I would like to make a couple of comments. There is no way I will watch this piece of Russian propaganda. First, Graham Phillips is a pretend journalist from the UK. When I lived in London, he was going to host an exhibit of photos of the leaders of the breakaway republics and sell the photos to raise money for the DNR. I called the pub and told them what he was doing and they cancelled the event. I have seen video of Graham Phillips carrying weapons as if a soldier and he was present during the interrogation of Ukrainian prisoners during the early stages of the war in 2014. The Ukrainians were tortured with knives and threatened by their captors and Graham Phillips was celebrating their suffering. I doubt that I could find the video today, but it was awful. The Ukrainian government captured Phillips and then deported him as an enemy agent. This guy is one of the worst human beings that I have ever seen.
Second, in this review, it is mentioned that this woman interviews several people from various areas of the eastern part of Ukraine and finds support for Russia. I will address this by telling you what I know about Vostok SOS. My ex used to work for Vostok SOS, a volunteer group which supported those fleeing the war. They helped them to find apartments, jobs, financial assistance, etc. Of the refugees from the Donbas in 2014, two and a half million people fled to Ukraine. Less than one million went to Russia to escape the war. My ex used to get calls at 7 AM asking for help. I could hear her speaking to these people. How many kids? Do you have any money? Kyiv is not possible. There are no apartments in the capital at all. I can get you a place in Kharkiv. Sorry, that's all we have. These people are not categorized as refugees, they are IDPs, Internally Displaced People. My daughter and I went along with a group of refugee children when they had a free day at an amusement park in Kyiv to help them orient themselves, have some fun, and get away from the trauma for a day.
I also am good friends with a man who was the lawyer in Ukraine for OSCE. It is a European organization which was in place to try to stop the violence. They were constantly thwarted in doing their job by the Russians, both within the organization and on the ground. The entire organization was frustrated working with the Russians who constantly lied and did all in their power to interfere and get around the restrictions. That's all I can say because the rest was classified.
Thanks. Your input on Graham Phillips is enlightening but not surprising. Your take on the OSCE is pretty much what I had heard elsewhere. Your wife's story about the IDPs is not what I had heard before, but similar.
One more thought, but it would be impossible to hold a fair election or referendum in Donbas or Crimea, as some have suggested, since two thirds of the population of those territories have fled to Ukraine. The only ones left are either pro-Russian or they wouldn't dare cross the Russians running both areas. Anyone who talks about polling the current residents is a fool. Anybody pro-Ukrainian has left or has been killed by the occupying Russians. It would also be impossible to find an objective subject to interview or to find someone who would dare to speak against Putin.
Exactly. And for those reasons Ukraine would not be amiss to concede a bit of dirt in the interests of peace. However, their long experience with Russia tells them not to trust a damn thing they promise. In their view this will only end when Russia is no longer capable of aggression. I am in a minority in thinking that such moment is close at hand.
In early 2015, Phillips was added to the Ukrainian Myrotvorets site, which lists so-called 'enemies of Ukraine', and encourages action against them.[39][40][41] Phillips continued reporting from Donbas throughout 2015, and 2016, often with controversial results. In a 17 September 2016 video published by Phillips, he is seen shortly before a prisoner exchange taunting a disabled Ukrainian prisoner of war who had lost both of his arms and sight in a mine blast, sparking outrage in Ukraine.[42] The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group called for journalist NGOs to condemn Phillips' actions.[43] Judith Gough, British Ambassador to Ukraine, said that she was appalled by the incident. Ukrainians organised a petition to then UK Prime Minister Theresa May to strip Phillips of his British passport, and ban him from leaving the UK; however, the UK replied that they had 'no grounds' to do this.
Phillips is now the only UK citizen to be sanctioned by the UK government. His assets in the UK have been frozen and there are calls to have his passport revoked.
It would appear that this Maria Lelyapova is not a very good judge of character. She should have wondered what this odd Brit was doing in a place like the LPR. Thanks for more of the story.
I forgot to mention that I have met many people from Donbas who fled the conflict there. These people lost everything, and they were the lucky ones because they knew people who stayed behind and they have endured serious hardship. I had one notary do some documents for me in my ECHR lawsuit and he told us the story of his escape. He was a successful lawyer in Donbas, and had just built a huge house. In Kyiv, he was trying to keep his family from starving, working out of one tiny office near Osakorki. Those who stayed behind either didn't move fast enough or they couldn't escape. Like the IDPs that I have met, they lost everything, but their sons have been drafted into the Russian army, they have been forced to take Russian passports, and they lost everything anyway.
