My Recent Remarks Calling for the Biden Administration to Defund the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation
The U.S. should suspend lethal military aid for the Ukrainian government until it disbands this anti-Western organization while incentivizing it to agree to peace with Russia to avert World War III
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressing members of the U.S. Congress in March 2022. The Biden administration has subordinated U.S. national security policy to the whims of the Ukrainian government ever since.
I was invited to speak at a press conference held on September 7th, calling for the Biden administration to withdraw all U.S. State Department funding for the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation which published a black list of 28 America First patriots, including myself, who voiced principled opposition to the Biden administration’s policy of unnecessarily prolonging the war in Ukraine in opposition to America’s vital national security interests. The press conference was followed by a panel discussion.
During the panel discussion, there were a couple of important speakers who had resided in Ukraine and presented evidence of Ukrainian perpetrated atrocities and small-scale war crimes which are being covered up by Western governments and Western media and even attacked as Russian disinformation. I emphasized the importance of considering this evidence to determining whether the U.S. should continue providing lethal military assistance to Ukraine. Biden has denounced Russian President Putin as a war criminal guilty of genocide. While there is evidence that a number of Russian war crimes have been committed, the UN Human Rights Commission reports only 5,600 civilian deaths in Russia’s illegal war of aggression in Ukraine during six months of fighting, suggesting Russian war crimes have been relatively small-scale. By way of comparison, the US and UK killed more civilians in three days of fighting on average during World War Two, a death rate 67 times higher.
I agreed with a number of the points made by the panelists including the increasing need for a U.S. mediated negotiated compromise peace agreement ending the war in Ukraine as well as peaceful cooperation and partnership between the U.S. and Russia. However, I strongly disagreed with the statements of a couple of the panelists stating that the formation and expansion of the Sino-Russian military alliance (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and the Sino-Russian BRICS economic bloc was a positive development and that the U.S. should consider joining it or the Chinese Belt & Road Initiative which was purposely designed to spread Chinese economic hegemony over the entire world.
Such a proposed course of action conflicts with my recent proposal to forge a US-led trade bloc to counter the Chinese bid for global economic hegemony. I stated my belief that it was important that U.S. should pursue a policy of peaceful accommodations with Russia and China in which both sides provided reciprocal concessions as part of a Reaganite policy of peace through strength. I also pointed out that while the U.S. and Russia are only adversaries because U.S. foreign policy has made us adversaries and a change in our foreign policy which serves to accommodate legitimate Russian security concerns could make us strategic partners, we need to realize that the People’s Republic of China is an adversary by virtue of their Communist regime and would be regardless of what policies the U.S. pursued.
I also strongly disagreed with a statement made claiming that Communist China was not sending the persecuted Uyghurs minority to the laogai death camps but merely trying to re-educate them to be more peaceful and raise their standard of living. While I entirely agreed with the comments of one panelist that King Charles III’s support for man-made global climate change extremism poses a great threat to the world, I did not concur with the remarks of one panelist that the British Empire, which largely disappeared by the end of the 1960’s still poses a malign influence over the world as it did when the U.S. declared independence from Britain nearly 250 years ago. I also did not agree that the Ukrainian government is a Nazi regime although it certainly has neo-Nazi elements, most notably the Biden administration armed and equipped white supremacist Azov regiment. Rather, I think it is more of an authoritarian regime which has adopted Soviet-era techniques and methods of repression including the imprisonment and assassination of political opponents, banning political opposition parties and forcing all Ukrainian TV networks to broadcast government propaganda.
Here is a summary of my remarks during the conference:
First, let me say that I believe this conference is very timely following President Biden’s recent prime time tirade denouncing 74 million America First Republicans as domestic violent extremists and fascists given that it is his own administration that has been actively pursuing fascist methods and policies. I think its important to realize that censorship, enemies lists, treating those who think differently as extremists or to claim they are Putin apologists merely for questioning the Western propaganda network regarding the Russo-Ukrainian war are things we would expect to see in a dictatorial state not in a constitutional republic like the United States of America.
