While the interview of Vladimir Putin by Tucker Carlson – see a series of posts about it on our “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden” Telegram channel – is now firmly in the focus, it is high time to remember a series of interviews and programs by Oliver Stone, which got censored away by YouTube, but are still available on other, free platforms, like Rumble.
👉 Oliver Stone’s Interview with Putin in four parts (2017)
The article you are about to read continues the topic of the Pereyaslav Rada from yesterday’s article Pereyaslav Rada of 1654 – the story of Zaporozhie Cossacks joining Rus, which looked more at the events surrounding the Pereyaslav Rada, which the present article explores more of the preceding decades and reasons while Malorossia wanted to escape the Polish yoke. The introductory note about the term “Ukraine” apply equally to today’s article. A highly-recommended documentary, Project ‘Ukraine’, has a mention of these events as well.
Alexey Kishchenko, “Bogdan Hmelnitsky. The Ascension of Malorossia”, 1880 / Commons.wikimedia.org
It is generally believed that the Pereyaslav Rada marked the reunification of Ukraine with Russia. However, a structure called “Ukraine” did not exist at that time.
370 years ago, on the 18th of January 1654, cries were heard in the city of Pereyaslavl-Russkij (Pereyaslavl-Russian): “We are wishing to be under the Tzar of the East, the Orthodox one! Oh, God! Approve it! Oh, God! Strengthen it! May we all be one forever!”
This is how the people who gathered at the Pereyaslav Rada reacted to the letter of Tsar Alexei Mihailovich, which confirmed that the Russian sovereign “ordered them to take them under his high hand.”
The article below was first published on Dzen on the 18th of January 2021, but it seems to be from 2020. It covers the historical background for Pereyaslav Rada (Accord), the result of which was the so-called unification of Ukraine and Russia”. It this regard, it is worth noting that “Ukraine” was not established as a geopolitical term at that time. One rather spoke of the Zaporozhie Getmanate (or of “Gulyaj-Pole” – “Free-for-all field” in the sense of the lawlessness on those territories). Before 1800-s, “Ukraine” featured in its dictionary form of “borderland”. The term “Ukraine” first became descriptive of a geographic location in the political sense in the first half of the 1800-s. And it was only after the October revolution of 1917 that “Ukraine” acquired the true meaning of geopolitical entity.
As an aside, I am puzzled by some in the Communist circles who distance themselves from the factually correct statement that “Ukraine was created by Lenin (as a geopolitical entity)”. In doing so, not only do they do a disservice to Lenin’s legacy, but also play into the hands of the Ukrainian nationalists. There is nothing wrong with Lenin creating Ukraine in the sensibilities of that difficult time. The similar sensibilities governed the establishment of the Far-Eastern Republic on the shores of the Pacific, and the creation of then tiny Belorussian Republic. What Lenin did made sense in that historical context, short-term. But he could not foresee and cannot be held responsible for how the decision played out long-term. That was something for the future generations to solve. And that future is happening now.
Ukraina – thus were called the South-Western Russian lands of Rzeczpospolita. This name was never official, it was used only in private conversations and became common in folk poetry. It is difficult to define the boundaries of the lands, known as “ukrainnyi”, more so that this name was not permanent and at different times covered varying stretches of land…
With this in mind, let us continue to the article at hand…
The beginning of January 2020 was marked in Ukraine by regular “Bandera” marches of nationalists, which caused a timid protest from the ambassadors of Israel and Poland. Meanwhile, in addition to the birthday of one of the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalists, another historical date falls on January, which is carefully hushed up and ignored by the current authorities of Ukraine. Meanwhile, no matter how hard Zelensky and Co. tried to sweep the inconvenient facts under the rag, it was that date that determined the choice of the Malorossian (Rus Minor, Ukrainian) people for several centuries to come.
“Only the guilty fear judgement,” Gonzo had written in his Twitter bio. “Only liars need stifle the truth.”
On the 13th of January 2024, the American-Chilean citizen and blogger/journalist Gonzalo Lira was murdered in jail by the Ukro-NAZI GESTAPO equivalent – the SBU – for the crime of speaking critically of the Zelensky/Biden regime.