Graham Phillips is widely despised within Ukraine. Several mutual friends know him and have told me that he is not only pro-Russian, but wants to see Ukraine destroyed. Phillips had photos of various warlords of the DNR and LNR, which he was selling in London, including Mikhail Sergeyevich Tolstykh, AKA Givi, who tortured Ukrainian prisoners, making them kneel while he used a machete on some of them. This is the video which I was referring to in the post above. Graham Phillips was present and participated in the torture. He was no journalist since he was carrying a weapon and wore camouflage.
On 16 February 2015, Tolstykh was included by the European Council in their sanctions list.[13] In 2016, he was charged in Ukraine with crimes including the creation of a terrorist organization, abduction, and abuse of prisoners of war.
This is one of the men whose portrait Graham Phillips was selling in the UK to raise money for the DNR and the like.
Searching on Толстих was funny. It means "fat" in Russian. The result was a bunch of porn sites for fat ladies. Searching in English, however, gave this about the late lamented DPR fighter:
In January 2015, several videos surfaced of Tolstykh physically abusing captured Ukrainian artillerymen from the Second Battle of Donetsk Airport. Tolstykh is seen clearly identifying himself before grabbing the prisoners by the face, brandishing a dagger, and cutting off military insignia and forcing prisoners to eat them. Oleksandra Matviychuk, head of the Kyiv-based Center for Civil Liberties, called what appears in the videos "flagrant violations of the Geneva Conventions" and said she was preparing the groundwork for prosecution.[15]
This is so, so tiresome, so many people have been utterly taken in by this crapola, including American "conservatives" who are apparently too stupid to figure out that they are being bamboozled by a Stalinist - Putin. So much for anti-communism... I wonder how soon Tucker Carlson will put up a Soviet flag on his set, maybe Vlad could give him one from the Victory Day celebrations. And Margaret Anna Alice is a long-time subscriber to my substack, perhaps she forgot about this: "Remember, this was written in 1997: "Next comes the Ukrainian question. The sovereignty of Ukraine is such a negative phenomenon for Russian geopolitics that, in principle, it can easily provoke an armed conflict. Without the Black Sea coast from Izmail to Kerch, Russia gets such an extended coastal strip, really controlled by someone unknown, that its very existence as a normal and independent state is called into question. The Black Sea does not replace access to the "warm seas" and its geopolitical significance drops sharply due to the stable Atlanticist control over the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, but at least it makes it possible to secure the central regions from the potential expansion of Turkish influence, being extremely convenient, reliable and an inexpensive border. Ukraine, as an independent state with some kind of territorial ambitions, poses a huge danger to the whole of Eurasia, and without a solution to the Ukrainian problem, it is pointless to talk about continental geopolitics at all. This does not mean that the cultural, linguistic or economic autonomy of Ukraine should be limited, and that it should become a purely administrative sector of the Russian centralized state (as, to some extent, was the case in the tsarist empire or under the USSR). But strategically, Ukraine should be strictly a projection of Moscow in the south and west (although more details about possible models of restructuring will be discussed in the chapter on the West). The absolute imperative of Russian geopolitics on the Black Sea coast is the total and unlimited control of Moscow along its entire length from Ukrainian to Abkhazian territories. It is possible to divide this entire zone on an ethno-cultural basis as much as you like, granting ethnic and confessional autonomy to the Crimean Little Russians, Tatars, Cossacks, Abkhazians, Georgians, etc., but all this only with absolute control of Moscow over the military and political situation. These sectors must be radically divorced from the thalassocratic influence coming from the west and from Turkey (or even Greece). The northern coast of the Black Sea should be exclusively Eurasian and centrally subordinate to Moscow..." Aleksandr Dugin, Aleksandr. Osnovy geopolitiki: Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii (Moscow: Arktogeya, 1997). See https://streamfortyseven.substack.com/p/putins-and-dugins-vision-of-a-greater, also, and https://tec.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/aleksandr-dugins-foundations-geopolitics for some useful background about Dugin and the Putin connection. The latter article is from 2004, so this all didn't even start up in 2014, it was 7 years earlier. It's amazing no US government source has ever mentioned any of this, it would cut the wheels out from under some of the absolute bullshit narratives being pushed here - including the one in the video - and being sucked down hook, line, and sinker by the gullible and ignorant "conservative" class here...
