Dutch journalist in Ukraine says Western media regularly lie about what is happening on the ground
By jdheyes // 2022-04-26
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A Dutch journalist who has been covering Russia's invasion of Ukraine says the Western media is routinely lying about what is actually taking place in the war-torn country in an effort to maintain a "blame Moscow" narrative. As reported by News Punch, Sonja van den Ende, an independent journalist from Rotterdam, Netherlands, said the Western media "lie continuously about everything just to implement their own agenda." Van den Ende is not reporting from the comfort of a safe studio somewhere in a Western capital, but rather, she is on the ground in Ukraine and has witnessed the invasion and its atrocities on both sides for weeks, noting that at present, there are "only a handful" of Western journalists in the hotspot of Donbas. As such, Western press outlets are simply "rubber-stamping fake news" just as they did during the Iraq, Syria, and Afghan wars. News Punch adds: Disillusioned with mainstream media lies, Van den Ende traveled to the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and became an embedded reporter with the Russian army to see what is really happening in Ukraine. The sound of shelling and explosion no longer frightens her. Seven years ago, van den Ende worked in Syria, months before the Russians stepped in at the request of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and destroyed ISIS, changing the tide of the civil war. She says the parallels between the Western mainstream media coverage of the Syrian and the Ukrainian conflicts are striking. "They lie continuously about everything just to implement their own agenda,” she said. “Like in Syria, President Assad was ‘the murderer’ and now President Putin is ‘the butcher.’ They had used this script for many years in Iraq, Venezuela and [other] countries which don’t comply with their agenda; they need a 'bad 'guy.' But they (media) are not even there on the ground, they can’t judge. Only a handful of journalists from the West are here: Graham Philips, Patrick Lancaster, Anne-Laure Bonnel and me.” There are other parallels in Ukraine to previous conflicts. She points to "false flag" operations and fake reports coming out of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, including the now-famous Snake Island hoax, Russia's alleged attack on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), and the now-exposed false story about Russia's "strike" on a Mariupol hospital. Other claims have been refuted as well. Van den Ende went on to say that false Ukrainian claims, which are repeated verbatim by Western media spreading disinformation, are like previous false flags by jihadists in Syria and the White Helmet’s staged attacks using chemical weapons -- attacks that were blamed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Dutch journalist also recounted the alleged chemical provocation in Khan Sheikhum, in Idlib, on April 4, 2017, later proven to be false by investigative reporters including Seymour Hersh, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. “The same happened in Bucha,” says van den Ende. “Many witnesses are saying that the Russian army left on 30 March. Even the Ukrainian military who came in on 1 April didn’t report about corpses on the streets. This happened on 3 April, according to the Western media. Also, evidence is saying the bodies had white armbands, the sign of the Russian army, the soldiers wear them. So the soldiers are killing the Russian Ukrainians? No way.” The journalist also said she has spoken with many Ukrainian civilians during her travels across the Donbas region, noting that nearly everyone she has encountered has condemned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's government for prohibiting the Russian language, which deprived them of basic cultural and domestic rights. “The majority of the people whom I spoke with were very happy that the [Russian special] operation has started,” van den Ende said. “Of course, nobody wants violence and war, but they have been suffering already eight years from the war, carnage and destruction by the Ukrainian forces. The worst were the Nazi battalions, who were fighting along with the regular army.” That our media and outlets throughout the West have sided with Ukraine against Russia should be no surprise given their level of dishonesty during Trump's administration. Sources include: NewsPunch.com NationalSecurity.news
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