If the Russian army has won the war against the Banderites in Ukraine, NATO has won the cognitive war against its own citizens in the West. The Atlantic Alliance has developed a new form of propaganda based on what it denounced a short time ago: Fake News, that is to say not false information, but biased information. How to protect yourself from it?

THE NATO DEVICE

“Subduing the enemy by force is not the highest art of war, the highest art of war is to subdue the enemy without shedding a single drop of blood.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

French General Philippe Lavigne of NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT) oversees research on new propaganda methods.

His command has 21 centers of excellence, including one for propaganda, the Strategic Communications Center of Excellence (STRATCOM) in Riga, Latvia [1]. It has created the NATO Innovation Hub (iHub) under the direction of Frenchman Francois du Cluzel, a former professor at the Collège militaire interarmes de Coëtquidan.

It funds research at John Hopkins University and Imperial College of London on cognitive abilities. This research covers the entire cognitive domain with various applications ranging from bionic soldiers to war propaganda.

NATO’s general idea is to add to the five usual domains of intervention (air, land, sea, space and cyber), a sixth: the human brain. “While actions in the five domains are carried out in order to have an effect on the human domain, the objective of cognitive warfare is to make each one a weapon,” writes François du Cluzel.

If war propaganda was based, during the First World War, on false information popularized by great writers; then on the repetition of selected messages during the Second World War; today it is conceived as an illusionist’s act [2]. It is about moving people to distract their attention and hide from them what they should not see. They judge what they see with the uninteresting information they are fed. In this way, we manage, without lying to them, to make them take bladders for lanterns.

We are living the first application of this technique, on the occasion of the war in Ukraine.

To make myself understood, I will first present some information to be ignored, then come back on the treatment of the war by French State television. I would have obtained the same result if I had used a German, British or American example.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WESTERN LEADERS FOR THE WAR IN UKRAINE

In the West, the narrative of the war in Ukraine places all the blame solely on the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and secondarily on the political and financial figures of his regime. However, this version is clearly false if one considers the daily reports of the observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

They testify that they heard an attack from the Donbass (still Ukrainian) by Kiev forces on the afternoon of February 17.

All news agencies reported that at least 100,000 civilians had fled into the Donbass or to Russia. In addition, the main political leaders of NATO heard Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tell them at the Munich Security Conference that he intended to acquire nuclear weapons against Russia. It is clear that it was not Moscow, but Kiev, that triggered the hostilities.

No one can imagine that Kiev has unleashed this war against a far superior enemy without having received prior assurances from allies apparently capable of defending the country against Russia. This can only be NATO or the United States and possibly the other two nuclear powers, France and the United Kingdom.

The first meeting where this war was presented as desirable was held to our knowledge in the House of Representatives on September 5, 2019. It was organized by the Rand Corporation, the think tank of the US military-industrial lobby.

The purpose was to present two reports, “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia” and “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground” [3] to the parliamentarians.

The main idea is to use against it the particularity on which Russia bases its defense. Since it is a huge territory that the Russians defend by moving around and practicing the “scorched earth strategy”, it is enough to force them to move abroad to exhaust them.

The importance of this event is shown to us by the incident that affected our collaborator, the Italian geographer Manlio Dinucci. His article on the subject was censored by his newspaper, Il Manifesto, which he had to leave [4].

Three events attest to the involvement of the United States, the United Kingdom and France in the secret preparation of the war.

 On March 24, 2022, a video of a 22-minute telephone conversation between the British Minister of Defense, Ben Wallace, and Russian comedians Vladimir (Vovan) Kuznetsov and Alexei (Lexus) Stolyarov was published. One of the Russians was posing as the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Denys Shmyhal, whom Wallace never met.
• Asked whether the UK would help Kiev to acquire nuclear weapons, the Rt. Hon. Wallace replied that he had to consult with Prime Minister Boris Johnson and that “The principle is that we will support Ukraine as a friend in whatever choice you make. In one sentence, he swept aside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• On the subject of the Next generation Light Anti-tank Weapon (NLAW) missiles that the United Kingdom has just sent to the Ukrainian army, Ben Wallace admitted that they were not working properly and that spare parts had also been sent.
• But it is especially on the subject of NATO that Ben Wallace’s language has been too prolix. The British minister once again invited Ukraine to join the Atlantic Alliance. In passing, he unwittingly revealed that the United Kingdom had been sending military instructors to prepare the Ukrainian army for several years.

Boris Johnson’s government used every means at its disposal to conceal, or rather minimize, these statements. It claimed that the interview lasted only 10 minutes and forbade YouTube/Google to broadcast the entire sketch. The Western media was asked to talk about his blunder on the atomic bomb and to cover up the other two points. This is how the British always do it: not to deny everything, but to make the most dangerous points disappear.

 On March 25, 2022, President Joe Biden visited the Congress Palace in Rzeszów, Poland. He was accompanied by the director of USAID, Samantha Power (former ambassador to the UN), and the Polish president, Andrej Duda. It is worth noting that Andrej Duda had his parliament pass a law denying the role of the Polish state in Nazi crimes and authorizing legal action against anyone who mentions them. Joe Biden spoke with various NGOs to praise their assistance to Ukrainian refugees.

