Viable Opposition: Is Washington Begging for War with Russia?

In the February 16th press briefing by Maria Zakahrova, spokeswoman for The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, we find some interesting and even humorous comments regarding the ongoing narrative that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine, many of which will never appear in the West's mainstream media. Let's look at some of her key comments, in particular, her comments on the Western media.

Zakharova opens the briefing with this line:

"Sorry, I was held up for a minute. I was double-checking whether we are invading or not. We’re not invading!

After outlining the meetings that Sergey Lavrov will have over the next week with various world leaders and their underlings, Zakharova weighs in on Russia's viewpoint of "the fakes" (i.e. fake news) with my bolds throughout:

"Perhaps this is a standing section we have lacked until now and it’s high time we started one – enough to make a cat laugh. This is what Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has termed “information terrorism” on the part of the Anglo-Saxon countries, namely a “tandem” of official and media narrative. On the one hand, this is laughably absurd, while being terribly sad, on the other. The leading Western countries’ domestic and foreign policy thought has been exposed with a dramatic force. And these are the countries that are controlling the goings-on everywhere, including in NATO. They are seeking to influence the processes unfolding inside even the associations of which they are not members. I am referring to the EU. These are the countries that laid claim to leadership in our world and posed as “guarantors” of this or that – security, freedom, whatever. All of you can see what we have arrived at. Surprisingly, it is these countries that have created within organisations under their control (I have primarily NATO in mind, but their supervisee, the EU, is also in this category) a huge number of units whose duty it is to fight fakes. I think they have supplied themselves with postmortems to complete for a year ahead. It has been a long time since I last saw such an amount of fakes, disinformation, planted stories, slander and condensed lies. The concentration of disinformation was not as dense even in the case of Syria."

She then goes on to discuss "provocations concerning Ukraine", once again calling out the Western media:

"Today, we are marking yet another day of “non-aggression” against Ukraine. We are doing this from the point of view of common sense and reality, which defy any likelihood of a “war” which has been promised to us with such insistence. The West – Washington and London – and its media, including Bloomberg, CNN, The New York Times, The Sun, UK tabloids, and others were active in publishing fakes and even photographs of the “attack in progress.” Yesterday, a fantastically silly report was aired by CBS. Unfortunately for many Western media outlets, this “war” has failed to materialise again. It would be funny, but we are using the term “war,” which is scaring the whole world. Yes, they were trying to do all they can for it to occur.

Unfortunately for The Washington Post, The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Daily Mirror, Bild, The Sun, and other disinformation media, the war has failed to materialise in the past few days. But they are not losing heart and await it with persistence worthy of a better cause. In the early hours today, according to a number of media reports, CNN made its correspondents and camera crew keep a round-the-clock watch to film what they called an “invasion of Russian tanks.” Reuters went on air in expectation of something terrible. I wonder if their advertising time was more expensive in that period, or they had sold it wholesale long ago. Even the post-exercise withdrawal of Russian army units to their bases was interpreted as a “cunning Russian trick” intended to sidetrack attention from the impending invasion....Is there some free space on the US Department of State website, where they have published a report on the alleged fakes disseminated by the Russian media, specifically RT? Insert a report about fakes spread by your US media. Do you need examples? I can let you have them.

However, this is not what I found surprising, because everything I described just now has happened in the past. What was particularly striking this time is the scale of the campaign. This must be the first time in history that not only the alleged “aggressor state” (the collective West assigned this role to Russia) but also the supposed “victim state” (this role in the US media performance was given to Ukraine) have refuted the war scenarios, which the Anglo-Saxon media has been forcing on us.

I believe this is the first time that both Russia and Ukraine are speaking almost in unison, even though they have diametrically opposite views on many issues and diverging (to put it mildly) approaches to many bilateral and international issues. First, there are no facts of any “invasion,” and second, everything we can read on this issue in the Western media is disinformation. How is it possible? Russia and Ukraine have been presented as hostile countries on the verge of a big European war, but they have refuted these allegations almost simultaneously, although their bilateral relations are far from positive....

Two countries – Russia and Ukraine – have been saying at all possible levels that there would be no war, that nobody would invade anybody or had any invasion plans, and that no preparations were being made for the “invasion.” But this has not stopped the Western propaganda machine. Official statements continued to be issued in an endless stream. You can see what this has led to.

We have witnessed yet another round in the misinformation campaign, initiated by the West, about the mythical Russian “invasion” of Ukraine and some kind of “aggression.” A lot of effort was invested into mounting this stunt and planting fake news, spreading far-fetched information, involving both major and lesser-known media outlets, prominent politicians, diplomats, and even heads of state. In countries located thousands of kilometres from Europe and which have no ties with Ukraine whatsoever, governments shared with everyone, including Russian ambassadors, their concerns about events unfolding according to a worst-case scenario. Even these countries have been receiving all kinds of misinformation from various channels....

In the meantime, NATO countries have continued to saturate Ukraine with weapons, rather actively, behind the cloak of their own information smokescreen. They are not the least bit concerned that these weapons can easily surface on the black market and be used against their own people, rather than against a mythical aggressor. We have seen this many times. Anything can happen there, considering the current NATO-inspired hysteria and psychosis in Ukraine....

In this context, President Vladimir Zelensky’s address to his fellow Ukrainians merits attention. I would like to note once again that he has declared openly that Ukraine is being scared with a big war (note that it’s not “us” who are scaring them), that once again an invasion date is being set (not by “us” again). In turn, we have made diametrically opposite statements and noted that we have no intention of invading, that there are no such plans, and that we are conducting military exercises. I will dwell on this aspect separately. Regarding invasion dates, everyone, including official representatives, politicians and journalists, has done their best to prove that these groundless rumours are worthless; they circulate without any reason and turn into fake news and misinformation in the West.

We are urging Western countries to stop inciting anti-Russia and essentially anti-Ukraine hysteria and stop saturating Kiev with weapons. These actions adversely affect the resolution of the conflict in Donbass and the entire situation regarding Europe’s security and stability."

There is no doubt that Russia's leadership is well aware that the West is living in a post-truth/propaganda saturated era where the mainstream media cannot be trusted in any sense.

As an aside, according to Russia's TASS news service, Zakharova also made a humorous reference to the ever-moving date of Russia's invasion of Ukraine as shown here:

While we don't know what the results of the potential meeting between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin will be, from what Russia's leadership has said to this point, the last thing that they (and the Ukrainians) want is war, despite the fact that Russia has moved peace-keeping troops into the western part of Ukraine (Donetsk and Luhansk) which were already controlled by rebels and are predominantly Russian-speaking as shown here: