Chris Hedges writes:
Nevertheless, at the time, for the record, this essay was submitted to both CounterPunch and Antiwardotcom, and they refused to publish it. We can only guess the reason why. It was during Biden's censorous administration, so they obviously were afraid of the backlash should they dare to publish something that challenges the core western narrative. They were afraid of being labeled a "Putin apologist" or "Kremlin stooge," etc. I've had several articles published in CounterPunch, so you'd think they'd want to publish a "counter" narrative, but it was declined without providing a reason. Well, judge for yourself what you think the reason was.
Unpacking the “Invasion” Narrative
Have you ever noticed that any time you encounter a Western media report about the conflict in the Donbass (formerly a part of Ukraine), it is almost always framed as the Russian “invasion?” This is not by accident. Well before Russia's military operation began in February of 2022, the US State Department and corporate media outlets were howling that Russia was set to invade Ukraine any day. They presented false timelines based on "intelligence" reports to try to predict exactly when this supposed "invasion" would take place. In fact, on February 24, Russia did attack, but why? What did the State Department know that we didn’t? Well, some time after Russia's direct intervention, facts began to emerge to indicate that the US knew Russia would respond militarily because a dramatic escalation of attacks were taking place in the Donbass by the Nazi-led Azov battalion. They "knew" because that's what they wanted, for once Russia responded to these violations militarily, they could then spin the military intervention into the "invasion" narrative, which had already been formulated and goes something like this: "One day Vladimir Putin woke up and suddenly decided that he wanted to reestablish the Soviet empire, so out of his lust for more power, he ordered the ‘unprovoked’ invasion of Ukraine."
The Greek tragic dramatist, Aeschylus, wrote that the first casualty of war is truth; hence, the first step towards peace is to expose the lie that started the war. And that’s why I don’t buy the Russian “invasion” narrative. I saw early on that this was the kernel of a lie being used to justify war in Ukraine, a war that did not begin on February 24 but in 2014 when the Russians speaking people of the Donbass did not accept the illegal, foreign led coup and so decided to break away; consequently, they were attacked by Ukrainian nationalists for eight long years. Then, in the week leading up to Russia's direct intervention, the attacks dramatically escalated, with some 6,000 violations of the Minsk Accord, as reported by the OSCE. Moreover, subsequently, new evidence emerged that the NATO-trained, neo-Nazi infested Ukrainian military was planning a massive assault on the Donbass and Crimea; Russia's intervention nipped this plan in the bud.
Take all context and history out of any event, and you can make up any narrative you like to support your worldview, and the compliant media will lap it up and propagate it to Americans, who suck it in uncritically because that's what they've been trained to do through war propaganda for more than a century. They've been trained to hate the Russians all their lives, even more than three decades after the end of the Cold War, as if it never ended. Well, the US military establishment didn't want this cash cow to end; so, in defiance of a promise not to expand one inch eastwards, NATO, a proxy of the US, began to methodically do just that during the past three decades, ignoring Russia's repeated warnings, expanding ever closer, not by inches but by hundreds (if not thousands) of miles towards Russia's borders.
Of course, the typical response is: "So what? After all, NATO is a defensive alliance." Oh, but is it? Why would a "defensive" alliance need to expand? And if NATO is so "defensive," why did NATO attack nations such as Yugoslavia, Libya, and Afghanistan, who did not threaten even one NATO member? Why were Yugoslavia and Libya heavily bombed by this "defensive" alliance? In the face of the indisputable role of NATO waging wars of aggression on these nations, the argument that NATO is a "defensive" alliance is absurd. For that matter, why does NATO even exist? It should not. Once Russia disbanded the Warsaw Pact in 1991, NATO should have likewise disbanded. Since the "enemy," the USSR, had collapsed, why did NATO continue to exist for three decades? Once one understands that without the backing of the US military machine, NATO is nothing more than a paper tiger, the answer to that question becomes quite clear: the sole reason for the continued existence of NATO is to act as a proxy for US geopolitical strategy and global hegemony.
Thus, in order to deflect from that truth, NATO desperately needs an "enemy," as its raison d'etre, to present to the public. So, why not resurrect the old enemy who served that role so well during the Cold War? In fact, Putin once hinted that Russia would consider joining this alliance, a suggestion that was, of course, unreservedly met with a "no way" response, closing the door in Putin's face. How dare he even think of such a possibility! Of course, this is impossible because if Russia were to join NATO, NATO would lose its raison d'etre and would have to disband. Despite Russia's many attempts to develop mutual relationships with the West over the years, it has always been rejected, for the sole reason that the West needed Russia to play its role as "the enemy.” That’s why Russia “needed” to invade Ukraine. The enemy must act as "the enemy" on the world stage for all to see, for only then can NATO declare that the invasion narrative is justified: "See, we told you so! Russia, unprovoked, invaded Ukraine! Russia is the enemy! Putin is another Hitler!"
