Ukraine Repression & Seeking Honest Casualty Rates: Release Lira!
w/ Special Guest: Branko Marcetic
Key Words:
Ukraine, Media Literacy, Casualties of the Ukraine-Russia Conflict, SBU, Russia
Pedro Gatos 00:00 - Introduction
Welcome alternative news listeners. This is 91.7 KOOP community radio. This is bringing light into darkness news and analysis. I'm your host Pedro Gatos and we are transmitting from Austin, Texas. All comments are welcomed and can be sent to Pedro at pgatos00@gmail.com. That's pgatos00@gmail.com. Many of the shows are archived at pedrogatos.org. Thank you for joining us, and we hope to have a recording of the show up on pedrogatos.org for your closer scrutiny within the week. We have a sensational show tonight as quite frankly, we have every Monday night. If your interest is to get as close to the truth as any news and analysis show will allow you then you are in the right place. Welcome to bringing light into darkness where we invite you to join in our weekly pursuit for social justice, a pursuit where we seek to separate fact from fiction and where we acknowledge uncertainty where we seek to deconstruct deceit by identifying where unproven allegations are presented as fact through repetition and the absence of evidence and where uncertainties are approached from a humble, critical thinking perspective, because our interest is in deconstructing deceit and depression not enabling it. Tonight, we continue to bring information to light that may be uncomfortable to hear about our country's conduct in the world around us. We don't do this to be self righteous, or to be un american. We do it because of the negative impact of increased misery it has on millions and millions of our fellow human beings. I believe as a citizen of our country, we are obligated under our democratic traditions to be vigilant about the foreign and domestic policies of our country and its government and bring light and take responsibility for its conduct and impact on the world around us. So tonight we start with the question, is it un american to be concerned that we were lied to about the winability and casualty rates in Vietnam? Is it un american that for 20 years we were lied to about the winability of the Afghan conflict? Is it un american to be concerned that we were lied to the war in both Iraq and Libya? Is it un american to acknowledge these truisms? And why would we expect that all of a sudden with the ongoing Ukraine war we would not continue getting a steady flow of misinformation. Tonight, we wanted to revisit and update the casualty rates on both sides of the conflict as best as we can determine despite such a disinformation environment that complicates such an effort, we seek to revisit the casualty rates because we have come to believe that the motive for misrepresenting casualty numbers to the American public is intentional in order to enable the continuation of a wildly disproportionate Lotter of the Ukrainian army and Ukrainian people as we seek to weaken Russia and the Russian economy. That if the good people of our country really knew the casualty numbers and dislocation of millions of Ukrainians and their dislocated future, we would demand an end to a war that only continues because we are enabling it in that we are funding and directing the war effort and the Ukrainian army. The Russian troops have completely liberated the strategic Donbas city of Bakhmut that was reported this morning, Saturday, May the 20th 2023. This has been the scene of a terrible battle for many many months and the Russian defense ministry confirmed it had ended in the early hours of Sunday. The operation in the city known to the Ukrainians is Bakhmutit was executed by the quote unquote offensive actions of the private military company The Wagner Group with artillery and air support from regular Russian forces the Minister of Defense for Russia said. The statement from the minister of defense came hours after Wagner's chief Yevgeny Prigozhin announced on social media that his fighters had taken complete control of the city. Meanwhile, Ukraine has denied that the city had fallen to the Russians, again, exemplifying constant contradictory information that is made available to the American public and the world. Tonight's show has two main themes. One is to overview the increased repression occurring in Ukraine where more than 5000 journalists and others who applied for press accreditation to work in separatist areas in 2016 have been labeled as quote unquote terrorists collaborators and quote sparking threats against them and their families. Where US taxpaying monies have been funding NGOs such as chess know that allow Ukrainians to anonymously accuse potential traders through a web form and submit evidence while giving them the option of also not submitting evidence but turning in their own family members. So today, treason has become a family affair, as it has urged Ukrainians to submit family members of accused traitors so rights our guests that we will introduce shortly. His article also documents repression of political activity, where now 11 political parties have been banned in addition to free speech, which has been criminalized in Ukraine. Additionally, what has been also been largely ignored in our mainstream media has been the attacks by the Ukrainian government against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, as well as the crackdown on anything that respects or promotes Russian cultural heritage, a heritage that 10s of millions of Ukrainians share before the Russian invasion. The other main theme that we will address tonight is the recent re incarceration of a journalist a US citizen Gonzalo Lira by the SBU the secret police of Ukraine on or about May 1 2023. He is a journalist and we provide his overview of the casualty rates. He was part of one of our shows earlier this year in January, which along with other primary sources, whose data in the past have proven to be much more accurate than what our government and mainstream media have been suggesting will again be presented tonight. But first, we turn to our interview that we had with Branko Marcetic just yesterday. Okay, welcome, alternative news listeners. This
Pedro Gatos 07:24 - The re-incarceration of Gonzalo Lira
