My take on a video that others have found convincing. Your comments invited.

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Margaret Anna Alice asked me for my take on this video that convinced her believe that Ukraine is a perpetrator and not the victim in the current war. I have watched the movie taking notes as I went, marking my observations at the various minute marks.

I will start by pointing to a list of books I have reviewed on Russia and the war, giving me a fairly broad background in the way Russia operates and this war in particular.  You will find a categorized list of my 480 Amazon reviews as of February 22 here.  Russia-Ukraine is the last category, way at the bottom, with 31 books, mostly linked to reviews.  Since then I reviewed Narkomania, which I mention in this piece.

The interviewee is Maria Lelyanova, Мария Лелянова, a Russian translator.  An Internet search does not turn up anything about her except participation in this video.

Maria Lelyanova it is a Russian citizen. She is billed as an excellent English translator who was staunchly antiwar as a Russian citizen. They say that she was converted by serving as a translator on her trip to the Donbass.

As my first note of skepticism. Living in Russia she cannot have been tremendously well-informed about the war on either side, such as the censorship is in that country.

It would not be hard for the Russian regime either to build false credentials portraying her as an antiwar activist or to exert influence on her to change her opinion.  Was she paid for this interview?  Quite possible.

She made the trip with Thomas Röper, a German journalist who is decidedly pro Putin per his Wikipedia entry.  Here are his books about Russia:

• Vladimir Putin. Seht Ihr, was Ihr angerichtet habt? J. K. Fischer Verlag, Gelnhausen 2018, ISBN 978-3-941956-96-4 (Anthologie).  This is an article in a book by Oliver Stone, whose sentiments were expressed in his Ukraine Burning movie. 

• Ukraine Krise 2014. Das erste Opfer des Krieges ist die Wahrheit. Wie der neue kalte Krieg begann. J. K. Fischer, Gelnhausen 2019, ISBN 978-3-941956-78-0.

• Putins Plan – „Mit Europa und den USA endet die Welt nicht.“ – Wie das westliche System sich gerade selbst zerstört und was Russland wirklich will. J. K. Fischer Verlag, Gelnhausen 2022

Here's Wikipedia (yes, it is biased).  Thomas Röper (* 26. November 1971 in Bremen^[1]) ist ein in Sankt Petersburg lebender deutscher Sachbuchautor und Blogger. Er gilt als „Kreml-treuer“ Verbreiter von Desinformation wie nachweislich falschen Behauptungen, Verschwörungstheorien und russischer Regierungspropaganda. Seit 2018 betreibt er das Blog Anti-Spiegel.^[2][3]

Röper introduces her, saying he was going to "put some reason" into her, to explain things. He says that Western propaganda is emotional. This is certainly true. However, it is equally true of the Russians. So we have an  extremely experienced advocate for Russia taking a young woman who openly and frequently admits her own naïveté to get what is supposedly a neutral take on what is going on and Donbass.

Maria claims that "we are the same people". "We grew up with the same literature" and so on. This is true to some extent. I grew up reading Russian fairytales to my son. Russia simply has a broader literature than Ukraine. This is due in part to the fact that the Ukrainian language was suppressed for many years. Ukrainian writers such as Bulgokov and Gogol wrote in Russian rather than their own language.  For what it's worth, we also read a lot that was originally written in English, such as Mark Twain.

However, Ukrainian nationalism has always been strong.  There has been persistent resistance to the Russians. The Russians explain it as fascism – Stepan Bandera, the Azov Battalion and others. They suppressed it with famines in 1921 and 1933. 

The Ukrainian language is closer to Polish than Russian.  I speak Russian and have had an unsuccessful struggle learning Ukrainian.  By way of comparison, I learned Portuguese quite easily already having a knowledge of French and Spanish.  Ukrainian and Russian split about a millennium ago, same as Spanish and Portuguese.  They are not at all mutually intelligible.  Russians disdain Ukrainian.  Bilingual people are almost always Ukrainian.