Can you add some rebuttal to the specific points that this Maria made? I pointed out that only Russia had the ability to bomb Mariupol and other cities in the east, that the victims were all predominantly Russian speaking people who had resisted the provocateurs in 2014, that the damage is mostly by Russian artillery because they simply have vastly more of it, that military snipers simply would not shoot civilians, etc.
I forgot to mention Kharkiv. The Russians have endlessly targeted hospitals, schools and cultural buildings in Kharkiv, which they never occupied. Ditto Dnipro, Zaporizhia, Mikolaiv, Krasnoarmisk, Kramatorsk and other cities. Attacking hospitals is what they do. Accusing Ukraine of the kinds of crimes they commit is part of their playbook. The accusations in this video make no sense - why would Ukraine do that to its own people - and they are exactly the things Russia has historically done in all of its wars.
Anyhow, will appreciate your additional commentary.
May 13, 2023·edited May 13, 2023Liked by Graham Seibert
Crimea holds quite a few offshore oil/natural gas wells, control of Crimea gives control over those wells. If China - given the depleted state of the Russian military - were to make a move in the Far East - that Crimean field would be a much more important resource than it is now.
Briefly skimmed through the video. Grotesquely unconvincing. The commentators who appear to be convinced are the same people who post comments about how everything is a Zionist-CIA plot. Losers and fantasists.
That was a very interesting summary. I live in faraway Canada, so I have no ability to know what is true and what is propaganda. But I can see that you have attempted to be fair-minded, and informative. I lean towards your view of the Ukraine war, so I was happy to read your rebuttal.
Keep up the good work. I like reading your articles.
I would like to make a couple of comments. There is no way I will watch this piece of Russian propaganda. First, Graham Phillips is a pretend journalist from the UK. When I lived in London, he was going to host an exhibit of photos of the leaders of the breakaway republics and sell the photos to raise money for the DNR. I called the pub and told them what he was doing and they cancelled the event. I have seen video of Graham Phillips carrying weapons as if a soldier and he was present during the interrogation of Ukrainian prisoners during the early stages of the war in 2014. The Ukrainians were tortured with knives and threatened by their captors and Graham Phillips was celebrating their suffering. I doubt that I could find the video today, but it was awful. The Ukrainian government captured Phillips and then deported him as an enemy agent. This guy is one of the worst human beings that I have ever seen.
Second, in this review, it is mentioned that this woman interviews several people from various areas of the eastern part of Ukraine and finds support for Russia. I will address this by telling you what I know about Vostok SOS. My ex used to work for Vostok SOS, a volunteer group which supported those fleeing the war. They helped them to find apartments, jobs, financial assistance, etc. Of the refugees from the Donbas in 2014, two and a half million people fled to Ukraine. Less than one million went to Russia to escape the war. My ex used to get calls at 7 AM asking for help. I could hear her speaking to these people. How many kids? Do you have any money? Kyiv is not possible. There are no apartments in the capital at all. I can get you a place in Kharkiv. Sorry, that's all we have. These people are not categorized as refugees, they are IDPs, Internally Displaced People. My daughter and I went along with a group of refugee children when they had a free day at an amusement park in Kyiv to help them orient themselves, have some fun, and get away from the trauma for a day.
I also am good friends with a man who was the lawyer in Ukraine for OSCE. It is a European organization which was in place to try to stop the violence. They were constantly thwarted in doing their job by the Russians, both within the organization and on the ground. The entire organization was frustrated working with the Russians who constantly lied and did all in their power to interfere and get around the restrictions. That's all I can say because the rest was classified.
Thanks. Your input on Graham Phillips is enlightening but not surprising. Your take on the OSCE is pretty much what I had heard elsewhere. Your wife's story about the IDPs is not what I had heard before, but similar.
