We took note of Martin Williams’ column “Freedom Genie Out of Bottle” published in The Citizen on 2 March. Our impression of this piece is as follows: lots of emotions and few facts. Well, this follows the current line of the Western media and officials to demonise Russia, wage an information war against Russia and decontextualise the situation in Ukraine. It seems that Williams took the fake news being spread by the Kyiv regime and the West at face value. One of the examples is his retelling of the story around Snake Island. “When a Russian naval officer called on…
We took note of Martin Williams’ column “Freedom Genie Out of Bottle” published in The Citizen on 2 March. Our impression of this piece is as follows: lots of emotions and few facts.
Well, this follows the current line of the Western media and officials to demonise Russia, wage an information war against Russia and decontextualise the situation in Ukraine. It seems that Williams took the fake news being spread by the Kyiv regime and the West at face value. One of the examples is his retelling of the story around Snake Island.
“When a Russian naval officer called on them [Ukrainian guards] to surrender or be shot, they replied: ‘Go f**k yourself ’”. This is what Williams described as Ukrainian people “fighting for values of an open society and free world”.
Yet he didn’t tell you the whole story. What the author didn’t tell you was that 82 Ukrainian guards of Snake Island surrendered to Russian forces and then got evacuated to Sevastopol on board of a Russian vessel. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian authorities presented state decorations to the guards … posthumously.
Yes, these guards were declared dead. There is more. Ukraine sent its naval forces to sink the transport carrying the surrendered guards and almost killed them.
The Russian navy defended the ship and nobody was harmed in the firefight, but is this an example of the Kyiv regime “fighting for values”? Well, if that is so, then it seems that human life is not among the values of “open society and free world”.
As for anti-Russian protests, again, it’s not the whole picture, there are also pro-Russian demonstrations (for example, in Serbia) and many more people support Russia than is being presented in the Western media. It is just too dangerous to demonstrate this support openly, especially in “developed democracies”, given the massive hysteria stirred by media – a true information war against our country, including its ordinary citizens.
The West speculates on people’s natural desire for peace. But where are all those Western “paragons of democracy”, “humanitarians” and “advocates of human rights” been for eight years while the Kyiv regime has been killing innocent people in Donbas? Where were the protests against Ukrainian authorities’ genocide of common Ukrainians?
The enlightened West preferred to turn a blind eye on human sufferings and made sure that the “fair, free and unbiased” media remained silent on a true humanitarian disaster in Eastern Ukraine. Cynicism and hypocrisy, yet again.
“We are witnessing a pivotal moment for the course of civilisation,” Williams says. That’s true. The so-called “liberal world order” with its killings of innocent people, like it, happened in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yugoslavia – literally “bombing [people] into democracy”, colour revolutions that leave people in poverty and deprive their countries of true sovereignty, double standards and discrimination, must be left behind on the scrapyard of history.
This will make space for a truly multipolar world where the West is only an equal part of it, but not the dominant force. Russia has just said it out loud. Most of the countries in the world strive for this, regardless of how vehemently the West denies it.
Alexander Arefiev is the Press attaché,second secretary Embassy of Russia
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