But did Russia's military response constitute an outright "invasion," or is Russia's "special military operation" a more apt description? In order to answer this question, we must examine closely the context that the West conveniently ignores in its invasion narrative. Besides the dramatic escalation of attacks on the Donbass in the week prior to Russia’s direct intervention (approximately 6,000 violations of the Minsk Accords), one should also take into account the history of this conflict, which actually began in the aftermath of the US funded and orchestrated, illegal coup of 2014 (sparked by neo-Nazi sniper fire). As a result, the neo-Nazis gained positions of power within the government, military, and national security posts; subsequently, the undemocratic, illegitimate regime enacted anti-Russian policies that were unacceptable to the primarily Russian-speaking ethnics residing in Crimea and the Donbass. Crimeans voted overwhelmingly (97.5%) in a referendum to join Russia while the Donetsk and Lugansk regions broke away from Ukraine. Once Crimea was annexed to Russia, Ukraine would not dare attack it, so it focused its attacks on the Donbass, which was continually shelled for eight years, resulting in almost 15,000 deaths and one million refugees, who mostly fled to Russia. The breakaway states of the Donbass begged President Putin to give them the same option as the Crimea referendum, but Putin refused because he knew it would antagonize the West and only escalate the situation.
Nevertheless, after eight years of Ukraine's refusal to implement the Minsk Accords, using neo-Nazis in the front line of its ethnic cleansing operations, and then with the dramatic escalation of violence in mid February of this year, President Putin declared that Russia would recognize the independence of the two breakaway republics and then intervened to protect the ethnic Russians from further violence. Essentially, as Dan Kovalik argues in “Why Russia’s intervention is legal under international law,” the government in Kiev, and “… especially its Neo-Nazi battalions, carried out attacks against these peoples with the intention of destroying, at least in part, the ethnic Russians precisely because of their ethnicity”; hence, the intervention to defend the people of the Donbass from a Nazi led ethnic cleansing campaign was not a violation of international law. In fact, since the territory in question had broken away from Ukraine for eight years, one can argue that the Donbass no longer belonged to Ukraine; thus, the military intervention cannot rightly be called an "invasion" of Ukrainian territory.
Moreover, in the months preceding the military response, in order to avoid a military intervention, Russia desperately made diplomatic efforts towards the West to reach an agreement; however, all of its efforts fell on deaf ears. Its reasonable security concerns were simply and directly stated: (1) Ukraine must not be allowed to join NATO and must remain neutral, (2) The flood of imported weapons from foreign powers must cease, and (3) Ukraine must implement the Minsk Agreement. Had NATO taken Russia seriously and entered into negotiations earnestly, in good faith, this crisis could have been avoided. After all, NATO had already stated that Ukraine would not be able to join NATO in the foreseeable future; moreover, NATO members participated in the Minsk Accords, so they could have easily pressed Ukraine to implement those agreements, and in order to show good faith towards reaching a peaceful settlement, NATO could have halted all weapons imports into Ukraine.
So, why didn’t it take these actions? None of these steps were unreasonable and could have easily been taken by NATO if it actually were interested in stopping the Nazi led attacks on the people of the Donbass; however, by all indications, not only was the US proxy not interested in reaching an agreement that would satisfy Russia's security concerns and bring peace to the region, but it had been arming and training the perpetrators for eight years. Why would the global hegemony project suddenly change a geopolitical strategy that had been in play at least since the illegal Maidan coup of 2014 (if not decades before that)? It's not that they thought Russia was bluffing; they wanted Russia to react militarily, which would set off the "invasion" narrative and give them the excuse to issue unprecedented sanctions and provide further military aid to Ukraine, all designed to prolong a proxy war that would eventually drag Russia down and perhaps even break it apart, just as in the case of the former Yugoslavia. They are willing to do this - at the expense of the last Ukrainian - a cynical, reprehensible behavior that deserves condemnation.
