 You're watching News Made Easy. I'm Anand Dev Chakravarty. Today I'm going to talk about our hypocrisy when it comes to Ukraine. How we say that Vladimir Putin is an aggressor, an invader and rightfully so. We talk about how the Ukrainian people are so brave, they're fighting an invading army. We have sympathy for the people dying there, their homes being bombed, they're being forced to leave their homes. But let's think about what feelings we had when the US invaded Afghanistan right after 9-11. We can say that the western armies went into Afghanistan in retaliation for what had happened in 9-11. Remember at that time there was no evidence that Afghanistan was behind it or even no concrete evidence that Osama bin Laden who was hiding in Afghanistan was behind the 9-11 attacks. Later on we did not question when the US and other forces invaded Iraq. Apparently to get hold of weapons of mass destruction which supposedly Saddam Hussein had. And the media reported it like that. We accepted it in large numbers. Maybe we were a little critical here and there and when they caught Saddam Hussein we cheered. We say that the reason why Iraq had to be attacked was because it was an issue of national security threat. Not only for the US but for the entire West because if it had weapons of mass destruction, WMDs, then it's an issue of security. So the US had a right to do that. But does Vladimir Putin have exactly the same excuse of national security? Can we say that if Ukraine went along the way it was going, joined NATO, then he had a problem because NATO's nuclear arms were going to sit right next to his border and he didn't want that to happen. And it was a national security issue just as the US had in Iraq now talking about Iran. Vladimir Putin wanted the same thing. He wanted Ukraine to stop joining NATO, not allow joint military exercises with the US and the West, with NATO and EU and not join EU. So this is what he terms as his own national security interests. Let's see whether he has a point there because let's look at what Europe looked like in the 1980s. One of the things here what you're seeing is Germany on that map on your screen. Germany of course was split into two parts and all these small states that you see were all on the right side next to Russia were all part of the USSR at that time. Germany got reunified and at that time the Soviet Union, the erstwhile Soviet Union and Western nations they had talks and there was a promise made which the promise was that NATO would acquire Germany. Germany would join NATO but it would not move an inch to the right. So this is what in 1991 NATO's map looked like. All the erstwhile East Bloc countries, the ones which were part of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact of that time, they were not part of NATO. But what happens in 1999? You can see a lot of these erstwhile countries have now joined NATO and it's moving closer and closer towards Russia's border. Let's move further. 2004 some more smaller countries joined NATO. 2009's a few more countries joined NATO. 2017 another country joined and even in 2020 we have one more country joining and you can see the yellow spreading NATO and moving more and more towards Russia's border. And in 2021 last year the US made an offer to Ukraine to join NATO as well and what does that mean? That means that NATO with its armed forces, with its nuclear arms, with its missiles would be able to sit right next to Russia's western border and you can see that Moscow is actually pretty close from there and the point that Putin wanted to make is that this is going to be within striking distance of Moscow. Whether that is valid or not is not the point. The point is that it would be hypocritical of us to say that this is wrong but the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the sanctions on Iran, they are alright. Why? Because we automatically assume that the US and the West are beacons of democracy. But what is the US doing right now which you did not see in your news feed that did not become the top headline which wasn't being talked about all over and this is civilians being killed in US bombing in Syria. And I am holding back the date. Here is the date, 3rd February 2022. This is just beginning of last month. 6 children, 4 women, 13 people killed in special operations launched by US in the Idlib province in Syria, in someone else's country. They have gone and bombed these places. So the US is known to be the big brother across the world but do we have to be hypocrites like that to assume that what the US does is right and what Putin does is wrong. They both wrong. They both wrong but another thing that I want you to see, Israel our big friend and we all hold Israelis as our big heroes now. What does Israel do in the Palestinian regions in the Gaza Strip? Here is a list of the number of children killed, Palestinian children killed in Israeli attacks between 1987 and 2022. And the source is Betheselem. This is not an Arab source. This is not something which is critical of Israel. This is a source within Israel. This is run by a Jewish group which wants to end the war and this is the number of children killed. 2464 children killed. This is the record by Betheselem. If you look at Palestinian record, this would be 4-5 times higher. Do you see anyone talk about that? Do you talk about that? Is it on your WhatsApp message group? If it's not and it's happening every single day. And this is just guilt. Children maimed, injured. That's a very, very high number as well and I'm only talking about children here. The adults, it's endless. The number of fruit trees cut down the way in which it has been turned completely barren, the Gaza area. Do a little bit of research on Google. Go to YouTube. You'll find a lot of documentaries which don't make the headlines right there for you to watch. And the western media and unfortunately our mainstream media will never tell you these things. And I'm just going to give you an example of how Time Magazine reports these wars. Time Magazine reports it. Here is Serbia. And what it says, bringing the Serbs to heal. And that is Time Magazine's, a massive bombing attack opens the door to peace. A massive bombing attack opens the door to peace. That's what Time Magazine says. And look at the spin there. A bombing attack is peaceful. And again in Iraq, right? Saddam Hussein, overthrown by the American army, invading army. Illegally, he's a sovereign