A recent London Calling episode featured one of those signature exchanges between Toby Young and James Delingpole which on this occasion centred on my recent piece about whether or not NATO ‘provoked’ Russia into invading Ukraine. James said he didn’t need to read that piece, insisting that his interview with the retired Swiss military intelligence officer Col. Jacques Baud in a recent Delingpod episode provided all the support he needed for the ‘NATO provocation’ theory of the war.
I decided to delve into that interview.
First off, being curious by nature, I looked up Jacques Baud online and discovered that in 2020 he went on Russian state TV to say there is “no history of poisoning by the Russian secret services”, that the Skripals simply had a bad case of “food poisoning” and that Alexei Navalny was poisoned not by the state but by some “mafia” people around him. He wasn’t challenged on any of these controversial claims and, regrettably, the Delingpod interview is in a similar vein.
A key claim made by Baud, both to Delingpole and elsewhere, is that Ukraine’s armed forces have been thoroughly infiltrated by ‘far-right’ ultra-nationalists, and consequently that Russian ‘denazification’ was and is a legitimate Russian goal. Baud cites Reuters as having said there are 102,000 ‘far-right extremists’ in the Ukrainian armed forces, a figure that he appears to have considered ‘too good to check’. The Reuters article in fact says there were 102,000 ‘paramilitary’ soldiers in 2022, which isn’t quite the same as ‘far-right extremists’. The ultimate source for this number, of which Baud is seemingly unaware, is the 2022 edition of IISS’s Military Balance, which makes an estimate of 102,000 troops in the Ukrainian ‘Gendarmerie and Paramilitary’ forces, which consist of the National Guard (60,000) and the Border Guard (42,000).
The National Guard was formed from a core of 33,000 Internal Troops personnel in 2014 and was later expanded to include some volunteer battalions, including the Azov Battalion (with pre-war numbers perhaps approaching 2,500 troops) and the Donbas Battalion (~900), although not the ‘Right Sector’ (~5,000 strong). Of course we know that some members of Azov (at least) are far-right or neo-Nazi, but Baud is essentially making the ludicrous claim that everyone in every unit of the National and Border Guard has ultra-nationalistic, far-right political beliefs.
To smear everyone in the Ukrainian National Guard in this way is like the BBC’s smearing of UKIP as a ‘far-right’ organisation. Even if we just consider the so-called volunteer battalions (perhaps a few thousand in total), the notion that anyone volunteering to defend their country must be ‘far-right’ or ‘ultra-nationalist’ (rather than just patriotic or nationalist) isn’t credible, and it’s notable that James in particular has railed against ginned-up fears of the so-called ‘far-right’ plenty of times in the past – even making reference to this in the same London Calling podcast.
However, let’s try to establish the true extent of far-right ‘infiltration’ of the armed forces of Ukraine. We can do no better than by digging up the only other source that Baud makes reference to, which is a Jerusalem Post article that itself references a George Washington University report focusing on a far-right group called ‘Centuria’ that has supposedly infiltrated the Ukrainian armed forces. Baud calls this ‘disturbing’, but I have to admit I didn’t read the full 93 pages because I was disturbed by a spontaneous fit of giggles halfway down the first page. Perhaps I can illustrate my misgivings with some quotes:
[Centuria …] has attracted multiple members, including [some] now serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine
That’s multiple members – more than one. And some are in the military.
One apparent member of the group […] attended an 11-month Officer Training Course at […] Sandhurst […]. Another apparent member […] attended the 30th International Week held by the German Army Officers’ Academy […] in Dresden
That’s exactly two with a military background.
Despite this, Baud goes on to make claims about the power of these supposedly ‘far-right’ Ukrainian paramilitary forces in influencing and coercing Zelenskyy’s Government against seeking peace with Russia through threats of a coup or assassination. I’m intending to address these claims (as well as those surrounding Maidan 2014) on another occasion, but suffice it to say they also border on fantasy.
It’s worth noting here that the coalition of ‘far-right’ political parties garnered only 315,568 votes in the 2019 parliamentary elections in Ukraine (2.2% of votes cast, 0.9% of registered voters), gaining a total of one seat for the leader of Svoboda, whose paramilitary Sich Battalion has a total of 50 members. The threat from the Ukrainian far-right is not zero, but even if one doesn’t consider Putin himself to be the arch ultra-nationalist, we should bear in mind that Russia has its own far-right problems, and ironically the founder (and still apparently the leader) of the Wagner Group, which was sent to assassinate the notably-Jewish Zelenskyy, looks to have Nazi sympathies himself.
Baud implausibly asserts that all this supposed far-right infiltration explains why Zelenskyy’s ‘Holocaust comparison’ speech to the Knesset went down like a cup of cold sick, and why Israel isn’t providing much in the way of support to Ukraine. In fact, it was not that Knesset members believe Ukrainian armed forces are full of ‘far-right extremists’ (although plainly Azov is quite far-right, and some MKs will have been aware of a recent neo-Nazi march in Kyiv); rather, the reaction to the speech focused on the false comparison between the current war and the Holocaust, and the fact that Zelenskyy failed to make reference to the elephant in the room – that the Holocaust partly took place on Ukrainian soil. However, Israel has other considerations, such as their large Russian-speaking population and the situation in Syria – although the latter, at least, seems to be highly fluid.
