Africa Remains at the Center of a 21st Century Cold War

BREAKING: Activists in Atlanta say that police are lying about what happened when a protester was shot and killed Wednesday.

The activists say police were hit with friendly fire when raiding their encampment, and that the activist killed, Tort, did not shoot them. pic.twitter.com/7U5JrkTj8k

— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) January 20, 2023

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Multipolarista.

The U.S. government has imposed aggressive sanctions that aim to “kneecap” China’s tech sector and halt the country’s rise, Washington policymakers and industry analysts have admitted.

The Joe Biden administration took the extraordinarily aggressive action this month of blocking China from importing most semiconductors, machines to create chips and supercomputer parts.

A former Pentagon official acknowledged that this was a “disproportionate” and “unilateral” attack, amounting to a “form of economic containment.”

He said this in an article in Foreign Policy, the magazine of the D.C. political class, titled “Biden Is Now All-In on Taking Out China.”

Jon Bateman, an ex-analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) who served in several important policy roles in the Pentagon, wrote that U.S. officials have “imposed disproportionate measures” and “strong-armed others into compliance.”

Washington’s “mindset all but guarantees a continued march toward broad-based technological decoupling,” he concluded.

Bateman stated that the “increasing boldness of U.S. unilateral actions, and Washington’s open embrace of a quasi-containment strategy” reflect the U.S. government’s new cold war goal: “China’s technological rise will be slowed at any price.”

Today, Bateman is a senior fellow in the technology and international affairs program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a powerful Washington-based think tank that helps Washington craft policy – with plentiful funding from the U.S. government, its allies, large corporations and banks, and billionaire oligarch family foundations.

Bateman is by no means a pro-China advocate. In April, he published a report for Carnegie called “U.S.-China Technological ‘Decoupling’: A Strategy and Policy Framework.”

In the lengthy document, Bateman “offered a concrete picture of what centrist decoupling might look like and how implementation could work at the agency level.”

Bateman wrote the Foreign Policy article as part of a debate with more hard-line hawks in elite Washington policy-making circles. He warned that their “maximalist” strategy could backfire and hurt the U.S. and its allies, and instead promoted a more cautious, incrementalist approach.

“America’s restrictionists—zero-sum thinkers who urgently want to accelerate technological decoupling—have won the strategy debate inside the Biden administration,” he warned.

“More cautious voices—technocrats and centrists who advocate incremental curbs on select aspects of China’s tech ties—have lost,” Bateman lamented.

He acknowledged that Washington’s new cold war on China has been completely bipartisan, but “Donald Trump’s scattershot regulation and erratic public statements offered little clarity to allies, adversaries, and companies around the world,” whereas “Joe Biden’s actions have been more systematic.”

“The United States has waged low-grade economic warfare against China for at least four years now—firing volley after volley of tariffs, export controls, investment blocks, visa limits, and much more,” he wrote.

Bateman said the Biden administration’s new sanctions, however, “more so than any earlier U.S. action, reveal a single-minded focus on thwarting Chinese capabilities at a broad and fundamental level.”

“Although framed as a national security measure, the primary damage to China will be economic, on a scale well out of proportion to Washington’s cited military and intelligence concerns,” he wrote.

He added, “The U.S. government imposed the new rules after limited consultation with partner countries and companies, proving that its quest to hobble China ranks well above concerns about the diplomatic or economic repercussions.”

Bateman noted that the United States is trying to pressure allies to join its new cold war on China, leading an international campaign to economically isolate Beijing by building a “Chip 4” alliance with South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan – which control the vast majority of the global semiconductor industry.

Bateman’s fears that these aggressive new cold war policies could backfire have already come true. Washington’s rapid attempt to decouple the U.S. economy from China is taking a toll on U.S. universities.

At least 1,400 scientists of Chinese descent have left U.S. research institutions and instead gone to China, according to a report published this October by academics at Harvard, Princeton, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The South China Morning Post reported that the “high number illustrates a ‘chilling effect’ resulting from U.S. government policies deterring research and academic activity by scientists of Chinese descent and suggests American research could suffer.”

The tech press has sounded similar alarm bells about Washington’s bellicose attacks on Beijing.

Electronics industry website EE Times quoted a corporate analyst who said the U.S. “sanctions put a temporary checkmate on China developing their foundry industry at more advanced nodes.”

