Before writing an incredibly superficial piece on Eastern Europe’s geopolitical affairs from the frontlines of Pennsylvania Ave., New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker might have checked in with his colleague who was actually stationed in Russia and knows what he’s talking about.
Baker joined the obnoxious media chorus this week in disputing virtually every single thing President Trump said recently with regard to the war in Ukraine, including Trump’s characterization of the conflict as something Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky could have avoided and Trump’s labeling of Zelensky as a dictator.
“President Trump is rewriting the history of Russia’s invasion of its smaller neighbor,” Baker wrote on Wednesday. “Ukraine, in this version, is not a victim but a villain. And Mr. Zelensky is not a latter-day Winston Churchill, but a ‘dictator without elections’ who somehow started the war himself and conned America into helping.” He went on to write that Trump had “falsely” accused Zelensky of starting the war and had engaged in a “revision” of historical record that “seems to be laying a predicate for withdrawing support for an ally under attack.”
That annoying thing the media do where they have to have the last word on every disagreement under the guise of calling it a “fact-check”? This is more of that.
If there’s any “revision” in challenging the absurd levels of propaganda that the Biden administration and the media disseminated for the sake of selling that war to the American public, so be it. Almost everything said about it by the people in power advocating to prolong it was a lie. They said it was about “democracy” and “freedom” when it was in reality a long-standing territorial dispute. They said Ukraine could “win” while privately acknowledging that was impossible. They said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was decimating his own country’s economy when it was in fact relatively stable and even strengthening.
The more offensive lies are related to what started the war and who’s to blame. Like the rest of us quickly growing insane with our involvement in the conflict, Trump seems to truly not care at this point. He wants to see an end and that’s all that matters. But if Baker is going to print things in the Times like “Mr. Zelensky did not talk the United States into giving him money ‘to go into a war.’ He and his country were attacked,” then we’re going to have to keep correcting him using his own paper’s reporting.
It was another pounding drumbeat of propaganda that the war was “Putin’s unprovoked war of aggression,” which is demonstrably untrue. Baker’s colleague, Times Moscow Bureau Chief Anton Troianovski explained in an episode of “The Daily” podcast in March 2022 that prior to the invasion, Zelensky took several inflammatory actions that were intended to alienate Russia.
Here’s what Troianovski said:
So what happens is just days after Biden is inaugurated, Zelensky cracks down on a business tycoon in Ukraine named Viktor Medvedchuk. And that’s important because Medvedchuk is basically the closest link remaining between Ukraine and the Kremlin. Putin is the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter. Medvedchuk runs a political party that is fairly pro-Russian. He was running several TV channels that were pro-Russian, and early last year, Zelensky closes those TV channels, starts an investigation into Medvedchuk. Last May, Medvedchuk was put under house arrest under suspicion of treason. So Zelensky took all these steps that were very aggressive, and that was something that clearly annoyed Putin greatly and in retrospect was likely one of the factors that exacerbated the situation between Ukraine and Russia.
Baker would have his readers believe that Putin woke up one morning and said it looked like a nice day to start a war. That’s not what happened.
When Zelensky closed down those TV channels just after Biden’s inauguration, he added insult to injury by tweeting at the time, “Ukraine strongly supports freedom of speech. Not propaganda financed by the aggressor country that undermines Ukraine on its way to the [European Union] and EuroAtlantic integration.” In effect, Zelensky was telling Putin their countries would not have relations, despite sharing a long history and, more importantly, many people on both sides of their border preferring a union of the two.
And then there’s the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an alliance that exists for the explicit purpose of consolidating the U.S. and Western Europe in opposition to Russia. Ukraine is one of the last two countries right on Russia’s border that isn’t a part of NATO, the expansion of which Russia has repeatedly stated is aggravating strained international relations. But after Joe Biden came into office with open arms for Ukraine, Troianovski said Zelensky “became more outspoken about wanting to join the NATO alliance.”
The timeline is clear. Biden comes into office, Zelensky feels emboldened to antagonize a much bigger and more powerful country under the belief that Ukraine will be protected by NATO (other nations’ armies and money), Russia reacts, and we end up funding Ukraine’s defense.
As for Zelensky being a “dictator,” it’s not like he outlawed political opposition, shut down places of worship that had traditional ties to Russia, forced the closure of media outlets critical of his administration, and indefinitely suspended elections to keep himself in power. Wait, let me re-check my notes. Never mind. He did do all of that in a process known in permanent Washington as “democracy and freedom.”
When people like Peter Baker claim that it’s “rewriting” history to acknowledge the truth, what they really mean is that the propaganda they prefer has been a failure.
Jesus Christ is King