Considering all of this, I find Baud’s assessment to be misinformed and misleading. The fundamental problem is that he’s clearly an intelligent and articulate man who can string together factoids into a coherent and persuasive-sounding whole – which is pernicious, when those facts are wrong. But I would still urge readers to listen to the interview: it’s informative for its clever-sounding, insidious mendacity.
Another key point Baud tries to establish is that “Ukraine started this” and he builds a narrative that: (1) Ukraine began shelling the Donbas on February 16th 2022 in an attempt to provoke a Russian invasion; (2) Joe Biden knew this was the plan, and due to intolerable provocation (3) the Russian parliament and then (4) Putin was forced unwillingly into action. He begins this thread at sixteen minutes into the podcast by saying:
In March 2021, President Zelensky issued a law to reconquer, by military means, Crimea and the south of Ukraine, meaning that they were preparing an offensive to attack Crimea and the Donbas.
What he’s referring to is a Presidential decree, the text of which is here. Quoting a journalistic summary:
[T]he basis of the strategy is the implementation of a complex of measures of a diplomatic, military, economic, informational, humanitarian and other nature with a parallel strengthening of defense capability and the development of European and Euro-Atlantic integration. Ukraine considers the political and diplomatic path to be a priority in resolving the conflict.
To suggest that this represented a prelude to a military re-conquest of Ukraine’s internationally-recognised territories is not terribly serious – it seems perfectly reasonable for Ukraine to have a strategy for what they’d need to do (e.g. build civil institutions, hold elections, etc.) in the event that Ukraine could – diplomatically or otherwise – ‘deoccupy’ Crimea. Baud goes on to say:
And [on] February 11th you may remember that Joe Biden said he knew that Russia would attack on the 16th of February. Now how could he know that? In fact, he knew that because he knew that the Ukrainians had planned to start their offensive on the 16th of February, and if you look at what the observers of the OSCE have reported from the 16th of February onwards, you see a dramatic increase of shelling from [the] Ukrainian side into the Donbas that forced the Donbas authorities to evacuate the Donbas population because they were under heavy artillery fire.
It seems obvious to a layman such as me that the U.S. could well have been aware of Russia’s intentions using well-established intelligence collection methods, such as signals intelligence gathered from the ~150,000 Russian soldiers on the Ukrainian border whom we now know to have been using insecure mobile phones – making Baud’s statement a telling solecism from a former intelligence officer. However, more to the point, it’s simply not true that Biden predicted February 16th to be the invasion date. In fact, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was reported to have said on February 11th:
Now, we can’t pinpoint the day at this point, and we can’t pinpoint the hour but what we can say is that there is a credible prospect that a Russian military action would take place, even before the end of the Olympics [on Feb 20th].
Reading the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission reports from the period, it’s clear there was a marked uptick in ceasefire violations (with ‘explosions’ – everything from RPGs to artillery – recorded at about 20 times the previous 30-day average), although it’s not possible to determine from these reports alone precisely who was responsible for the majority of the fire, or who started it – with both sides making accusations, and explosions reported on both sides of the line of contact. However, the OSCE maps suggest it was roughly an even exchange from both sides. You’d expect one side to respond to shelling from the other, and that seems to be what happened.
But Baud strongly implies that the OSCE reports blame Ukraine for the shelling, which is patently false, and which is again very telling because I’m confident he’s actually read the reports. The reason I can be confident is because he makes an interesting mistake, saying that on one particular day (February 18th) the rate of shelling was 40 times previous levels. But it’s clear he’s referring to one of the daily reports that actually covers two days of reporting, which is why his number is double the correct figure. Consequently, he has no excuse for suggesting the OSCE blamed the shelling on Ukraine.
As to the Russian evacuation of Donbas civilians which Baud claims was the direct result of Ukrainian shelling, there’s compelling evidence that Russia pre-planned the evacuation on or before the 16th as a pretext for the full-scale invasion, and indeed it seems that Donbas residents were confused as to the reasons – or the need – for an evacuation.
Baud’s narrative breaks down still further when he asserts that it was only after the supposed Ukrainian shelling that the Russian Duma voted to implore Putin to recognise the Donbas territories. In fact, this happened on February 15th. Then – remarkably quickly – on February 16th Russia put its claim to the UN Security Council. This was part of a planned strategy to establish the legal fiction, under Article 51 of the UN Charter, that Russia was merely defending the supposedly-independent states of Donetsk and Luhansk from outside aggression.
But if Baud is correct that the full-scale Russian invasion on the 24th was an unplanned and necessary response, it was rather convenient that those hordes of Russian troops just happened to be on Ukraine’s borders at the right time, and doubly convenient that – despite claiming on the 15th that they were withdrawing forces – Russia secretly moved another 7,000 troops to the area just before the 16th, in time for the start of these completely unexpected hostilities.
