Prof: US' 'Russia Hit Lists' Claim is New Propaganda Twist Aimed at Sowing Panic Among Ukrainians
18:35 GMT 21.02.2022 (Updated: 13:44 GMT 25.02.2024)
© ALEXANDER NEMENOV
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After Washington's predictions about Russia's invasion on 16 February and "false-flag op" failed to materialise, the US claims that Russia has compiled lists of Ukrainians "to be killed or sent to camps" following an invasion, calling their information "credible" but providing no evidence to back the new narrative.
"The fact of all facts is that whenever a war starts, the first victim is the truth," says Professor Stevan Gajic, a research associate at the Institute of European Studies in Belgrade. "I believe that this is exactly the case this time as well. We had these announcements that the invasion will start on 16 February or before, and none of the claims were backed by solid evidence. We have not seen anything so far. I only see these claims as a part of a propaganda war that we're witnessing now."
The claims were made by Ambassador Bathsheba Nell Crocker, the US representative to the Office of the United Nations, in her letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet. Her letter, obtained by NBC News, says that the US has "credible information that indicates Russian forces are creating lists of identified Ukrainians to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation." Crocker went on to claim that "Russian forces will likely use lethal measures to disperse peaceful protests or otherwise counter peaceful exercises of perceived resistance from civilian populations." The Kremlin dismissed Crocker's allegations as "fiction."
According to Gajic, the main motivation behind Washington's new narrative is to create a state of panic among Ukrainians. The question is whether the Americans and other nations believe the US State Department after it repeatedly discredited itself, says the professor.
"So it would be really naive to trust anything that comes from that kitchen before it is really firmly backed by hard evidence," the academic says. "I don't think that this [hit list] claim is even important, that it should even be considered because it is only one of many. And I predict that this will not be the last one and that we will only hear more and more creative conspiracy theories from Washington."
The White House's manipulation of facts including the whitewashing of atrocities committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and hysteria over the alleged weapons of mass distraction (WMD) in Iraq, led to "unmeasurable suffering of millions of people and the onslaught of the situation until the present day," warns Gajic.
Time and time again, the West has resorted to a "selective worldview," the academic stresses. This time it's accusing Russia of "would-be" violations of human rights in Ukraine while neglecting Kiev's violations of the
ceasefire and safety of the citizens of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, according to Gajic. Prior to that, the US and the EU turned a blind eye to the violations of the Russian speaking population in the Baltic states, Serbia's legitimate claim to Kosovo, and the fact that NATO bombed Yugoslavia in 1999 without the UN resolution or Security Council's decision, he notes.
ceasefire and safety of the citizens of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, according to Gajic. Prior to that, the US and the EU turned a blind eye to the violations of the Russian speaking population in the Baltic states, Serbia's legitimate claim to Kosovo, and the fact that NATO bombed Yugoslavia in 1999 without the UN resolution or Security Council's decision, he notes.
"When we talk about these claims of human rights violations in DPR and that Americans never addressed what happened on 2 May of 2014 in Odessa, where 100 people were burned alive in a building and nobody is responsible for that, what else can we talk about?" Gajic asks. "I think this is all part of one same problem. And the problem is that geopolitics is above values when it comes to the statements of the Western leaders and policy makers."
Police officers and opposition supporters are seen on Maidan Nezalezhnosti square in Kiev, where clashes began between protesters and the police. (File)
© Sputnik / Andrey Stenin
According to the academic, the Donbass issue has been overlooked and neglected by the West since the 2014 Ukrainian coup, while the Kiev regime's opponents have been suppressed and silenced.
"What happened with all the voters of Viktor Yanukovich, the voters of the Party of Regions, what they like to call the pro-Russian voters?" wonders Gajic.
Meanwhile, between August and October 2021, in the village of Slavyanoserbsk, in the area of the residential area Sokogorovka Pervomaisk, the village of Vidnoye-1 near Lugansk and on the outskirts of the village of Verkhneshevyrevka, Krasnodonsky district, five mass graves were discovered, according to the Investigative Committee of Russia. The remains of at least 295 civilians, including women, who were killed by indiscriminate shelling by Ukrainian armed forces in 2014, were exhumed. The conflict in Eastern Ukraine has claimed the lives of over 13,000 people since 2014, according to the UN. The attacks on the peaceful civilians of Donbass by the Kiev and neo-Nazi militias were called nothing short of genocide by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
However, White House Spokeswoman Jens Psaki rushed to cast doubt on the mass graves disclosure. For his part, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz claimed at the annual Munich Security Conference on 19 February that it is "really ridiculous" to say that "there is something like genocide" in Donbass.
On 18 February, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics announced the evacuation of their citizens to Russia amid an escalation on the contact line between Ukraine and the DPR and LPR, as Kiev forces intensified shelling of the Donbass region. According to the DPR, Kiev forces fired 12 122-mm calibre mortars at Zaichenko, Donetsk region, on Monday.