The website also used cold war rhetoric to refer to the aggressive U.S. policies, writing:

The latest U.S. salvo in the chip war against China will set back its domestic chipmakers by generations, while global suppliers of semiconductors and fab tools will incur billions of dollars in lost sales because of a giant dent in demand out of China, analysts told EE Times.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has strengthened Cold War measures from longer than 40 years ago. In its new rivalry, the U.S. aims to freeze China’s advancement on a new front: chip technology that is critical for economic development and military superiority.

Wired magazine came to the same conclusion, reporting that the U.S. sanctions aimed to “kneecap” China’s tech industry.

Wired said Washington’s “sweeping new controls are designed to keep [China’s] AI industry stuck in the dark ages while the U.S. and other Western countries advance.”

The tech magazine quoted Gregory Allen, director of the AI governance project at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), an influential neoconservative think tank in Washington that is bankrolled by the weapons industry, U.S. government, and Washington’s allies.

Allen summed it up: “The United States is saying to China, ‘AI technology is the future; we and our allies are going there—and you can’t come.’”

Benjamin Norton is founder and editor of Multipolarista.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Grayzone.

Back in October 2019, as the war in eastern Ukraine dragged on, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Zolote, a town situated firmly in the “gray zone” of Donbas, where over 14,000 had been killed, mostly on the pro-Russian side. There, the president encountered the hardened veterans of extreme right paramilitary units keeping up the fight against separatists just a few miles away.

Elected on a platform of de-escalation of hostilities with Russia, Zelensky was determined to enforce the so-called Steinmeier Formula conceived by then-German Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier which called for elections in the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

In a face-to-face confrontation with militants from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who had launched a campaign to sabotage the peace initiative called “No to Capitulation,” Zelensky encountered a wall of obstinacy. 

With appeals for disengagement from the frontlines firmly rejected, Zelensky melted down on camera. “I’m the president of this country. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a loser. I came to you and told you: Remove the weapons,” Zelensky implored the fighters.

President of Ukraine Zelensky has visited disengaging area in Zolote today https://t.co/scFZLt45C2 pic.twitter.com/JlD1cWPQ39

— Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) October 26, 2019

Once video of the stormy confrontation spread across Ukrainian social media channels, Zelensky became the target of an angry backlash.

Andriy Biletsky, the proudly fascist Azov Battalion leader who once pledged to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen”, vowed to bring thousands of fighters to Zolote if Zelensky pressed any further. Meanwhile, a parliamentarian from the party of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko openly fantasized about Zelensky being blown to bits by a militant’s grenade.

Though Zelensky achieved a minor disengagement, the neo-Nazi paramilitaries escalated their “No Capitulation” campaign. And within months, fighting began to heat up again in Zolote, sparking a new cycle of violations of the Minsk Agreement.

By this point, Azov had been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military and its street vigilante wing, known as the National Corps, was deployed across the country under the watch of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, and alongside the National Police. In December 2021, Zelensky would be seen delivering a “Hero of Ukraine” award to a leader of the fascistic Right Sector in a ceremony in Ukraine’s parliament.

A full-scale conflict with Russia was approaching, and the distance between Zelensky and the extremist paramilitaries was closing fast.

This February 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukrainian territory on a stated mission to “demilitarize and denazify” the country, U.S. media embarked on a mission of its own: to deny the power of neo-Nazi paramilitaries over the country’s military and political sphere. As the U.S. government-funded National Public Radio insisted, “Putin’s language [about denazification] is offensive and factually wrong.”

In its bid to deflect from the influence of Nazism in contemporary Ukraine, U.S. media has found its most effective PR tool in the figure of Zelensky, a former TV star and comedian from a Jewish background. It is a role the actor-turned-politician has eagerly assumed.

But as we will see, Zelensky has not only ceded ground to the neo-Nazis in his midst, he has entrusted them with a front line role in his country’s war against pro-Russian and Russian forces.

The President’s Jewishness As Western Media PR Device 

Hours before President Putin’s February 24 speech declaring denazification as the goal of Russian operations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “asked how a people who lost eight million of its citizens fighting Nazis could support Nazism,” according to the BBC.

Raised in a non-religious Jewish family in the Soviet Union during the 1980’s, Zelensky has downplayed his heritage in the past. “The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults,” he joked during a 2019 interview in which he declined to go into further detail about his religious background.