Baud may be cynically hoping that critics of Western foreign policy won’t be bothered to do their own research and will simply nod their heads sagely, feeling themselves privy to secret knowledge and safe in their titanium-lined bunker of naïveté. Sadly, it’s not clear that’s a bad strategy. But with events like the massacres in Bucha (which Baud has also denied), the rapes, forced deportations and the deliberate bombardment of non-military targets, it’s reached the point where those too cocksure to examine the facts look a lot like a modern-day Walter Duranty, albeit without the Pulitzer and with only the stench of death surrounding them.
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For a self-proclaimed layman Rons appears very assured about many important and nuanced details regarding this conflict over 1,500 miles away. He suggests that Delingpole’s and Baud’s views on the far-right beliefs of thousands of Ukraine fighters is unfounded and proceeds to use unknowable assertions to demonstrate this:
It may be the case that Delingpole and Baud are wrong but using presumptions to counter their claims is simple hypocrisy.
I can’t speak for anyone else but I groan every time I hear some patsy pontificating about the Russians or Ukraine, not because I think they’re wrong (although they invariably are) but because an important point of UK involvement in the conflict is to distract the public attention away from real news. Articles like this play right into the hands of the string-pullers so when Delingpole groans at Young on London Calling I don’t hear someone who thinks they know better about what’s going on in Ukraine I hear someone who sees clearly what’s going on under our noses!
Why is the claim ‘ludicrous’? DoesToby actually know anything at all about the history of the Far Right in Ukraine and Eastern Europe in general – it seems not.
He is also ignorant of the process of incorporating the Far Right into the Ukrainian Armed Forces after the 2014 CIA /Nuland Maiden “coup” and massively extending its influence
Being an apolgist for the most corrupt ( and since 2014 US/CIA abused) country in Europe, with a history of Racist “ethnic cleansing” extremism and atrocity ( see videos the Odessa burnings 2014) does Toby no credit.
Terrific article which adds some much needed balance to the eccentricity of some other pieces (not to mention comments) on here.
The idea that anyone would rely on the intelligence efforts of Switzerland (professional army 9,000) is the stuff of a Peter Sellers movie.
The fact that the rights and wrongs of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine are even being debated is a sign of how freely available harmful chemicals are today.
After all, the man, in his own words, in his own newspaper, told us what he was trying to do, tried to do it, and then told us again:
‘There will be a territory of potential integration into Russian civilization, which is anti-fascist in its internal nature, based on the border with the exclusion line to the Russian border.’
‘The “Catholic province” (Western Ukraine as part of five regions) is unlikely to become part of the pro-Russian territories. The line of alienation, however, will be found empirically.
‘Ukraine will be eradicated, but including, and above all, Western totalitarianism’
‘…publication of the names of accomplices of the Nazi regime, involving them in forced labor to restore the destroyed infrastructure as punishment for Nazi activities (from among those who will not… Read more »
Baud makes sense to me. Listen to Garland Nixon on George Galloway Moats 157.
Where was Ukraine’s army on February 24th? Wasn’t it mostly in the Donbass preparing for the offensive against the Russian speaking Republics?
It was mostly in the Donbass because they’ve been at war there since 2014. Where do you expect it to be?
Evidence for a major Ukrainian offensive is zero and defies all common sense, given Russia’s massive military build up on multiple fronts.
What was the background to this war? And is it a war waged against a military or civilian enemy? Who funds and arms the opposing sides? Who are the opposing sides? What do both sides want? What does Amnesty have to say about this war?
I don’t believe Putin wants to recreate the Soviet Union or create a Greater Russia, that’s just Western propaganda trying to portray him as the new Hitler. But he must have had a reason to invade so what was it?
There was a ceasefire line in Donbas, and no evidence that official Ukrainian forces had crossed over it. That isn’t even the standard Russian claim / propagandist excuse for invading but rather they had dramatically increased bombardment from outside.
Given the months-long massive build up of Russian forces on Ukraine’s border it would have been quite astonishing if Ukraine hadn’t bolstered its defensive capacity on what was a de fact national boundary and likely entrance point (Donbas ceasefire line).
In terms of increased shelling in the week beginning 16 February, the most likely explanation is that either the Ukrainian military were defensively responding to deliberately provocative increased attacks from the separatist side (perhaps thinking the Russian invasion was beginning), or that it was false flag; the Russian / separatist side fired into or exploded ordinance in unmanned areas of their own side of the line as a pretext for invasion.
What is not at all credible is the idea that the Zelensky regime was preparing to launch a large new military assault in the Donbas (a conflict which had calmed down to the extent that there were hardly any civilian casualties in 2021) at precisely the same moment as 200,000… Read more »
Toby, thanks for writing this. Not that James will listen. He’ll just say “well of course that is what “they” would say.” Toby, the LC pod has become unlistenable because everything is a conspiracy to James and these things called facts are somehow proof of your being Overton Windowed again. It gets boring. I can tell you what James will say on any topic because he’s a one-trick pony now. And he has a solid first class mind. Perhaps he, like Putin, just became overwhelmed during Covid with fears of plots and cabals. It’s sad because you two have great rapport, but when last ep he said he didn’t need to read a differing opinion, that made me turn it off. But he was more than happy to say someone at some unnamed church had Ukrainian refugees who hated Zelensky, blamed him for the war, etc, etc.
it’d time for an intervention.
An intervention by who? Nato? And if Nato, would that not mean a world war?
