UKRAINE

BEN NORTON—Since a US-backed 2014 coup overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected government and installed a viciously anti-Russian and pro-NATO right-wing government, Kiev has been battling pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country. Neo-fascist Ukrainian groups like Right Sector and Svoboda played a major role in this Western-backed regime change operation. In the violence following the putsch, these forces cohered into neo-Nazi militias like the Azov Battalion and C14 (named after the white supremacist “14 words” slogan). In 2014, the Azov Battalion was directly incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard, merging the explicitly fascist militia with the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior and military.

ERIC ZUESSE—The Netherlands Government is resisting an effort by Dutch victims’ families to find out why Ukraine’s Government, on 17 July 2014 — when the Malaysian airliner MH17 was shot down while flying over Ukraine’s civil-war zone — this passenger-plane had been guided by Ukraine’s air-traffic control to fly through, instead of around (as it instructed other airliners), the war-zone.

MOA—There are some serious questions around the Biden family involvement in the Ukraine that the media have not picked up on. The first regards the ownership of the company which hired Joe Biden’s son Hunter for an exorbitant amount of money while Joe Biden ran the U.S. Ukraine policy. The second question is about the firing of Viktor Shokin, the former Prosecutor General of the Ukraine. Trump accuses Joe Biden of having intervened in favor of his son’s sponsor to get Shokin fired. The timeline below supports that assertion.

DMITRY ORLOV—While the Ukraine, as part of the Russian world, is important, an important requirement for being part of the Russian world is willingness to die for it. The people in Eastern Ukraine have demonstrated such valor, and so they are given humanitarian aid and other forms of assistance and are issued Russian passports soon after they ask for them (and submit all of the required paperwork). As far as the rest, they have demonstrated quite a bit of anti-Russian hostility and an overwhelming willingness to sit around and do nothing while their country is being looted and destroyed, and so they will get nothing.

YASHA LEVINE—It’s hard to keep track of all the frantic, overcooked coverage, but it looks there’s a concerted effort in the press to shrink time and space and make it seem like the only truly bad Ukrainian meddling started and stopped with Donald Trump and his cronies. Naturally, big doses of Russophobia are being shoveled into the mix to make it all seem exceptional and scary — as if it’s all part some of kind bigger partnership with the forces of darkness to undermine democracy around the world.