One more thought, but it would be impossible to hold a fair election or referendum in Donbas or Crimea, as some have suggested, since two thirds of the population of those territories have fled to Ukraine. The only ones left are either pro-Russian or they wouldn't dare cross the Russians running both areas. Anyone who talks about polling the current residents is a fool. Anybody pro-Ukrainian has left or has been killed by the occupying Russians. It would also be impossible to find an objective subject to interview or to find someone who would dare to speak against Putin.
Exactly. And for those reasons Ukraine would not be amiss to concede a bit of dirt in the interests of peace. However, their long experience with Russia tells them not to trust a damn thing they promise. In their view this will only end when Russia is no longer capable of aggression. I am in a minority in thinking that such moment is close at hand.
In early 2015, Phillips was added to the Ukrainian Myrotvorets site, which lists so-called 'enemies of Ukraine', and encourages action against them.[39][40][41] Phillips continued reporting from Donbas throughout 2015, and 2016, often with controversial results. In a 17 September 2016 video published by Phillips, he is seen shortly before a prisoner exchange taunting a disabled Ukrainian prisoner of war who had lost both of his arms and sight in a mine blast, sparking outrage in Ukraine.[42] The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group called for journalist NGOs to condemn Phillips' actions.[43] Judith Gough, British Ambassador to Ukraine, said that she was appalled by the incident. Ukrainians organised a petition to then UK Prime Minister Theresa May to strip Phillips of his British passport, and ban him from leaving the UK; however, the UK replied that they had 'no grounds' to do this.
Phillips is now the only UK citizen to be sanctioned by the UK government. His assets in the UK have been frozen and there are calls to have his passport revoked.
It would appear that this Maria Lelyapova is not a very good judge of character. She should have wondered what this odd Brit was doing in a place like the LPR. Thanks for more of the story.
I forgot to mention that I have met many people from Donbas who fled the conflict there. These people lost everything, and they were the lucky ones because they knew people who stayed behind and they have endured serious hardship. I had one notary do some documents for me in my ECHR lawsuit and he told us the story of his escape. He was a successful lawyer in Donbas, and had just built a huge house. In Kyiv, he was trying to keep his family from starving, working out of one tiny office near Osakorki. Those who stayed behind either didn't move fast enough or they couldn't escape. Like the IDPs that I have met, they lost everything, but their sons have been drafted into the Russian army, they have been forced to take Russian passports, and they lost everything anyway.
Graham Phillips is widely despised within Ukraine. Several mutual friends know him and have told me that he is not only pro-Russian, but wants to see Ukraine destroyed. Phillips had photos of various warlords of the DNR and LNR, which he was selling in London, including Mikhail Sergeyevich Tolstykh, AKA Givi, who tortured Ukrainian prisoners, making them kneel while he used a machete on some of them. This is the video which I was referring to in the post above. Graham Phillips was present and participated in the torture. He was no journalist since he was carrying a weapon and wore camouflage.
On 16 February 2015, Tolstykh was included by the European Council in their sanctions list.[13] In 2016, he was charged in Ukraine with crimes including the creation of a terrorist organization, abduction, and abuse of prisoners of war.
This is one of the men whose portrait Graham Phillips was selling in the UK to raise money for the DNR and the like.