Are you seriously calling for a world war where the side you would like to see lose has nuclear weapons?
Perhaps you should delete your astonishingly stupid and dangerous comment.
Rather than downvoting a serious comment about a serious matter, it might be better (and braver) to actually argue your rationale behind cheering on a nuclear world war.
He clearly called for an intervention to help James Delingpole. That is usually a family meeting where loved ones talk plainly to the person in order to get them to see the truth of their predicament, but if you want to use NATO that would work as well.
I’m not sure he clearly called for an intervention to help James, but after re-reading the comment you may well be correct.
I have re-read your comment a couple of times as well, but clarity evades me again here. What exactly do you mean by “but if you want to use Nato, than would work as well”
Sevastopol is the Russian Navy’s warm water port. It is of crucial, CRUCIAL importance to Russia. If Ukraine (and therefore Crimea) became part of Nato, Sevastopol would become home to the US Navy instead.
So despite your word salad above, Mr Young, Delingpole is correct whilst you are not.
Don’t think this bloke is telling lies worth a look.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/insight-vox-col-richard-black-on-ukraine
Given the history of consistent brazen lying on virtually everything under the sun (the Skripal poisoners were sightseeing! There was categorically not going to be an invasion of Ukraine! The Moskva sank in a storm! The dead civilians in Bucha were actors! Ukraine has been shelling itself! – the examples go on and on
), it seems mind-boggling that anyone still gives any credibility to what Putin and his cronies say.The denazification claim is just one of many truly feeble attempts to legitimise Russian imperialist aggression and expansionism.
You state Russia is guilty of expansionism and imperialism. Which I find rather ridiculous.
Russia has of course been guilty of just that in the past, but I think it is fairer to say it wasn’t Russian expansion as such, it was Communist expansion. This culminated in the Soviet Union, which of course collapsed between 1989-1991.
Since then, Russia accepted its much diminished status in the world, in terms of both ideology and territory. It has at no point embarked on anything that could be remotely described as expansionist or imperialist.
There are clear geo-political reasons for Russian wishes (Russia, not Putin) to retain Ukraine as a friendly or a neutral neighbour. American / Nato actions however, have made this wish an impossibility. Russia is not in Ukraine for expansionist or imperialist reasons at all, it is there seeking to defend its geo-political stability.
Perhaps you could outline your thoughts as to why you consider Russia to be expansonist and imperialist?
This article is weak and ignores the herd of elephants in the room. Was the US involved in regime change in Kiev in 2014 by co-opting neo nazis? Most likely, yes. Was the Ukrainian army bombing Donbas for 8 years, killing many thousands, while many ethnic Russians did not recognize the new government as legitimate? Undeniable. Did the Zelensky regime refuse to sign up to the Minsk accord? Yes. Is NATO at war with Russia using Ukrainians as cannon fodder and pouring arms and funds into a lost cause? Very probably, yes. Does the US have a motive to destabilise Russia via military action in ukraine, and does the US have a record of regime change? I’d say so…. Conclusion: neither side is blameless, but the collective west’s involvement in prolonging a war which is lost — especially after goading the Zelensky regime with false promises — is morally bankrupt.
I fear that Delingpole has “jumped the shark” with his anti-Nato narrative.
I think that it’s time for a divorce and for London Calling to continue, Toby needs to find a new sidekick.
‘that the Holocaust partly took place on Ukrainian soil.’
The actual physical evidence indicates that the Holocaust didn’t take place at all.
The documentary made by the Jew David Cole called Cole goes to Auschwitz was an early documentary exposing the lies and deception that was used to create the Holocaust propaganda lie.
Absolute rubbish.
Delete your account.
Truth is always the first casualty of war. Are we to believe ‘Ukraine, angels. Russia, devils’, told to us by politicians who have lied to us throughout Covid and driven by media who are neither impartial nor questioning.? I choose to believe neither.
“But with events like the massacres in Bucha (which Baud has also denied), the rapes, forced deportations and the deliberate bombardment of civilians.”
How did Ian leave out the Ghost of Kyiv, the Snake Island “Spartans”, the attempted melting down of Chernobyl, firing a Soviet era rocket on an ethnic-Russian enclave, Russian generals killed twenty times over, etc. ?
The defining characteristic of a conspiracy theorist is that he is immune to data which contradicts the theory.
By contrast, the sort of thinking pioneered by the Ancient Greeks and which forms the basis of western advances in science and technology is to remain open to contrary data. Conspiracy thinking is the default mode of the non-western world.
These days a conspiracy theorist is a bloke who’s tired of being right all the time.
Not just these days. They are never wrong. In their own minds.
A safe and effective analysis I guess.
“the Skripals simply had a bad case of ‘food poisoning’”
Ian,
I suspect you are a little too ready to take the majority belief as the truth.
Have you ever “debunked” this chap’s analysis?
