Anti-Russian sentiment has deep roots in modern Western society, owing in part to the country’s military power and historical status as a foil to Western Europe.
In recent years this struggle has acutely played out in the country of Ukraine, which the United States has worked tirelessly to pull into the Western orbit. 2014’s Euromaidan coup installed a fiercely anti-Russian government in the Mariinskyi Palace, empowering Ukrainian nationalists with grievances against Moscow dating back to Nazism’s mid-20th century march across the continent.
The development led to significant hostility toward ethnic Russians in the country, especially in Ukraine’s eastern provinces. Atrocities such as the Odessa Trade Union House massacre demonstrated the physical threat posed to Russo-Ukrainians, while the banning of the Russian language in schools and places of business illustrated what observers claimed was a broad suppression of Russian culture.
In the United States, anti-Russian sentiment dating back to the Cold War has been rekindled by claims of Russian interference in US presidential politics – a narrative frequently not borne out by investigations into the matter. Widespread Russophobia has heightened the typically militaristic tenor of Western news reporting, causing coverage of the Ukraine conflict to fall even below the standards of typical war coverage in the United States according to Covert Action Magazine managing editor Jeremy Kuzmarov.
The analyst joined Sputnik’s Fault Lines program Wednesday to discuss the state of journalistic reporting on the ongoing conflict.
“I think that the media coverage has been absolutely abysmal,” claimed Kuzmarov, an author of several critical books on US foreign policy. “We've had a decade of Russophobia that we've discussed on the show that's really impacted people considerably. And there's been a total blackout.”
“As far as Israel-Palestine, it has gotten through because of the brutality of the Israelis,” he continued. “Some of it has been reported in mainstream media, the bombing of hospitals and things like that. But there's been a total blackout on the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian military, including the neo-Nazi Azov battalion*.”
“Especially liberal media has been particularly biased and Russophobic, like MSNBC and CNN, as well as alternative media like Democracy Now! that has a following among activists who are more in the peace movement – there's nothing on that network ever. They've never interviewed Eastern Ukrainians who've been victimized by the Ukrainian military or endured shelling of their cities.”
The US-based news outlet CNN was embarrassed in late 2022 when, during a piece celebrating Ukraine’s advance in the Kherson region, footage aired by the network appeared to show a man with a Ukrainian flag giving a Nazi salute to a crowd of revelers. The incident was one of many demonstrating the significant influence of neo-fascists in Ukraine’s military and society – a fact that Western media has increasingly taken great pains to ignore.
“Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial [post-Maidan] euphoria,” The Nation reported in 2019. “There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, ... book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators… What Ukraine’s far right lacks in poll numbers, it makes up for with things Marine Le Pen could only dream of – paramilitary units and free rein on the streets.”
“Post-Maidan Ukraine is the world’s only nation to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces,” the report noted. Multiple occurrences of war crimes have been attributed to far-right regiments in Ukraine, including the use of cluster munitions and documented instances of torture. One video from late 2022 showed the summary execution of several surrendering Russian soldiers, who were shot in the legs before being gunned down. Such cases have received little attention as media focuses on often dubious pro-Ukraine stories.
Western portrayals of the Ukraine conflict as a struggle for democracy and human rights are belied by the actual nature of the Ukrainian government, which has legitimized neo-Nazi gangs in the domestic as well as the military sphere. Five years ago Kiev announced the National Druzhina paramilitary group would serve as poll watchers in the country’s national elections. The group swears fealty to politician Andriy Biletsky, who once vowed Ukraine would “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade…against the Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].”
“There's a deeply ingrained Russophobia that goes back to Cold War and Hollywood film and how they present the Russians as the enemy in a demonized way,” said Kuzmarov, who claimed that anti-Russian sentiment has prevented an honest discussion about the nature of Ukraine’s government. “That has seeped so deeply in our culture that Americans can't wake up and smell the coffee as to what's gone on here, the catastrophe, the Vietnam-type situation that they support in Ukraine.”
The analyst observed that the conflict has become deeply polarized in the United States, noting it is “becoming a popular issue for the Republican Party now. That may be one reason why the young lefties aren't coming strong against the Ukrainian war, because the main politicians speaking out against it are people on the right. People they hate [like] Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump, and Robert Kennedy, who defected into the Republican Party.”
*Azov Battalion is a terrorist organization banned in Russia.