Gonzalo Lira used to start his broadcasts on YouTube in 2022 with the call of “Where is Tiffany Dover?”, referring to the nurse who became ill on-camera during a PR stunt that was supposed to show the safety of the experimental COVID-19 vaccine, and subsequently “disappeared” from all the records. Having become stranded in Ukraine in 2022, Lira was rightly fearful of becoming equally “disappeared”.
Back then he got released, and behaving somewhat uncharacteristically, continued with his broadcasts, raising concerns that he may have been compromised by the SBU. If he really was or if he throught he could out-fox the SBU… that we will never know, for the present answer to the call-out of “Where is Gonzalo Lira?” is, sadly, the silence of death.
While Gonzalo Lira’s YouTube channel still exists, most of the videos there disappeared from public access after his arrest in 2022. Some may still be accessed if the direct link is known, like the Victoria Nuland stream, embedded below.
Ukraine has become one big portal, opening back into their Banderite, Nazi-collaborating past.
Slogans like “Ukraine above all” recall the Nazi German “Deutschland uber alles”.
The sign of the past above the archway: “Glory to Hitler! Glory to Petljura! Glory to Bandera! Long live Ukrainian Independent State! Long live our leader S. Bandera” is precisely what today’s Nazis in Ukraine recite.
“Watch members of the “collective West” hivemind do a WWII Nazi salute of the Ukrainian Waffen SS at the UN Office in Geneva, minutes before the High Level Segment of the Conference on Disarmament. Profound cynicism or sheer incompetence? Probably both…”
The boundaries become blurred… where do 1941 – 1945 end and 2022 – 2024 begin?
So, let’s return to the events of the Euromaidan in Kiev 10 years ago, which lead to the tragedy we are witnessing now.
Let’s gaze back through the prism of satire to ZDF on the 15th of March 2014 – 3 days before Crimea in a referendum decided to return home to Russia.
The brutal honesty and the razor-sharp multi-layered humour of this program leaves no doubt that the events in Kiev were correctly understood in Europe.
Enjoy the show, and remember the freedom of speech, which is now unimaginable on any mainstream Television channel in today’s “European Garden” – or, as Hitler preferred to call it “The Blessed Pastures of Europe”.
Nowadays, the whole program, had anyone been allowed to produce it in the first place, would have immediately been banned as “Putin’s Propaganda” threatening “our democracy” – yes, criminal charges would probably have been the result.
2014 is only 10 years ago, nevertheless watching this show resembles something from another world.
It was clear already in 2014 that the Maidan massacre was a false flag
As a follow-up to the Grayzone publication about the Ukrainian trial that demonstrates 2014 Maidan massacre was false flag, and a comment from our subscriber, pointing to this fact being known in Germany, we have found in our archives a German newsreel that was aired on the First German TV channel sometime between mid-March and mid-April of 2014, and translated it to English.
The newsreel is interesting for several reasons.
It comes from the time, when the investigative journalism in Europe was not yet dead, and the journalists could challenge the official line, unlike what is happening now, when the German journalist Alina Lipp is persecuted in Germany for reporting from Donbass.
The trees mentioned in the reportage were a few week later cut down by the Kiev coup regime to hide precisely the evidence that these reporters showed.
Pay attention to the background in the scene with the lawyer representing the victims – you will notice the red-and-black Banderite flag on his table.
After the reportage from Kiev, there is a fragment about Turkey and the “civil war” in Syria. There is still a year ahead, before Russia will be forced to respond to this threat, on the request from the Syrian government. We left the episode in for its historical importance,and especially one phrase, spoken by the news anchor: “Until now, NATO has maintained that it is not interested in a military confrontation with Russia.”
On the pages of this blog I previously followed the long-drawn saga with the Crimean Scything gold that the Netherlands refused to return to the museums that owned the artefacts. These articles are from 2016 and 2019 and can be found, following the Scythian Gold tag. The collections that were lent out to Holland, technically belong each to its legal entity (therein, the 4 Crimean museums).
