Prominent American Names Added to Ukrainian Kill List
Pressure Mounts to Shut Down “Mirotvorets” Database
The now-infamous Ukrainian kill list known as Mirotvorets (“Peacekeeper”) has added a number of prominent American names, prompting an international press conference which was held on Wednesday.
The press conference, which was hosted online by Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) Magazine yesterday, concerned two key reports just released by EIR’s investigative team: KIEV’S ‘INFO TERRORIST’ LIST ‘Global NATO’ Orders, and Ukraine’s Deathlist Database: myrotvorets.center.
You can watch the entire press conference here:
The main speakers included Scott Ritter, Ray McGovern, former Senator Col. Richard Black (retired), Diane Sare, candidate for US Senate, and several other prominent individuals targeted by Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, who are demanding Congressional action to stop US funding of the hitlist.
The EIR report states: “Rapid, decisive international action is required to force the closure of the Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), which operates under and answers to Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. A blacklist issued by the CCD July 14, 2022, naming more than 70 leading journalists, academics, politicians, military, and other professionals from 22 countries, as ‘Kremlin propagandists,’ is a hitlist, posing a grave threat to the personal security of those named therein.”
The EIR further states that it has confirmed at least five of those fingered by the CCD are included in the list of “criminals to be eliminated” published by the fascist Mirotvorets gang in Ukraine: “Schiller Institute founder and leader Helga Zepp-LaRouche; Schiller Institute spokesman Harley Schlanger; former CIA officer and active anti-war activist Ray McGovern, the co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), who has participated in Schiller Institute conferences; former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter; and former U.S. Congresswoman and Democratic presidential pre-candidate Tulsi Gabbard. The Myrotvorets list is reported to have accumulated nearly 200,000 names since it was started in 2014 and, given the difficulties in using its search engine, others from the CCD blacklist may also be on the Myrotvorets hitlist.”
Col. Black, who was wounded in Vietnam, served a total of 32 years in uniform first as a pilot for the US Marine Corps and later as an attorney for the US Army. He believes that he was added to the list because he publicly stated that he was against the wars the US is involved in abroad, including the war in Ukraine where the US is funding and supporting neo-Nazi groups such as Azov Battalion, Right Sector and Svoboda “(Freedom”).
“I believe that the US, UK and the European Union have embarked on an imprudent course of action that carries a significant risk of eventually triggering an all-out nuclear war,” the former Senator said. He added that the Department of Homeland Security recently failed to establish a center for countering disinformation in the US because of public outrage following a presentation by Nina Jankowicz whom DHS had chosen to head up the new agency.
“Her presentation to the public was so bizarre,” Col. Black said, “that Americans simply recoiled at the idea of someone like her censoring their thoughts and expressions. So, the US Center for Disinformation, run by DHS, has temporarily been blocked because of its potential for violating Americans’ First Amendment freedoms.”
However, Col. Black said, DHS did not limit their efforts to censor ‘disinformation’ to the US. It exported them to Ukraine. And Nina Jankowicz, as it turns out, speaks fluent Ukrainian and has been deeply involved in the activities of the Ukrainian government in the months leading up to Russia’s military intervention.
“It is difficult to imagine that she is not really up to her knees in the information suppression efforts of Ukraine,” the Colonel said, adding that the funding for Ukraine’s CCD was approved by the US Congress under HR7691, known as the “Additional Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2022.”
Many of the people targeted by the CCD and Mirotvorets, including Senator Rand Paul and former Representative Tulsi Gabbard (HI), are patriotic American citizens who are also well-informed on US foreign policy, according to the Colonel. “It’s the intention of the Department of Homeland Security and the Ukrainian Center for Disinformation to silence us,” he said.
There is a movement within some American and Ukrainian agencies, such as DHS, to list what they call “info terrorism” as a crime. In other words, if you have any opinions which are contrary to official narratives, you would be considered a “terrorist” and therefore subject to the same laws as actual terrorists who hijack airplanes, plant bombs at marathons or blow up buildings. Your words and thoughts could get you tortured or even executed if this Orwellian plan is put into action, because you would literally be considered a “terrorist” just for not subscribing to the approved and sanctioned groupthink.