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/07/the-holes-in-the-official-skripal-story/
Thank you Mr Ron, for looking into this. I, too, went and listened to this after London Calling. I found myself slightly suspicious at the start of the discussion when he said: “Our government…. Eh, I mean the Russian government.” The thing that stood out for me was that, supposing everything he said was true (and I’ve no doubt ordinary Russian speakers have been treated appallingly in Ukraine), and if Putin was stricken with worry about these human rights abuses taking place in that country, would all this justify a war? Angry about the Minsk agreement not being adhered to? Does this justify war and all the bloodshed? Of course is doesn’t and Baud leaves me cold if he was hoping to inspire any sympathy for Russian military actions. This doesn’t mean I’m now going to absorb all the coverage in DM or elsewhere. I will just carry on with my search for accurate details of what’s going on in Ukraine.
Putin executed a special military operation.
The West wanted the war.
Putin has never told us but perhaps you can – what’s the difference between a special military operation and a war?
Go look for yourself.
War for Russia is deploying more than 10% of its useable forces.
One is conducted to gain long term political control over conquered territory, the other is to solve a problem which polite negotiations failed to do.
I travel to Poland frequently and have observed the refugees- women, children with cats and dogs. Millions of people. This “special military operation” description is ordure. Yes, West want a long war to drain Russian resources and to make them think twice about doing any such thing again. Nelson wrote about all this in the Telegraph weeks ago.
It’s easy enough to ascertain what’s going on in Ukraine. According to sources not shot-through with prior hatred for Putin, Russia is methodically grinding the US, er, Ukrainian war machine to dust.
‘Angry about the Minsk agreement not being adhered to? Does this justify war and all the bloodshed?’
Russia, like other countries, is allowed to have its own foreign policy. In Ukraine it clearly sees an existential threat. Large faction of Russia hating nazi extremists with NATO backing and arms, biological weapons labs, a government happy to cut the water supply to Crimea off, open, government-backed discrimination against Russian speakers and a leader who has expressed a desire to regain nuclear weapons. That’s more than enough reason to take action in my opinion. The war is a tragedy of course. Wars are. But the United States and the UK have literally flattened countries on far, far more spurious grounds.
More third rate tripe from Rons.
For a proper sceptical analysis, even from someone describing Putin’s actions as “idiotic and brutal”, try Peter Hitchens:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10840777/PETER-HITCHENS-explain-called-evacuation-not-surrender.html
Seems like the MSM can be more sceptical than a so-called sceptical website when Rons is around.
I can’t believe this guy can get his articles printed by an otherwise respectable publication like The Daily Sceptic when he’s done far less reading on the subjects he’s writing on than everyone commenting on his work.
For a well researched breakdown of Nazi influence in Ukrainian military and politics see Ian Davis’ article in UK Column:
https://www.ukcolumn.org/index.php/article/does-ukraine-need-to-be-denazified
My thoughts entirely. I suppose it’s an attempt to appear balanced; but to take the author’s position, you really do need to have your fingers in your ears and try your best not to look at any context.
It is done simply to stimulate response. Look at the comment count and compare it to other articles.
He seems to maintain the website for Toby. I guess that explains his visibility,
Yeah. If anybody calls the Azov regiment “neo-Nazi”, the authorised pro-NATO trollface response is “Well, some of them have indeed been photographed carrying swastika flags, but you can’t prove they’re all neo-Nazis, can you? Ner ner ni ner ner!”
Personally I am so fast that no sealion will ever catch me.
Well done to the author for challenging the fake facts that this publication seems happy to publish.
Fake facts?! An unusual term. Can you give us some examples of fake facts?
I think the troll means “heretic” facts. There is no way facts can turn around such fanatical psuedo-religious befiefs.
Whatever the pretense, I relish watching Putin breaking the Unipolar World.
The unipolar world is laughing at Putin and his long table and crap army.
US and its poodle UK isolating themselves from the larger world. Meantime, Russia, what with its washing machine parts army, is grinding Europe’s second-largest army to dust.
Are you triplejabbed?
You obviously don’t understand symbolic gestures in diplomacy.
So the Ukrainians were openly Nazi and those that tolerate Nazis … and I guess the rest are “only following orders”.
Putin’s private army is the Nazi affiliated Wagner Group. Which he sent into Ukraine to hunt out Zelensky who is…Jewish.
History repeats itself, I guess
I don’t think you’ve got any evidence to back up that assertion, sorry, don’t believe you.
His Nazis are better than your Nazis.
I’ve given him a kicking over that stupid statement before. It makes no difference, he just regurgitates his bile on every post no matter what evidence is presented.
So Ian Rons, guys like these just members of the Gendarme?
just like this nice fella?
But do please tell us more about your non-affiliation with Russia.
No point engaging with them.
We’ve got a nasty bout of thread crabs on this one, including the author itself.
Back off. Ian has submitted a thoughtful piece. You may not agree with it, in which case, submit your own piece instead of sniping.
No.
Thoughtful, not in the least. If you read it carefully, he sneakily mines the whole post with untruths, projections and standard Empire of Lies talking points.
No time to be giving any quarter to apologists of the fascist Western pols.
I am utterly embarrassed and ashamed to be a resident of HM’s Zone A.
The sooner the multi polar world overtakes this western zombie society the better.
Submit your rebuttal then.
Try a statement that makes sense.
I can’t vouch for the other poster, but I STAND WITH RUSSIA.
I don’t stand with any side here. I would just like to understand the truth.
You’ll have to incorporate sources not shot through with prior hatred for Putin. All others are singing from the same hymn book.