This video does not address the language issue, but I will because it Margaret Anna Alice mentions it. Ukraine is the most thoroughly bilingual country I have ever spent time in. It had been dominated by Russia since 1648. There are three Ukrainian to Russian language clines: west to east, rural to city, and uneducated to educated. When I arrived in 2007 it was said that Russian was the dominant language in 10 of the 11 largest cities, the exception being Lviv, in the far West. 

My wife grew up speaking Russian. It does not make her Russian any more than speaking English makes me an Englishman. In this instance language, ethnicity and political allegiance do not coincide much at all. Russian was forced on Ukraine.

During the Soviet era American academics such as Stephen Cohen tended to treat the Soviet Union as a single entity, and accepted Soviet claims that it was homogeneous. It was not. For a quick read on the differences, see John Steinbeck's 1947 "Russian Journal."

However, Lelyanova, raised in the Russian tradition, accepts without question the claim that Ukraine and Russia are all the same. Probably Belorussia as well, though those citizens would disagree. If they had the freedom to do so.

The set up, at minute six of the video, is a litany of all of the ways in which Russia is at fault for starting this war. Röper probably intended it as a set up in order to destroy the arguments.  The arguments are strong, and IMHO never well refuted.  Listen closely.  What Maria believed before her "conversion" is pretty much the way it is, IMHO.

Maria went to the Russian Far East to get away from the war. She worked in a rehab center.  Speaking of the incessant propaganda, she said at Minute 7: "This is what is done to the people of Russia by the news, a continuous narrative." This is certainly an admission or a recognition of the Russian propaganda with regard to Ukraine.

Röper began the acquaintance by engaging Maria to translate subtitles on footage from Mariupol. The people in Mariupol were saying nasty things about the Ukrainians. That the Ukrainian army was savage and mistreated them.  It piqued Maria's curiosity.

The situation in Mariupol is without a doubt a tragedy. I was there in 2009.  It was a very thoroughly Russian speaking part of Ukraine. Its citizens nonetheless resisted the attempt in 2014 to include it in the Donetsk People's Republic.  It remained part of Ukraine.

There is no dispute that the Russians bombed Mariupol flat. The same way that they flattened Grozny in Chechnya. It is the Russian way of war. – what they did in World War II. The estimated number of civilian casualties is about 20,000.  These were caused by Russian bombing and artillery.  There is no way anybody can blame it on the Azov Battalion, trapped like rats for several months in the basement of the destroyed Azovstal factory.  The 600 civilians killed in the bombing of the drama theater in Mariupol could only have been killed by the Russians.  Ukraine's bombers could not have gotten there in the first place, and they certainly would not have wanted to kill their own people.

It is a vast irony that the parts of the country that have been destroyed in this war are almost all predominantly Russian speaking.  Nobody could contend that the Russian speakers are better off than before the invasion.  They would not be even if Russia prevailed.  Language notwithstanding,  Russia was not wanted in 2014 and certainly not in 2022.

This is a good point to note that Ukraine did not and could not have bombed Mariupol. The Russian Air Force is vastly superior, and Mariupol is very close to Russia. Whatever bombing was done there was done by Russia itself.

Russia's military has always centered on its army, and its army has always centered on armor and artillery. It is estimated that Russia had a 9:1 advantage in artillery in the summer of 2022. They used air and artillery to flatten Mariupol.  It is also beyond dispute that the Russian propaganda actively blamed Ukrainians for the damage..

Röper and Maria met up with a Graham Phillips in Lugansk.  An Internet search reveals that he has worked for Russia today and as a longtime resident of Lugansk.  Here's what you see. Phillips, far from a neutral observer, certainly had a bias as he was telling Maria what was going on.