“It’s unlawful for a US agency to fund a foreign agency in order to censor American citizens,” Col. Black said. “It’s unlawful for the agency to do it here. It’s unlawful for them to fund and to pay off another country to do it over there.”
Some people targeted by the Ukrainian CCD, whose personal information has been made public on the Mirotvorets database, have already been killed, then referred to as “liquidated” on the website. One of the latest victims was Daria Dugina, a Russian journalist, who was killed in a car bomb explosion in Moscow. Russian investigators believe that the bomb was remotely detonated by an undercover Ukrainian operative, who rented a room in the building where Daria was living and surveilled her from there.
“And they [Mirotvorets] have included hundreds of children,” Col. Black said. Children whose “crime” was posting pro-Russian sentiments on social media, thus making them “info terrorists” in Ukraine.
According to the Rio Times, an assassination attempt on the vice president of Argentina can be connected to her doxxing on Mirotvorets, after she refused to harshly condemn Russia’s “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine and because she called for peace talks between the two nations.
Former USMC Intelligence Officer Scott Ritter served as the Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq until his resignation in 1998, when he began speaking out against US foreign policy.
“I’m as patriotic as it gets,” Ritter said. “Challenge my patriotism, you challenge me personally.”
Ritter said that he was heavily criticized by the US government, media and “just about everyone” for daring to question the official narrative about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. “I was called Saddam’s shill,” Ritter said. “I was called much worse than that. And yet, my voice was never silenced. And I am proud of the fact that I not only continued to speak out, but more importantly, I think, history has shown that everything I said was correct.”
Ritter believes that if more people had listened to what he had to say sooner, the war in Iraq might have been averted, sparing millions of Iraqis who were killed or displaced as well as the lives of thousands of American servicemen who died there and tens of thousands more who were wounded. But he also says that airing such contrarian opinions today, under Ukraine’s “info terrorism” policies, would not just get him criticized, but killed.
“There is an absolute chilling effect of being called a ‘Russian propagandist,’” Ritter said. “Now, it’s curious. What constitutes being a Russian Propagandist? According to the Ukrainians, it includes things such as stating there were NATO bases on Ukrainian soil involved in the training of Ukrainian forces, for the employment against the separatists in the Donbass. A factually correct statement, but somehow, by uttering this, this makes me an ‘information terrorist.’”
Ritter says he is also considered a “terrorist” for providing a forensic analysis of the mass murder in Bucha, which he believes was committed by Ukrainian, not Russian, forces. Even simply pointing out that the conflict in Ukraine has become a proxy war pitting the US and NATO against Russia, earns him the “information terrorist” moniker.
“The chilling impact of being called a ‘Russian propagandist’ is real,” Ritter stated, adding that two US-based publications, which had frequently published his writing in the past, will no longer publish him because of that label. “They can’t be affiliated with a ‘Russian propagandist.’”
Ritter says his criticism of NATO and his opposition to its proxy confrontation with Russia and the “sanctions war” it entered into with Russia, is what earned him the dubious title. He predicted that sanctions would boomerang back and harm western economies far more than Russia’s. A prediction which appears to be coming true, given the dire situation of many European countries reliant upon Russian gas to provide them with heat in the coming winter months.
Several more prominent individuals mirrored Ritter’s outrage at American support of Ukraine’s CCD, including Diane Sare, a New York candidate for the US Senate, who is running for Chuck Schumer’s seat.
“One has to ask if this is some roundabout way of seeking to suppress my candidacy and to silence any debate over the policy of arming and supporting a fascist regime in Ukraine for the purpose of having a war with Russia,” Sare stated. “I’d like to remind people that the Ukrainian government has banned 13 opposition parties, shut down Russian-language reporting, outlawed collective bargaining for the majority of their trade unions and just recently announced that if you voted for a referendum in a Russian-controlled territory, that you can face up to 12 years in prison.”
Sare added that the Canadian Embassy in Kiev also expressed interest in the silencing of so-called “Russian propagandists” and referred to them as a threat against “freedom of thought.”