Second, let me provide some background as to my current position and experience. I currently serve as Deputy Director of National Operations for the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security I am a former U.S. Army combat arms officer. I served as an International Programs Manager on the US Army HQ staff in charge of armaments cooperation with the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas from 2000-2003. I have two graduate degrees including an M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. I am currently serving as a contributor to the National Interest foreign policy journal and was a contributor to Dr. Peter Pry’s book “Blackout Warfare” as well as his upcoming book “Will America Be Protected?” which is due to be released later this year. I also serve as Editor of a newsletter entitled “The Real War” at dpyne.substack.com
Back in January I began warning in The National Interest that if the Biden administration didn’t agree to Russia’s demand to issue a written guarantee to never include Ukraine as part of NATO, then Russia would invade Ukraine following the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics in late February. I wrote articles calling for negotiating a mutual security agreement with Russia to end all disputes between Russia and NATO. After Russia invaded Ukraine I published a detailed peace proposal in early March calling for a negotiated peace ending the war. In early April, Ukrainian sources condemned my peace proposal denouncing me as a longtime paid Russian agent and an information terrorist subject to being tried as a war criminal. On June 18th, I published a 15 point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine after which I was subjected to relentless onslaught of dozens of hate mails laced with profanity denouncing me as an apologist for Russian President Vladmir Putin.
On July 29th, I was made aware that my name appeared on a black list of 31 subsequently revised down to 28 high-profile, influential U.S. policy figures published by the Biden administration funded Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, an official part of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, on July 14th, whom they accuse of “promoting narratives consonant with Russian propaganda” and classify as “information terrorists”, subject to being tried as “war criminals.” It appears that they misspelled my name or else I likely would have been notified about this when it went public on July 25th. A friend of mine told me that were I to travel to Ukraine, I likely would be assassinated.
The stated reason for my inclusion on this list was that I published a fifteen point compromise “peace without victory” plan, which I believe remains the most serious and comprehensive peace proposal to end the war in Ukraine yet published in the Western world. In my proposal, I called for Ukrainian recognition of the Russian annexation of Crimea as well as popular referendums to be held in Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts to vote on the question of independence from Ukraine in exchange for a full Russian military withdrawal from the rest of Ukraine and an end to the war. I have since learned that military strategist Edward Luttwak, whom the Ukrainian government also included on their initial black list, had proposed doing so as well.
In accordance with the terms of my proposal, if a majority of their citizens voted to remain with Ukraine, then Russia would be forced to withdraw all of its troops from Ukrainian territory and Ukraine would achieve victory in the war without any further loss of life. It is difficult for me to understand how the Government of Ukraine could possibly consider that to be promoting Russia’s propaganda narrative. In response to my peace proposal, I was subjected to an unprecedented barrage of hate mail, which in retrospect appears to have been directed by the Ukrainian government.
It is very disappointing to me that the Ukrainian government has alleged, with insufficient supporting evidence, that a number of distinguished America First patriots, elected leaders, retired military officers, national security strategists, leading foreign policy theorists, scholars and statesmen including Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, COL. Douglas Macgregor (USA Ret.) and Dr. John Mearsheimer are in any way disseminating Russian disinformation. The truth is that the only offense committed by myself and my fellow statesmen has been our unfailing determination to loudly, publicly and courageously advocate for a realist foreign policy that not only serves to champion U.S. national security interests in the face of tremendous public opposition by the mainstream liberal media establishment and liberal political elites, but a visionary and enlightened policy of peace through strength which I believe to be very much in Ukraine’s national interest as well.
