Massive Ukrainian drone strike shuts Moscow airports: WION interview

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Massive Ukrainian drone strike shuts Moscow airports: WION interview

Being in the press pool of any given broadcaster is not something you can take for granted. For a time in the spring, I was a regular on India’s premier English language global broadcaster WION. At one point a 10 minute interview with them attracted half a million views. That is what can occur when the broadcaster has nearly 10 million subscribers.

But not long afterward I disappeared from the WION radar for inexplicable reasons. Now it appears my flavor of commentary has returned in good grace and today was my second time on air with them in less than a week. So we go with the flow, holding only one thing dear: to try one’s best to make sense out of the cacophony of news and disinformation that is hitting us from all sides.

The subject of our talk was originally going to be the news that Belarus president Lukashenko is planning to nominate Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize if he manages to put an end to the Ukraine-Russia war. That surely is a better reason for awarding the Nobel to an American president than Barack Obama’s receiving it at the start of his presidency for …not being George Bush Jr.

However, Ukrainian’s latest massive drone strike on Moscow which caused authorities to temporarily suspend operations at the two main airports of the capital, Domodedovo and Sheremet’evo upstaged Mr Lukashenko and we went with that. This gave me an opportunity to present to an audience mainly in the Global South my argument that how the war ends will not be decided by those who backed the losing side but rather by those who are the winning side.

See minute 3 and following in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Oys30WxHTE

That being said, I nonetheless take some pleasure in reading Donald Trump’s flat statement today that neither Mike Pompeo nor Nikki Haley will be offered positions in his administration. This announcement appears to confirm the observations of Larry Johnson among others that Pompeo and a few other back-stabbers from Trump’s first term were themselves behind the rumors that they were in talks for jobs, rumors that were happily picked up and disseminated by the Neocon-disposed mainstream media. For those who are skeptical about the term, yes, there is such a thing as ‘disinformation.’

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Massiver Drohnenangriff der Ukraine legt Moskauer Flughäfen lahm: WION-Interview

Es ist nicht selbstverständlich, zum Pressepool eines Senders zu gehören. Im Frühjahr war ich eine Zeit lang regelmäßig bei WION, Indiens führendem englischsprachigen globalen Sender, zu Gast. Einmal erreichte ein zehnminütiges Interview mit mir eine halbe Million Aufrufe. Das kann passieren, wenn der Sender fast zehn Millionen Abonnenten hat.

Aber nicht lange danach verschwand ich aus unerklärlichen Gründen vom WION-Radar. Jetzt scheint meine Art von Kommentaren wieder willkommen zu sein, und heute war ich zum zweiten Mal in weniger als einer Woche bei ihnen auf Sendung. Wir schwimmen also mit dem Strom und halten nur eines für wichtig: sein Bestes zu geben, um aus der Kakophonie von Nachrichten und Desinformation, die uns von allen Seiten trifft, schlau zu werden.

Das Thema unseres Gesprächs sollte ursprünglich die Nachricht sein, dass der belarussische Präsident Lukaschenko plant, Donald Trump für den Friedensnobelpreis zu nominieren, wenn es ihm gelingt, den Krieg zwischen der Ukraine und Russland zu beenden. Das ist sicherlich ein besserer Grund für die Verleihung des Nobelpreises an einen amerikanischen Präsidenten als Barack Obamas Erhalt des Preises zu Beginn seiner Präsidentschaft dafür, dass er nicht George Bush Jr. ist.

Der jüngste massive Drohnenangriff der Ukraine auf Moskau, der die Behörden dazu veranlasste, den Betrieb an den beiden wichtigsten Flughäfen der Hauptstadt, Domodedowo und Scheremetjewo, vorübergehend einzustellen, stellte Herrn Lukaschenko jedoch in den Schatten, und wir machten uns das zunutze. Dies gab mir die Gelegenheit, einem Publikum, das hauptsächlich aus dem globalen Süden stammt, mein Argument vorzutragen, dass das Ende des Krieges nicht von denen entschieden wird, die die Verliererseite unterstützt haben, sondern von denen, die auf der Gewinnerseite stehen.

Siehe ab Minute 3 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Oys30WxHTE

Davon abgesehen bereitet es mir dennoch ein gewisses Vergnügen, Donald Trumps heutige Aussage zu lesen, dass weder Mike Pompeo noch Nikki Haley Positionen in seiner Regierung angeboten werden. Diese Ankündigung scheint die Beobachtungen von Larry Johnson und anderen zu bestätigen, dass Pompeo und einige andere Verräter aus Trumps erster Amtszeit selbst hinter den Gerüchten steckten, dass sie in Gesprächen über Jobs waren, Gerüchte, die von den neokonservativen Mainstream-Medien gerne aufgegriffen und verbreitet wurden. Für diejenigen, die der Amtszeit skeptisch gegenüberstehen: Ja, es gibt so etwas wie „Desinformation“.

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Published by gilbertdoctorow

Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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2 thoughts on “Massive Ukrainian drone strike shuts Moscow airports: WION interview”

  1. Very good interview. I’ve been trying to hit some of those same points in the last two entries in my little blog. Glad WION gave you the opportunity to reach a wide audience.

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  2. No matter what Trump does, he will have to deal with the shrieking of the Neocons. The NYT will fire both barrels. There will be calls for impeachment. But all that has to happen is for Elon Musk to say it was the right thing, Elon Musk being the Neocon’s kryptonite. Right now the goal is to get Zelensky to take the fall. There too, Musk can be of help. Zelensky is for sale. And the richest man in the world can buy a hundred of him. Stay tuned. Oh, and it helps that Trump is pissed off. He’s tired of being looked down on by the Neocons.

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