The War for our Minds, Part 2
The Media networks on the ground
For this part, I am greatly indebted to Dan Cohen, who wrote a very solid piece of investigative journalism, titled ‘Ukraine’s Propaganda War: International PR Firms, DC Lobbyists and CIA Cutouts’, in which Mr. Cohen reveals the network of foreign strategists, Washington DC lobbyists, and intelligence-linked media outlets behind Ukraine’s public relations blitz.
I was already on the trail of this, aided by among others an article by Caitlin Johnstone titled ‘People Overestimate The US War Machine And Underestimate The US Propaganda Machine’, but Mr. Cohen’s article filled in many of the gaps I had.
It is good to read both articles, and then continue mine.
I will not completely rehash the work of Cohen and Johnstone, but it comes down to this: there is a very sophisticated and well planned PR campaign going on. One that spans the world (or tries to) (and that has been active in the US for years, as well, but that is my opinion).
* Ukraine is aided by a vast network of PR firms (over 150 PR firms from all over the world [likely meaning: US and EU])
* NATO commanders praise their work: “They are really excellent in stratcom — media, info ops, and also psy-ops.”
* This effort is led by people with close ties to Western governments and intelligence groups. (a)
* This is highly organized, with press materials prepared that include propaganda images (anti-war, anti-Russian, pro-Ukrainian, etc.) that were submitted by thousands of artists from all over the world, key messages to use, terminology to avoid, etc. (b)
* They perpetuate known false stories (such as Ghost of Kiev and 13 sailors of Snake Island), and they have no problems using Neo-Nazi images, salutes, etc.
* They employ ‘NATO-backed troll farms’ to push their agenda/messaging
*Facebook blocks Russian media outlets, but allows fake accounts impersonating such outlets to make the real outlets harder to find, a campaign run by a group (StopFake) that has ties to Soros’ Open Foundation Society. “StopFake was hired by Facebook in March 2020 to “curb the flow of Russian propaganda”” (D. Cohen)
* Other similar campaigns are founded by people with ties to the US State dept. (c)
* Approved sources for these PR campaigns show ties to US and EU governments and billionaire foundations (Open Society Foundation, CIA, WEF, etc.)
(For the links with relevant support for some of the claims Cohen made, see his actual article.)
(a) “The international effort is spearheaded by public relations firm PR Network co-founder Nicky Regazzoni and Francis Ingham, a top public relations consultant with close ties to the UK’s government. Ingraham previously worked for Britain’s Conservative Party, sits on the UK Government Communication Service Strategy and Evaluation Council, is Chief Executive of the International Communications Consultancy Organisation, and leads the membership body for UK local government communicators, LG Comms.” (D. Cohen)
(b) “The folder is run by Yaroslav Turbil, described on his LinkedIn page as “Head of Ukraine.ua — Ukraine’s digital ecosystem for global communications. Strategic Communications & Country Brand Promotion.” Turbil has worked at multiple “civil society” organizations closely linked to the U.S. government and interned at Internews, a U.S. intelligence-linked organization that operates under the guise of promoting press freedom.” (D. Cohen)
(c) “Another campaign is run by Nataliya Popovych, the founder of the public relations agency, One Philosophy, in Kiev. Popovych’s LinkedIn profile shows she has worked with the U.S. State Department and advised former President Petro Poroshenko. She is also co-founder and board member of Ukraine Crisis Media Center, a propaganda arm funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. Embassy, and NATO, among many others.” (D. Cohen)
See also an explanation of the list of Russian Language websites that are supposedly ‘trustworthy’:
Interestingly, the founder of the Ukrainian PR agency that is at the basis of this PR effort, stated “Today we have a war, that was started against us, the Ukrainians and our land Ukraine, by Russian aggressor. This is a hybrid war: the mix of bloodily struggling fight with a huge disinformation and fake campaign lead by Russia. “From the first hour of war, we decided to join the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help them distribute the official sources to show the truth. Without any fake headlines, that [is] sharing Russia.”
Yet their campaign actively spreads fake headlines, and fake narratives, which renders her words very hollow. Something is going on, and we clearly cannot take her at her own word. We have to look deeper. Mr. Cohen did, as laid out so well in his above mentioned article. And then we see that behind her and her campaign stand a whole different network of national interests (US, EU, NATA), lobbyists (billionaires like Soros, the WEF), intelligence agencies, etc.
Mrs. Johnstone noticed how Twitter was aggressively pushing tweets by ‘The Kyiv Independent”, even though she never subscribed to it. When looking into them, she found this news outlet was made only a few months ago (November 2021), funded by an emergency grant from the European Endowment for Democracy (EED).
She explains what this EED is:
“The European Endowment for Democracy is a spinoff of the US government-funded “NGO” National Endowment for Democracy, which according to its own co-founder was set up to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly, namely orchestrate coups and manage narratives to advance US interests. A page on an NED website says that “All EU member states are members of EED’s Board of Governors, together with members of the European Parliament and civil society experts.””
