Armstrong Economics Blog/War Re-Posted Nov 22, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Sir, Discussing Ukraine with a friend, I brought up the Belgrade Agreement of 1991. Searching the internet I found one article besides your blog spot that references it. I couldn’t find it. Do you have a copy? Censorship at its finest.

Keep up the good work.

DK

ANSWER: That is really unbelievable. The agreement was reached in 1994 following the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Al Gore was quoted by the Guardian on December 18, 1993: “Ukraine is deceiving us all” and that its nuclear policies were “evil.” As the Guardian reported that the Ukrainian “government and its parliament are already in NATO’s bad books for refusing to make good their promise to abandon nuclear weapons.” It was Ukraine that was threatening the entirety of Eastern Europe for their hatred of Russians dating back to ethnic cleansing from the Nazi era was alive and well. You absolutely cannot trust anything Ukraine would ever agree to. I have warned that when shaking hands with Ukraine, you better forget counting your fingers; you need to make sure you still have your arm. Even the IMF has said that Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe. NOTHING they say can be trusted.

There was a very real deep fear that Ukraine would not only make sure that the cold war would continue, but they also were highly radical and would use nuclear weapons to claim Russia fired first. Ukraine is a country that is not trusted by its neighbors. It is absurd propaganda that they are fighting for Democracy by refusing to allow the Donbas to vote when they absolutely hate the people there. But the West refuses to protect the Donbas also because they are simply Russians. This one-sided view of human rights allows Ukraine to propel the entire world toward World War III.

Every document you look at and the press pre-2022 cast Ukraine as a dangerous country dominated by corruption and engulfed still in this view of ethnic cleansing from the days of Hitler. Because the CIA protected the Ukrainians, they have never been held accountable, and they are now propelling the world into war.

But Adalaide University just published a study on how Ukraine has been using BOTS to manipulate the world’s opinion to support Ukraine and the destruction of Russia. Ukraine has always been disliked by its neighbors because of its support for Hitler. They have long been considered radicals and linked to the Nazis all because Hitler promised to allow them to create their own country.

Ukraine was NEVER a country before the USSR. They were more like the Kurds in Iraq. The borders they are fighting for were merely drawn for administrative purposes by the USSR. They were the ones who pushed for the collapse of the USSR, and they were the ones who immediately began forming an army of 400,000 that scared the hell out of all their neighbors.

By 1992, they were fighting to take over the Russian fleet. Even Dick Cheney was deeply concerned because Ukraine was irresponsible, and their hatred of Russians from the Nazi days surged to the surface. They had more nuclear weapons than China at the time.

James Baker went to negotiate and argued that Ukraine should surrender its nuclear weapons. There were never trusted. Just like the Serbs in Bosnia, the hatred ran very deep. Ukraine took the position that it would only surrender its nuclear weapons if Russia did. Their arguments were simply colored with Russian hatred. They instantly formed an army after 1991, and the Belgrade Agreement was finally reached in 1994, where they agreed to surrender their weapons and remain neutral, with NATO vowing not to invade, and Russia took the same position. Only then did Ukraine agree to surrender its nukes, for they realized that NATO did not trust them and would regard Ukraine as a terrorist state hostile to Europe.

Ukraine then argued it would cost too much to surrender all its nukes. They were the third-largest nuclear power in the world. They then demanded all sorts of guarantees, which they have violated today, but they also extorted money from the United States to disarm their nukes. To cement the deal, Bill Clinton paid Ukraine $175 million to return the nukes to Russia, and Russia, in return, provided the nuclear power rods for Ukraine. Of course, FAKE NEWS seems to be repainting history with the current color of fashion.

The Ukrainian Civil War was started by the UNELECTED government installed by the US & NATO. They immediately sent an army to attack the Russians in the Donbas. They called it an “anti-terrorist operation,” all to pretend they wore white hats. The Ukrainian people did NOT vote for this war. This was instigated by the West. I warned from the outset that our computer back in 2013 pinpointed Ukraine as the place where World War III would begin. It is now being driven to destroy Russia for climate change. This is NOT my personal opinion. Sorry, I wish it were. Then I could be wrong like any person. But this is the computer projecting, and it has been dispassionate.