Holland now sent the valuables to Kiev, and with the current kleptocratic neo-Nazi regime in power there, the chances to this heritage of mankind staying there is very slim. Ironically, if Holland was hell-bent on not returning the items to the proper owners in Crimea, it would have been better for the collection to stay in Holland until the end of the SMO and the de-Nazification of Ukraine, but that is, apparently, not in the interests of the overseas managers of Holland.
Below are two articles from “Argumenty i Fakty”. The first one is with the breaking news from yesterday regarding the delivery of the invaluable cargo to Kiev, while the second is from last year, that looks into the troubled legal canvas that surrounded the case. The articles overlap somewhat in the historical section, complementing each other.
by Konstantin Mikhalchevsky, RIA Novosti, 27.11.2023
Collection of Scythian gold, Central Museum of Taurida, Simferopol, Crimea, Russia.
The collection of Scythian gold from Crimean museums has been handed over to the Kiev regime. Representatives of the authorities announced the arrival of a truck with the valuable cargo in the Ukrainian capital.
A truck with valuables
The Ukrainian portal “Strana”, with reference to the customs, reports that a truck with 2694kg of cultural valuables arrived on the territory of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. It is planned to perform the identification and registration of the cargo with the subsequent transfer of the valuables to the treasury of the museum.
It was very surreal listening last year to Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union speech, standing there in a brown suite, giving a OUN/UPA Nazi collaborator greeting, and then proclaiming that Russia was taking chips out of dishwashers. So much so, that it prompted us, while working on the translation of “2 Years” – A Danish Underground Publication from 1943, to create a historical parallel caricature. At the same time, media was in a frenzy about how Russia, any second now will run out of missiles, or had actually already done so. It was also presenting a portent analogy to the media frenzy in the German-affiliated press in 1941, just as Nazi Germany invaded the USSR. I was saving the links to those publications back then, for a better time, which happened to be now…
Bizarre delusions of grandeur to go with self-seductive propaganda narratives seem to be inherent as Western imperialism once a century launches project “defeat and conquer Russia”.
German Nazism once displayed it big time, and EU and NATO now parrot their predecessor while openly aligning politically with Fascism.
Since the start of the SMO western MSM have consistently reported “Russia out of missiles”. A mantra that didn’t age very well and the humour is lost on no-one, when the articles are viewed in one take. We added some 1940s deja-vu, plus a little something for the full-spectrum experience.
Here is an expanded article, which is a blend of a translation of a WebArchived copy of a Dzen post and the previous publication, mentioned above.
Russia forever bought Kiev from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: the purchase deed is valid till this day
In 1686 Russia acquired Kiev for 146 thousand roubles, concluding an agreement with the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth on “Eternal Peace” – this peace treaty regulated the division of the Getmanate. The de jure agreement is still in effect, by analogy with the sale of Russian Alaska to the United States.
The parties began long negotiations on the price that Moscow would pay to Warsaw “out of brotherly friendship and love” — this is how the diplomats officially formulated the purpose of the payment in 1686. The bargaining for Kiev went on for several months. Although the Polish Sejm ratified the document only in 1764, seven tonnes of silver were paid immediately by the Russians, and the deal was concluded.
Converted at today’s exchange rate, the cost of Kiev at the end of the XVII century amounted to slightly more than 397 million roubles, and if we count using the price of silver, to 133 million roubles. Anyway, at that time it corresponded to about 10% of the annual budget of Russia.
The Tzar (Ivan V Alekseevich, co-ruling with Peter I) feared that Poland would use the proceeds to modernize and expand the army, but the money were divided among the patrimonial nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and did not contribute to the militarization of the neighbouring state. At the same time, Ukraine became known on European maps as “Okraina” (“Borderland”).
Formally, the purchase deed for Kiev within the framework of the “Eternal Peace” is still valid. Two centuries later, in 1867, Alexander II sold Alaska to the United States for 7.2 million gold dollars.
As a postscript: After the dissolution of the USSR, the borders between Russian Federation (the legal heir of the USSR, the Russian Empire and the Russian Kingdom) and Ukraine (first appeared on the map as a state in 1992) never underwent the procedure of demarcation. As such, it has large legal repercussions for the international relations. The following article gives a good introduction into the matter, also touching on the demarcation of borders between RF and China: Demarcation of borders is … The problem of demarcation. Ukraine did not and did not properly register in the UN the demarcation of its borders as a state
Ukraine’s Crimes Against Humanity (2022-2023) is also compiled by Maxim Grigoriev (Russian language Telegram channel of the author).
The book was published on the Maxim Grigoriev’s English-language Telegram channel «War Crimes in Ukrake» and announced in this post on the Telegram channel of the Russian Ministry of foreign Affairs.
Below are the introduction and the table of contents of the book:
INTRODUCTION
The book ‘Ukraine’s Crimes Against Humanity (2022-2023)’ contains more than 400 testimonies of victims and eyewitnesses of Ukrainian war crimes and terrorist acts against civilians, committed between 2022 and 2023.
These testimonies have been collected by various public initiatives and organizations, including the International Public Tribunal on the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis and Their Accomplices, the Foundation for the Study of Democracy, and many others. The non-governmental nature of the work of these organizations, and limited resources has allowed only a small number of the tens of thousands of Ukrainian war crimes to be documented.
The evidence of crimes presented in this book contains direct speech — the accounts of victims and witnesses of crimes — and is classified according to the types of crimes under international humanitarian law. In each case photographs and full details of the victims and witnesses are provided, allowing them to be re-interviewed both by the media and by national or international judicial structures.
The accounts presented in this book testify to massive Ukrainian war crimes, which under international humanitarian law are classified as crimes against humanity and have no statute of limitations.
We would appreciate if you could repost this message with this book in social media or pass it to the media and human rights organizations of your country.
М. Grigoriev
President of the Foundation for the Study of Democracy
Back in the early 90s I, just as lots of other youths in Russia and the post-Soviet space listened to a multitude of Western pop groups, like Scorpions, Pet shop boys, A-Ha. With my command of the English language becoming more solid, I was also starting to understand the lyrics – remember, there was no Internet to check the texts, so you got by with what you understood on your own.
And the understanding was that of a warm and fuzzy welcoming feeling – the West invitingly offering to become the best friend of Russia. Or so it seemed. Later, in the naughts, came other musical preferences, and Scorpions with PSB faded into the background.
Now, many decades later I re-listened to some of my favourites from that time. And, what is more important, re-watched the clips. It’s important to keep in mind that not all music of that time had a political undercurrent or agenda, in fact, the majority of the clips were perfectly innocent in this regard. And then there were occasional musical items that failed the smell test of time.
“Wind of Change” by Scorpions seemed like a nice peace-building work of musical art, a hand of friendship outstretch to the new Russia… until 2023, when they changed the lyrics to suite the new political agenda of pandering to Ukraine, with Ukraine becoming the new target for this song.
Pet Shop Boys has two clips that drew my attention with the modern knowledge of the past events. Watch closely “Go West”. I always thought of it as addressing the wider Soviet audience, luring people into the sweet embrace of the West (that with the hindsight turned out to be a sweet honey trap). Yet, watch closely the clip.
Pay attention to the blue-and-yellow “Ukrainian” colour scheme…
…the gesture of the OUN-UPA Bandera Nazi collaborators nonchalantly thrown at three places in the clip…
Below is a complete re-blog of an excellent, thoroughly researched and objective article about how the myth of “Holodomor” of 1932-1933 was created and neutered in the West and then picked up by the nationalistic forces in Ukraine. The article is written by Olga of the Siberian Matrëshka Telegram channel.
There is only one additional comment that I want to make about the name “Holodomor”. The article mentioned why “H” was chosen as the first letter. The fact is, the Russian word “holod” means “cold”, while “famine” or “hunger” is “golod”; “mor” means “mass death”. So the official “Western” name actually means “death from freezing”, but as will be come apparent from the article, the choice of the leading “H” was intentional.
The myth of the Holodomor is blatantly at odds with reality. Supporters of the Holodomor theory argue that the Soviet government and Stalin personally wanted to destroy the Ukrainian people. This statement is not supported by facts: the famine of 1932-1933 covered the territory of several Soviet republics, and in Ukraine it was not at all widespread. Well, did the Soviet government starve Ukrainians selectively, depending on the territory in which they lived?
