Russia-Ukraine: Why Josep Borrell’s articleis propaganda and distortion of facts |19 March 2022
High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell published an article in several media outlets around the world. It is titled ‘Russia’s Unjust War is Doomed to Fail’ and discusses Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine.
It is obvious that ahead of its publication the EU’s missions went to great lengths to make sure that the national media give as much publicity as possible to the voice of Brussels. Translated into several languages, the article made its way into news outlets in various countries. We feel compelled to offer our response, especially considering that there is nothing in this article other than manipulations, propaganda and intentional distortion of facts.
Josep Borrell begins his text with emotionally charged words: “At this dark hour…” Does he see himself as a new Winston Churchill who once referred to the occupation of France as the “darkest hour”? Let’s leave this comparison to the conscience of this European official. Still, we cannot fail to note that despite the challenging and complex attitude the British Prime Minister had towards the Soviet Russia, he supported Moscow when our country came under threat from the Nazis by calling on the entire world to come together in fighting this scourge. Churchill’s current successors – Boris Johnson, Elizabeth Truss and, it seems, Josep Borrell himself – have been supporting the neo-Nazis in Ukraine for the past eight years.
Josep Borrell labels Ukraine as a “peaceful and democratic” country, as if Brussels has never seen the reports of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stating that at least 13,100 people died from the conflict in eastern Ukraine between 2014 and January 2022. They all fell prey to the unprovoked aggression of the Kiev regime, including more than 3,000 civilians, many of them children. How can you refer to a state that kills its own citizens as a peaceful nation?
Much has been said lately on whether Ukraine “posed no threat to [Russia], nor provoked it.” It is safe to assume that new facts will surface soon. Not only did the NATO countries proactively supply weapons to Ukraine, including offensive weapons, while sidestepping their commitments not to deploy strike systems there, but it turned out that Kiev had plans to throw into questions its status as a non-nuclear state, and the Ukrainian leadership said as much in public. It has become obvious in recent days that the development of biological WMDs was underway in a country neighbouring Russia. In all, the state which officially declares itself to be against Russia and everything Russian has been building up its military capabilities, seeking to acquire banned weapons of mass destruction and becoming a staging ground for future Western special operations against the Russian Federation. Is this what you call “posing no threat”?
Josep Borrell claims that Vladimir Putin’s “target is not just Ukraine, but […] the whole international rules-based order, based on the United Nations system and international law.” In fact, the target of the operation is not Ukraine but denazification and demilitarisation of Kiev’s militaristic regime, and helping the people of Donbass. As for international law, it is good that the EU official mentioned it because in the past years, Brussels has been consistently forgetting about international law and substituting it with a vague “rules-based world order”.
Meanwhile, international law is rather clear-cut and includes, for example, resolutions of the UN Security Council that are mandatory for all members of the international community, including UNSC Resolution 2202 (2015) that approves the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements, of February 12, 2015. For seven years, Moscow has urged the international community to read this document carefully and tried to convince Kiev’s partners and patrons to influence Kiev to fulfil this international legal document. Next to nothing has been done over the seven years. If, after the current events, the West begins to respect international law, that will be at least one of the positive outcomes of the current special operation.
Josep Borrell calls for considering “the lives of innocent people” and the “civilian targets” of the Russian “aggression.” One should be reminded that the Russian Armed Forces are only targeting neo-Nazi battalions and other fascist divisions on the territory of Ukraine, as well as the military infrastructure of the Kiev regime that was prepared to be used in operations against the DPR, the LPR and our country. Spokespersons of the Russian Defence Ministry have been releasing their data to the media and the general public on a daily basis with the utmost transparency. Specifically, the telling evidence is the secret orders discovered in the headquarters of the 4th rapid deployment brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine concerning combat missions which are part of Kiev’s so-called united forces operation in Donbass. The secret orders clearly indicate that a major offensive operation was being planned in Donbass for March 2022. Should that scenario had been realised, it would have caused countless victims among civilians in the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics.
It is the Nazi volunteer battalions that pose a real threat to Ukrainian civilians. It is they who are using civilians as human shields, as they did recently in Mariupol, and prevent them from using the regularly announced humanitarian corridors out of city. In fact, they are holding civilians hostage.