is 91.7 KOOP Hornsby, Austin. This is bringing light into darkness Monday news and analysis today is Friday, May the 19th 2023. This program will be aired live on Monday, May the 22nd 2023 at 6pm on kop.org and 91.7. FM. We are very blessed to have with us Branko Marcetic. Branko thank you for joining us today. You've been a prolific writer of Jacobin. Magazine and a number of other regular publications over the years. I wanted to have you on the show basically to review some of the issues around the Ukrainian press freedoms and political party freedoms and those types of things. You wrote a very important piece I thought back on February the 25th 2023 in the Jacobin - The State of the Ukrainian Democracy is Not Strong. But it was in the context if you if you just bear with me for one second, a while back on January 23 2023. I had a interview of Gonzalo Lira after he had been released from jail. He's a journalist, a Chilean born an American citizen, dual citizenship journalist living in Kharkov, Ukraine for a number of years and reporting from the front lines. And in that pace, he spoke along with others about the casualty rates that were real concerned have been misrepresented by our government and by Ukraine and the mainstream media in general. But recently, Gonzalo Lira was rearrested. Yahoo posted about the arrest of May 1 that according to the investigation, this is a journalist that's been in Kharkov for several years law enforcement authorities accused him of supporting Russian occupation and valorizing Moscow's apparent war crimes during the war, a pattern of war crimes that we have been trying to confirm but have found a lack of documentary proof to support the claims. The other thing is that he was claimed in this article is engaging in attempts to discredit Ukraine's highest military and political leadership in the spring of 2022. He provided a video showing the faces of Ukrainian soldiers and insulting the country's defenders. He posted the videos on YouTube. He has some 300,000 subscribers. He's been accused by the Secret Service their, the SBU of Ukraine of denying the facts of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian citizens and the mass killings of civilians by invading horses in during a search of his possessions, law enforcement found mobile phones and a computer that contain evidence of his illegal activity. With respect to his illegal activity, I thought that might be a good jumping off point for you to highlight some of your findings that you shared in your piece. The state of Ukrainian democracy is not strong, the February 25 2023 piece that you did you were talking about a number of things, but particularly around a March 3 22 law that saw the Criminal Code amended, can you can just highlight the state of press freedoms in general freedoms, we all know that during times of war, you should expect some changes. But it seems when you look at this, it's a very political, if you agree with this, you can you can speak and if not, God help you or whatever. So right now, Gonzalo Lira was recently incarcerated and nobody is talking about it, a lot of people fear for his life. And I'm just wondering if you can share some of the highlights from your February piece on that issue?
Branko Marcetic 11:04 - Silencing of Dissidents
Well, as you say, country at war and a country under attack as Ukraine is it's not altogether surprising that there should be a centralization of power, there should be kind of curbs on free speech in the free press that happens in basically every country Ukraine situation. The thing is, though, just because it's its own, it's not surprising, or if it's predictable, does not mean it's saying that we should be happy about or even relaxed about, because if we're talking about protecting and defending Ukrainian democracy, as we often are in the context of US aid to the country, and then surely we have to guard against the erosion of Ukrainian democracy from within. And I think the other key point before I get to some of the specifics is that while this has accelerated because of the war, and during the war, that started long before the war, as Zelensky had been moving in an authoritarian direction, long before and that was as he started to kind of slip in terms of his approval ratings. And as local elections were going against his party, that's where we started to see this stuff ramp up. And now it's really gotten bad at the post the war. So what's happened? I mean, basically, there's been a wave of government repression against all manner of dissidents in Ukraine. Now, sometimes that's people quite explicitly in favor of the Russian invasion. Ukrainians are saying, you know, we agree with this. And people might say, well, that that seems acceptable to prosecute, or what have you? Well, it may be, but there's also people, just people who have anti war views, or have criticisms of the Zelensky government. And the decisions that are made in the lead up to this war, of criticisms of this led to government's conduct of the war. And perhaps it's a version to negotiations that and that kind of thing. You have prosecution of a lot of left wing dissidents, often not just people who are anti war, but some of the only kind of critical voices and Ukrainian society are kind of putting out an alternative to the political direction of the country. Then what does this look like in practice, it means arrest of people who are part of various groups, it means heavy handed prosecution of people for airing particular speech that the government finds inconvenient. At the moment, it looks like torture, you know, there's been some pretty harrowing stories coming out of the SBU facilities and Ukraine that also looks like an outright murder, killing. Ukrainian security services have not been really hiding the fact that they are going after some of these people that, you know, they consider collaborators, people who have taken positions in the Russian occupied territories, as government officials, and so on so forth has been a sort of wave of murders of these people. And the Ukrainian services have basically said that, you know, they're responsible for it, by having a sort of Ukrainian Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.
