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The West’s anti-Russia media campaign

As the EU steps up its opposition to what it deems to be Russia’s “disinformation campaigns”, it is time to shine light on some of the narratives that the Western media has been concocting regarding the catastro­phe currently configuring the relationship between Russia and the West: the Ukraine crisis.

The stance of many Russian supporters and their justification for the Russian government’s actions can be traced back to the violation of the alleged promise made by the US Secretary of State James A. Baker and German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, that although the newly unified Germany would be part of NATO, the latter would “not move one inch to the East”. The NATO Review, on the other hand, attributes Russia’s belief about the existence of a binding agreement to the confusion in the political environment of the early 1990’s, even presenting NATO’s eastward expansion as the fulfillment of a moral obligation: “the countries of Central and Eastern Europe were finally able to assert their sovereignty and define their own foreign and security policy goals. As these goals centered on integration with the West, any categorical refusal of NATO to respond would have meant the de facto continuation of Europe’s division along former Cold War lines. The right to choose one’s alliance, enshrined in the 1975 Helsinki Charter, would have been denied – an approach that the West could never have sustained, neither politically nor morally.” I will leave this aspect of the conflict aside, however, as it is easy to get lost in the sea of alternative accounts and interpretations of the exact events of 1990. Instead, I will embark upon an analysis of the crisis from a constitutional standpoint, appealing to what Western civilization has elevated to the position once held by religion – the rule of law.

As the scrupulous analysis by Valery Dmitrievich Zorkin, the Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, of the unfolding of the crisis in Ukraine shows, the “bastion of human rights and freedom” – the West, has in fact been undermining the absolute power of its sacrosanct rule of law in supporting and aiding the opposition, which has now become Ukraine’s de facto government.

In the early stages of the crisis the Western media was eager to present the protests in Kiev and other regions of Ukraine as evidence of the Ukrainians having chosen to join Europe. Thus, Yanukovich’s pro-Russian stance was portrayed as his betrayal of the will of the Ukrainian nation. The Western media, however, conveniently omitted the fact that even all the protestors combined in all the regions, who never exceeded 1.5 million in number, could hardly represent the will of a nation of 45 million. Thus, the call for the removal of Yanukovich by Western politicians was contrary to the law given that Yanukovich and the Verkhovna Rada constituted a legitimately elected government. Moreover, Yanukovich’s impeachment itself was unconstitutional, given the fact that at the moment of the decision about his impeachment, only 313 MPs were present, of which 283 voted for his removal from power, which was short of 55 votes according to the requirements of the Constitution for the impeachment of a president.

Even after the illegitimate removal of Yanukovich from power, the Verkhovna Rada continued its work with flagrant violations of the law. The opposition, which came to power in the Verkhovna Rada following the president’s removal, numbered around 150 MPs, leaving it without a constitutional (300 votes) or even an ordinary (226 votes) majority. Well documented stories about the subsequent “persuasion” techniques implemented by the opposition in order to gain a majority, as armed “guards” appeared in the homes of insubmissive MPs, were also conveniently omitted from the Western media’s analysis of the events.

Was the Western media aware of the falsified procedure for the dismissal of Yanukovich, of the use of force and machinations with the deputies’ cards in order to obtain a majority in the Verkhovna Rada, as well as all the other violations of the Constitution and the illegitimacy of the new government? It most probably was as many western as well as Ukrainian journalists were witnesses of these events according to Zorkin. Thus, perhaps the West should cleanse its own media of “disinformation” before that of Russia’s.

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