Graham Phillips Journalist - Telegram

Stay with me from here in the LNR, Lugansk, and to be on my mailing list, message me at gwplondon@gmail.com - thanks again, Graham. 16.7K views 15:24. Graham Phillips Journalist. This is the text from the Nottingham Post, including my statement to their journalist Olimpia Zagnat, on the release of Aiden Aslin. So, that is that, obviously they ...

Maria says "Everything and Donbass is covered with Zs. How can it be that if we are such monsters that everything in Lugansk is covered with Z's?"  I have a simple answer – the Russians control the Lugansk People's Republic. They have done so since 2014. They have forced the young men into the war against Ukraine. It is a matter of power. You cannot say anything they will not like. I know people in the occupied city of Holya Prystan, and relatives who have visited them. They are very careful who they talk to, what they say and who takes their picture. It is the same or worse Mariupol.  A member of our Toastmasters club, Natalia Baliuk, gave a speech on the disastrous situation of her family in Mariupol. Those she can find.  I will be pleased to put anybody interested in touch with Natalia or the Golya Prystan families.

Maria and Röper went to Severodonetsk.  This was the site of a huge battle in the summer of 2022, as the Russians mounted a massive, slow offensive to take the city. As is usual, it was battered flat by artillery. Maria asks why the people she talked to there would not say anything bad about Russia? I offer two obvious reasons. First, most who could flee had already gone. They are refugees in the West. Easy to find here in Kyiv, where they do say many nasty things about the Russians.  Second, the Russians control the city. Nobody with any brains would say anything bad about the Russians while they are under their thumb.

Since she accompanied the German Röper on this trip, obviously the authorities in these Russian controlled areas knew of their presence. Just as in John Steinbeck's Russian Journal or Walter Duranty's reporting there is a question of whether or not the people they met were authentic. They may not have been.

They were introduced to Deynego Vladislav Nikolaevich    Владислав Дейнего, for eight years the Donetsk People's Republic's negotiator at the Minsk talks.  Röper gave her the chance to ask questions, to which Maria says "my questions seem naïve.  I had no clue  I thought this is internal Ukrainian business.  It has nothing to do with us." 

In “nothing to do” she is simply wrong – Russia supported the uprisings with military equipment and "little green men."  The surprise is that although after Yanukovych official Ukraine was in no position to prevent People's Republic takeovers, the people themselves managed it in Odessa, Kharkiv, Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Mariupol and other places.

"Why are the people of Donbas hated so much?  Why are they being destroyed during these eight years?"  Maria begs the question.  Who started the war in 2014?  Who continued it?  Who prevented the OSCE from observing what was happening?  I will add, that the people of Donbas are not hated.  They have been welcomed as refugees to the rest of Ukraine.  But the Russian-backed aggression from Donbas is of course resisted.

Röper says they will "take away some of these myths" through an interview with a DPR military guy.  "his name is Yankagin" Can’t find him in a search.  She concludes "What started in February was unavoidable.  It could not have happened any other way."  This is a major claim, which she does not substantiate with any of her own evidence or his.  Why what happened in Donetsk necessarily led to a massive Russian "Special Military Operation" to seize Kyiv makes no sense.

I note that we don't hear from some of the usual Russian apologists they always trot out.  Gonzalo Lira, Col Douglas MacGregor and Patrick Lancaster come to mind.  See also Kees Van Der Pijl in my book list. Those she does include Oliver Stone and Graham Phillips.  I don't know what motivates them, but they have all been Russian cheerleaders since long before 2022.

Maria visited a school and found that a lot of literature teaching young children that Ukraine and Russia are enemies. This is not without precedent. As I write this I am holding in my hand Історія Української РСР, a history of the Ukrainian SSR published in 1963, in Soviet times. I have read this book with my son. It is hostile to the west and very condescending to the Ukrainians in comparison to the Russians. In particular, the Soviet Union appropriated the original civilization, Kievskaya Rus, as their own. Maria knows this – she asks later in the film why Ukraine would be upset at this.