(Did you catch that? “to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly” This includes regime change, as a major tool. Coups. Those are the words of the co-founder of the EED itself!)
And this Kyiv Independent is very heavily pushed by a Big Tech company, Twitter, in order to dominate the news stream people see, and shape their perception.
That their reporters openly flirt with Neo-Nazi groups, is, of course, merely a detail. (Comically, a few weeks this was a conspiracy theory, that there were actual Neo-Nazis in Ukraine…)
And again, notice how they got founded and funded well before Putin made his move and invaded Ukraine.
What were they preparing for? Did this have to do with the planned mass offensive Ukraine had planned against the two now independent Russian regions, to reconquer them? Was it pre-emptive?
I could go on, but the point is clear:
A MASSIVE PR and psy-ops operation is going on, nominally Ukrainian, but completely interwoven with people with ties to the highest circles in NATO, the US, EU, and their intelligence apparatus (with Soros and WEF thrown in for good measure). Those groups and links did not materialize after the Russian invasion, but were already in place, for years in some cases, but now adapted for use in this new front line.
This is very important to note, as my last part will explain.
Next, the PR campaign is linked to a lobbyist campaign, where the interests of Ukraine and those of the business of the Oligarchs in Ukraine become inseparable. This should come as no surprise, and further underscores that this is part of some bigger, and not a last minute push.
For example, Mr. Cohen wrote: “Daniel Vajdich, a registered foreign agent and lobbyist for the Ukrainian Federation of Employers of the Oil and Gas Industry, the largest in Ukraine, is working on behalf of Volodymyr Zelensky to lobby members of Congress to approve more weapons shipments to Ukraine.”
Who does he represent? Zelenksi? Ukraine? The owners of the oil and gas companies in Ukraine (including Burisma and such)? Who knows?
And again, this is not new, and did not start with the Russian invasion a month ago. Mr. Cohen wrote:
“Former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul described the network of public relations professionals and lobbyists surrounding Zelenskyy. “These are people around Mr. Zelenskyy who are like the intermediaries and interlocutors. They’ve been interacting with the American elites and American media for a long time,” he said.
McFaul and John E. Herbst, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, act as informal advisors to Zelenskyy. McFaul told Politico that he speaks to Ukrainian government officials “probably everyday,” and “has helped them make connections with NBC or MSNBC producers.””
Mr. Cohen ends his excellent investigative report with the statement that the Ukrainian military’s defeat seems to be imminent, yet “Lobbyists nevertheless persist in their campaign to portray the Ukrainian military as underdogs scoring blow after blow against Russian hordes. In doing so, they help extend the war and continue the carnage.”
He is, in essence, insinuating that the typical ‘military-industrial complex’ is trying to find a new war, after the Afghanistan retreat, through those lobbyists. While those motives doubtlessly are in play, intermingled with the Deep State elites interests, mixed with and overlapping in the corrupt swamps of Ukraine, as others here on Substack have pointed out, I am seeing something else.
The steady build-up of a massive operation, aimed at controlling the world, through information, manipulation and psy-ops programs.
Farfetched? Not really, as the last part in my series will show, and as you might already be picking up on, yourselves.
Mr. Cohen and Mrs. Johnstone also alluded to it, each in their own investigative pieces.
““Propaganda is the same as real lethal weapons,” declares Marta Dzhumaha, PR manager at healthcare company BetterMe.” (D. Cohen)
This insight and open declaration marks a shift in importance and emphasis on such operations. By itself, you might brush it aside as mere marketing aimed hyperbole, meant to garner support for her business, but it fits too well with other information I am uncovering, giving that statement a more direct, literal meaning. But more on that later.
Mrs. Johnstone made several excellent observations in the above cited article.
She points at the sophistication of the ‘US-centralized empire’s propaganda campaign’, and about that campaign, she writes:
“This highly advanced perception management operation is happening all around the world about any issue the empire has a vested interest in. As anti-imperialist author and podcaster Justin Podur recently put it, “The US Empire is based on the mastery of storytelling. Making reality through propaganda.”
Truly, one of the most under-appreciated and overwhelmingly powerful forces on this earth is the US imperial propaganda machine. The ability to manipulate public thought, not just within the United States but across vast swaths of nations, has allowed it to manufacture international consensus for whatever agendas it wishes to advance in a way that eclipses the collective organizing power of official international bodies like the United Nations.”
“The ability to manipulate public thought”. That is key. Manufacture consensus, to advance their own agenda. And not just in the US, but in many other nations (which suggests those groups wield their propaganda weapons as easily within the US [!!! that means you and me !!!], as well as abroad), up to, and including, in the UN (where the lock-step unison among Western countries was interesting to note, even though the possible presence of bioweapon labs so close to them, in an active war zone, should have cautioned them a whole lot more: they’d be among the first to suffer from any accidental releases!).