So now we’ve worked out that the post author is a Commissioned Officer in the 77th.
Very poor.
Are you a simpleton..lord snoopy is a raging Russian war enthusiast, just like you.
Ad homs.
Debate 101 fail.
Is that a sperm attached to a Nazi key? I’m struggling to think of a more embarrassing tattoo.
So you have found some nazi tattoos, online.
Call that evidence?
You need verified information on all the army, to make your case.
And your “evidence” is sourced from where? Oh, of course, no evidence, just opinion.
Ian Rons hasn’t a clue.
But I do have a beer. Cheers!
I think you had too many beers when you wrote this article.
Baud is just one of many geopolitical analysts who has seen through the Western lies and propaganda.
The facts are ……
Ukraine, with help from the West, have been waging war against ethnic Russians since the US led coup of 2014.
In that year 97% of Ukrainians in Crimea democratically voted to reject their neo-Nazi supporting national government for closer ties with Russia.
The republics of Donetsk and Luhansk voted by a similar margin.
Ethnic Russians in the east left the Ukrainian military and took their hardware to the Donbass to set up autonomous regions to protect their citizens fleeing from the Ukrainian army and neo-Nazi militias.
Zelensky was elected because he said he would end the conflict in the Donbass. He did exactly the opposite. He vowed to take back Crimea by force and join Nato and have nuclear weapons.
Ukraine ignored the Minsk peace agreements.
Zelensky banned the use of the Russian language which the vast majority in the east and south of Ukraine use.
In February 2022 Ukraine were massing their military for a “final solution” against the… Read more »
Be good if Ian crafted a post to answer your post GHF, mite be a bit more difficult than knocking down Dellingpoles strawmen tho.
Cheers.
My post is all verifiable with links if needed.
Let me compare Rons’ well reasoned, evidence based article with your 5 word reply.
On balance, Rons comes out if that comparison quite well.
Do you have something specific to say about the content?
If you do, it could make you look bright.. otherwise.,……not bright.
Just when you think this forum is lost to conspiracy theorists and crackpots, you get a genuinely high class article like this.
Excellent journalism, the best I have read here.
I now understand the source of some of the daft claims that have been circulating here.
Like anything else Fingers, if it doesn’t suit you, you attack it. If it does suit you, you applaud it.
You have zero ability to critically analyse anything. Everything is face value to you.
Your extreme right wing views don’t suit me
I love the way you’re trying to persuade everyone that Hitler was not actually right wing, so it’s ok for you to be to the right of him
Hey sucker, get a load of this.
https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm
Chapter and verse son. If you don’t concede the point, you are most certainly a Nazi.
Show an example of your critical thinking.
Read the room doughnut.
At a loss as to why you waste your time with ‘crackpots and conspiracy theorists’ – doesn’t add up; what are you hoping to achieve?
He has no achievements. But he keeps trying. He was a cunt during covid. So no reason to think he would improve during bull shit crisis mark 2.
I am shocked, I tell you, shocked that a guest on James Dellingpole’s podcast is a crackpot who is full of crap.
About as shocked as I am that you’re not pushing up the daisies being XXX jabbed. Here’s hoping eh?
Please, get off your mother’s computer and find a girlfriend, the world could do with a little less of your frustration.
Married with kids simpleton.
Didn’t spill my seed on my mom’s basement floor.
That statement is not very woke of you and makes all sorts of deprecated assumptions.
And you think that you are a good person?
At least I’m not a
Excellent forensic article. Every time I have investigated Russian excuses for the invasion I have also found the facts to be either incorrect or wildly exaggerated.
Just on the increased shelling in Donbas in the week prior to the invasion, as far as I can see there are three possibilities:
A) The separatist side (with extensive hidden Russian military support) launched a much increased bombardment on 16 February and subsequent days to provoke the Ukrainian military into answering in kind.
The latter did so, naturally thinking this was either a part of or a softening up prelude to the now much flagged imminent invasion; in other words they acted in self-defence.
B) US intelligence, which got just about everything else right about the Russian movements and intentions, predicted a false flag event being used as an excuse to invade.
Under this theory the separatist / Russian side could have been responsible for the large majority of the observed explosions within their own territory, either ensuring that shells dropped short into unmanned sectors, or even more safely carried out ground explosions of pre-planted ordinance. An OSCE observer at any distance away would not have been able to tell the difference between that… Read more »
Shush! The Mutton heads on here believe the US is evil and Putin is smart.
Answering your own Battalion comments is a sure sign of retardation.
You don’t like the site, bog off and flog your dolphin at Politico, Grauniad, New Statesman* etc…
*other tone deaf, left wing lying, gaslighting bile-factories are available….
An ugly rant!
Run out of arguments?
You have a nerve accusing others of ugly rants.
You might have misread me, I am as right wing and “anti covid” as they come – I just don’t blame the west for an evil tyrant’s atrocities like most of the idiots on here do
Evil and tyrant.
Like every WEF Young Leader who now heads nearly every western “democracy” ?
Do you not see where COVID came from, where NATO inevitably leads, where Net Zero terminates ( i. e. the populace who it’s applied to)?
