United States of America
Stand for a fake: US Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy’s false statements published by Kommersant
We were bemused and somewhat confused to see the interview US Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy gave Kommersant correspondent Yelena Chernenko, which was published on April 28.
We can foresee possible excuses with reference to the fact that the Ambassador simply did not have enough time to settle in to her position. But after all, Lynne Tracy arrived in Russia in January 2023 and has been in Moscow for more than three months now, which is more than enough time for any professional to learn the ropes.
Her first phrase sets the tone: “Whatever differences we, the United States, have with the Russian government, these are not differences with the people of Russia.” Does Lynne Tracy really hope that readers are not aware that right now Russian military personnel, as well as civilians in Donbass, are being killed by American weapons bought with American money and, apparently, for American interests, while the Kiev regime is actually slaughtering hundreds and thousands of Ukrainians (“until the last Ukrainian”) just to please its caring masters on the other side of the Atlantic?
Lynne Tracy’s interpretation of the 2013-2014 events in Ukraine is striking in its selectivity and outright lies: “Ukraine was looking towards the EU... But, as you know, later the Ukrainian government abandoned its association with the EU. This decision provoked a strong reaction, and then in 2014, we saw how Russia went down the path of extreme destabilisation, illegally annexing Crimea and destabilising the situation in Donbass.” Perhaps Madame Ambassador simply does not know, and her assistants did not give her a hint, but this simple puzzle clearly lacks... the truth and the correct sequence of events.
So let us remember. The legally elected legitimate government of Ukraine made the decision not to sign the association agreement with the EU after the Kiev authorities back then weighed the pros and cons. As President Viktor Yanukovych later noted, “signing an association agreement would mean betraying the interests of the country and the Ukrainian people.” Later, the Maidan riots, organised and supported by the EU and the US, happened, which brought together all radicals and extremists, Victoria Nuland’s “cookies,” violence against law enforcement officers, “unknown” snipers and victims, the signing of the agreement on the settlement of the political crisis in Ukraine with guarantees from the EU and directly from German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorsky, the violation of all its provisions, the seizure of government buildings by armed groups, an assassination attempt on Viktor Yanukovych, and a coup d'état carried out in the interests of foreign sponsors of the opposition, among others. At the same time, the fighters of the Right Sector (banned in Russia) attacked buses with 300 anti-Maidan participants returning from Kiev to Crimea, then sent “friendship trains” with armed fighters from nationalist organisations to the peninsula, in order “to drown Crimea in Russian blood,” as a leader of the radicals, Dmitry Yarosh, put it. The Crimeans did not put up with this situation and voted in favour of the peninsula’s return to Russia at the referendum on March 16, 2014, almost unanimously, in the highest manifestation of democracy. Soon, on May 2, 2014, extremists in Odessa vividly demonstrated what would have happened in Crimea, if they had only been allowed to, by burning people alive in the Trade Unions House. Eight years of terror over the residents of Donbass only reaffirmed the misanthropic nature of the Kiev regime and its neo-Nazi militants. Is there any need to recall that human lives do not matter at all to a representative of the country that killed millions of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc., the country with My Lai, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo under its belt?
There is no need to guess what the United States would have done in response to an attempt to seize government buildings and mass violence on the streets. It did not go soft on a relatively peaceful group of protesters (not like the Maidan bandits) who made an unauthorised entry into the US Capitol on January 6, 2020, and they are still being dealt with in courts. But this is probably, as the Americans like to say, “very different.”
In the context of either the amnesia or ignorance demonstrated by Lynne Tracy, the phrase “we must consider Ukraine as well as the circumstances that have developed there and make assessments based on what we know about what is happening specifically in Ukraine” sounds particularly cynical.
At the same time, one cannot but thank the Ambassador for the fact that, from the height of her position, she reluctantly admitted that “Russia has the right to set its foreign policy priorities.” Now we can breathe freely, because we were very worried about this, whether they in the “City upon a Hill” would allow us to decide issues of national interests ourselves.
In response to Lynne Tracy’s loose statements on New START and strategic stability, we would like to once again remind the American diplomat of the real reasons for the suspension of this treaty and emphasise that this decision can be reversed. But in order to do this, Washington must show political will, make conscientious efforts for a general de-escalation and create conditions to resume the full functioning of the treaty and, accordingly, comprehensively ensure its viability.
But right now, the US is openly seeking to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia, which US officials keep talking about.
As for Lynne Tracy’s statements about the egregious, ugly situation with the US failure to issue visas to Russian journalists who were supposed to accompany Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to New York, they can only be called a mockery. Everything that was done by the American side was done on purpose. Let us quote Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov again: “A country that calls itself the strongest, smartest, free and fair country has chickened out and done something stupid by showing what its sworn assurances about protecting freedom of speech and access to information are really worth.”
In general, the rhetoric of American diplomats, which has nothing to do with reality, has long ceased to surprise us. What’s surprising is the obsequious attitude of the Russian newspaper and the interviewer, member of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy Yelena Chernenko. Instead of asking pointed, burning questions in the context of the hybrid war waged by Washington against Russia, she fell all over herself to thank Lynne Tracy for the first interview.
Additional materials
-
Photos