Pedro Gatos 14:00
Branko, let me ask you real quick in your piece, you indicate that some of the laws that got passed, included, alluding to collaborating or collaborative tourism, it included a broad range of activities, from supporting aggression against Ukraine to spreading propaganda and education to protesting or handling information in ways that help the enemy. This was according to a lawyer with Kyiv based Regional Center for Human Rights. But the question that came up that you addressed in your piece that I thought was really important, and maybe you could include that in your remarks is that's really political on how authorities interpret this helping the enemy. In other words, if you say anything that's positive or not negative about Russia, you get on these black lists that you mentioned. Can you include in your comments, your interpretation of that and blacklist accordingly?
Branko Marcetic 14:51
Yeah, I mean, like I said, you know, sometimes you'll find examples certainly of people who are being arrested because you know, often elderly people who have said things that You know, positive about about the Russian invasion or saying that they support it or you know that they're not really bothered either way. But I mean, if you look at some of the specific examples of people who are being prosecuted, there's a lot of spurious cases here where people are accused of say, supporting the invasion. And you look at what they've actually said. And what they said was just that they're critical of those Zelensky government. And they think that this Zelensky government contributed was not cool, and actually preventing the alpha from bringing out there was one particular politician and one of the eastern regions or was accused of, you know, supporting Russia, whatever, we'll say in the text saying he backed the invasion, taking up the Zelensky government, you look at what the actual Facebook post was, and it was just him saying, on the eve of the invasion, you know, that there's Zelensky government must go, which I mean, that's, you know, open to interpretation, but my read of it is not that he was saying Russia should get rid of this government, but that he was angry at this Zelensky government and needed to be replaced with something that was more conducive to peace, you know, so there's a lot of things like that. I mean, also, the people who have ended up in his collaborator with us, again, people who are in occupied territories where Russian soldiers have taken control, and they are often just as violently and regressively maintaining control those territories, people in those areas have to somehow live, you know, they either have to become refugees, which carries its own profound risks and dislocations and everything, where they have to stay where they are, and try and help their local communities and live within this occupation. And so these people have sometimes taken positions, they, you know, whether it's educational positions, or whether it's working on repairing train lines are working in the health care sector, the local healthcare sector to keep hospitals running so that they can save lives. And these people have been charged by this government as being collaborators very, not just not just a spurious charge, but but also killing one, you know, basically incentivizes people to abandon not just their homes, but their local communities that need their help. There was there was a rabbi actually who was prosecuted this was this was in the New York Times this was the my, my piece, the highlight of this, there was a rabbi who has been prosecuted as a collaborator because he was bringing food back to the to disperse to people on the on the air.
Pedro Gatos 17:26
Let me ask you one other question that's connected to that. So you know, it's one thing to be be saying, Oh, I believe that it was right for Russia to invade, I could see how that can raise the ire of a nation that was seeing it as an aggressive act. But a lot of these people sometimes would be just making a comment that they understood Russia's quote unquote, national security needs that were being ignored. And the kind of the context of what led up to the result, not that you would agree with it. But to be able to at least explicate kind of both sides of this issue. That was that that was a collaboration is crime, right.
Branko Marcetic 18:03
It's also a lot of times, it's just criticisms of Zelensky for trying to try harder, not not expending more effort to find peace and to avoid conflict. I mean, I think, you know, in the West, we still have this idea that Ukrainians are a monolith. And basically, everyone just agrees that Zelensky did everything that correct. And you know, this is an unprovoked invasion, and so on and so forth. But actually, there's a lot of Ukrainians who have criticisms of Zelensky government and his decision making, they have criticisms of the US, rolling us and in flaming this, but these these views are considered at the moment beyond the pale and ripe for prosecution. So and I think also another a lot of these lists these unofficial lists of collaborators, they're being sent around. Sometimes they're official servers that you know, just people who have made a list on telegram of people that they have accused of various things. These things are not substantiated the unproven claims that they have no allegations whatsoever, just someone's photo and name and, and personal details are posted on these telegram channels, which you know, is conducive to all kinds of vigilantism. And so, you know, it's it's a very dangerous time to be not just a dissident, but just any sort of Ukrainian person, particularly in some of these eastern territories that are being fought over where you're kind of caught between, on the one side, Russian occupying forces that obviously will use violence and other means to try and make you basically obedient to those occupying forces. But then you also on the other hand, the Ukrainian government, your government that is basically threatening you with prosecution and god knows what else if you succumb to those threats, and so it's a really lose, lose situation. You know, like, I mean, obviously, Russia that was doing is terrible, but we in the West only really have influence over the side, the credit side and my point of the piece and this is this is not my original point. This is me speaking to various Ukrainians who put this out that, hey, look, the US has all this aid, not just military aid, but economic aid, and it's giving to Ukraine, it's already using that aid to say, to condition it and say, We're gonna give you this, but by the way, you have to fix your problems with corruption, and so on and so forth. And you have to make these neoliberal economic reforms, you have to privatize and you have to cut taxes and regulations, and so on, so forth. Well, okay, if we're already going to condition this aid, uncertain policy directions that we want to see from Ukraine, why not also say, Oh, by the way, if we're going to give you this aid, we will see an improvement and democratic freedoms. And we want to stop this prosecution of people who are very seriously being accused of collaboration as and we want to stop the book being thrown out at just ordinary people. That I think is a productive way that that people in the West and suddenly this is what I've been told, again, by people who are from Ukraine, that this is a productive way that Westerners can guarantee the defense of Ukrainian democracy, not just from the Russia invasion, but also from internal repressive forces that exist inside Ukraine existed inside Ukraine long before as well. So.
Pedro Gatos 21:07
Yeah, well, let me just remind listeners that we have the privilege of visiting with Branko Marcetic, staff writer at the Jacobin magazine from 2019 to 2020, who is a Leonard C Goodman Institute for Investigative Reporting fellow, he comes from New Zealand and received his master's in New Zealand. The other thing I just wanted to ask you to speak to, if you would, is Andrew Korybko. He's a he's a political analyst and journalist and he wrote a piece on Gonzalo Lira following his arrest, and he talks about the recent arrest in Ukraine on or about May 1 of this month, and that he could face up to five to eight years in jail, I guess, based on the new legal laws, but he also was very critical of the United States Government double standards of silence on this incident as a US citizen, it completely contrasted with his hysteria. That is the US government hysteria over Wall Street Journal employee Evan Gershkovich arrest in Russia back in April on charges of espionage after he was caught red handed soliciting classified military industrial information from a regional lawmaker, according to and as documented by the author. I think your point that you made about enormous amount of aid that the West led by the United States has been given to Ukraine is important, but also what our listeners should be aware of is the Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh spoke out last month in April, indicating that much of the military aid according to his data, immediately after the conflict broke out between Kyiv and Moscow in February last year that Poland, Romania and other countries on the border were being flooded with weapons, ostensibly that should have been for the frontlines in Ukraine. However, Hersh also refers to that CVS store that was withdrawn or retracted, which Hersh claims was not because of its inaccuracy, but rather because of the pejorative role. The US media has been playing Hersh writes, quote, the media is supporting the stance of the US government and we're on the side of the Ukraine, we all hate Russia and quote, so it's not withdrawn for its lack of veracity but for that purpose, but the CVS story indicated that only 30% of the military aid actually reached the front line and Ukraine, not to mention that it's our clients state. So therefore, we should be held responsible to making sure that there is some additional accountability on behalf of the Ukrainian people and their government there. But can you speak to that comparison Andrew Korybko co makes about even Gershkovich arrest and then your prognosis for the well being of Gonzalo Lira?
Branko Marcetic 23:54
Yeah, I mean, look, it's not even really about who's responsible. It's more that we actually can do something about it. I mean, you know, I think the Russian arrest of the Wall Street Journal reporter is outrageous. Unfortunately, this is a tactic that they use. They want to have bargaining chips that they can then exchange with the US resource with the Brittney Griner case and other US nationals that were basically traded by the Russians for presidents, Russian prisoners that the US was holding. All of those were incredibly difficult cases that just took a long time to resolve there was a lot of back and forth. I mean, you know, I can't remember exactly how long Griner was in prison and Russia there was for a while. It's not easy to get these people out. Some of these people have been imprisoned for years. By contrast, however, you know, we have no real we only have ways that we can bargain with and negotiate with the Russians to get these people back with Ukraine, I guess, because of the fact that we're giving them so much aid. You know, I think it should be a much easier manner to say hey, you've imprisoned one of our nationals, one of our citizens. Who, whether you want to agree with him or not was just engaging in speech, we want him back. And that's a much simpler manner to do this. I mean, in terms of, you know, the hypocrisy that you're talking about. I mean, you know, unfortunately the hypocrisy on every side of it here.
Pedro Gatos 25:15
Branko, we need to take a quick pause for the cause this is 91.7 KOOP. Hornsby Austin. We'll be back in a flash don't touch that down.
Part 2
Pedro Gatos 00:00
We return to bringing light into darkness with our guest Branko Marcetic, enjoy.
Branko Marcetic 00:06
You know, I think particularly with the United States, I mean, the US government wants to present itself as this kind of beacon of democracy and freedom around the world, which I think it really has, since the Russian invasion, I think it really owes it itself to operate by the standards that it wants to hold other countries to and near one in particular highlight is the treatment of Julian Assange shows what the Russian state does is incredibly outrageous and authoritarian and repressive. We know that it's not a secret that the Russian government is a very repressive one. But meanwhile, I mean, the United States as the states and its partner, the UK, trying to prosecute Assange actually have an incredibly dangerous, chilling effect on journalism, not just in the US. But worldwide. Assange is an Australian citizen, who wasn't even in the United States when he did his alleged crime of releasing information, but they've also been torturing people should have a read of what he's been through while he's been in prison. You can, you know, like him, and all I can you can agree with the things that he's released or not, but the way that he has been treated has been incredibly inhumane and monstrous. It's not something that I would wish and really anyone. Lira, you know, I don't know everything about him. There's there's things that I've read about some of his views that I really find repugnant, and I don't personally agree with them. But again, I mean, I don't think someone should be potentially tortured or disappeared for speech or even just for that sounds like the journalism having a critical view of the conduct of the government, even if it is war time. I mean, you would hope that that he's being treated better than Assange is, but having read some of the reports about what people have been taken in by the SBU the Ukrainians, security services, what they've experienced, it's not unreasonable to fear that, you know, he may suffer all kinds of tortures and deprivations. I hope not. It's something that there should be pressure US officials to bring up when they Ukrainian counterparts given all the the aid that has been given.
Pedro Gatos 02:08
Yeah, I think just the absolute silence is deafening by the US in the West. We've had a long history in this country, whether it was the pervasive repression in 1980s, I can remember characterized by death squads in Central America, in a number of our clients states, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, the Contras in Nicaragua later, our support of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the same period. And then when you look at the government that came to power that we put into power in 2014, in the Ukraine, we have documented elsewhere, so will not do it here. More than a half dozen cabinet positions in 2014 coup government were Neo Nazis, largely recruited from the Right Sector and Svoboda parties, including those that were both the heads of the official prosecution in the court systems, namely the Office of the Prosecutor General Ali Magnitsky, as well as Andriy Parubiy, who was appointed as the top cabinet appointed officials of Secretary of the national security and national defense committee, which included the Ministry of Defense that oversees national defense for the Ukrainian Government and the armed forces of Ukraine, both cabinet positions appointed to Neo Nazis following the 2014 coup. You know, when you look at the SBU and the change after the coup and the people that were running the security services, or became the leaders in those areas, with real nationalist tendencies, it's a very scary time for him and his family, I am sure and this show is dedicated to bringing light to Gonzalo there is incarceration, and what we hope is his prompt release unharmed. Let me ask you this, before we let you go, people are interested in trying to access more of your work Branko. What would be your advice for people to access your writings,
Branko Marcetic 03:55
I tell them to go to jacobin.com, J A C O B I N and find the stuff I write there. But you can also find a lot of different coverage American and world events. You can also go to Twitter @bmarcetic and find me there. I also write for other publications from time to time and These Times. It's a Chicago based magazine as well as current affairs.
Pedro Gatos 04:23
Well, very good. Well, listen, we will continue to follow your work and appreciate your contributions to a better understanding of the world around us, particularly in this age of such enormous amounts of disinformation. Thank you so much branco.
Branko Marcetic 04:37
Hey, thanks for having me on.
Pedro Gatos 04:38 - Gonzalo Lira Interview
Absolutely. We now turn back to the subject of the misrepresentation of casualty rates in the Ukraine Russian conflict, and we first feature Gonzalo Lira an excerpt from an interview that we included in our bringing light into darkness January 23. Show 2023. On the same subject, and namely military casualties. Gonzalo Lira, a Chilean American novelist and filmmaker who actually has been residing in the war zone and Ukraine was interviewed on the same day January 17 2023, by George Galloway, a British politician, broadcaster and writer who is currently the leader of the Workers Party of Britain and has been serving since 2019. Here is Liras perspective on casualties as he responds to George Galloway's question
George Galloway 05:33
I wanted to ask you, finally Gonzalo, Ukrainians in exile up are usually the ones with the big BMWs. I had a run in with some of them just this very day. There's a lot of Ukrainians been killed others a lot of Ukrainians already in the army. There's a lot as the mothers and wives were demonstrating in Kyiv. Today, a lot of missing Ukrainian service personnel who haven't been accounted for are no admitted as dead. But there's also now a draft, it's quite clear from some of the pictures and video, a draft a very young children in Ukrainian military uniform. I'm very old man, even older than me in uniform now in military roles, that seems to indicate our scraping of the barrel by Zelensky. Is he running out of soldiers?