At minute 24 Maria is shocked that "We are not brother nations."  No, by 2014, after the Russians had invaded and annexed Crimea, the LPR and the DPR it was pretty clear that they were no longer brother nations. In Kyiv we actively renamed streets.  The Moscow bridge here in Kyiv became the northern bridge. Yes, the brotherhood of nations had been a repeated Soviet theme. Ukraine was always the junior partner.  Actually called "Little Russia." But it is hard to sustain the claim when you invade your neighbor.

"We are being hated.  We are being dehumanized from an early age on."  Yes, that was the history of Soviet propaganda.  Ukraine needed to establish a Ukrainian identity separate from the Russian identity.  Ukraine did what the Russians had long done.

Minute 26.  Story of Ukrainian troops getting high on drugs.  This is hearsay.  It could be true in part.  It could not be verified.  It appears to be exactly the opposite of what happened.  See Narkomania about the people's republics.  The behavior of drunken Russian soldiers is well documented.  They don't know why they are fighting in Ukraine.  Ukrainian soldiers know why they are fighting.

There is a story of inhuman living conditions in a basement.  Why are they in a basement?  Who was doing the bombing?  Ukraine had no air force capable of bombing and a 9:1 deficit in artillery.  It was Russian.

Minute 28 Maria believes that Ukraine destroyed hospitals.  It is an unsubstantiated claim.  Ukraine also claims that the Russians target hospitals and schools.  Kherson is a good example where it would be nonsense to blame it on Ukraine.  Ukraine never attacked Kherson in recapturing it, yet schools and hospitals were often destroyed.  It is a Russian tactic.  Blaming the other for what you do yourself is also a Russian tactic.

The last day they went to Святогорск Svytogorsk, in the Donetsk oblast.  Close to Izyum.  1500 out of 4500 inhabitants remain.  Claimed that they hide in basements.  It is claimed that they appeared in a video, shown on Ukrainian TV.  Now they are hunted in Kharkiv and elsewhere, to be killed (as traitors).  They being targets of snipers, but fear more for their relatives.  This footage must be rather old, since Ukraine recaptured this land about September of 2022.  It would be interesting to revisit the town and listen to the story today.

Minute 33.  In Svytogorsk?  Suggestion that snipers would have been shooting civilians.  Doesn't happen much.  This is supposition.  Why would a soldier waste ammo, and give away his position, shooting people who pose no danger? Hearsay.  Propaganda.  The video shows soldiers distributing humanitarian goods, with the claim that the risk is "very high" as they do so.  Classic propaganda.  If Maria is in danger, why isn't she wearing a helmet?

"The bombing was going on not far from us.  You can see the smoke rising."  If true, it was Russian bombers.  This area is close to Russia and Russia has significant air superiority, especially close to their home base. 

"Do not show our faces.  Do not put our pictures in video."  and "when we are liberated we will be free to talk."  It would be interesting to go back to Svytogorsk now that they have been liberated (by Ukraine, not Russia) and talk to them. 

Minute 36 "They don't want to be a part of a country that hates them so much."  "They don't want to be part of Ukraine."  This is a repeated theme.  Of course the interviewees have to say this with a Russian knife at their throat.  There may be some who accept being under Russia.  Those who felt strongly the other way were presumably the first to leave.  This propaganda of hate is everywhere.

Minute 37.  Claim that the refugee center was "like a pretty good hotel."  This is propaganda.  There are many people here in Kyiv who have gotten out of refugee centers.  At this moment 70,000 civilians  from Zaporizhia are being swept into refugee centers on account of the anticipated Ukrainian attack.  Many do not want to go.  The Russians are having trouble. They are not “good hotels” by any means.

That's my analysis of this video.  My observations would indicate that it is propaganda, backed by some very experienced Russian apologists, Röper, Phillips and the People's Republic personalities being interviewed, to sway a naïve young woman.  Or maybe not so naïve – was she paid?

Please post your comments, especially you Ukrainians who know the story better than I.