Trump was the first POTUS in living memory not to begin a new conflict in his first term.
His predecessor was Obama, a Democrat. His successor, Biden, a Democrat.
Putin and Trump seemed to have a reasonable relationship, the foundation of the discredited claims of Russian collusion (which are now subject to the Durham Investigation).
But somehow Trump and Putin are cast as the evil entities over the last five and a half years, by complicit governments and collusive left wing media.
And you don’t think that all stinks?
If there were ever a need for a sanity check, that would be it.
Agree re Trump, but we cannot escape the fact that Putin is deliberately murdering thousands of people to steal land
Covid didn’t happen spontaneously or in a vacuum, it followed decades of corruption, the hollowing out / corporatisation and corruption of governments and agencies; the tools used to surveil ordinary citizens wasn’t dreamt up in 2020. We in the west have been living under corrupt tyranny and creeping totalitarianism for years and years. How can you see that covid was bulllshit, and then on this issue believe every word of the same media that lied to you incessantly for the last two years? Did you follow what happened in Syria? You can’t have done, or you would be a lot more ambivalent about the ‘evils’ of Putin’s Russia.
Scepticism is a part time activity for most covid objectors. It was nice when they were scared, but when it’s safe to enter the sheep pen again, they compliantly do.
It’s infuriating!
LOL, you credit Biden with ‘smarts’?
Biden is a lily livered senile old idiot, Putin and Xi have been waiting (or perhaps planning) for such a weak Western leader.
Where did I say Biden was smart you silly old fool?
But I thought Trump was the warmonger colluding with Putin.
Why didn’t Putin take his chance when Trump was POTUS?
Meanwhile, Russia has smashed all Ukraine’s heavy weaponry, and withdrawn to the east. had he wanted to take Ukraine he has 2,000,000 troops who could have accomplished that in a week. Why did he only turn up with a fraction of that, then do precisely what he said he would do and defend ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine.
Your Putin Derangement Syndrome is as bad as Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Because he’d never have got away with it with a strong president like Trump. Xi and Putin probably couldn’t believe their luck that they managed to fiddle the election and get this old dope in
There is nothing wrong, with the US, that regime change and a Putin appointee, add ten million Chinese wouldn’t solve.
Unlikely that the geographic area of Russia has anything to do with anything. There are quite a few more populous countries.
Your analysis appears to depend on there only being two countries involved, this is somewhat naive.
Whilst Russia’s ‘largest geographical country’ status isn’t reflected in its conventional military might (though it still far outnumbers and outguns Ukraine) it is in its possession of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world (over 6000).
Quite intimidating.
In any case that expression was really just used to add a bit of dramatic colour to the piece, its absence would not have changed any of the substantive elements.
The main one being that the claim that Ukraine decided to launch a new military onslaught on the separatists in Donbas at precisely the same moment when intelligence suggested their country was about to be invaded by a massive Russian force seems a little, well… unconvincing…
The Russian nuclear arsenal is matched by the US nuclear arsenal. That was the point of the nuclear proliferation treaty.
Much of Russia’s former nuclear arsenal went to help power American nuclear power stations.
It’s not in question, it’s a documented fact by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine.
5,000 artillery rounds were used on the border of Donbas.
How many by the rebels, how many by Ukraine?
It doesn’t matter dummy. The fact that western Ukraine had transported their artillery to the Donbas border is sufficient to identify them as the aggressor.
Eastern Ukraine has not been invading western Ukraine for the last 8 years, it’s precisely the opposite.
If what Putin has done was deemed illegal then troops from other UN Nations could have been legitimately rolled in to support western Ukraine. But they weren’t.
That should tell you all you need to know.
One of your more remarkably silly arguments. They’ve been at war since 2014.
The rebel republics are and always have been a Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory
The UN doesn’t have any troops, you buffoon. Individual countries loan them. The West doesn’t want war so it has limited its response to arms supplies.
Read what I actually posted bollock brains.🙄
“….then troops from other UN Nations….”
Prove your made up statements doughnut. Give us all some evidence. But you won’t, you never do.
Just make shit up as usual.
You are slow so I will repeat: the UN can’t ‘roll in’ troops because it hasn’t got any. No UN approval is required for anyone to support Ukraine, either in arms supply or on the ground troops.
You have been asked to differentiate between the parties’ rounds many times and failed to do so.
Sorry, I don’t understand what you’re asking.
Are you asking me to identify between opposing artillery fire?
Satellite observations can identify those by muzzle flashes and impact sites.
But that’s not the point. The fact western Ukraine’s artillery has been transported to the Donbas border, when over the last 8 years western Ukraine has been the aggressor in the east, is sufficient to identify them as the aggressor.
Why haven’t UN countries rolled in armour to help? Because Russia legally invoked article 51 and the west knows it’s right.
You constructed a wholly false argument based on your failure to understand the OSCE reports and UN law. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that was out of ignorance. But seeing as you persist with this, you are an outright liar.
Article 51
of the Charter of the United Nations
24 Oct. 1945 -|Last updated: 01 Oct. 2009 15:42
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
Where does it demand permission is sought dummy?
If Article 51 had existed in 1939, Hitler could have ‘invoked’ it in the same way, with about as much justification as Putin.