The forces that are now planting their blatantly anti-historical “Ukrainianism” in Ukraine attach great importance to the theme of the “Holodomor”. I invite the reader to first get acquainted with how the myth of the “Holodomor” was created – a famine allegedly artificially organized by Stalin for the purposeful destruction of the Ukrainian people. And only then move on to historical realities.
The famine of 1932-1933 is a bitter page in our real history. But this famine, firstly, was far from the first in the history of Russia. And, secondly, it affected not only Ukraine, but also the Don, Kuban, Volga, Central Black Earth, Kazakhstan. However, the Ukrainizers immediately, in hot pursuit, tried to isolate the “Ukrainian” component from this tragic event, which affected many regions of the USSR, and make the theme of the famine of 1932-1933 an irrelevant one. in Ukraine as an instrument of struggle against the “communist regime”.
The «Golodomor» myth (intentionally misspelled in the West as «Holodomor», more on that in a later post that dispels the myth) has gripped Europe, engulfed in the fervent russophobia. Italy is the latest to jump on the bandwagon of this hoax.
As it is asked in the expanded comment by Maria Zaharova of the Russian Foreign Ministry, what about those who were starving in those lean years in the Volga basin area. The term «golodajushie Povolzhja» – «the starting of the Volga basin» has become an idiomic part of the Russian language to describe someone in dire need for help.
And the famine of those years engulfed all of the Southern and Eastern Russia. In my own family, my grandmother’s grandmother died of hunger at that time. The catch: that branch of my family lived in the Altai Krai of Russia, that is, in Sibera.
Comment by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, M.V.Zaharova, in connection with the recognition by the Italian Senate of the “Holodomor” as a genocide of the Ukrainian people
On July 26, the Senate of the Italian Republic adopted a resolution recognizing the so-called Holodomor as a “genocide of the Ukrainian people.” Earlier, a similar document was approved by the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the start of a special military operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.
We regard this anti-Russian step as another evidence of the short-sighted policy of official Rome aimed at encouraging the most unbridled Russophobic manifestations actively promoted by the Kiev authorities and their patrons.
At the same time, Rome does not take into account the millions of people who became victims of the famine of 1932-1933 in the Russian Volga region. We invite Italian citizens to ask their government: is such disregard of facts caused by ignorance of world history or is there an undisguised segregation of people on a national basis?
It is quite obvious that the continuation of the line on the “Ukrainization” of the Italian political class and society, expressed, among other things, in the thoughtless execution of the increasingly brazen and unceremonious demands of the Nazi Kiev regime, may lead in the not so distant future to the adoption by the Italian Parliament of resolutions on perpetuating the memory of the anti-Semite S. Petliura or the Nazi collaborator S. Bandera.
Such decisions of the Italian legislators, who in this case did not show any depth of analysis of historical events, nor political foresight and wisdom, certainly make the prospects for normalization of Russian-Italian relations more distant.
Ever since MH-17 was shot down by Ukraine on the 17.07.2014, flying in the direction of Donbass, over a war zone, controlled from the Dnepropetrovsk control tower, with the air traffic controller disappearing into thin air after he instructed MH-17 to descend toa lower altitude; with the fighter pilot Voloshin first making an armed sortie, then getting a “Hero of Ukraine”, and then committing suicide; since Ukraine was made part of the investigation much like if a rapist is made a part of an inquiry into a rape case; after the kangaroo court of Netherlands, when all inconvenient evidence provided by Russia was simply ignored.
Ever since that time I return to the topic of the MH-17 shoot-down on the pages of this blog – all the past posts having the MH-17 tag – and knowing that Russia will not forget this case and will ultimately bring the guilty to justice. Maybe next year, on the 10th anniversary?
Today is another date.
Which for some reason was not remembered by Ukrainian channels. I didn’t see it, maybe it was somewhere. But I have not seen any mention in the foreign press.
This picture was painted by the Dutch artist Emily Rose. Dedicated to the plane crash with the Boeing MH17. Why is memory so short, fellow Europeans?
Then the bodies didn’t even have time to cool down there – “Russians are killers”, “Putin is the killer”.
There was simply nothing known at all.
The plane just crashed…