Today, as Russian troops bear down on cities like Mariupol, which is effectively under the control of the Azov Battalion, Zelensky is no longer ashamed to broadcast his Jewishness. “How could I be a Nazi?” he wondered aloud during a public address. For a U.S. media engaged in an all-out information war against Russia, the president’s Jewish background has become an essential public relations tool.

Watch left & right wing factions of MSM unite to declare any allegations of Nazism in Ukraine to be Russian fake news because President Zelensky is Jewish. Featuring Senators Marsha Blackburn & Mark Warner, former CIA spy Dan Hoffman & “Ukraine Whistleblower” Alexander Vindman pic.twitter.com/vruyDUoWxv

— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) February 28, 2022

A few examples of the U.S. media’s deployment of Zelensky as a shield against allegations of rampant Nazism in Ukraine are below (see mash-up video in above tweet): 

• PBS NewsHour noted Putin’s comments on denazification with a qualifier: “Even though President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and his great uncles died in the Holocaust.”
• On Fox & Friends, former CIA officer Dan Hoffman declared that “it’s the height of hypocrisy to call the Ukrainian nation to denazify—their president is Jewish after all.”
• On MSNBC, Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner said Putin’s “terminology, outrageous and obnoxious as it is—‘denazify’ where you’ve got frankly a Jewish president in Mr. Zelensky. This guy [Putin] is on his own kind of personal jihad to restore greater Russia.”
• Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn said on Fox Business she’s “been impressed with President Zelensky and how he has stood up. And for Putin to go out there and say ‘we’re going to denazify’ and Zelensky is Jewish.”
• In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Gen. John Allen denounced Putin’s use of the term, “de-Nazify” while the newsman and former Israel lobbyist shook his head in disgust. In a separate interview with Blitzer, the so-called “Ukraine whistleblower” and Ukraine-born Alexander Vindman grumbled that the claim is “patently absurd, there’s really no merit… you pointed out that Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish… the Jewish community [is] embraced. It’s central to the country and there is nothing to this Nazi narrative, this fascist narrative. It’s fabricated as a pretext.”

Behind the corporate media spin lies the complex and increasingly close relationship Zelensky’s administration has enjoyed with the neo-Nazi forces invested with key military and political posts by the Ukrainian state, and the power these open fascists have enjoyed since Washington installed a Western-aligned regime through a coup in 2014. 

In fact, Zelensky’s top financial backer, the Ukrainian Jewish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, has been a key benefactor of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and other extremists militias.

Backed by Zelensky’s Top Financier, Neo-Nazi Militants Unleash a Wave of Intimidation

Incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, the Azov Battalion is considered the most ideologically zealous and militarily motivated unit fighting pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region. 

With Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel insignia on the uniforms of its fighters, who have been photographed with Nazi SS symbols on their helmets, Azov “is known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology…[and] is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing U.S.-based white supremacy organizations,” according to an FBI indictment of several U.S. white nationalists that traveled to Kiev to train with Azov. 

Igor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian energy baron of Jewish heritage, has been a top funder of Azov since it was formed in 2014. He has also bankrolled private militias like the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions, and has deployed them as a personal thug squad to protect his financial interests.

In 2019, Kolomoisky emerged as the top backer of Zelensky’s presidential bid. Though Zelensky made anti-corruption the signature issue of his campaign, the Pandora Papers exposed him and members of his inner circle stashing large payments from Kolomoisky in a shadowy web of offshore accounts.

When Zelensky took office in May 2019, the Azov Battalion maintained de facto control of the strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol and its surrounding villages. As Open Democracy noted, “Azov has certainly established political control of the streets in Mariupol. To maintain this control, they have to react violently, even if not officially, to any public event which diverges sufficiently from their political agenda.”

Attacks by Azov in Mariupol have included assaults on “feminists and liberals” marching on International Women’s Day among other incidents.

In March 2019, members of the Azov Battalion’s National Corps attacked the home of Viktor Medvedchuk, the leading opposition figure in Ukraine, accusing him of treason for his friendly relations with Vladimir Putin, the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter.

Zelensky’s administration escalated the attack on Medvedchuk, shuttering several media outlets he controlled in February 2021 with the open approval of the U.S. State Department, and jailing the opposition leader for treason three months later. Zelensky justified his actions on the grounds that he needed to “fight against the danger of Russian aggression in the information arena.”