She continues:
“Where the real fuss ought to be made is the truly jaw-dropping power of the US propaganda machine. So subtle and sophisticated that even relatively intelligent and well-informed people fail to see the strings that are pulling at their minds, but so powerful it shapes the world.”
This used to be the USSR. In the Cold War, they were the masters of double speak, fooling everyone left and right, where the US often bumbled about naively, and people in Europe got easily fooled by the Communist programs. Vietnam is a great example, where the US fully underestimated the impact of perception and propaganda, even let Americans like Jane Fonda tour a North-Vietnamese factory of anti-aircraft weapons, in the middle of a war between North-Vietnam and South-Vietnam, with active and serious involvement of the US on the South-Vietnamese side. She is almost literally the poster girl for the naive attitude of the US regarding the propaganda war going on. The North Vietnamese took pictures of her sitting on such AA-gun, as if she’d be shooting at American planes, while she before and after that trip openly criticized the US involvement in that war. What a powerful visual.
Also, aiding and abetting the enemy, in the middle of an active war. A war the US was winning, in terms of military effectiveness, as far as I can tell (the Tet-offensive was repelled, indeed at great cost given the surprise, but the US counter effectively destroyed the North-Vietnamese regular army as a fighting force), but lost because the Russian fueled anti-war sentiments at home evaporated the political will to see that war through (right or wrong, that would be a different discussion).
While I don’t want to debate the merits of Vietnam, the point is this: that war was lost at home, through propaganda. The Soviets didn’t fire a shot, themselves, but managed to break the US through subversion and psy-ops. Now we see a similar attempt, to break the Russians in Ukraine, have their own population rise up, and erode the Russian will to fight.
(As far as I can tell, this attempt to create mass protests against the Russian government is failing miserably, after initial successes, which were whipped out well beyond proportion in the Western media.)
Still, the tables seem to have turned, and it is now the US, or groups within the US [and the EU], that are actively working to take the lead in this area.
Interestingly, some of this seems corroborated by an article published on the blog ‘The Saker’, offering a translation of a text written by a Russian military professional, Alexander Dubrovsky. It seems to be an eyewitness analysis from the early phases of the war, from a decidedly Russian point of view, but it offers some interesting insights.
The opinion of a professional about the special operation in Ukraine (MUST READ!) | The Vineyard of the Saker
First, he notices some of the tactics being used:
“I categorically object to the publication of the number of combat losses until the operation has entered its final phase. This is a gift for someone else’s information war, a trump card in the hands of the enemy, the dispersal of false information among outright alarmists inside the country: “they all lie, hide, underestimate”, “no war”, “mothers, don’t let your sons”, “how I want peace”, “how much more blood can be shed”…”
He describes how the Ukrainians tried to influence the Russian people: A strong appeal to emotion, to call out the Russian population at home to take to the streets and protest and undermine the Russian war effort from within. Notice, in that light, some very not so subtle propaganda posters, shamelessly trying to exploit that.
(Not very subtle, at all! Notice how the ‘matrioshka’ poster invokes women and children as victims, as well…)
The Russian military source continues:
“To minimize civilian casualties is understandable, we are one people. […] This was a mistake of the General Staff, the people should clearly understand the objectives of the operation, its necessity, the inevitability of victims. Not the current price.”
Initially, the goal was to try to persuade the Ukrainians to lay down arms, which explains why the Russians did not open with a scathing bombardment of anything Military in Ukraine.
He continues:
“We underestimated the enemy’s power of informational, ideological, psychological resistance, they were waiting for us. Literally on the very first day, with one click of American bloody fingers, they deprived us of the support of the civilian population and those AFU units ready to become neutral. Millions of dollars, thousands of IT guys, global media corporations cut Ukraine off from any objective information, it stank in our country.
And our main losses were in the first three days. Now they will be rapidly reduced. Peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, like the Crimean one— are no longer carried out by the Russian army. The fighters received other orders, got involved, got angry, regrouped, any hopes for active support from the civilian population and those parts of the AFU who had changed their mind were dispelled.”
He elaborated on the Russian hopes/expectations in those first few days of the war:
“There were few flowers and bread loaves to be seen, the people have been crushed by propaganda and lies, intimidated into insanity by the Nazis. […]
Can you imagine what, during a year of service there, the Nazis stuffed into their heads – gave them the opportunity to shoot at the settlements of “quilted jackets and colorados” with impunity, to mock the civilian population there. So, the calculation for the help of locals and APU was inaccurate, the cancer in Ukrainian society is simply monstrous. But… we will cure it.”
He is pointing out that civilians and Ukrainian military alike have been fed propaganda, which made any hope to unite together against corrupt leaders impossible. Now, you can laugh that away: The Russians INVADED, so how could they expect the Ukrainians, civilians AND Army, to simply roll over and join with the aggressors who invaded them? Ridiculous!
Unless WE are missing something, that seemed so obvious to this Russian military man. Either way, that was the Russian tactic, and the Russian carefulness in those initial days. Where it bears repeating: VERY unlike the typical US methods as seen in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, which were bombed
What speaks to the insight of this Russian, is this snippet:
“Today, there are dozens of groups of different numbers isolated from each other, hiding in cities and towns. No centralized supply, no air support, no approach of reinforcements. They are not able to act within the framework of any plans of the Ukrainian General Staff. Just crowds of armed men with orders to stand to the death.
The main groups “North” and “East” were beheaded and deprived of command — these are 22 brigades, which had been entrusted with the honorable duty to drown Donbass in blood at the beginning of March. We beat them to it by a week or two, starting our own special operation. Now 150 thousand people (together with national soldiers) are marinated in “cauldrons”, cut off from each other. For a second — this was done by smaller Russian forces… and in five days.”
This week, we see this confirmed by the independent analysis of Scott Ritter on Twitter:
Kiev was a feint, to draw troops away, so other goals could be achieved without much interference.
One last element from his long letter:
“So, military columns will not be destroyed for three reasons. Firstly, these are trophies. Secondly, weapons will not get to the combat-ready units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the national battalions of the South-East — the addressees are sitting in “cauldrons”. Thirdly, everything will be transported by ordinary civilian trucks, the rear transport of the AFU units is together with its parts, or destroyed in fleets.
Calculate and hit container trucks? Yes, you can. Just keep in mind — all the roads to the border checkpoints with “kind-hearted Europe” are clogged with columns of cars of fleeing Ukrainians for hundreds of kilometers. The traffic there is terrible. There are women and children in the cars. And Poland and Hungary did not move the inspection points into the depths of their territories, did not increase the checkpoint capacity with additional personnel.
That is, Ukrainian border guards with their “colleagues” keep people waiting for days to cross the border. Continue to describe the scenario that Kiev and Washington are counting on? Or can you figure out for yourself what kind of TV picture the whole “civilized world” expects? They dream that bloodthirsty Russians will start bombing civilian cars… or the railway.”
What did he describe here? A clear insinuation that the Zelenski regime was trying to bait the Russians to bomb trucks and convoys in the West of the country. Why? To get tear-jerking footage of blown up women and children.
As he wrote in the beginning of his letter: “Sometimes it was impossible to suppress the “Grads”, artillery and mortars hidden in residential neighborhoods that were nailing you.” This has been proven, through numerous images and videos, showing the launch of rockets and the presence of artillery very close to residential areas, and the many videos of Ukrainian soldiers and militia having taken position in schools and hospitals.
He is aware of the attempts to turn everything into a PR stunt, a propaganda coup, to turn against the Russians. Very interesting to see the Russian insider view.
To end, Mrs. Johnstone cited from the book Inventing Reality, published all the way back in 1986, where the author, Michael Parenti, makes the following observation:
“For many people an issue does not exist until it appears in the news media. How we view issues, indeed, what we even define as an issue or event, what we see and hear, and what we do not see and hear are greatly determined by those who control the communications world. Be it labor unions, peace protesters, the Soviet Union, uprisings in Latin America, elections, crime, poverty, or defense spending, few of us know of things except as they are depicted in the news.
Even when we don’t believe what the media say, we are still hearing or reading their viewpoints rather than some other. They are still setting the agenda, defining what it is we must believe or disbelieve, accept or reject. The media exert a subtle, persistent influence in defining the scope of respectable political discourse, channeling public attention in directions that are essentially supportive of the existing politico-economic system.”
This was written, she points out, well before Big Tech managed to monopolize the media landscape. Lastly, she sarcastically remarks how the mad push in the West against ‘Russian propaganda’ is a giant admission that it IS possible to manipulate how people think, act and vote on a massive scale through the media, and how it is never admitted by those who push that fight against Russian propaganda that they themselves are by far the worst offenders when it comes to such mass manipulation…
She ends by wondering about how sustainable that is, how long people can endure such constant barrages of psychological abuse, day after day. She offers an answer, in a link to another of her posts, which you can read here. (And give her a follow, too!)
With this, I will end my second part.
The next and last part will detail what I perceive as happening, piecing together my narrative with declassified or unclassified NATO/US documents, and by pointing at certain effects we see, which I think we can link to some of the programs being talked about in those documents.
Which will show how we are, indeed, seen as legitimate targets in a whole new domain of warfare, the war for our minds.
I just listened to PGunnels read this. Excellent info..thank you for your research ArnGrimR!
Thank You Arn👏 God bless You and Your's