Of course, Russia understands this, and contrary to expectations, does not faithfully play its “enemy” role and follow the script of the invasion narrative. Usually, if we think of "invasion," we think of toppling a government, replacing it with a puppet government, and occupying it long enough to make sure that the puppet government's power is secure. Such was the case of the illegal invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq by the US; evidently, the US expected Russia to follow this same invasion manual, so a great deal of projection feeds into this narrative. Instead, Russia countered it with its own narrative, the "special military operation," which has specific, limited goals that resemble its demands prior to the mid February response: (1) the defeat of Ukraine's military, (2) halting the shipment of weapons from abroad, (3) the recognition of the right to self determination by the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, and (4) the denazification of Ukraine's military, national security apparatus, police, and government. So, even though Russia has yet to achieve her objectives, she also isn’t playing the scripted role of the invasion narrative either. Yes, it’s true that Russia has not only been playing defense but has attacked Ukraine outside of the Donbass; well, from a strictly military standpoint, to only "defend" without targeting the enemy's military at its source is a recipe for disaster and possible defeat. With all the weapons pouring into Ukraine from abroad, a purely defensive posture would undoubtedly result in an endless war - a losing strategy, for sure.
Basically, the invasion narrative falls flat on its face because it does not correspond with reality, especially the expectations that usually flow from this scenario. Yes, from a technical standpoint, any incursion into territory constitutes an "invasion," yet isn’t this technicality absurd in light of the relentless, Nazi led ethnic cleansing campaign for eight years, resulting in more than 14,000 deaths and a million refugees? Instead, the "special military operation" narrative does seem to more realistically describe events on the ground during the past year and a half, and it sure beats the "Suddenly, one morning the evil Putin woke up in a bad mood, so that devil decided he'd regain the lost glory of the old Soviet empire" line.
Russia’s “special military operation” counter narrative has been consistently downplayed, dismissed, suppressed, distorted, censored, and banned by Western mainstream media outlets. Whenever media or thought in general is censored and banned, I'm reminded of "On Liberty" (J. S. Mill). All that the banning/censoring of opposing narratives does is reveal a fundamental insecurity in your own position. Banning Russian global media merely exposes a fear of Russian global media. If you have confidence that your ideology/worldview is truth based, then why fear opposing arguments? In fact, these arguments should be welcomed, for then you have the chance to expose the falsity of them; hence, fear is the only reason for banning/censoring - the fear that truth is not on the side of those who do it. This is foundational to Western political philosophy, yet people even in so-called Western democracies don't seem to get it. Banning and censoring merely exposes your own hypocrisy; it’s a suicidal act of betrayal of your own ideals. Throughout the history of thought, truth is usually on the side of the very ones who have been censored and banned - the very reason why they were censored and banned in the first place.
To conclude, the fact that this alternative narrative is being censored and banned says to me that it can't be countered with facts; instead, as I see it, the war propaganda of the invasion narrative was created as the first lie to justify a proxy war, which had been planned for quite some time. Surely, the special military operation narrative makes more sense than the "suddenly one morning" fairy tale about an evil devil.
Unpacking the “Invasion” Narrative
Have you ever noticed that any time you encounter a Western media report about the conflict in the Donbass (formerly a part of Ukraine), it is almost always framed as the Russian “invasion?” This is not by accident. Well before Russia's military operation began in February of 2022, the US State Department and corporate media outlets were howling that Russia was set to invade Ukraine any day. They presented false timelines based on "intelligence" reports to try to predict exactly when this supposed "invasion" would take place. In fact, on February 24, Russia did attack, but why? What did the State Department know that we didn’t? Well, some time after Russia's direct intervention, facts began to emerge to indicate that the US knew Russia would respond militarily because a dramatic escalation of attacks were taking place in the Donbass by the Nazi-led Azov battalion. They "knew" because that's what they wanted, for once Russia responded to these violations militarily, they could then spin the military intervention into the "invasion" narrative, which had already been formulated and goes something like this: "One day Vladimir Putin woke up and suddenly decided that he wanted to reestablish the Soviet empire, so out of his lust for more power, he ordered the ‘unprovoked’ invasion of Ukraine."
The Greek tragic dramatist, Aeschylus, wrote that the first casualty of war is truth; hence, the first step towards peace is to expose the lie that started the war. And that’s why I don’t buy the Russian “invasion” narrative. I saw early on that this was the kernel of a lie being used to justify war in Ukraine, a war that did not begin on February 24 but in 2014 when the Russians speaking people of the Donbass did not accept the illegal, foreign led coup and so decided to break away; consequently, they were attacked by Ukrainian nationalists for eight long years. Then, in the week leading up to Russia's direct intervention, the attacks dramatically escalated, with some 6,000 violations of the Minsk Accord, as reported by the OSCE. Moreover, subsequently, new evidence emerged that the NATO-trained, neo-Nazi infested Ukrainian military was planning a massive assault on the Donbass and Crimea; Russia's intervention nipped this plan in the bud.
