A cheerleader for Ukrainian nationalism and war, [Illia] Ponomarenko regularly posts gory photos of dead Russian soldiers and calls for NATO to intervene in the war on Ukraine’s behalf, thus assisting a social media campaign by Ukraine’s armed forces and the far-right that directly violates the Geneva Convention for the humane treatment of prisoners of war.
Notably, [Illia] Ponomarenko’s employer, the newly created Kyiv Independent, receives its funding from western imperialism, including Washington’s National Endowment for Democracy and the EU’s European Endowment for Democracy.
More recently, photos of the apparent killing of civilians in Bucha first appeared on the social media accounts of figures such as Ponomarenko and the far-right “activist” thug Serhii Sternenko. The photos and reports were then fed to Western media outlets, which again seized upon them to call for increased sanctions against Russia and the prosecution of President Vladimir Putin as a war criminal.
Photo captions by the New York Times indicate that Azov Battalion soldiers were among the first to enter Bucha on April 2 after Russian forces left the town on March 30. Despite this fact, claims of a wanton Russian massacre are promoted uncritically while those calling for investigation before judgement are smeared as “Russian trolls.”

Previously:

The Washington Post Finally Admits The Role of the ‘Far Right’ Azov Battalion in Ukraine

Discerning Volodymyr Zelensky

March 8, 2022March 8, 2022 Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Posted on March 8, 2022 by Lambert Strether
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
“‘Not A Very Nice Person At All,’ she read. ‘I wonder what kind of person would put that on a wallet?’ ‘Someone who wasn’t a very nice person,’ said William.” –Terry Pratchett, The Truth
In this extremely short and simplistic post, I will do what it says on the tin: Scrape away the already deeply impacted layers of wartime propaganda[1]. I propose to do this in the old-fashioned American way: By following the money. (I was inspired to write this post by Gonzalo Lira, former NC contributor (!), streaming from Kharkiv (!!). His video, “Who Is Zelensky? A Puppet—and Here’s Why,” is perceptive, lucid, and convincing, albeit NSFW. I recommend you listen to it, on the off chance that the more hits this video has, the more of a public figure — hence, safer — Lira will be.)
Discerning Volodymyr Zelensky

The CIA has backed Ukrainian insurgents before. Let’s learn from those mistakes + Project Aerodynamic

March 1, 2022September 9, 2025 Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The CIA has backed Ukrainian insurgents before. Let’s learn from those mistakes (Archived)

As the conflict continues on it’s fourth day, the disinformation campaign is out in full swing. With left wing pundits advocating for a full scale US intervention, and the corporate hacks of the political right rejecting such an idea. This has led to an onslaught of misinformation and even, outright propaganda over all viral media as well as television. But underneath the surface of rancid, media obfuscation lies an even far more nefarious history. The Central Intelligence Agency’s history with Ukraine spans decades, where one covert program (Operation Aerodynamic) saw to exploit the anti-Soviet Ukrainian resistance groups that were late found to have conducted war crime atrocities. The primary contact in the operation involved, Mykola Lebed, a Ukrainian nationalist who was alleged to have been collaborating with Nazi Germany after he was freed from prison, in 1939 as Germany invaded Poland, for the murder of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki in 1934. Lebed worked for the CIA in American where he gathered intelligence on the Soviet Union as late as into the late 1960s.

Fast forward to the current period, and the CIA activities involving far right neo nazi groups, such as the Azov Battalion, have been a large covert operation meant to combat Russian military in the disputed territories of Luhansk and Donetsk. The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials. By 2014, the CIA’s Ground Division began training Ukrainian guerillas after Russia annexed Crimea, the program began to expand under the Trump administration, and currently the program augmented under the current Biden administration. In this video i expand on the CIA influence which span decades with the government of Ukraine.
YouTube: The CIA-Ukraine Nexus (Operation Aerodynamic) (Odysee) by Adam Fitzgerald

Sources:

Project Aerodynamic (PDF)

Here’s What the CIA Director Was Really Doing in Kiev

Hitler’s Shadows: Nazi War Criminals, US Intelligence & The Cold War (PDF)

CIA-trained Ukrainian paramilitaries may take central role if Russia invades

The CIA May Be Breeding Nazi Terror in Ukraine