The Real Inside Scoop on Ukraine

Now we learn the rest of the story.

As I’ve said often, most Americans can’t fill a thimble with what we know about Russia or Ukraine. And I was going to leverage contacts inside of the situation from both sides to understand it.

Well, by two degrees of separation I was able to do this.

One of my friends reached out to a contact in Kazakhstan who explained the situation. She has friends in both countries, and by proximity is much more informed than we are. Below is her response to what is happening.

Regarding information we have here in Kazakhstan it’s a very confusing situation. There are so many different information from both sides Russia and Ukraine. And it’s clear that part of this info is fake and propaganda, from both sides. And in order to understand what is really happening now you need to check info from both sides.

We have lots of connections with both countries and we of course talk with people from there to understand what is really happening.

We edited it without changing the context of her statements. Titles of segment are our own:

As I see it, Russian people are divided into 2 groups:

(1) who represent the minority of the population of Russia are people who totally believes Russian propaganda and support the president.

(2) people who represent the majority of Russian people who are against the war.

People in all the big cities of Russia hold rallies against the war. They asked Putin to stop, but it is forbidden to act like this. Some people were arrested by the police there.

Interestingly, this is much like America where the majority of the people are against our current government. And while Putin appears dictatorial, look at how Biden and the Democrats behaved with Wuflu.

Back to her assessment:

As for Ukraine, people basically don’t want to understand the reasons (for the war). Their anger can be understood of course, as they just hate all 150 millions of Russians–despite the fact that the majority of Russians are against the war.

Recently, a new law was passed in Russia – the law about fake information of a special operation in Ukraine.

The war is forbidden to be called “war”. It must be referred to as a “special operation”. Punishment under this law ranges from a large money fine to imprisonment for 3-5 years. In some cases, people can be given a maximum of 15 years in prison. Therefore, even people who are against the war are afraid to talk about it.

Here in KZ,  almost all people understand Putin’s rationale. But they think that he went too far in his desire to help Donbass; he really turned into aggressor.

One must understand that the war can’t start without a reason. And we watched what preceded these events.

Donbass oppression by Ukraine

In what is not being discussed, Russia and certain Ukrainian citizens have a legitimate reason to be upset with Ukraine. She explains below:

In 2014 Donbass decided to become independent from Ukraine and asked Russia for help. Ukraine’s response was to begin shooting dissidents in Donbass. This impasse has been going on for 8 years.

During this time most Russian residents of Donbass made Russian passports and became Russian citizens living in Ukraine. A lot of people were killed in Donbass by Ukraine army.

After that, Russia began to take the shooting from Ukraine to Donbass as aggression against Russian citizens, and not as an internal problem of Ukraine. Russia tried to protect the Russians citizens there.

Many times during 8 years this issue was raised up by Russia’s politicians in the United Nations and elsewhere. But for some reason, no one paid attention to this and did nothing during 8 years to help Donbass to stop shooting.

That’s what they actually mean by the term “Nazi”. In this case, it’s not against Jews. They use this term to call Ukrainians “nazi” against Russians in Donbass.

This aggression led to what is happening now.

Figuratively speaking, imagine a bear in a zoo. A person teases a bear through the cage. That person beats the bear with a stick for 8 years expecting no reaction back and no judgment from other people.

The bear asks for help to remove this man with a stick. But no one pays attention to this; no one considers it important. Everyone is silent and does nothing to help.

When the bear reaches his limit, he bites off the whole hand of this man with a stick. Everyone sees this happen, thus the bear now looks like a monster, and a man with a stick is an absolute victim for everyone.

Of course this doesn’t give Putin the right to begin the war. He should solve all problems in a political way.

KZ is one of the post-Soviet countries, and without a doubt Russia is an economical leader of the region. So we have a lot of Russian TV channels here. Also, most people in KZ speaks Russian and watch Russian state TV channels. So information from those channels is totally different from what you get in America.

[smartslider3 slider=13]
Protecting Russians and Hurting Ukrainians

The main idea is that Russia’s operation is to protect Russian people in Donbass from military aggression and from national discrimination. They say that the Russian army only fires precision-guided weapons at military facilities in Ukraine, and are not shooting at residential areas.

And what Ukraine claims about the killing of civilians is all Ukrainian provocation.

For example, when Russians fired at the maternity hospital, Russia said that all patients had been evacuated beforehand by Ukraine army and the Ukrainian soldiers had been placed there and shot from there. That’s why Russians attacked. And it can be true in fact.

Some Ukrainian people speak about such provocations. When Ukrainian soldiers are based in civilian areas or in hospitals and begin to shoot to Russian army from there in order to provoke the Russians to fire back. Then they say that Russians shot up residential areas or hospitals where the civil people were. It’s terrible from both sides. None of them are right.

In another example, 2 or 3 days ago the Russian army showed official documents about the missile which had 50 cassettes with striking elements. The Ukrainian army aimed this missile to a civil area in Donetsk (Donbass). Russia shot down this rocket with an anti-missile installation.

As a result, 49 cassettes in the missile were destroyed. But one still fell on the city and destroyed the buildings within a radius of 500 meters. 20 people were killed.

What would have happened if the missile had not been shot down? All 50 cassettes would have exploded in the city center.

I know that this info was not announced in the foreign news channels. Maybe that channels also choose what to talk about and what to be silent about?   But there was real evidence, flight path of the missile, and so on.

In another example, in Ukraine they released prisoners and gave them weapons. It’s scary to imagine what criminal men can do with weapons in their hands. Not only shoot to Russian army, but for looting, robbery, and other crimes for which they can later blame Russians. Nobody will check if it’s true or not.

Information War

That what people hear in Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and other post-soviet countries.

As you know, every medal has 2 sides. And we should filter an incoming information to weed out lies. And those who only watch Russian TV propaganda – they are like zombies. And there are such propaganda zombies in every country. TV, radio and internet work hard to form an opinion of people that is convenient for government of these countries.

But those who know English (a minority of the population) – can watch news channels in internet which you wrote about to weed out lies. They try to collect the truth piece by piece from different information sources, like a puzzle.

For BBC and CNN – Russia is a total monster and Ukraine is an absolutely victim. For Russian info sources – Russia is a total hero.

This is an information war. None of them totally good or totally bad. It’s not black or white – this situation has lots of grey shades. And people from both sides suffer.

And all 150 millions of Russians suffer because of the sanctions, including the majority of people who do not want war. And of course, sanctions affect the economies of post-Soviet countries like Kazakhstan, etc.

We in Kazakhstan, as a side watching the neighbors fight, understand that war is the worst option.

This is a war between governments of countries. And ordinary people do not understand what information to believe, among the informational noise that comes from different sides.

I wrote quite a lot during today, trying to explain what we see from here in general.

Profound insights from someone with front row seats. This certainly isn’t what the mainstream media tells us. Now ask yourself why we aren’t being told the rest of the story.

Copy */
Back to top button