Absolutely anyone can claim Article 51 applies. What matters is whether the UN agrees – and they don’t.
You are consistently the least interesting contributor to this website.
Russia wasn’t threatening to invade the US but rather Ukraine, which has zero nuclear weapons.
On your other point I can only assume you haven’t seen my first post above. In any case I am well aware of the OSCE reporting, and wasn’t challenging the extent of observed explosions (not necessarily identified as artillery rounds) at the time in the region.
What wasn’t known in the overwhelming majority of cases was the direction of any rounds (incoming or outgoing) or indeed whether they might have been purely ground explosions, which is relevant to the ‘false flag’ theory.
In any case please see my first post for my overall analysis, and resultant near certain rejection of the Russian position on this which you quoted me on.
Just goes to show how limited your vision is.
Thankfully, someone has had a stab at an analysis of the situation rather than screaming “fascist nazi Ukrainian hater” at anyone who dares to examine why Russia would attack Ukraine.
I like your comments in A). Very rational and factual as far as I can gather. The only issue I have is that the artillery activity on the border of Donbas, was on the border of Donbas and the shooting was at least two way according to OSCE observers.
Which is almost beside the point because, after eight years of assaults on Donbas by western Ukraine, their artillery is stationed on the western side of the Donbas border.
I stand to be corrected here but, as far as I can gather, there has been no insurgency from east to west. Therefore, artillery fire from west to east must be considered the aggressor. The artillery has been transported from the west to the Donbas border.
On that basis, artillery ramped up over the seven days prior to Russia’s intervention, whilst Russian troops were on the Russia/Ukraine border could only have been for one of two reasons:
As a prelude to invasion of Donbas, which is the principle purpose of artillery. To… Read more »
Once again, literally anybody can quote Article 51. What matters is whether the UN itself accepts that it applies. And they don’t.
Obviously you haven’t read Article 51. It does not require permission.
It’s only a paragraph long Fingers, even you can manage it.
Just to clarify
I don’t think the UN has taken any measures yet.
Same drivel as before.
Ukraine could invoke Article 51 too, which means that both sides would be claiming UN justification to fight each other.
Stupid? Yes it is.
Or rather, yes you are.
“Putin was, according to our media, defiant, and threatened nuclear retaliation if a NATO member intervened. There has been barely a murmur of objection to this from the west. All we have heard is of the heroic effort to arm the Ukrainian’s against the oppressive Russians. No effort has been made to say, “eff you Vlad, you’re in the wrong here and we’re rolling our troops in and if you don’t like it, we have a nuclear arsenal better than yours”.
To use an alleged lack of condemnation of the Putin regime and its captive media’s near daily repugnant nuclear threats (not just if if Russia was directly attacked but if anyone intervened with conventional military force in Ukraine) as a tacit acknowledgement that Russia was in the right over this is stretching things to way past breaking point.
First of all there was in fact a massive amount of horrified condemnation amongst politicians and media in the West (including UK).
The reason that this did no translate into ‘lets roll the troops in and if that leads to a mass nuclear exchange (as it almost inevitably would) then so what’, is because of this very humanitarian horror (not a… Read more »
Good of Toby’s mate Delingpole to put up a straw man for us to find mendacious enough so to buy back into the UK Legacy Media narrative.
I, for one, don’t pay too much heed to Baud but nor do I pay much heed to the “poor innocent Ukraine” bullshit.
And at the end of the day, I don’t feel safer because of the west’s treatment of this war.
You go for the innocent Russia bullshit then?
Do you buy into the innocent west bullshit then?
It does look like Russia invaded Ukraine.
Of course they did, but the numpties on here seek to justify it. One trick ponies the lot of them, they saw the covid lie now they think everything western is a lie
Maybe the Chinks knew this?
Talking of one-trick ponies ………
Intervened before an ethnic cleansing as far as I can assess.
Unlike the west, which lets ethnic cleansing occur in places like Rwanda and Bosnia before stepping in.
Why don’t you piss off to Rwanda, Bosnia or China then instead of constantly complaining about the West that gave you a comfortable life and career for your zero talent?
Might be an option whilst you zombies freeze and starve to death in your Net Zero utopia.
Who complained about the west. I pointed out an acknowledged fact.
Need to take your angry head off mate.
PS I lived in China. Nice place.
Remember when ethnic cleansing was regarded as just cause for military intervention ? Ditto: preemptive actions ?
That’s what I thought.
Not very sceptical of Irons not to have considered the false flag possibility. (Even our prime minister has recognised the false flag as a genuine phenomenon, rather than an invention of crazy conspiracy theorists,)
Weak
So daily Skeptics has truly been compromised.
What a sad state of affairs.
we have this complete tool of mind fuck land trying to use typically lame argumentation methodology trained from debate class to try and convince us that our support for little miss Nazi pawn Zelenski is really good and the sceptical position. After all this is the daily Skeptic.
So I guess it’s time to dump my support for this POS rag.
Bye. Don’t let the door hit your………….
So original. Actually you really strike me as one of the lamest posters I’ve seen on these boards.
I’d be surprised if you broke 105 on IQ tests.
Have you had one?
When you’re capable of posting more than a four line comment, let me know.