Shedding light on the Ukraine crisis - essential readings on Nato, Russia and the control of media information

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is an illegal and brutal act. As with all invasions, all war, the human consequences are depressingly familiar. At times like these, we express our sympathy for suffering and displaced people. 

We are seeing extensive coverage of the upheaval in Ukraine. We are getting wall-to-wall reports on approaching Russian forces. We're hearing much political condemnation and media amplification of it. But what we aren't getting, yet should be entitled to, is balanced information, probing analysis and open discussion on why this situation has come about. 

Nor does the massive extent of that coverage remotely compare with reporting of the violence visited by the 'West' and its friends on the peoples of Yemen, Palestine and other 'far-off' places. The crimes committed by, and on behalf of, the US/UK/NATO in places like Libya and Syria are rendered, likewise, invisible. 

The trauma of fleeing Ukrainians is also deemed of higher importance, with appalled politicians and reporters lamenting how 'they're European', 'just like us'. 'Distant', non-white refugees, many, like the crammed, imprisoned population of Gaza, with no means of escape, receive no similar attention, sympathy or help. There's a useful word for this disparity: racism.

The level of shrill, war-beating jingoism over Ukraine is on a scale with the dangerous hysteria post-9/11, announcing the 'War on Terror', leading to the catastrophic invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and their ongoing, calamitous fallouts.

As then, we are being led to support escalations, interventions and potential outright war based on false and contrived claims. An entire, cartoonish narrative depicting Putin as a ‘madman/the new Hitler’ has been normalised as ‘rational’ comment. 

Almost nothing of the actual historical context of this crisis, vis-a-vis the Cold War, wilful NATO expansion and Russia’s security issues, is being aired by the 'mainstream' media. 

And to 'step out of line' by questioning the prevailing narrative is to be deemed a 'Putin apologist'. We are being propagandised, misled and gaslighted on a truly epic scale. 

In alarming addition, blanket banning of 'state-serving' Russian media is being imposed by the EU and other 'freedom-protecting' entities. No such labels are being applied to the state-serving BBC. Ursula von der Leyen, Google and Facebook are now telling us what's 'right' for us to read and view. 

All across social media, writers, journalists and sites deemed 'sympathetic' to Putin and/or Russia - now, effectively, indivisible - are being purged, curbed and 'ghosted'. We are not only at a volatile moment in international affairs, but an Orwellian one in authoritarian responses.

It is only through the remaining, for now, gateway of alternative media that any truly open, critical and independent discussion and background to this crisis is reaching the public.

Below is a selection of essential reading and viewing, serving to inform and correct for the multiple omissions and distortions. 

As the one-dimensional news providers, right-wing/centrist 'think-tanks', selective 'security analysts', liberal militarists and other siren voices for war continue to dominate the studios, press and airwaves, we still have, at least, these vital chroniclers and observers of how we got here, the perilous state we're now in, and how any serious template for all-inclusive peace and stability can ever come from it.

Jonathan Cook: Russia-Ukraine war: A different invasion, the West's same 'madman' script

John Mearsheimer: (video from 2015, foretelling the crisis. Full version here)

Ted Galen Carpenter: Many predicted Nato expansion would lead to war. Those warnings were ignored

Ali Abunimah: How to Stop World War III

Vladimir Pozner: How the United States Created Vladimir Putin

Diana Johnstone: US Foreign Policy Is a Cruel Sport

Michael Brenner: The Consequences of Humiliating Russia 

Chris Hedges: Chronicle of a War Foretold

Ali Abunimah and Rania Khalek: Ukraine War Exposes US Hypocrisy, Double Standards & Racism

Asa Winstanley: Who are Ukraine's "Moderate Rebels?"

Media Lens: Statement

Glenn Greenwald: War Propaganda About Ukraine Becoming More Militaristic, Authoritarian, and Reckless

Scott Ritter: Putin's Nuclear Threat

John Wight: Nato's an obstacle to peace in Europe and elsewhere

Tamara Nassar: Boycotting Russia compulsory, while boycotting Israel is punished

Peter Oborne: Let's call out the West's bias over Ukraine for what it is - blatant racism

Benjamin Norton: Iraq War architect Condoleezza Rice condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as war crime

John Pilger: (map of encircling Nato forces)

Lowkey: (tweet on selective media reporting of Ukrainian civilian resistance)

Jonathan Cook: (tweets on George Monbiot's smearing of leftists, and failings as a foreign policy analyst)

Ali Abunimah (tweet thread on the history and continuity of neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine)

Caitlin Johnstone: (tweet thread: "f the actions of NATO powers had nothing to do with the attack on Ukraine then why have western experts been warning for years that the actions of NATO powers would provoke an attack on Ukraine?")

Joseph Massad: Russia-Ukraine war: How the West backed Putin into a corner

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Updated, 4 March 2022

Media Lens: 'Doubling Down On Double Standards – The Ukraine Propaganda Blitz'