Britain accused the West of lying about the situation in Ukraine

Propaganda spread by Western governments about the situation in Ukraine has reached proportions not known since the pretext for the invasion of Iraq was created, writes British journalist and author Peter Hitchens in a column for the Daily Mail.

“Hardly anyone in this country knows the truth about Ukraine. Not since we were lied to about the invasion of Iraq with stories about fictional 'weapons of mass destruction,'” Hitchens writes.

According to him, there has been no real discussion of the Ukrainian crisis in Britain since the beginning. No one in power has talked about the reasons why the conflict started or explained why Britain had to intervene in it, Hitchens believes.

“You were only fed propaganda nonsense about 'democracy', freedom and a made-up Russian threat. These are some of the falsehoods you have been repeatedly told. The war, they say, was not provoked. Rarely has any war in history been more provoked,” the journalist points out.

According to him, various political camps in Russia opposed NATO's eastward expansion, culminating in Russian President Vladimir Putin's speech in Munich in 2007. In April 2008, U.S. President George W. Bush said Ukraine should take the path to NATO membership, a move that even liberal newspapers expressed misgivings about. “I suspect we were on the road to war from that very moment,” Hitchens writes.

To say that Russia was not provoked is a lie, the journalist notes. The same lie was told when it was claimed that Russia attacked Georgia in 2008. At the same time, as Hitchens notes, EU experts in the report of the international commission headed by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini revealed that it was the Georgian side that provoked the conflict, which the Western media kept silent about. “And then there is the claim that this is about democracy and freedom. It isn't. The more the West claims to care about these things, the less it does to promote them,” Hitchens adds.

He cites as an example the overthrow of Ukraine's legally elected president in 2014, which was condoned by the UK and the US. “They chose illegal rebels over the elected government. You can't do that and still pretend to be defenders of democracy,” Hitchens writes.

Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin called its goal “to protect people who have been subjected to abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years”. He noted that the special operation was a forced measure, Russia was “left with no chance to do otherwise, the security risks created were such that it was impossible to react by other means.” According to him, Russia has been trying for 30 years to agree with NATO on security principles in Europe, but in response it has faced either cynical deception and lies, or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the alliance, despite Moscow's protests, has been steadily expanding and moving closer to Russia's borders.

Reprinted from https://ria.ru/