West silencing dissenting voices to control narrative on Ukraine war

The conflict between Russia and the West over Ukraine seems to have gone beyond the military realm as independent media outlets say their dissenting voices are being silenced by the US and its allies.

Among several news outlets whose social media accounts have been blocked in recent weeks is the ASB news, whose editors say the suspension of their accounts is a targeted takedown aimed at controlling the narrative on the war in Ukraine.

The editors of ASB news say they are working to offer alternative information sources as opposed to the blatantly false information that the West provides about the conflict.

Commenting on a Press TV’s query whether the conflict in Ukraine is taking shape in various different avenues apart from its military aspect, Pepe Escobar, a geopolitical analyst whose Twitter account has been suspended as part of the Western campaign to muzzle dissenting voices, said on Thursday that the move by the US and its allies indicated their despair to win the public relations (PR) war.

“They are absolutely desperate because they need to win the PR war for Western audiences. They already lost it inside Russia. The problem is what I call NATO stand, the spectrum of the whole NATO sphere. There's only one narrative that is allowed. It's the narrative that comes from the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, and all of us independents have been silenced little by little and especially these past two weeks,” Escobar told Press TV.

“We are telling it like it is; what's really happening, especially in Mariupol and the Donbass; the fact that Ukraine has absolutely no chance to win anything in this war. And of course, the only solution from the point of view of Big Tech is to cancel us,” he added, referring to two volatile regions in eastern Ukraine.

The geopolitical analyst expressed hope that there will be “Indian platforms, Iranian platforms, Pakistani platforms, African platforms, Latin American platforms, soon emerging all over, and that will be the end of Big Tech as controlling social networks.”

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Clashes have escalated between Russian troops and Ukrainian forces over the control of the besieged port city of Mariupol as Russia’s military offensive in the former Soviet state nears its 50th day and amid Western promises to flood the war-battered country with military and financial aid.

Asked as to how the West’s arm supply to Ukraine would be affecting the war in the former Soviet state, Escobar said, “They think they can prolong the war, sending old MiGs, Kalashnikovs... but most of these weapons, they don't even arrive at their destination in different parts of Ukraine, or they are immediately resold in the black market inside Ukraine. Ukraine nowadays is an enormous black hole, including many superimposed black markets as well. So this will never arrive.”

Pointing to the Ukrainian military forces, Escobar added, “They have a choice sooner or later: either they surrender or they're going to be totally exterminated and that will be the end of the Ukrainian armed forces; but this is also something that we simply cannot explain to Western social networks.”

Commenting on his predictions for the battle looming for the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine, Escobar said, “We cannot predict anything. In fact everything that so-called Westerner military analysts I would say predicted went wrong.”

“What we follow is movement on the ground and what we could define as the Russian high command's strategic ambiguity. Because we can never tell what's going to be their next major move,” he underlined. “This is something that from the point of view of the Russians it should be accomplished throughout this month until the end of April… Nobody can say that they know what the Russian military are going to do next.”

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Asked about the West’s hypocrisy and double standards in the media coverage of the Ukrainian war as it received a different international response than the war in Yemen, Syria, and the occupation in Palestine, Escobar said, “All the wars of conquest, rape, pillage and plunder by the Empire over the past 50 years in fact, they simply disappeared.”

“It's like the only war that exists is the war unleashed by the evil new Hitler, Vladimir Putin. This is beyond any rationalization of hypocrisy,” the analyst stressed. “In fact, of course, the genocide in Yemen, which is a real genocide, had already disappeared from the Western narrative for the past few years. And now it's completely obliterated. Same with Palestine. Everything that happened in Syria when the Americans were using a proxy war to destroy the Syrian nation also disappeared completely. And obviously, it's impossible for, I would say, especially the Americans and, of course, the European poodles that follow them, to understand and to put in context in perspective how imperialism survived or has been survived for the past few decades based on these wars of choice.”

“What basically led to the Russian response to the situation in Ukraine was many different factors,” Escobar added. “The fact that the Russians knew that there were bio labs in Ukraine and this was confirmed the Russians knew that Ukraine was making some moves to restart a nuclear program. This was also confirmed that NATO essentially, was organizing a huge blitzkrieg. There would be a real blitzkrieg genocide in Donbass and also everything was confirmed. So they had to act now as a sort of preemptive attack against NATO essentially. And this war is not Kiev against Moscow. This one is NATO against Moscow. And this is also another information that simply cannot be analyzed in Western social networks.”

Russia President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” on February 24 to demilitarize Donetsk and Luhansk, largely populated by ethnic Russians, in eastern Ukraine. The US and its European allies have labeled the military operation as “Putin’s land grab,” imposing waves of unprecedented sanctions on Moscow.

In 2014, the two regions - collectively known as the Donbass – declared themselves new republics; a move that triggered a persisting and bloody conflict between Kiev and armed pro-Russian separatists.

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