Gonzalo Lira 06:30
Nobody really knows. But the fact that we've seen a lot of videos that indisputably proves that you know, little boys, 16, 15 years old, wearing a military uniform and carrying a weapon. And we've also seen older men, I mean, men who are clearly in their late 40s 50s killed, you know, I mean, we I saw, I've seen some videos of Ukrainian soldiers who are dead, and they've lost their helmets. And they're bald like us older guys. I mean, we all get balder, and that's why do you wear a cap? And you know, we all get older, we can instantly tell on that guy. That guy's in his 40s, you know? And yeah, you were seeing a lot of that, and it's despicable. And nobody really knows the numbers, because the Kyiv regime is very, very cagey about the number of its losses. They have propagandized people into thinking that losses amount to, you know, maybe 15, maybe 20,000 dead, but it's much, much more. I mean, the fact is, they let slip in speech that at least 100,000 had been killed. This was a month or so ago. But the actual number, nobody really knows, but credible estimates of people who have been on top of the numbers and trying to get the numbers from different ways. They're saying that it's way above 125,000 killed. And a lot of people are saying it's closer to 150,000 killed insofar as wounded and incapacitated, because there are wounded and there are and who could be patched up and sent back to the front and then there are wounded who are just not going to go back. They lost a limb or whatnot. You know, you're talking maybe 180 to 220,000. wounded, incapacitated. So altogether, you're talking conservatively 320,000 men who are out of commission, that's extraordinary numbers we're talking about here. And it seems to be credible. And insofar as there were Russian losses. The BBC for a while was very carefully combing through all social media and all Russian news informations and outlets trying to come up with credible estimates as to the Russian dead. And they stopped doing this back in July, August, I believe, because the numbers they were getting were so low. It didn't fit their narrative. They were only estimating maybe, I think it was last number was seven to 8000 men, and currently, it's credibly estimated the Russian all Russian forces, Wagner mpmc, the Chechen fighters DPR and LPR, militia men and the Russian army, they've lost maybe killed in action 20,000. So let's take the conservative figures, the ones that Ursula mender, lightened said, which is 100,000 killed of the Kyivregime. And compare that to the outside number of the total Russian dead, which is 20,000. You're talking a ratio of five to one. Okay. And the general in charge of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. He said that they currently had as of this was about two weeks ago, 10 days ago, he said that they currently had 200,000 men. He said this to the Wall Street Journal, and the economist who did a round of interviews with them, right? They had 200,000 men under arms, and the Russian is known that they have 600 650,000 right now on the borders of Ukraine. So this is an attritional conflict. And ultimately, in a traditional war. What matters is who has the bigger numbers and who can inflict the greater losses. If the Russians are inflicting casualties at a rate of five to one, and on top of that they have over three times the armed force that the Ukraine side has, then it becomes just an inevitability, the outcome is not in dispute. It's just a matter of how we will get to that outcome. and in what timeframe. I mean, this war ended as a practical matter of quite some time ago in the sense that we know who's going to win. You know, when you're playing some board game or something, you know, perhaps you're playing with your children like Monopoly or something, or you're playing chess with a friend. And there's that moment when you realize, oh, it's over. I lost. I mean, yeah, I can keep on playing. But the result we know it, that moment has gone. I mean, it's obvious now, there, the inevitability of this conflict is obvious. But the cost that will be inflicted on these boys, I mean, we were talking about your we're talking 15, 16 Your children. That's unconscionable. I mean, at least, you know, with the old man who are fighting. Well, you know, they don't have that much life ahead of right, quite frankly. I mean, it sounds callous, but you know, at least there's that comfort, they lived a life and then they died in the war horrible, but some 16 year old child really shouldn't be within 100 kilometers of any kind of combat like that. They're too young, they're babies. And because I've seen the videos, it's, it's horrifying. The children and I'm sorry, I'm getting.
George Galloway 11:12
No, no, it's it's an emotional subject Gonzalo Lira.
Pedro Gatos 11:17 - Colonel McGregor Interview
What follows is to May 3 2023 exclusive interview with retired Colonel Douglas McGregor, with the London real host, Brian Rose.
Brian Rose 11:28
you have testified as an expert witness before the Senate and House Armed Services committees. And then 2020, Donald Trump appointed you as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense, you've written five books on military transformation, including breaking the phalanx and transformation under fire. You have argued that Ukraine has been destroyed, and that Russia will win this war, while the media and government propagate false narratives to hide the true reality of the situation. Colonel McGregor, Welcome to London real what is really going on on the ground in Ukraine, versus what I just read at the times in London, or what I read in the New York Times on a regular basis?