Similarly, many, though not all, neoconservative Republicans in Congress, have been marching in lockstep with the Biden administration and liberal Democrats in Congress in trying to demonize principled America First conservative voices of opposition to Biden's decision to provide a blank cheque of over $56 billion soon to be nearly $70 billion in aid to Ukraine as "apologists for Putin" without any real evidence to support their claim. Biden’s undeclared proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, particularly its provision of long-range rockets to Ukraine to enable it to strike Russian targets inside Russian territory is greatly increasing the chances of Russian nuclear escalation.
The constant onslaught of Ukrainian government war propaganda and disinformation, repeated by the mainstream media as fact, has had a baneful effect on US national security policy and has brought us to the verge of an unnecessary world war with Russia. U.S. leaders fail to understand that by putting Ukrainian national security interests above our own, they are effectively putting US national security interests last given that Ukrainian government interests are entirely oppositional to our own. Ukrainian President Zelenksy’s number one foreign policy objective is to enmesh the US and NATO in a full-scale war with Russia while the number one vital US national interest is to avert a nuclear war with Russia and China. Russian leaders have threatened the use of nuclear weapons at least forty times in the past six months but US leaders are not listening bringing us ever closer to the brink of a potential nuclear apocalypse. Furthermore, even if we are able to avert a nuclear holocaust, Western sanctions on Russia are having a greater recessionary impact on Western countries than Russia itself and they are greatly exacerbating the global food crisis that could kill millions of people in the Global South.
I want to be clear in stating that I strongly support Ukraine’s right to defend itself from Russia’s continuing, illegal war of aggression. I also strongly support Ukraine’s right to maintain a robust conventional military in order to ensure its continued political and economic independence. At the same time, I refuse to turn a blind eye to the fact that, as Dr. Mearsheimer has ably articulated, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was largely provoked by the US and NATO’s unfortunate declaration in 2008, and since, that NATO will be expanded to include Ukraine as a full-member in the near future. Had the U.S. and NATO not crossed Russia’s redline to include Ukraine as a U.S. and NATO strategic partner, Ukraine would be whole and free today. Had the U.S. and NATO issued the written guarantee before the war that NATO would never be expanded to include any additional former Soviet republics, including Ukraine, Russia would not have invaded Ukraine and peace would prevail in Eastern Europe today.
While I continue to strongly support providing largescale humanitarian aid including food supplies and medical assistance along with non-lethal U.S. military aid to Ukraine, I have persistently opposed the provision of lethal military aid to Kyiv. My rationale for opposing it is that it has given Ukrainian leaders false hope that they can defeat Russia which has a population nearly four times larger, an economy 7.5 times larger and the largest nuclear arsenal in the world by far. In any case, according to a new CBS News report, only about 30 percent of the weapons the US and NATO have sent to Ukraine are actually reaching the front lines. More importantly, I have opposed continued U.S. lethal military assistance as I believe it is in opposition to US national security interests to provide it as it has caused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to refuse to negotiate a compromise peace agreement with Moscow, which both sides were close to finalizing in late March and early April before Zelensky decided to break off all peace talks with Moscow, at the cost of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and military personnel, whose lives might have otherwise been spared.
The primary purpose of my published articles on The National Interest and my numerous interviews on the subject of the war in Ukraine has been and will continue to be to articulate the best course of action from the perspective of advancing America’s paramount national security interest of ending this terrible war as swiftly as possible in order to avert an unnecessary world war with Russia that could very possibly escalate to the nuclear level without warning and lead to the destruction of the U.S., NATO and very possibly of Ukraine as well. However, I have also strived to serve as an advocate for the over forty million citizens of Ukraine and what I believe to be their best interests, not to multiply their civilian and military death toll and increase the destruction of their cities by prolonging the war unnecessarily as the Biden Administration and its neoconservative Republican supporters in Congress have done, all the while claiming to ‘support’ Ukraine.
