursuing a policy of Nazification, many provisions of which are borrowed from the programs of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.

❗️ The rise of Nazism in Ukraine and the already accomplished transformation of this country into the epicenter of world Nazism/neo-Nazism is no longer a factor of internal Ukrainian politics or even Russian-Ukrainian relations. This is an important aspect of pan-European, and perhaps even world, politics.

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