See No Evil, Hear No Evil: Russian POWs 'Unworthy Victims' in Eyes of West, Say Independent Scholars
17:08 GMT 07.04.2022 (Updated: 16:46 GMT 08.01.2023)
© Sputnik / Maxim Blinov
/ Subscribe
The New York Times has verified a gruesome video featuring the killing of Russian POWs by Ukrainian soldiers. The crime reportedly took place near the village of Dmytrivka, 7 miles southwest of Bucha. Nevertheless, the NYT publication did not receive wide publicity in contrast to the alleged Bucha massacre.
"In their influential work 'Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media,' the late Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky defined the notion of 'worthy and unworthy victims' in US political propaganda selling foreign policy to the public," says US independent journalist and geopolitical analyst Max Parry. "In this case, Russian soldiers who are murdered or injured in war crimes by Ukraine are deemed unworthy because it is inconvenient to the misleading narrative surrounding this conflict promoted in Western corporate media of Russia being the sole aggressor."
Parry highlights that at the same time an evidence-free story of "the massacre" of Bucha civilians by the Russian military is splattered all over every news outlet as a presumption of fact without any verification or meaningful inquiry. According to the journalist, the stark difference in coverage demonstrates how politicised the West's narrative of the conflict has become.
"Many analysts have noted the striking similarity in the reports on the Bucha story and the inherent anti-Serb bias in the media during the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s where disproportionate attention was given to the 1995 Srebrenica killings by Bosnian Serbs, while comparable war crimes by Bosnian Muslims against Serbs in the lead up to Srebrenica was completely omitted from Western news," notes the American journalist.
A soldier takes a photograph of his comrade as he poses beside a destroyed Russian tank and armoured vehicles in Bucha, Kiev region, Ukraine April 2, 2022
© REUTERS / ZOHRA BENSEMRA
Even though the Pentagon admitted that it could not independently confirm atrocities in Bucha, US President Joe Biden rushed to claim that Vladimir Putin was "a war criminal" and should be brought to trial over the case.
However, much falsified “evidence” published in the media during wars in Yugoslavia and the Middle East and the fake images produced by “war actors” make Western claims in Ukraine difficult to assess, according to Rodney Atkinson, British academic, founder of freenations.net website and a former ministerial advisor.
"The films of the maltreatment and killing of Russian troops are however clear, not least because they were evidently made by Ukrainian soldiers," says Atkinson. "I have published examples including that published by the New York Times on my Freenations.net website."
At the same time, the British academic has drawn attention to a "particular hypocrisy by the United States in demanding war crime trials for others when American politicians have for years refused to be subjected to the International Criminal Court (ICC) themselves."
To complicate matters further international tribunals have become no less politicised than the Western media, says Parry. He notes that these tribunals "have frequently been accused of being a tool of Western imperialism" because they are "disproportionately targeting US adversaries and leaders in the global south, particularly Africa, while failing to bring to justice members of the Bush administration for the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, for example."
"In the case of the former Yugoslavia, Serbs were inordinately charged with crimes against humanity compared to Bosnians and Croats," Parry points out. "A kangaroo court like the ICC is just as likely to be an instrument for imperialism in regard to the Ukraine-Russia conflict as well."
Commenting on the NYT's Russian POWs story, largely neglected by other Western mainstream media, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov lamented the fact "there are no calls for an investigation or punishment of those responsible for the violation of international humanitarian law."
"It would be hard to credibly disagree with Ambassador Anatoly Antonov, Russian Ambassador to the United States, stating there is a bias in US reporting regarding Ukraine," Matthew Gordon-Banks, former UK Member of Parliament and retired Senior Research Fellow, UK Ministry of Defence. "Russia is repeatedly accused of spreading disinformation, yet, here, The New York Times (NYT) verified video of the murder of Russian Airborne soldiers close to Bucha, has received hardly any publicity in Western media. The truth is one of the first casualties of war."
Gordon-Banks expresses bewilderment over the fact Western officials have yet to openly condemn the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian military even though Ukrainian Presidential Adviser Oleksiy Arestovich has said that "if it turns out to be real, this is absolutely unacceptable behaviour".
Furthermore, Western countries have silenced Russian media sources, which are providing an alternative view of what's going on in Ukraine, and stuck to its own narrative.
"In a number of Western countries, including the United States, there is noticeable censorship at this time," stresses Gordon-Banks. "Even those people with no financial or vested interest like myself are finding that deep state forces and the media are putting pressure on them. The truth will always come out."
