On the 15th August, Shaun Walker, a reporter for the British Guardian news paper reported that a Russian military convoy had crossed the border into Ukrainian territory, using a rough dirt track and clearly crossing through a gap in a barbed wire fence that demarcates the border.
The Kiev government subsequently claimed that this Russian convoy had been partially destroyed by Ukrainian artillery.
Mysteriously, Shaun Walker only posted one photograph in his world exclusive on the Russian invasion of Ukraine- a photo of the tail end of one armoured personnel carrier on a road in some unidentified location. The Kiev government like-wise produced no photographs of the destroyed Russian military hardware or any evidence of the mauled remainder of the Russian military convoy.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen subsequently accused Russia of an incursion into Ukrainian territory, a claim strenuously denied by the Russian authorities who speculated that the military convoy was a Ukrainian one which had been hit by friendly fire .
Like so many of the multitude of the claims by the Kiev Government about Russian military invasions over the past few months; none of them have been able to be verified by satellite imaging , or military personnel, or by journalists on the ground.
In the face of absence of verification, it is more than likely that none of these Russian incursions occurred. The absence of Russian military advisers and equipment and troops appears to be also substantiated by the rapidly deteriorating military situation for the rebels in Eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s demoralized and ill-equipped troops and reluctant conscripts, along with the rag-tag band of neo-con funded neo-nazi brigades, would prove no match for Russia’s modernised military hardware and elite troops.
So why then would Shaun Walker produce such a report; knowing full well that his article could have led to Word War 3? Shaun, despite his fluency in Russian, is well known for his Russophobic and anti-Putin tendencies, along with other Guardian reporters such as Luke Harding. And additionally, was the Kiev Government media simply responding in its less than honest way to more media rumour and supposition,or was this something else?
Either way, Shaun Walker’s credibility as a reporter has been severely compromised.
But his tendency to play with the facts is no by no means unusual in Western media. In its most blatant example of media dishonesty, Western, and particularly US mainstream media, have for years portrayed Israel as some tiny vulnerable island in a sea of hateful hordes of Arabs. The truth of that nasty little narrative is only now becoming known to Western audiences, as the alternative press construction of the real scale of systemic long -term brutality and genocide by the Israeli military and governmental machine against largely defenceless Palestinians, becomes disturbingly apparent. And why?; because the pressure on editorial boards from those who support Israel, has over the previous 66 years eliminated the alternative and honest narrative. One can only assume that the anti-Putin and anti-Russian hysteria whipped up reporters like Shaun Walker is similarly driven by external editorial influences.
And who might those influences be, one wonders?
And what should the repercussions be for media reporters and media agencies who incite war and violence?
New Antarctica 