leader of a sovereign nation, supposedly with WMDs. Time, we got him. We got him. This is the Time Magazine, right? Respected Magazine. What happens when Putin enters Ukraine? The return of history, how Putin shattered Europe's dreams. Now look at the comparison right there on your screen. Bringing the Serbs to heal. Massive bombing campaign. Bombing attack opens the door to peace. And on your right is the return to history. Return to history is in some ways an illusion to what happened when Hitler started taking over countries nearby. So this is how it's being reported. Now the interesting thing is that one of the things that the western media tries to keep quiet about is the way in which Ukraine itself is actually heavily dominated by extreme nationalists and by neo-Nazis. And you can see this, which came out right there in one of the interviews being done on the BBC. And I'm just taking it from Twitter. This has been put up by Twitter handle by Alan McLeod. And he talks about the most racist Ukrainian coverage on TV news. And you should watch it. You should listen to it. This man is Ukraine's deputy chief prosecutor. And the language he's using is completely neo-Nazi. It's a neo-Nazi language which the western nations, the western media is never going to point out. And they're going to basically try and say that this does not exist. Listen to it. I'm sorry. It's very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair being killed, children being killed every day with Putin's missiles and his helicopters and his rockets. Sir, of course I understand and respect... But yes, of course you can say that okay, they are right-wing. They are extreme nationalists. They are neo-Nazi. But as long as they're not being violent and killing people inside, no one else has the business. Any external force doesn't have any business entry. There can be arguments about that because this neo-Nazi movement in Ukraine has been violent. It has been violent against a lot of people, against minorities, against ethnic Russians. So there can be an argument against that as well. But the point here is that has the West, has the US been innocent of regime change in Ukraine? And I'm going to rewind a little bit and take you back to 2014 when the Euro-Medan revolution took place. When young people came and took over the central square of Kiev along with support from opposition parties and opposition leaders and they basically forced the elected president Yanukovych to resign and leave, right? Was that a completely spontaneous thing? There are two pieces of evidence to believe why it is in the case, why the West was actually deeply involved in the regime change at that time. And there are two pieces of evidence. I'll start with the first one. And that is this conversation that took place between a senior US official, Victoria Nuland from the Obama administration who was in charge of Ukraine at that time, and the US ambassador to Ukraine, Jeffrey Pyatt, right? And you can see that it clearly tells us that the US is actually calling shots as to who will form the new government, right? Listen in, and this is all happening while an elected government, legal, lawful government is still in place. I'm just thinking in terms of sort of the process moving ahead, we want to keep the moderate Democrats together. The problem is going to be Tony Boke and his guys. And, you know, I'm sure that's part of what Yanukovych is calculating on all of this. I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's the guy, you know, what he needs is Clich and Tony Boke on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know? I just think Clich going in, he's going to be at that level working for Yats and Yuk. It's just not going to work. Yeah, no, I think that's right. Okay. Good. Well, do you want us to try to set up a call with him? Here's the next step. All right. You heard that Yats is the guy. Newland is allegedly saying that in that tape. And Yats or Arseny Yatsenuk was the guy for the U.S. because he was made prime minister after Yanukovych was ousted, right? And this is, as I said, while Yanukovych was still in power before that, there are Western reports and a lot of reports at that time which believe that the police had used snipers to basically shoot down protesters. Later on, it turned out that the snipers actually killed both sides. And the snipers apparently were from the opposition, not from Yanukovych who was ousted, right? Against whom the protests were taking place. How do we know that? Again, this is a leaked conversation that took place between two people. Again, a telephone conversation. And this is between EU's foreign affairs chief, Catherine Ashton and the Estonian foreign minister, Urman Spite. And again, listen to what is being said here. Well, all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides among policemen and even from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides. So that, and then she also showed me some photos. She said that has medical doctor. She can, you know, say that it is the same handwriting, the same type of bullets. And it's really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don't want to investigate what exactly happened so that there is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers they were, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition. Who was doing this? How did this happen? Why did these false flag operations take place, which helped a regime change take place and anti-Russian regime take place in Ukraine, which was once a close ally of Russia. What happened? Again, as I'm saying, the important thing here is to remember that big powers all have blood on their hands. There is no good side. There's no bad side. Both are acting in terms of power. And yes, you can say they're all bad if they impose war on innocent people. This war right now is being led by Putin. It has been created over a period of time because of conditions of conflict between two sides, Russia on the other side and NATO on the other. The victims of it are the Ukrainian people. But remember when you feel sympathy for the Ukrainian people, which you must, when you feel angry that there's war and you feel worried about war and you want peace, do look into your own heart and say, Would you do it again when the Israeli forces kill more Palestinians? Will you do it again when the US bombs and in collateral damage some civilians die in some other poor country?