Next, in August 2020, Azov’s National Corps opened fire on a bus containing members of Medvedchuk’s party, Patriots for Life, wounding several with rubber-coated steel bullets.

Breaking! A bus carrying supporters and members of #Ukraine‘s opposition party “Patriots For Life” was attacked by Ukrainian National Corps and Azov Battalion in the east of the country (Kharkov), unconfirmed reports that some of the passengers have been murdered. pic.twitter.com/O0hB2sqbRA

— The Eurasianist ☦️ (@Russ_Warrior) August 27, 2020

Zelensky Failed to Rein In Neo-Nazis, Wound Up Collaborating with Them

Following his failed attempt to demobilize neo-Nazi militants in the town of Zolote in October 2019, Zelensky called the fighters to the table, telling reporters “I met with veterans yesterday. Everyone was there—the National Corps, Azov, and everyone else.”

A few seats away from the Jewish president was Yehven Karas, the leader of the neo-Nazi C14 gang.

During the Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” that ousted Ukraine’s elected president in 2014, C14 activists took over Kiev’s city hall and plastered its walls with neo-Nazi insignia before taking shelter in the Canadian embassy.

As the former youth wing of the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party, C14 appears to draw its name from the infamous 14 words of U.S. neo-Nazi leader David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

By offering to carry out acts of spectacular violence on behalf of anyone willing to pay, the hooligans have fostered a cozy relationship with various governing bodies and powerful elites across Ukraine.

A March 2018 report by Reuters stated that “C14 and Kiev’s city government recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a ‘municipal guard’ to patrol the streets,” effectively giving them the sanction of the state to carry out pogroms.

As The Grayzone reported, C14 led raid to “purge” Romani from Kiev’s railway station in collaboration with the Kiev police.

The C14 Nazi terror gang signed an agreement with the Kiev municipal government to patrol its streets. This footage taken just a few months later in 2018 shows them carrying out a pogrom against a Romani camp. pic.twitter.com/9aAA86K8TQ

— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) February 28, 2022

Not only was this activity sanctioned by the Kiev city government, the U.S. government itself saw little problem with it, hosting Bondar at an official U.S. government institution in Kiev where he bragged about the pogroms. C14 continued to receive state funding throughout 2018 for “national-patriotic education.”

Karas has claimed that the Ukrainian Security Serves would “pass on” information regarding pro-separatist rallies “not only [to] us, but also Azov, the Right Sector and so on.”

“In general, deputies of all factions, the National Guard, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs work for us. You can joke like that,” Karas said.

Throughout 2019, Zelensky and his administration deepened their ties with ultra-nationalist elements across Ukraine.

After Prime Minister Attends Neo-Nazi Concert, Zelensky Honors Right Sector Leader

Just days after Zelensky’s meeting with Karas and other neo-Nazi leaders in November 2019, Oleksiy Honcharuk—then the Prime Minister and deputy head of Zelensky’s presidential office—appeared on stage at a neo-Nazi concert organized by C14 figure and accused murderer Andriy Medvedko.

Zelensky’s Minister for Veterans Affairs not only attended the concert, which featured several antisemitic metal bands, she promoted the concert on Facebook.

Also in 2019, Zelensky defended Ukrainian footballer Roman Zolzulya against Spanish fans taunting him as a “Nazi.” Zolzulya had posed beside photos of the World War II-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and openly supported the Azov Battalion. Zelensky responded to the controversy by proclaiming that all of Ukraine backed Zolzulya, describing him as “not only a cool football player but a true patriot.”

In November 2021, one of Ukraine’s most prominent ultra-nationalist militiamen, Dmytro Yarosh, announced that he had been appointed as an advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny. Yarosh is an avowed follower of the Nazi collaborator Bandera who led Right Sector from 2013 to 2015, vowing to lead the “de-Russification” of Ukraine.

A month later, as war with Russia drew closer, Zelensky awarded Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo the “Hero of Ukraine” commendation. Known as “Da Vinci,” Kosyubaylo keeps a pet wolf in his frontline base, and likes to joke to visiting reporters that his fighters “feed it the bones of Russian-speaking children.”

Ukrainian State-Backed Neo-Nazi Leader Flaunts Influence on the Eve of War with Russia 

On February 5, only days before full-scale war with Russia erupted, Yevhen Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 delivered a stem-winding public address in Kiev intended to highlight the influence his organization and others like it enjoyed over Ukrainian politics.