Rather, I have sought to encourage the Biden administration to put America’s very substantial diplomatic leverage to good use by helping to mediate the best peace deal possible for Ukraine with the realization that no nation has offered or likely will offer to send troops to help defend it against Russian aggression. This daunting realization means that, no matter how much military assistance we send them, Ukraine does not have a realistic chance of liberating its territory from Russian occupation, by military means alone, but can only do so by negotiating a compromise peace agreement along the lines I have advocated in my recently published peace proposal.
It is my sincere hope that both the Ukrainian government (and the Biden administration) will join me in my continuing efforts to save as many Ukrainian lives as possible, expel Russian troops from its occupied territories and allow fourteen million Ukrainian refugees to go home so they can build the long and arduous process of rebuilding their country by returning to the negotiating table as soon as possible. Ukraine’s window for a compromise peace settlement is fast running out as the Russian government has announced its plans to conduct popular referendums, likely on September 11th, to vote on the question of re-unification with the Russian Federation with the plan being to annexing all Russian-occupied territories. Once these territories in eastern and southern Ukraine, which include approximately seventy percent of Ukraine’s Black Sea coastline, have been annexed, Russia will never agree to return them. Therefore, it is imperative that Ukraine resume negotiations without delay to finalize a peace deal ending the war with Russia by the end of August in order to help ensure its territorial integrity.
Of course, if the US were not a member of the NATO alliance, we would not be involved in providing military aid to Ukraine at all and we would realize that the US has no significant national interest in the Russo-Ukraine at all. This in turn would have enabled us to entirely avert the threat of Russian nuclear escalation against the U.S. stemming from the Biden administration’s decision to fight an undeclared proxy war against Russia there. Sadly, our failed national security strategy which has not only to served to provoke what was an easily avoidable Russian invasion of Ukraine but has served to incentivize Russia and China to ally more closely together militarily is continuing to greatly magnify rather than diminish existential threats to our great nation.
It is imperative that the Biden administration take immediate action to call for a peace conference on the basis of my peace proposal and pressure Ukrainian President Zelensky to accept these fair and reasonable peace terms ending the war. Once peace has been achieved, the U.S. should phase out economic sanctions against Russia, sign a Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) II Agreement with Russia that would mandate the withdrawal of western NATO and Russian forces from eastern Europe and effectively restore the pre-2016 status quo in Europe. I believe such an agreement would go far to assuage Russian security concerns and help to effectively neutralize Russia’s military alliance with the People’s Republic of China. It would also discourage Moscow from joining the PRC in its planned offensive to forcibly reunite with Taiwan, greatly reduce the chances of nuclear war with Russia and perhaps cause Chinese President Xi Jinping to be more risk averse in provoking a potential Third World War with the United States given uncertainly whether Russia would join the fight.
Meanwhile, the truth about Ukraine’s corrupt, autocratic leader is finally coming out in the mainstream media. In light of this new report, President Biden should make future U.S. aid to Ukraine conditional upon Zelensky being replaced as President by a Ukrainian leader who is far less corrupt and dictatorial. On August 11th, the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation removed its disgraceful black list of American citizens and citizens of other Western countries, which have been providing it with military aid to help it fight Russia, from its website, following a barrage of negative media reports in the countries it targeted. I would like to thank EIR for helping to make that happen.
My Latest Radio Interview
Finally, here is a recording of a lively two-hour radio interview I did on September 12th on the "We Are the People" radio show, hosted by former congressional candidate Jason Preston. I joined Utah EMP Task Force Director Bob McEntee in warning of the increasing nuclear and Electromagnetic (EMP) threats from Russia and China, why we may be on the verge of World War III with the Sino-Russian alliance and what steps U.S. leaders need to take to avert it.
© David T. Pyne 2022
David T. Pyne, Esq. is a former U.S. Army combat arms and Headquarters staff officer, who was in charge of armaments cooperation with the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas from 2000-2003, with an M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He also serves as the Editor of “The Real War” newsletter at dpyne.substack.com. He may be reached at emptaskforce.ut@gmail.com.