“It seems that if you believe that it was a good thing that we defeated Adolf Hitler 77 years ago, that you probably are a victim of Russian brainwashing,” Sare said, “and, as we see, if you don’t reform your opinion on that matter, you will have to be liquidated.”
On March 28, the Ukrainian CCD posted a document defining “information terrorism” as a “crime against humanity.”
“How can asserting an idea be a crime?” Sare asked. “Presumably, if I were to assert something which is false, there is a remedy, which is: Prove that I’m wrong. Tell the truth. If I say 3 plus 6 is 17, someone can demonstrate that that is not true and that is not correct. Therefore, it is an absurdity to equate saying something which is not true to terrorism.”
“However,” she added, “if you are going to impose a lie, then you have to resort to brute force and terror to make it stick because you have to ensure that anybody who would think otherwise is silenced.”
You can therefore surmise that since it’s Ukraine using brute force and intimidation via its Mirotvorets database, that it’s patently obvious who is telling the lie and who is telling the truth.
“So, I do have to say that I find it rather astounding that 77 years after the Nazis were defeated in Europe, that we have such a situation where somehow people don’t think there’s anything wrong with Nazism anymore,” Sare continued, “where we have assassins like the fellow who killed 10 people in Buffalo, wearing the Black Sun, a logo that the Azov Battalion shares. A Nazi logo.”
Indeed, one wonders why Vogue magazine published articles praising Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator and mass murderer. But that is exactly where we are now. Fascism, it seems, is the new fashion. We can only hope that more public attention to the Mirotvorets kill list and other terrifying Nazi activities will end this bizarre fascination with fascism.
Public awareness about the kill list is already making some of its supporters sweat. My recent article about Roger Waters’ inclusion in the list, which was picked up by several publications including Monthly Review Online, was read by none other than Eliot Higgins, the head of Bellingcat, who was not very happy to be exposed as a supporter of Mirotvorets.
You can see Higgins’ verbal diarrhea all over his Twitter feed for yourself, but personally, methinks the lady doth protest too much. Though I am rather flattered that he mistook me for George Eliason, who writes for Consortium News.
One can imagine that the American names just removed from at least some portions of the site will quietly resurface when all the clamoring stops, if the entire site is not shut down permanently. This is why so many outraged people are now hell-bent on the complete removal of the site.
Among those most outraged is Mira Terada, spokesperson for the Foundation to Battle Injustice, a Russian human rights organization which has been investigating Mirotvorets for years. Terada’s name is also on the kill list.
“I would like to mention that Mr. Higgins’ verbal incontinence on Twitter is the result of fear and panic,” Terada wrote today. “Many Russian investigative reporters, including recently killed Daria Dugina, began to find extremely successful evidence of the criminal activities of BellingCat and bring this group of international provocateurs to the surface. It remains to be hoped that sooner or later Eliot Higgins will come to his senses and show prudence, stop supporting nationalists and executioners and stand on the side of truth.”
Terada yesterday spoke at another press conference hosted by Russia Today in Moscow, in which multiple journalists who have been named by the CCD and doxxed on the hitlist were present and gave statements. You can read about that here.
Curiously, the Foundation to Battle Injustice, which also highlights abuse of minorities by police and prisons around the world, is banned from many social media sites. I cannot even post a link to it on Facebook.
But Mirotvorets, a kill list, which is still publicizing the personal information of thousands of people including activists, journalists and even children, is easily accessible to anyone and you can even donate to the site with the click of a button.
What can we do? Well, if you live in the US, Canada or the EU, you can write to your representatives or call upon your government to stop supporting the website with your tax dollars. It may not seem like much, but a trickle can turn into a downpour very quickly, if enough people get involved.
And right now, a storm is desperately needed.
About the author:
Deborah Armstrong currently writes about geopolitics with an emphasis on Russia. She previously worked in local TV news in the United States where she won two regional Emmy Awards. In the early 1990’s, Deborah lived in the Soviet Union during its final days and worked as a television consultant at Leningrad Television.
