To Whom: Ukraine… Behind the Scenes

After reading an article published by RealClear Politics on May 6, 2024, I decided to share the piece with Siskiyou News readers. 

The article focuses on two journalists, Aron Maté and Paul Sperry, who both have written articles which focus on events in Ukraine that, to my knowledge, haven’t been discussed in main-stream media. 

Here’s an excerpt from J. Peder Zane’s article published by RealClear Politics:

“Two of my colleagues at RealClearInvestigations – Aaron Maté and Paul Sperry – recently recast one of the biggest stories of our time: America’s long, strange, and destructive entanglement with Ukraine.”

“As with all great investigative journalism, Maté and Sperry draw on a wide range of documents and insider accounts to reveal facts the powers-that-be have tried to conceal.” 

“Their reporting shows that Ukraine is not an independent democracy but a client state of America which has pushed Ukraine into ever-deepening conflict with Russia. It does not excuse Vladimir Putin’s illegal and murderous invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but it shows the massive escalation in a decade-long proxy war the two powers have been conducting on another nation’s soil.”

Another excerpt from Zane’s article that refers to Aaron Maté’s reporting”

“Although this conflict stretches back decades and even centuries, Maté’s April 30 article starts in 2013. That’s when an uprising known as the Maidan movement was percolating in opposition to Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt president, Viktor Yanukovych, who had delayed signing a trade pact with the European Union because he did not want to alienate Russia.”

“The Maidan movement was soon co-opted by ultra-nationalist groups, some of whose members “openly sported Nazi insignia.” But many American officials, including then-Vice President Biden, saw it as an opportunity to pull Ukraine from the influence of Russia and to undermine Putin.”

“High-ranking U.S. officials – including senior State Department official Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt – actively advised the movement, which staged a coup in 2014 by storming the Ukrainian parliament. Those same American officials were also involved in naming the new government.”

“Putin immediately moved to counter growing American influence on his border. Just days after the coup, Russia invaded and soon annexed Crimea. Russophile Ukrainians in the eastern Donbas region followed suit. While Putin publicly told the Donbas forces to seek a diplomatic solution to their claims, American officials, including then-CIA Director John Brennan pushed Ukraine’s new government to armed conflict. As Maté wrote, Ukraine then “descended into a full-scale civil war. Thousands were killed and millions displaced in the ensuing conflict.”

This excerpt from Zane’s article refers to Paul Sperry’s writing:

“Sperry’s April 17 article changes our understanding of one of the most famous and consequential examples of U.S. meddling – Biden’s December 2015 threat to withhold $1 billion in aid if Ukraine did not fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. It has long been known that Shokin had launched multiple investigations into Burisma Holdings, the corruption-riddled energy giant that was paying Biden’s son Hunter millions of dollars. After Shokin was fired, those probes went away.”

For those that don’t know, the Twitter Files published by Matt Taibbi revealed that Adam Schiff’s office asked Twitter to remove Paul Sperry from the platform, which I believe Twitter complied. That request occurred in Nov. 2020. In an interview Mr. Sperry said he believes that Mr. Schiff was angry at him for revealing the identity of the whistle blower involved in Trump’s first impeachment, which Sperry believes led to the request to remove him from Twitter.

Link to Twitter  ( X ) Matt Taibbi, regarding Adam Schiff’s office requesting that journalist Paul Sperry be removed from Twitter. I believe the bold type is Twitter’s response:

27.They also received an astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for individuals they didn’t like to be banned. Here, the office for Democrat and House Intel Committee chief Adam Schiff asks Twitter to ban journalist Paul Sperry: pic.twitter.com/SXI1ekqi13

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023

It’s after reading articles like this one and then realizing that when I watch the news on TV, these issues aren’t covered or they are glossed over. I’m not surprised that polls show that trust in the US media has gone down. Maybe that’s why some independent journalists and podcasters are growing their listener numbers and readership. 

I want to point out that the article published by RealClear Politics is based on the reporting of Aaron Maté and Paul Sperry, and for those not familiar with their work, you may be skeptical. As of now, I have no reason to not trust these two journalists.