Colonel Douglas McGregor 12:02
Well, I think it's more than just a narrative. Now, I think the West led primarily by Washington in London, has erected what I would call an empire of lies. It's truly devastating. And it's shocking in its scale, and impact is something that, frankly, I was completely unprepared for. I've never seen anything quite like this where systematically we have lied about everything involving Russia and Ukraine now for months, if not years. And the truth of the matter is that people have never been told or not being told, and you can find the truth, but you've got to look for it, obviously, on the internet, is that Russia is by no means the evil aggressor in this thing, if anything, Russia launched an operation that it felt it had to to secure its country. We have been working tirelessly for at least the last 20 years to undermine and weaken Russia in whatever way possible, we decided we didn't care much for Mr. Putin and his success at essentially retrieving Russia from the ash heap of history. And then the Russia has made it very clear that they would not accept NATO on its borders. I mean, effectively, they done that with Latvia and Estonia. They do have a border up there. But they made it very clear that Ukraine, which is roughly the size of Texas in the United States, could never be a member of NATO that simply presented too much of a danger. They made that clear in 2008 had Budapest we ignored it. And then subsequently, Mr. Putin has given speeches reiterating the criticality of neutrality for Ukraine, unwilling to see NATO bases there. In 2014, one of the principal reasons that he intervened to seize Crimea was to prevent that naval base from falling into the hands of what he expected would be NATO forces. And remember, whatever he says NATO he ultimately means the United States is the United States Navy that would have gone into the ports in Crimea edge, the United States Armed Forces, it is moving eastward towards the Russian border. And we've chosen not to discuss that 2014, you also had this coup that we helped to organize and implement, which put two people in power that otherwise would never have gotten there. And these people were violently anti Russian, hostile to Russian national security interests. We encourage that we cultivated it, we began pouring money into this thing called Ukrainian army really, it's more of the army than anything else. And in 2014, this fledgling Ukrainian army began immediately attacking the Russians in eastern Ukraine, and the so called provinces or oglasi, Donetsk and Luhansk. And in the time between the first attacks by artillery in 2014, and the intervention by the Russians in February of 2022, they killed 14,000 people, and they fired 1000s and 1000s of rounds of the artillery. In fact, in the week or two, just before the Russians finally moved in, they fired over 2000 rounds of artillery ammunition, and these were all being fired at Russian civilians. Now I noticed I say Russian civilians, they were technically Ukrainian. and citizens, they just happen to be Russians. And of course, these Russians were being oppressed. They were effectively presented with a fait accompli either you become Ukrainian, you stop speaking Russian, you speak Ukrainian, you write in Ukrainian, and you adopt Ukrainian identity and culture and so forth, or we're going to punish you. And so the Russians in eastern Ukraine have been second or third class citizens now, for years. All of this did not go down. Well, in Russia, as you can imagine, then, of course, we had this thing called the Minsk accords, which was in theory presented to the Russians as a way to get past the conflict and maintain some measure of civility and peace in Ukraine. Well, it didn't work. And it didn't work, as we've discovered, because the first Chancellor Merkel, who's now retired, and then subsequently Mr. McCrone, the president of France, both admitted the whole thing was a hoax. It was simply a device to buy time for the Ukrainians to build their forces up. And it became very clear to the Russians that this large force, which was extremely well tripped, and I would argue, reasonably well drained, certainly by NATO standards, was poised to launch an attack at Russia, with the goal of crushing the Russians and Luhansk and Donetsk and then ultimately retaking Crimea. So the Russians said, No, thank you. And they intervened, the big mistake they made is that they assumed that someone was willing to negotiate with them. And so they went in with a really small force no more than 90,000 on the ground in terms of combat troops. And they discovered after two or three months, four months, even though they were not taking heavy casualties as originally reported, they took very light casualties. It was the Ukrainians that had begun taking heavy casualties almost from the beginning, they discovered that they weren't going to get a negotiated settlement. Finally, the generals met with Putin last summer and said, This is a war. This is not what we bargained for. We miscalculated the underlying assumptions were wrong, there is no one to talk to. And you'll recall that shortly after your former Prime Minister's visit in April to vistors olanski, that any hope of talks was crushed. And ultimately, they said, We've got to get ready for a real war that meant mobilizing reserves expanding the size of the army training everybody up re equipping people because the equipment they used initially was almost all obsolescence. So that was completed by Christmas. But then there was pressure to launch an offensive, but the weather didn't cooperate. So the decision was made since we don't have firm ground and you recall it in that part of the world, you had this thing called the rest of pizza, which is a respiratory pizza, which is effectively a sea of mud that makes virtually impossible for armored fighting vehicles or wheeled vehicles. If you leave the hard surface road, you're in big trouble. And we go back to World War Two, you find that the major offensives were either launched in the dead of winter when the ground was frozen, or they were launched in June, July, August, September timeframe. So the Russians then said, Fine, we'll build an impregnable defense hold what we've got, and invite the Ukrainians to attack us. And in the meantime, the Ukrainians have taken terrible, terrible losses. And these losses have never been truthfully reported in the Western media. Because I think Washington was very concerned that if it became clear that the Ukrainians were dying in great numbers, their forces were being destroyed almost faster than they could be fielded, that support for this insane notion of waging a proxy war on the backs of Ukrainian people against Russia, would no longer be supported in NATO. So the easy solution was lie. And then you have a compliant media that is ideologically aligned with the globalist neocon governments in the West, especially Washington and London. And it becomes very easy to tailor the