Searching on Толстих was funny. It means "fat" in Russian. The result was a bunch of porn sites for fat ladies. Searching in English, however, gave this about the late lamented DPR fighter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Tolstykh
In January 2015, several videos surfaced of Tolstykh physically abusing captured Ukrainian artillerymen from the Second Battle of Donetsk Airport. Tolstykh is seen clearly identifying himself before grabbing the prisoners by the face, brandishing a dagger, and cutting off military insignia and forcing prisoners to eat them. Oleksandra Matviychuk, head of the Kyiv-based Center for Civil Liberties, called what appears in the videos "flagrant violations of the Geneva Conventions" and said she was preparing the groundwork for prosecution.[15]
This is so, so tiresome, so many people have been utterly taken in by this crapola, including American "conservatives" who are apparently too stupid to figure out that they are being bamboozled by a Stalinist - Putin. So much for anti-communism... I wonder how soon Tucker Carlson will put up a Soviet flag on his set, maybe Vlad could give him one from the Victory Day celebrations. And Margaret Anna Alice is a long-time subscriber to my substack, perhaps she forgot about this: "Remember, this was written in 1997: "Next comes the Ukrainian question. The sovereignty of Ukraine is such a negative phenomenon for Russian geopolitics that, in principle, it can easily provoke an armed conflict. Without the Black Sea coast from Izmail to Kerch, Russia gets such an extended coastal strip, really controlled by someone unknown, that its very existence as a normal and independent state is called into question. The Black Sea does not replace access to the "warm seas" and its geopolitical significance drops sharply due to the stable Atlanticist control over the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, but at least it makes it possible to secure the central regions from the potential expansion of Turkish influence, being extremely convenient, reliable and an inexpensive border. Ukraine, as an independent state with some kind of territorial ambitions, poses a huge danger to the whole of Eurasia, and without a solution to the Ukrainian problem, it is pointless to talk about continental geopolitics at all. This does not mean that the cultural, linguistic or economic autonomy of Ukraine should be limited, and that it should become a purely administrative sector of the Russian centralized state (as, to some extent, was the case in the tsarist empire or under the USSR). But strategically, Ukraine should be strictly a projection of Moscow in the south and west (although more details about possible models of restructuring will be discussed in the chapter on the West). The absolute imperative of Russian geopolitics on the Black Sea coast is the total and unlimited control of Moscow along its entire length from Ukrainian to Abkhazian territories. It is possible to divide this entire zone on an ethno-cultural basis as much as you like, granting ethnic and confessional autonomy to the Crimean Little Russians, Tatars, Cossacks, Abkhazians, Georgians, etc., but all this only with absolute control of Moscow over the military and political situation. These sectors must be radically divorced from the thalassocratic influence coming from the west and from Turkey (or even Greece). The northern coast of the Black Sea should be exclusively Eurasian and centrally subordinate to Moscow..." Aleksandr Dugin, Aleksandr. Osnovy geopolitiki: Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii (Moscow: Arktogeya, 1997). See https://streamfortyseven.substack.com/p/putins-and-dugins-vision-of-a-greater, also, and https://tec.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/aleksandr-dugins-foundations-geopolitics for some useful background about Dugin and the Putin connection. The latter article is from 2004, so this all didn't even start up in 2014, it was 7 years earlier. It's amazing no US government source has ever mentioned any of this, it would cut the wheels out from under some of the absolute bullshit narratives being pushed here - including the one in the video - and being sucked down hook, line, and sinker by the gullible and ignorant "conservative" class here...
Thanks, Stream.
Can you add some rebuttal to the specific points that this Maria made? I pointed out that only Russia had the ability to bomb Mariupol and other cities in the east, that the victims were all predominantly Russian speaking people who had resisted the provocateurs in 2014, that the damage is mostly by Russian artillery because they simply have vastly more of it, that military snipers simply would not shoot civilians, etc.
I forgot to mention Kharkiv. The Russians have endlessly targeted hospitals, schools and cultural buildings in Kharkiv, which they never occupied. Ditto Dnipro, Zaporizhia, Mikolaiv, Krasnoarmisk, Kramatorsk and other cities. Attacking hospitals is what they do. Accusing Ukraine of the kinds of crimes they commit is part of their playbook. The accusations in this video make no sense - why would Ukraine do that to its own people - and they are exactly the things Russia has historically done in all of its wars.
Anyhow, will appreciate your additional commentary.
A few articles which might touch on these points - too late at night for a detailed rebuttal:
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/03/03/a-brief-history-of-the-donbas-war-in-photos
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/03/03/the-war-day-seven
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/03/12/definitely-not-staged
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/03/14/they-bury-their-neighbors-wherever-they-can
Hope these help, I can have more tomorrow or by the end of the week.
Dugin again. No wonder there remains conflict. Why the 1991 agreement and were Crimea base leases enough?
Crimea holds quite a few offshore oil/natural gas wells, control of Crimea gives control over those wells. If China - given the depleted state of the Russian military - were to make a move in the Far East - that Crimean field would be a much more important resource than it is now.
Briefly skimmed through the video. Grotesquely unconvincing. The commentators who appear to be convinced are the same people who post comments about how everything is a Zionist-CIA plot. Losers and fantasists.
That was a very interesting summary. I live in faraway Canada, so I have no ability to know what is true and what is propaganda. But I can see that you have attempted to be fair-minded, and informative. I lean towards your view of the Ukraine war, so I was happy to read your rebuttal.
Keep up the good work. I like reading your articles.