Take all context and history out of any event, and you can make up any narrative you like to support your worldview, and the compliant media will lap it up and propagate it to Americans, who suck it in uncritically because that's what they've been trained to do through war propaganda for more than a century. They've been trained to hate the Russians all their lives, even more than three decades after the end of the Cold War, as if it never ended. Well, the US military establishment didn't want this cash cow to end; so, in defiance of a promise not to expand one inch eastwards, NATO, a proxy of the US, began to methodically do just that during the past three decades, ignoring Russia's repeated warnings, expanding ever closer, not by inches but by hundreds (if not thousands) of miles towards Russia's borders.
Of course, the typical response is: "So what? After all, NATO is a defensive alliance." Oh, but is it? Why would a "defensive" alliance need to expand? And if NATO is so "defensive," why did NATO attack nations such as Yugoslavia, Libya, and Afghanistan, who did not threaten even one NATO member? Why were Yugoslavia and Libya heavily bombed by this "defensive" alliance? In the face of the indisputable role of NATO waging wars of aggression on these nations, the argument that NATO is a "defensive" alliance is absurd. For that matter, why does NATO even exist? It should not. Once Russia disbanded the Warsaw Pact in 1991, NATO should have likewise disbanded. Since the "enemy," the USSR, had collapsed, why did NATO continue to exist for three decades? Once one understands that without the backing of the US military machine, NATO is nothing more than a paper tiger, the answer to that question becomes quite clear: the sole reason for the continued existence of NATO is to act as a proxy for US geopolitical strategy and global hegemony.
Thus, in order to deflect from that truth, NATO desperately needs an "enemy," as its raison d'etre, to present to the public. So, why not resurrect the old enemy who served that role so well during the Cold War? In fact, Putin once hinted that Russia would consider joining this alliance, a suggestion that was, of course, unreservedly met with a "no way" response, closing the door in Putin's face. How dare he even think of such a possibility! Of course, this is impossible because if Russia were to join NATO, NATO would lose its raison d'etre and would have to disband. Despite Russia's many attempts to develop mutual relationships with the West over the years, it has always been rejected, for the sole reason that the West needed Russia to play its role as "the enemy.” That’s why Russia “needed” to invade Ukraine. The enemy must act as "the enemy" on the world stage for all to see, for only then can NATO declare that the invasion narrative is justified: "See, we told you so! Russia, unprovoked, invaded Ukraine! Russia is the enemy! Putin is another Hitler!"
But did Russia's military response constitute an outright "invasion," or is Russia's "special military operation" a more apt description? In order to answer this question, we must examine closely the context that the West conveniently ignores in its invasion narrative. Besides the dramatic escalation of attacks on the Donbass in the week prior to Russia’s direct intervention (approximately 6,000 violations of the Minsk Accords), one should also take into account the history of this conflict, which actually began in the aftermath of the US funded and orchestrated, illegal coup of 2014 (sparked by neo-Nazi sniper fire). As a result, the neo-Nazis gained positions of power within the government, military, and national security posts; subsequently, the undemocratic, illegitimate regime enacted anti-Russian policies that were unacceptable to the primarily Russian-speaking ethnics residing in Crimea and the Donbass. Crimeans voted overwhelmingly (97.5%) in a referendum to join Russia while the Donetsk and Lugansk regions broke away from Ukraine. Once Crimea was annexed to Russia, Ukraine would not dare attack it, so it focused its attacks on the Donbass, which was continually shelled for eight years, resulting in almost 15,000 deaths and one million refugees, who mostly fled to Russia. The breakaway states of the Donbass begged President Putin to give them the same option as the Crimea referendum, but Putin refused because he knew it would antagonize the West and only escalate the situation.
Nevertheless, after eight years of Ukraine's refusal to implement the Minsk Accords, using neo-Nazis in the front line of its ethnic cleansing operations, and then with the dramatic escalation of violence in mid February of this year, President Putin declared that Russia would recognize the independence of the two breakaway republics and then intervened to protect the ethnic Russians from further violence. Essentially, as Dan Kovalik argues in “Why Russia’s intervention is legal under international law,” the government in Kiev, and “… especially its Neo-Nazi battalions, carried out attacks against these peoples with the intention of destroying, at least in part, the ethnic Russians precisely because of their ethnicity”; hence, the intervention to defend the people of the Donbass from a Nazi led ethnic cleansing campaign was not a violation of international law. In fact, since the territory in question had broken away from Ukraine for eight years, one can argue that the Donbass no longer belonged to Ukraine; thus, the military intervention cannot rightly be called an "invasion" of Ukrainian territory.
