By Roger Annis, A Socialist In Canada, March 11, 2022
Nearly one week ago, the spokesperson for Russian president Vladimir Putin outlined in a telephone interview to Reuters news agency Russia’s conditions for an end to its special military operation in the country. Reuters wrote in its article, “Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was demanding that Ukraine cease military action, change its constitution to enshrine neutrality, acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory, and recognise the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states.”
A more detailed description of Russia’s demands were published in the online news outlet ZN.ua in Ukraine on March 10. It reports (translated from the Russian-language original by A Socialist in Canada):
According to information obtained by ZN.ua from reliable diplomatic sources, Russia has placed six demands on Ukraine. The first five of them, as Russian president Vladimir Putin sees it, should be enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine. Here are the six demands:
- Ukraine will not join NATO. Neutral status for Ukraine, with Russia and other countries acting as guarantors of that neutrality.
- Russian to be the second state language of Ukraine. The abolition of all laws infringing on that.
- Recognition of Crimea by Ukraine as Russian.
- Recognition by Ukraine of the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic, within the original administrative boundaries of the regions (including those territories now controlled by Ukraine).
- ‘De-Nazification’. Prohibition of the activities of ultra-nationalist, Nazi and neo-Nazi parties and public organizations, the abolition of existing laws on the glorification of Nazis and neo-Nazis.
- ‘Demilitarization of Ukraine’. A complete rejection of offensive weapons, under which, if desired, any type of weapons can be brought.
The only Western news agencies to report this news are the aforementioned interview/report by Reuters and a brief news report by Sky News in Britain (here). The full, translated-to-English report by ZN.ua on March 10 is here in pdf format: ZN.ua on six demands Russia to Ukraine. Here is the Reuters repor tin pdf format: Russia’s terms to Ukraine.
There are two strong reasons why the vast majority of Western media is censoring this news of Russia’s demands on Ukraine.
One is that many people in the West, including consumers of corporate and state-run media, will read the Russian demands and find them reasonable. A demilitarized and non-nuclear Ukraine? Who could disagree with that? Decisive action by a Ukrainian government against violent ultra-nationalists and neo-Nazis? Ditto. In other words, widespead publication and knowledge of Russia’s demands would be a political and diplomatic embarassment to the government/corporate-media duo in the West. It would compromise and undermine their propaganda drive against Russia. Therefore, the news is censored.
Two, Western governments and media are working overtime to present Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine as something equivalent to the murderous ‘shock and awe’ which the U.S. military unleashed upon the people of Afghanistan in 1991 and the people of Iraq in 2003. Those two military operations and their aftermaths killed hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. They also severely disrupted or destroyed life-giving industry, agriculture and societal infrastructure in the two countries.
As of midnight, March 10, resistance to Russia’s military operation and its six demands for peace in Ukraine has cost the lives of 564 civilians and caused 982 civilian casualties. Those are tragic numbers, but any comparison to U.S. military actions in recent decades is not serious; it is propanda, pure and simple.
Furthermore, another set of tragic casualty figures show a similar point. There has been no publication of reliable military casualties in Ukraine since March 2, but on that date, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported the deaths of 498 Russian soldiers in Ukraine and the deaths of at least 2,870 Ukrainian soldiers. These figures as well as continued fighting since March 2 show that military casualties in Ukraine far outnumber civilian casualties. This is the exact opposite, by a very wide margin, of what civilian and military casualties from the U.S and NATO-country interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq illustrated.
The casualty numbers in Ukraine show that Western media reports of indiscriminate attacks by the Russian military causing widespread deaths of civilians in Ukraine are lies, pure and simple. Countless reports in social media outlets in Ukraine describe how the Russian military has been taking extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties. You can believe or not believe such reports, but the casualty numbers do not lie. They are only numbers, but they reveal underlying truths.