message to some or another sustained support. And remember, Russia still has the legacy of the Cold War behind it. And what that means is it's easy to convince people that Russians are bad. Russians are evil, after all, wasn't the Soviet Union, bad and evil. Of course, this is not the Soviet Union, this country today is radically different. If anything, it is extremely religious, culturally conservative. And I think the Russian military contrary to what's been reported, the Western media has been behaved extraordinarily well, is not guilty of 90% of the war crimes of which it's been accused. On the other hand, the Ukrainian military has behaved atrociously, and murdered people in large numbers and celebrated it in Nazi fashion. So at the end of the day, this is an empire of lies. Now, here's some good news. empires of lies, create truth bombs, and the truth bombs are beginning to explode. And I'm sure that you're aware of the leaked documents, but also more and more information from the battlefield is slipping through reporters who are not part of the mainstream are there and they're telling the truth. So it's harder and harder to maintain the fiction that Ukrainians are winning, that the Ukrainians ever could win, that the Russians are losing, and the Russians are incompetent and capable and stupid, just as it's become impossible to argue that the Russian economy has been harmed at all by the sanctions. On the contrary, Russian economy is doing quite well. So I think that's where we are right now. The Russian military is waiting for the ground to dry more Ukrainians are attacking, they've lost now at least 300,000 dead. I've seen higher estimates than that. The Russians are looking at perhaps 30,000 Killed in action, and perhaps 40 50,000 wounded. But the difference between Russian wounded and Ukrainian wounded is that Russian wounded are quickly evacuated, their wounds are treated and they are returned to duty, about 90% of them. Whereas the Ukrainian side doesn't do that as well can't do it as well. And large numbers of people are dying of wounds on the battlefield. So it's a it's a treacherous situation. I think it's a humanitarian crisis. We haven't even discussed the 10s of millions of people whose lives are destroyed and Ukraine, what 11 million plus have now left the country, I've seen estimates that suggests that they started with 34 point 5 billion in the country, they're down now to somewhere around 18 or 19 million. And the Ukrainians, they're coming out now and have been coming out from the beginning all report they have no intention of going back. And we haven't even begun to address the child trafficking and trafficking of women that has gone on without a break and the black market for much of the material that we've sent over there. And obviously the squandering of cash that ends up in bank accounts in places like Cyprus belonging to people like Zelinsky. And the key figures in his operation, including generals and Ukrainian army, even down to the battalion level, this is a disaster, we should put a stop to it right away and try to rescue as much of Ukraine as we can.
Brian Rose 21:30
How is this any different than any other military conflict?
Colonel Douglas McGregor 21:33
Is it the scale of the deception here? Yeah, I think so. And also the cooperation in the media. You know, I lived through the Vietnam era. In fact, it started out in the military in 1971, in Virginia Military Institute, then went on to West Point in 1972. And we were still dealing with the Vietnam disaster. And it was very clear that at least until 1968, the media was giving the military a pass, they were essentially reporting figures for casualties that were not accurate. They were slow, rolling our own casualties, increasing and inflating the casualties on the other side. And of course, promoting the notion that we were winning. And you had a massive campaign launched by the President and the senior force store at the time was Moreland in 1967, to convince everybody we quote unquote, turn the corner, we're winning. And then of course, we got the Tet Offensive in January, and it was a disaster and it became abundantly clear to everyone in the media could no longer pretend. And the media was less interested in pretending you still had a lot of people in the media with some sense of integrity, and devotion to the country. And I began to tell the truth that made lots of people angry. These were the Americans that had believed the lies from the beginning. And of course, we didn't even discuss the fact that the whole war was based on a lie. The Gulf of Tonkin incident, which really never occurred as it was reported. It's not the first time that we've gone to war for a lie. We went to war in 1970. And on the basis of lies as well. So the bottom line is that I think today, what's different is the willingness to lie, the willingness to deliberately deceive, and I listen to it every day, every morning, on every news channel. I read it all the time. And you sort of shake your head and said, This is incredible. But the good news is the truth bombs, they're beginning to detonate. And very shortly by I would think as soon as this ground dries, to the point where hundreds of 1000s of Russian forces can leave their defensive positions and attack, it'll be very difficult to maintain the fiction anymore.
Pedro Gatos 23:25
So as of this May 3 2023 interview, McGregor claims that there are 300,000 Ukrainians dead in the Ukraine Army. This is consistent with the number that Gonzalo there are made in his interview back in January of 2023, in which he alluded to Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, who also revealed numbers consistent with these numbers of May of 2023. And we've cited Scott Ritter his numbers that are also consistent with these numbers. And when you look at the ratios of Ukrainian army dead to Russian army dead, we consistently find a six to eight to one ratio. In other words, for every Russian military death, there are 68 Ukrainian military deaths. This is what makes it such a slaughter, a truth kept away from the American public, but the mainstream media all fail to bring any attention to these numbers and actually promote numbers that are ridiculously lower. So I just wanted to end the show today with yet another number. Another truth bomb as McGregor refers to it, and that was from Robert Kennedy Jr, who earlier this month is actually on Monday, May the eighth 2023. In an interview on Fox News said that as a result of the Ukraine Russia war that the US is promoting Ukraine, his last 300,000 military personnel and some 40,000 civilian deaths. He went on to say what we're doing in Ukraine is not good for the Ukrainian people and quote, so this is another estimate that's consistent with the ones we've been putting forth on bringing light into darkness since August of 2022 this time by a Democratic presidential candidate thank you for joining us on bringing light into darkness tonight we'll see you next week