Moreover, in the months preceding the military response, in order to avoid a military intervention, Russia desperately made diplomatic efforts towards the West to reach an agreement; however, all of its efforts fell on deaf ears. Its reasonable security concerns were simply and directly stated: (1) Ukraine must not be allowed to join NATO and must remain neutral, (2) The flood of imported weapons from foreign powers must cease, and (3) Ukraine must implement the Minsk Agreement. Had NATO taken Russia seriously and entered into negotiations earnestly, in good faith, this crisis could have been avoided. After all, NATO had already stated that Ukraine would not be able to join NATO in the foreseeable future; moreover, NATO members participated in the Minsk Accords, so they could have easily pressed Ukraine to implement those agreements, and in order to show good faith towards reaching a peaceful settlement, NATO could have halted all weapons imports into Ukraine.
So, why didn’t it take these actions? None of these steps were unreasonable and could have easily been taken by NATO if it actually were interested in stopping the Nazi led attacks on the people of the Donbass; however, by all indications, not only was the US proxy not interested in reaching an agreement that would satisfy Russia's security concerns and bring peace to the region, but it had been arming and training the perpetrators for eight years. Why would the global hegemony project suddenly change a geopolitical strategy that had been in play at least since the illegal Maidan coup of 2014 (if not decades before that)? It's not that they thought Russia was bluffing; they wanted Russia to react militarily, which would set off the "invasion" narrative and give them the excuse to issue unprecedented sanctions and provide further military aid to Ukraine, all designed to prolong a proxy war that would eventually drag Russia down and perhaps even break it apart, just as in the case of the former Yugoslavia. They are willing to do this - at the expense of the last Ukrainian - a cynical, reprehensible behavior that deserves condemnation.
Of course, Russia understands this, and contrary to expectations, does not faithfully play its “enemy” role and follow the script of the invasion narrative. Usually, if we think of "invasion," we think of toppling a government, replacing it with a puppet government, and occupying it long enough to make sure that the puppet government's power is secure. Such was the case of the illegal invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq by the US; evidently, the US expected Russia to follow this same invasion manual, so a great deal of projection feeds into this narrative. Instead, Russia countered it with its own narrative, the "special military operation," which has specific, limited goals that resemble its demands prior to the mid February response: (1) the defeat of Ukraine's military, (2) halting the shipment of weapons from abroad, (3) the recognition of the right to self determination by the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, and (4) the denazification of Ukraine's military, national security apparatus, police, and government. So, even though Russia has yet to achieve her objectives, she also isn’t playing the scripted role of the invasion narrative either. Yes, it’s true that Russia has not only been playing defense but has attacked Ukraine outside of the Donbass; well, from a strictly military standpoint, to only "defend" without targeting the enemy's military at its source is a recipe for disaster and possible defeat. With all the weapons pouring into Ukraine from abroad, a purely defensive posture would undoubtedly result in an endless war - a losing strategy, for sure.
Basically, the invasion narrative falls flat on its face because it does not correspond with reality, especially the expectations that usually flow from this scenario. Yes, from a technical standpoint, any incursion into territory constitutes an "invasion," yet isn’t this technicality absurd in light of the relentless, Nazi led ethnic cleansing campaign for eight years, resulting in more than 14,000 deaths and a million refugees? Instead, the "special military operation" narrative does seem to more realistically describe events on the ground during the past year and a half, and it sure beats the "Suddenly, one morning the evil Putin woke up in a bad mood, so that devil decided he'd regain the lost glory of the old Soviet empire" line.
Russia’s “special military operation” counter narrative has been consistently downplayed, dismissed, suppressed, distorted, censored, and banned by Western mainstream media outlets. Whenever media or thought in general is censored and banned, I'm reminded of "On Liberty" (J. S. Mill). All that the banning/censoring of opposing narratives does is reveal a fundamental insecurity in your own position. Banning Russian global media merely exposes a fear of Russian global media. If you have confidence that your ideology/worldview is truth based, then why fear opposing arguments? In fact, these arguments should be welcomed, for then you have the chance to expose the falsity of them; hence, fear is the only reason for banning/censoring - the fear that truth is not on the side of those who do it. This is foundational to Western political philosophy, yet people even in so-called Western democracies don't seem to get it. Banning and censoring merely exposes your own hypocrisy; it’s a suicidal act of betrayal of your own ideals. Throughout the history of thought, truth is usually on the side of the very ones who have been censored and banned - the very reason why they were censored and banned in the first place.
To conclude, the fact that this alternative narrative is being censored and banned says to me that it can't be countered with facts; instead, as I see it, the war propaganda of the invasion narrative was created as the first lie to justify a proxy war, which had been planned for quite some time. Surely, the special military operation narrative makes more sense than the "suddenly one morning" fairy tale about an evil devil.
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