Afterwards, he gave a speech to his soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division, stationed there [5]. He also visited them in the dining hall and spoke to them without a teleprompter or cameras. As always at such times, the old man (79 years old) revealed state secrets. According to the witnesses, he thanked them for their commitment in Ukraine for a long time, even though officially there have never been any US soldiers in that country.

 On March 29, 2022, General Eric Vidaud, director of French military intelligence, was dismissed. No official explanation was given. It seems that in reality, General Viaud had deployed men on the direct instruction of President Macron’s private staff, in 2021 when he was commander of special operations, to supervise the Azov Banderites regiment.

Immediately, five Ukrainian helicopters tried to flee Mariupol, the stronghold of the Azov regiment. Two were shot down on March 30.

The survivors were taken prisoner by the Russian army. They spoke immediately. The soldiers of the Special Operations Command are placed for all logistical matters under the orders of the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, General Thierry Burkhard, but they take their orders directly from the head of the armed forces, President Emmanuel Macron.

Relations between Presidents Macron and Putin cooled sharply.

HOW WAR PROPAGANDA MASKS REALITY

In France the state has France-Télévision for its own population, with France-2 being the most watched channel, and France Médias Monde for abroad. The latter group depends directly on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and broadcasts France-24 in several languages.

Anne-Sophie Lapix interviewing Andriy Sadovy for France 2 without noticing that he is a Banderite oligarch is a bit like interviewing the Propaganda Minister of the Third Reich, Joseph Goebbels, without noticing that he was a Nazi.

To begin with, France 2 proposed a live newscast from Lviv (Ukraine) presented by its star, Anne-Sophie Lapix, on March 14, 2022 [6]. This newscast gathers every day a little more than 20% of the public.

The young woman showed a lot of destruction and traumatized refugees. She walked through the city, but did not notice the imposing monument to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators. She also questioned the mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovy, without explaining that he is one of the country’s leading oligarchs.

She did not ask him about his media group, of which his wife is the director. So she did not ask him about the remarks made the previous day on his channel, 24 Канал, calling for the killing of all Russians, women and children included, according to the method advocated by SS Adolf Eichman [7].

At no time was it specified that this program was an initiative of the Banderite oligarch Andriy Sadovy and his wife, both former clients of the Publicis agency of Arthur Sadoun, the husband of Anne-Sophie Lapix.

The viewer who ignores Ukrainian tributes to the Nazis and exhortations to follow their example can only weep at the accumulation of suffering that was shown to him. He cannot doubt that the Russians are liars and criminals and that Ukrainians in general are innocent victims.

Tatar journalist Fakhrudin Sharafmal addresses the Russians on March 13, 2022, on the channel of the mayor of Lviv : “You are garbage that must be swept off the face of the planet. If a Ukrainian has the chance to crush your bones, to slit your throats, to choke Ruskies, I hope he will seize his chance to contribute to the cause and kill at least one of you.

On March 25, France 24 in English, in its column Truth or Fake, reported on the interview of British Defense Minister Ben Wallace by Russian comedians. Following the instructions of Boris Johnson’s cabinet, the French Foreign Ministry’s television channel mocked his statements on the atomic bomb in order to better conceal those on the inefficiency of his anti-tank weapons and especially those on the presence of British military instructors in Ukraine for several years.

The journalist presented the comedians as youtubers, whereas they work for the NTV channel, which allowed her not to mention that they are censored on YouTube in the country of the 1st amendment and freedom of expression. The column was produced by journalist Catalina Marchant de Abreu, a specialist in debunking fake news (sic)

The peak was reached on March 31 with France 2 news [8]. France-Television, which until now denied the ideological character of the Azov regiment, broadcast a report on this formation. The public television admitted that it had, in 2014, been infiltrated by neo-Nazi elements, citing one of its founders, Andriy Biletsky, but assured that it had since changed into a respectable Defense force. 

France-2 did not mention one of its other founders, Dmytro Yarosh, a NATO agent and former coordinator of European neo-Nazis and Middle Eastern jihadists against Russia [9], who has become a special advisor to the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armies [10].

France 2 cites neo-Nazi Andriy Biletsky as the leader of the Azov Battalion in 2014. The journalist, Arnaud Comte, deputy editor-in-chief of the channel, does not have time to point out that Biletsky, aka the “White Führer,” was elevated to the rank of lieutenant colonel and decorated by President Pedro Poroshenko, and then founded a political party (the “National Corps”) preaching ethnic cleansing of Central Europe and was elected as a neo-Nazi deputy to the Verkhovna Rada (National Assembly).

France-2 referred to an old UN report on torture, but not to the discovery of his special prisons by the Russian army [11], nor to recent UN statements on the subject. The report also failed to explain what Banderites are in Ukrainian history and reduced the importance of neo-Nazis to the wearing of the swastika.

Having thus glossed over the problem, the channel estimated the danger to be between 3,000 and 5,000 men, while Reuters assures us that the Banderite paramilitaries today represent 102,000 men divided into numerous militias incorporated into the Territorial Defense [12].

Thierry Meyssan is a political consultant, President-founder of the Réseau Voltaire (Voltaire Network). Latest work in English – Before Our Very Eyes, Fake Wars and Big Lies: From 9/11 to Donald Trump, Progressive Press, 2019.