The Ukrainian Crisis Three Years On: An Autopsy of the Mainstream Media Discourse Pt I [+Videos] - Like This Article

March 12th, 2017 - Fort Russ News - 

- Analysis - by Denis Churilov for FRN - 

Three years on, there is still a need to talk about an ongoing event that is among the most misrepresented topics in the Western political and media discourse - the Ukrainian Crisis. This topic is of high importance, as its escalation may lead to WW3 and then straight to a Nuclear Apocalypse, which, obviously, isn’t going to benefit the majority of people on planet Earth. People generally should be well-informed and have balanced views on such issues, as the political decisions usually rest on public support. It’s within your responsibility too to prevent bad, misguided political decisions from being made.

Regarding the Crisis itself, the coverage of those events by the Western mainstream media to date has been done in a near-Orwellian style, with so called political pundits having discussions on-air, during which they struggle to come to consensus on whether Putin is an irrational maniac or a cunning evil genius with world domination ambitions. The general discourse is focused on condemning “Russian aggression” and “Russian behaviour in Ukraine”, accusing it of military invasion, destabilising the region, among other thing. 

Anyone who dares to disagree is labeled a “Putin’s apologist”. The official Russian viewpoint is labeled “Russian propaganda”, and everyone who considers it (or merely disagrees with the Western mainstream media narrative) becomes “brainwashed by Putin’s lies”.

It is particularly disturbing that this narrative isn’t debated against within the mainstream media in any Western country (with the exception of Germany, perhaps). It is sad, really. The main purpose of this essay is to debate the official Western narrative about the events in Ukraine. The statements made bellow will be supported with links to materials that will include relevant written articles, raw video-footage, as well as official documentation.

First, let’s take a look back, just to refresh the memory, and see how it all began.

As many of you remember, the US-backed “Euromaidan" coup occurred in Kiev in late February 2014. The democratically elected president Yankovich was violently ousted and had to flee the country. People with the support from the West-Ukrainian establishment came to power. With many of them holding strong nationalist and blatantly anti-Russian views, they initiated a couple of controversial legislations, including the infamous abolition of the law that allowed Russian as an official language (a decent priority for a government that just came to power; way more important than the state of national economy and other boring things): 

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http://ift.tt/2mX8L1t

It wasn’t the only issue, of course. Many of those who came to power in Kiev were just russophobic in general, appealing to the crowd with slogans such as "hang the Russians" ("москаляку на гiляку"), with some of them being openly neo-nazi (this point will be elaborated a bit later).

Evidently, such rhetoric didn’t impress people in the South-Eastern parts of Ukraine, the dominant majority of which are ethnically, linguistically and culturally Russian (especially given that it was an unconstitutional, undemocratic and violent co op; people in the South-East were opposing it from the start). A number of anti-Kiev/pro-Russia protests were carried across the region, with people demanding federalisation (predominantly, they demanded autonomy through decentralisation from the Kiev government). Here is the footage of protests that occurred in Donetsk, Lugansk and Odessa (the Western mainstream media was very reluctant to report on these): 

There were also a couple of reported incidents when protesters were taking over local administrative building by force. In order to be fair, it has to be pointed out that they were using the exact same methods employed by the pro-Euromaindan groups a few months earlier (when they were occupying city administrations in the Western provinces and, later, storming administrative buildings in Kiev with use of firearms).

What was suppose to happen in such situation? Well, ideally, the new Kiev government should have set a dialog with the people in the South Eastern provinces, to discuss possible solutions, try to find ways to reach a compromise, all that stuff that governments that call themselves democratic do. 

But what did Kiev do? Well, let's leave that for Part II.

***

Denis Churilov - Born in Saint Petersburg, grew up traveling from place to place in Russia, from Chelyabinsk to Krasnodar region, and spent years living in Northern Kazakhstan. Moved to Australia in the mid-2000's. Graduated with a Bachelor of Behavioral Science (Psychology).

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The Ukrainian Crisis Three Years On: An Autopsy of the Mainstream Media Discourse Pt I [+Videos] - Like This Article

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