For the Ukrainians who cheer war, I remind you of the story of Croesus, king of Lydia. He asked the Oracle at Delphi if he would win if he waged war upon Persia. The Oracle replied, “A great empire will be destroyed.” He took that as his victory. He lost, and the collapse of the great empire was his. Ah, how stupidity causes history to repeat. Ukraine will be utterly destroyed. Their view of a nation-state will be but a fleeting moment of greatness. They are destroying all the lives of their own people simply because of their hatred of Russians and their quest for ethnic cleansing. Everyone supporting Ukraine in this hatred will suffer the same fate. Post-2032, we will get to redesign our government from the ground up. Nothing will remain standing like the fallen statutes of Egypt and Rome. Our time will come.

Zelensky was elected on a promise to end corruption, yet, he has stashed more money offshore than any former leader in Ukraine. He promised to end the civil war and seek peace with Russia. He lied to gain power and has done exactly the opposite. This guy puts money before his own country while hiding it offshore, as the Pandora Papers confirm, and refuses to negotiate or honor the Minsk Agreement because fools would stop sending money to his government, and the well would quickly dry up.

The day before Putin came to defend the Donbas, Zelensky stood up and said he would seek to reestablish nuclear weapons. That ended Ukraine’s 1994 agreement to remain neutral. This was like 1962 when Russia put nukes in Cuba.

The people who never question anything about Ukraine are the same people who believed COVID was like the black plague and you would die without a vaccine and a mask. People are so easily manipulated. Unfortunately, if they were not, how would you get people lining up to fight and die on a battlefield when the very BEST they could ever hope for is to return unharmed to a family who is still there?

Bots manipulate public opinion in Russia-Ukraine conflict

 Posted on Sep 8 2022 by Lee Gaskin

Researchers from the University of Adelaide have found bots have had a major online presence during the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The researchers analyzed 5,203,764 tweets, retweets, quote tweets, and replies posted to Twitter between February 23, 2022, and March 8, 2022, containing the hashtags
#(I)StandWithPutin, #(I)StandWithRussia, #(I)SupportRussia, #(I)StandWithUkraine, #(I)StandWithZelenskyy and #(I)SupportUkraine.

“We found that between 60 and 80 per cent of tweets using the hashtags we studied came from bot accounts during the first two weeks of the war,” said co-lead researcher Joshua Watt, an MPhil candidate in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Adelaide’s School of Mathematical Sciences. “This drove more angst in the online discourse and even impacted discussions surrounding people’s decision to flee or stay in Ukraine.”

“We observed increases in words such as ‘shame,’ ‘terrorist,’ ‘threat,’ and ‘panic.’ Pro-Russian human accounts were having the largest influence on discussions of the war – particularly on accounts which were pro-Ukraine. To our knowledge, this is the first body of published work which addresses online influence operations in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.”

“In the past, wars have been primarily fought physically, with armies, air force and navy operations being the primary forms of combat. However, social media has created a new environment where public opinion can be manipulated at a very large scale.”Co-lead researcher Joshua Watt, MPhil candidate in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Adelaide’s School of Mathematical Sciences.

Fellow co-lead researcher, Bridget Smart, a Masters student in Applied Mathematics and Statistics, added: “Our research identifies that this is happening during the Russia-Ukraine war and provides a statistical framework which quantifies the extent to which this is happening. This work extends and combines existing techniques to quantify how bots are influencing people in the online conversation around the Russia-Ukraine invasion. It opens up avenues for researchers to understand quantitatively how these malicious campaigns operate, and what makes them impactful. This research has identified that social media organisations may need to be better equipped for detecting and handling the use of bots on their networks. It has identified that governments may need to have stricter policies on social media organisations, and that social media can be a vital tool during conflict.”

The paper titled “#IStandWithPutin versus #IStandWithUkraine: The interaction of bots and humans in discussion of the Russia/Ukraine war”  has been published in arXiv and will be presented at The International Conference on Social Informatics in Glasgow from 19-21 October.