In his article, Borrell says that “for months, we [the West] pursued unparalleled efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution”. It is clear to anyone familiar with the history of the issue that this is far from true. It is Russia, guided by the need to implement in practice the indivisible security principle enshrined at the highest level in the OSCE documents that came up with an initiative for talks on security guarantees with the United States and NATO. But we saw no intention to meet us halfway on the key elements of our proposals. They have also breached the elementary proprieties of diplomatic correspondence. It is worth reminding everyone that in an attempt to reach out to the European capitals, Sergey Lavrov wrote letters to the foreign ministers of 37 countries, including all member states of the European Union and NATO. In these letters, he asked them how their countries intended to implement, not in word but in deed, their obligations to fulfil the principle of indivisible security in Europe and not to strengthen their own security at the expense of the security of others. In response, we received just two empty letters signed by Mr Borrell and his NATO colleague Jens Stoltenberg, to whom the Russian letters were not even addressed. Thereby the West has demonstrated its unwillingness to conduct a constructive dialogue with our country. It is also hard to overlook the hypocritical policy of the European Union, which calls for a diplomatic solution of all arising problems, but only creates obstacles along the way with its actions. Specifically, it has started paying from its own pocket the massive arms supplies to Ukraine. It is entirely possible, incidentally, that these weapons will eventually sneak their way to the arsenals of terrorist organisations. Is that what Mr Borrell calls a “diplomatic solution”?
The Brussels article claims that “the international community has opted for the full-scale isolation of Russia”. Who and when gave Mr Borrell the right to speak on behalf of the entire international community? It is high time he realised that the world at large is not limited to the European Union and its partners like the United States, Japan, and Australia. Even Europe is not confined to the European Union. It is much broader and more diverse. Even without Brussels’ prompting, it is patently clear to members of the international community that they will have to decide on their own who they will or will not cooperate with.
One of the paragraphs is devoted to a “Russian propaganda campaign”. Mr Borrell writes that “the Kremlin and its supporters have engaged in a massive disinformation campaign, which started weeks ago”. It is a classic example of saying that black is white. It is not Russia but the EU that has launched a whole division in charge of anti-Russia propaganda and disinformation at the European External Action Service. This did not happen several weeks ago but back in 2015, just when the Minsk Package of Measures was signed. Had the EU been convinced that it was right, it would not have adopted unprecedented censorship measures against Russian television networks and journalists in Europe, outlawing them and cancelling their accreditation. So much for the much-touted EU liberalism.
“Calling the Kiev government ‘neo-Nazi’ and ‘Russophobic’ is nonsense: all manifestations of Nazism are banned in Ukraine. In modern Ukraine, extreme right-wing candidates are a fringe phenomenon with minimal support, without passing the barrier to enter the parliament,” Borrel writes. This is bare-faced disinformation that is easily laid bare. On May 2, 2014, neo-Nazis and Russophobes burned pro-Russian protesters alive in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, and the culprits have not been called to account. The propaganda of Nazism never stopped in Ukraine, especially in its western regions but also in the east of the country. Its instruments include neo-Nazi marches in the cities; banners with the images of WWII Nazi collaborators Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich on government buildings; teaching schoolchildren to accept and support the actions of the punitive units of pro-Nazi Ukrainian accomplices of Hitler during the 1940s; and, of course, the Nazi greeting Slava Ukraini (Glory to Ukraine, an analogue of the Nazi greeting Sieg Heil), which all Ukrainian officials and public figures say at the end of their statements.
As for the alleged absence of far-right deputies in the Verkhovna Rada, Mr Borrell should know that some Ukrainian MPs hold the membership cards of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Svoboda party. Oleg Tyagnibok, Andrey Paruby and other individuals, who are notoriously known for their xenophobic, anti-Semitic and openly misanthropic statements, have until recently been regarded as respectable members of the Ukrainian political landscape. Neo-Nazi groups have infiltrated state security services, namely the National Guard and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The denazification of Ukraine, which is part of the ongoing special military operation, includes the eradication of these networks, their ideology and symbols.
Josep Borrell likes to talk, whenever he can, about a “Russian aggression against Ukraine”, war, isolation and reckoning. But there is no escaping the fact that for the past eight years the aggression was entirely unilateral: Ukraine’s aggression against the Russian-speaking people of its eastern regions.
Russia did not start that war, but Russia will end it. Brussels should accept that.
https://mid.ru/en/press_service/articles_and_rebuttals/rebuttals/nedostovernie-publikacii/1804414/
https://www.nation.sc/articles/12604/opinion-piece-by-josep-borrell-high-representative-of-the-european-union-for-foreign-affairs-and-security-policy-on-the-russia-ukraine-conflict
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The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Seychelles NATION newspaper.