Watch Yevhen Karas the leader of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi terror gang C14’s speech from Kiev earlier this month. Straight from the horses’ mouth, he dispels the many narratives pushed by the left, the mainstream media and the State Department. pic.twitter.com/VWJqWPUGUp

— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) February 27, 2022

“LGBT and foreign embassies say ‘there were not many Nazis at Maidan, maybe about 10 percent of real ideological ones,’” Karas remarked. “If not for those eight percent [of neo-Nazis] the effectiveness [of the Maidan coup] would have dropped by 90 percent.”

The 2014 Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” would have been a “gay parade” if not for the instrumental role of neo-Nazis, he proclaimed.

Karas went on to opine that the West armed Ukrainian ultra-nationalists because “we have fun killing.” He also fantasized about the balkanization of Russia, declaring that it should be broken up into “five different” countries.

“If We Get Killed… We Died Fighting a Holy War”

When Russian forces entered Ukraine this February 24, encircling the Ukrainian military in the east and driving towards Kiev, President Zelensky announced a national mobilization that included the release of criminals from prison, among them accused murderers wanted in Russia. He also blessed the distribution of arms to average citizens, and their training by battle-hardened paramilitaries like the Azov Battalion.

With fighting underway, Azov’s National Corps gathered hundreds of ordinary civilians, including grandmothers and children, to train in public squares and warehouses from Kharviv to Kiev to Lviv.

As US media celebrated average Ukrainian citizens taking up arms against Russian troops, the ultra-nationalist Azov Battalion’s National Corps published a propaganda video of its fighters training and passing out arms to residents of Kharkiv, transforming them into combatants. pic.twitter.com/RVL1nyWkfw

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) March 1, 2022

On February 27, the official Twitter account of the National Guard of Ukraine posted video of “Azov Fighters” greasing their bullets with pig fat to humiliate Russian Muslim fighters from Chechnya.

Azov fighters of the National Guard greased the bullets with lard against the Kadyrov orcs👊

Бійці Азова Нацгвардії змастили кулі салом проти кадировських орків👊

Підписуйтесь на наш телеграм канал https://t.co/SBQltMr4bM pic.twitter.com/A1ci7tZL8r

— НГУ (@ng_ukraine) February 27, 2022

Besides authorizing the release of hardcore criminals to join the battle against Russia, Zelensky has ordered all males of fighting age to remain in the country. Azov militants have proceeded to enforce the policy by brutalizing civilians attempting to flee from the fighting around Mariupol.  

According to one Greek resident in Mariupol recently interviewed by a Greek news station, “When you try to leave you run the risk of running into a patrol of the Ukrainian fascists, the Azov Battalion,” he said, adding “they would kill me and are responsible for everything.”

Footage posted online appears to show uniformed members of a fascist Ukrainian militia in Mariupol violently pulling fleeing residents out of their vehicles at gunpoint.

BREAKING 💥 Ukrainian NAZI are preventing people from leaving Mariupol and are shooting at them.

Residents of #Mariupol do not move around the city, Mariupol will soon be liberated!#EndTheBandera#StopUkrainianNazism
#Ukraine #Russia #DPR #LPR #DNR #LPR #Donbass pic.twitter.com/AakZGyNxQx

— Deus Abscondis (@Deus_Abscondis) February 26, 2022

Other video filmed at checkpoints around Mariupol showed Azov fighters shooting and killing civilians attempting to flee.

On March 1, Zelensky replaced the regional administrator of Odessa with Maksym Marchenko, a former commander of the extreme right Aidar Battalion, which has been accused of an array of war crimes in the Donbass region.

Meanwhile, as a massive convoy of Russian armored vehicles bore down on Kiev, Yehven Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 posted a video on YouTube from inside a vehicle presumably transporting fighters.

“If we get killed, it’s fucking great because it means we died fighting a holy war,” Karas exclaimed. ”If we survive, it’s going to be even fucking better! That’s why I don’t see a downside to this, only upside!”

Alex Rubinstein is an independent reporter on Substack. You can subscribe to get free articles from him delivered to your inbox here. If you want to support his journalism, which is never put behind a paywall, you can give a one-time donation to him through PayPal or sustain his reporting through Patreon. He can be followed on Twitter at @RealAlexRubi.

Max Blumenthal is the editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, as well as an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on the United States’ state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions. He can be followed on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal.