by Eric Zuesse, The Duran:
On April 18th, The Daily Beast and Yahoo News headlined “White House Peace Talks Include Recognizing Russian Control of Crimea” and reported that
The White House has reportedly proposed recognizing Russian control of Crimea as part of a framework peace plan to bring Russia’s war against Ukraine to an end. … Russia occupied Crimea by force in 2014. Since then, Ukrainians there have had to vote at gunpoint—a violation of international law. The international community still recognizes the region as belonging to Ukraine.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
To that “Russia occupied Crimea by force in 2014” I would point out that during 20-27 February 2014 the U.S. regime carried out a coup hitting Ukraine but targeted really against Russia, by overthrowing a democratically elected NEUTRALIST Ukrainian Government next-door to Russia and replacing that by a rabidly Russia-hating government that promptly started mass-murdering its opponents and thereby started the war in Ukraine in 2014, as a civil war between the supporters of democracy in Ukraine versus the supporters of the U.S.-installed government.
To that “Since then, Ukrainians there have had to vote at gunpoint” the link there is to a 16 March 2024 article in the rabidly anti-Russian Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post titled “For Putin’s election in occupied Ukraine, voting is forced at gunpoint” and pertaining NOT to the referenda that Russia had held during 23-27 September 2022 in Ukraine’s regions Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, which had asked the residents there Yes-or-No on whether to join the Russian Federation; and no evidence was provided in Bezos’s newspaper about that referendum (merely allegations about that 2024 Russian election), but the equally anti-Russian New York Times (of the Sulzberger/Ochs family) had actually covered that referendum, and on 24 September 2022 headlined “Armed Russian Soldiers Oversee Referendum Voting” and included as evidence only two photos of the voting, one from Shutterstock showing people sitting at a table filling out a form and there was a transparent portable container of filled-out forms there, which presumably was collecting both yes and no ballots, and a Russian military person was standing there with a rifle (and looking away, not at the voters), this being in a war-zone in what was still officially Ukrainian territory. The other photo was from Reuters and showed something more clearly interpretable: two women filling out the form, who were seated at a makeshift table outdoors amid ruins, and clearly there was only a single container, it being of the very same type, containing therefore all of the filled-out ballots, both yes and no, and it was being held by its handle below the left hand of a man who had no weapon and who was looking away from the voters. In this instance, there was no “Armed Russian Soldier.” Presumably the man holding the container of completed ballots would then collect the completed ballots. Furthermore, in the photo where there was such a soldier holding a rifle, that soldier might authentically have needed a rifle in order to protect voters in an area where Ukrainian troops were near enough to constitute a possible threat to the voters. All that is clear from the ‘news’-reporting in The West about that referendum is that this ‘news’-reporting was presenting the propaganda-line of the U.S. Government. For exmple, on 30 September 2022, America’s National Public Radio headlined “How Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian regions could change the war”, and interviewed Andrew S. Weiss, V.P. of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who reliably speaks against Russia’s Government (i.e., for regime-change in Russia), and speaks against Putin. He told NPR that “the real deterrent is watching the determination of the people of Ukraine and their military as they defend themselves against this unprovoked invasion.” Of course that’s the U.S. regime’s propaganda-line, but IT WAS NOT AT ALL “UNPROVOKED”: that allegation by this Carnegie ‘Peace’ neocon was the exact OPPOSITE of the truth.
Furthermore, HERE is a map showing the regions where those referenda were being held during September 2022; and HERE is a map showing the areas of Ukraine that had voted at least 70% for the neutralist Ukrainian President whom Obama’s 2014 bloody Ukrainian coup overthrew; and, as you can easily see just by clicking onto those two images, virtually the entirety of the areas where that referendum was being held had voted at least 70% for that President whom Obama overthrew. Those were areas in Ukraine which for eight years had been attacked, suppressed, their Church outlawed, and their language outlawed, and which were under military occupation by, the regime that Obama had created in 2014; and, so it is no mystery why a democratic referendum that would free them from that oppressive regime would produce a vast majority favoring to join the Russian Federation instead.
