Stoltenberg now much belatedly admits "the war didn't start in February last year. The war started in 2014."
Stoltenberg now much belatedly admits "the war didn't start in February last year. The war started in 2014."
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Hard to spin this as "admitting" anything, considering this is a widely known fact.
Nah, the western mainstream narrative was that Russia just invaded Ukraine completely unprovoked in February last year.
Lol, wat? Western mainstream sources have been covering the conflict since 2014.
- https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-timeline-idUSBREA270PO20140308
- https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/russias-putin-took-european-states-surprise-ukraine-report-n309406
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26248275
- https://news.sky.com/story/us-russian-military-firing-into-ukraine-10395472
"The atomic unit of propaganda isn't lies, but emphasis."
You can find good coverage on the past decade of the region, but the overpowering narrative is that of an unprovoked attack.
That's a very narrow interpretation. Those headlines do not suggest that the Western media was reporting that everything was fine in the region but then Russia attacked; it means that the conflict escalated into a full blown invasion of Ukraine instead of merely occupying Crimea/Donbas.
Even one of the top links in your search result says:
For eight years, brave Ukrainians fought and died for that dream after Russia invaded Crimea and the Donbas region. Today, as a result of President Putin’s flagrant disregard for human life and Ukrainian sovereignty, many more will suffer. But the dream—and America’s support for it—will never die.
As you point out, to the extent the mainstream narrative acknowledges the past at all, it's to frame it as "Russia actually invaded in 2014 and are now trying to finish the job."
There's certainly no acknowledgement of NATO expansion being a legitimate concern for Russia, or the violence against ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine, or Ukraine not abiding by the terms of the Minsk agreements (much less comments from the West that those agreements were bad faith documents designed only to buy time).
Darn those Ukrainians for fighting back against a hostile takeover of their sovereign land. Have they no shame?
Yes, yes, brave Ukrainian patriots really preserved their cultural heritage by bombing schools and banning a plurality of their people from speaking their mother tongue.
"Sovereign land". What of the people who actually fucking live there? Who predominantly wanted to join the Russian Federation?
inb4 sham referendums
Did you even read the article? They started the war.
https://www.kanekoa.news/p/osce-reports-reveal-ukraine-started
9 days before? They were shelling the place for years?
Both, the other times there were negotiations though. Not this time.
If you read that article and don't see it for the blatant Kremlin propaganda that it is, then you and I have nothing further to say to each other.
"Anything that disagrees with my worldview is Kremlin propaganda."
cool
None of these sources are talking about NATO involvement in Ukraine since 2014, nor acknowledge the role NATO played in creating the conditions for the conflict.
I agree with you, and I appreciate the links, but I will say that this isn't common knowledge. The prevailing narrative is something along the lines of Russia invading Ukraine in 2022 for conquest and the US + allies intervening to save democracy. Tons of people will dismiss you if you point out western involvement prior to 2022 (not on lemmygrad tho).
This seems like a bit of a strawman, tbh. It's true that the average person in the street in the U.S. may think that the war started last year, but certainly doesn't square with what the mainstream media have been generally reporting over the last ten years.
No it doesn't match our own reporting, but people really, truly believe this anyway. Go on any other Lemmy instance and talk about the 2014 Ukraine coup, Ukrainian Nazis, or Russian diplomacy and see how quickly you get dogpiled/banned. I can attest that it's similar in real life in the US, albeit people are more polite when they're face to face.
We're going to have to do a media analysis to retort, but the evidence is clear - if you talk about 2014 then all social media platforms immediately respond en masse with "that's Putinist propaganda". If the MSM had truly been pushing this larger historical context, we wouldn't be in this situation.
If the " evidence is clear", can you show me an example? You're not the first person to say this, but no one yet has actually provided a citation or source to demonstrate what you're talking about.
I have been following the conflict fairly closely across many different sources, and it certainly hasn't seemed controversial to say that the conflict began in 2014 instead of 2022.
That's what I am saying. We need to do an analysis to find the evidence. It's primarily been a social media experience. There's a lot of places talking about the real context in the media, but clearly there's a dominant narrative on social media coming from somewhere.
You honestly never heard the expression "unprovoked invasion" in the mainstream media?
Yes, when the US intervened in Vietnam, Grenada, Iraq, Libya, Guatemala, Nicaragua, etc, etc.
Also good examples:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia-ukraine-war-kiev-conflict https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger
But in fairness, this was run of the mill news that was mainly just reporting the facts and it got completely memory-holed and overwritten with the crazy slavering warmongering shit we've gotten all over the western media since last year. Nobody is able to remember the origins of the war. Some people still deny Ukraine's Nazi revival.
The conflict starting and NATO involvement in it are two separate things. Your post only addressed the former, not the latter. It is no secret for those who have been paying attention that the conflict did not start last year.
What Stoltenburg said is:
And since 2014, NATO Allies have provided support to Ukraine, with training, with equipment, so the Ukrainian Armed Forces were much stronger in 2022, than they were in 2020, and 2014. And of course, that made a huge difference when President Putin decided to attack Ukraine.
This doesn't seem to contradict any previous statement about NATO's support for Ukraine that I am aware of.
You're either missing the point I'm making or intentionally deflecting from it.
The point you are making is that Stoltenburg made some kind of shocking admission, when in fact he did not.
No, the point I'm making is that a lot of people are bleating that Russia invaded Ukraine completely unprovoked last year which is completely at odds with reality. The latest admissions from Stoltenberg is just another piece of evidence that the conflict was going on since the 2014 coup, and that NATO has been deeply involved in it during this whole time. While you are correct that this has been reported on previously, such reporting has completely stopped after Russia got directly involved in the war. Furthermore, people such as Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer, who point these facts out today have been completely deplatformed by the mainstream media. They now publish articles on substack instead of mainstream papers, and are reduced to giving interviews on youtube channels.
No, the point I'm making is that a lot of people are bleating that Russia invaded Ukraine completely unprovoked last year
While you are correct that this has been reported on previously, such reporting has completely stopped after Russia got directly involved in the war. Furthermore, people such as Jeffrey Sachs and
Do you have any sources to support this? You're making this out to be the general position of the media, but I haven't seen much evidence of that.
Sources to support what exactly? Show me an article talking about NATO involvement in Ukrainian conflict prior to Russia's invasion that was published after February 2022, or any interviews with people who give historical context for the conflict in mainstream media. Sachs and Mearsheimer are prominent experts on this, why can we not find their views published in papers like NYT or WSJ?
The pro-NATO fake news admited that NATO allies had intervened in Ukraine in contradiction to their claim that NATO was never involved in the Euromaiden coup. Are they also impliying that Russian intervention had not existed in the 2014 coup contrary to their claim that Russians had tried to stop the coup? Their further contradicted themselves on whether Putin had started the war in 2014 or 2022, so I am not surprised that fake news in NATO countries are not creditable but they should at least not contradict their narrative every year. The narrative on Putin's side is more consistent about the NATO intervention in the Euromaiden coup, the Kyiv government's massacre on ethnic minority that justify Putin's military intervention after 8 years of failed peace talk, the racism towards all Ukrainians who are ethnically Russians that were uninvolved in the conflicts, and the Putin's success in doing what Putin said he would do (protect rebelling Ukrainian states from Kyiv state terrorism) and not what the NATO said Putin would do (takeover Ukraine).
Liberal with the realest backbone. As usual their opinions change with coverage, not facts. It was just this year that we couldn't get one of these chucklefucks to admit there was any depth to the SMO than "orkz invaded" now they all have the chronology memorised.
Not widely known fact. known sure.
