Pink Floyd Star Declared “Enemy of Ukraine”
I have written about the Ukrainian hit list known as Mirotvorets, or “Peacekeeper,” twice before. The first time was in an article about internet censorship, and the second time was when a 13-year-old Ukrainian girl, Faina Savenkova, was added to the list for publicly speaking out against Kyiv’s bloody war on Russian-speaking civilians in the eastern part of Ukraine, a region known as the Donbas.
Myrotvorets is a database which lists thousands of journalists, activists, and anyone else who is declared an “Enemy of Ukraine.” Their personal information is published, such as the addresses of their homes, phone numbers and bank account numbers; anything that can help them be easily located. When the people on this list are murdered, like Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli was, the word ЛИКВИДИРОВАН, “LIQUIDATED,” written in Ukrainian, is stamped across their picture in big red letters.
And, as of today, Darya Dugina, who was killed in a car bomb explosion in Moscow on Saturday, appears as “liquidated” on the website, adding more credibility to Russia’s assertion that she was assassinated by a Ukrainian nationalist who rented an apartment in the building where Darya lived in order to surveil her prior to her killing. It is believed that she was killed because her father, Alexander Dugin, was referred to as “Putin’s brain” and “Putin’s spiritual guide” in Western media, though these claims are really just more speculation.
It seems that almost anyone can be added to this kill list. Even Henry Kissinger’s name is on the list despite his long history of Russophobia. But since he dared to air his concerns about how the U.S. is teetering toward war with Russia and China, Kissinger, who once suggested dropping nuclear bombs on Moscow, is now declared an “Enemy of Ukraine.”
Really, so many people have been added to this list that it has now become a badge of honor among those opposed to Ukraine’s regime, when they are included on the Myrotvorets site.
Why this site is allowed to operate is a good question. But you can access it easily, and even donate money to help the “cause,” if you are sympathetic to Nazis and think that assassinating people for their opinions is a wholesome way to support Ukraine.
Here is Roger Waters’ profile:
The co-founder of Pink Floyd is known for his support of imprisoned WikiLeaks creator Julian Assange, and for his opposition to imperialism and war, as well as for his awesome music, loved by millions around the world.
Waters recently referred on CNN to Joe Biden as a “war criminal” and said that Biden is “fueling the fire in Ukraine.”
“This war,” the musician stated, “is basically about the action and reaction of NATO pushing right up to the Russian border, which they promised they wouldn’t do when [Mikhail] Gorbachev negotiated the withdrawal of the USSR from the whole of Eastern Europe.”
Waters also said that Crimea belongs to Russia, because the majority of people living on the peninsula are Russian.
The rock star’s views have outraged the pro-NATO crowd and their Nazi friends, as well as the social justice warriors who froth at the mouth in support of whatever the mainstream media declare to be the “current thing.” Waters, who has always been something of a dissident and anti-war, the way all rock stars used to be when rock and roll was still real, is attacked mercilessly by the “woke” crowd, who are intolerant of all who are not in lockstep with their views.
Social justice warriors to the rescue! Roger Waters is smeared for his dissident views. An investigation by the Russian Foundation to Battle Injustice reveals the names of the individuals, corporations and government entities which are believed to be the “organizers, sponsors and curators of the Ukrainian nationalist website.” While Myrotvorets is easily accessible to anyone who likes that sort of thing, this Russian human rights organization is blocked on major social media platforms like Facebook.
Investigators say that the hit list, which was created in 2014, is supervised by the public organization “Myrotvorets Center,” which is headed by Roman Zaitsev, a former employee of Ukrainian Special Services, and by the public organization, “People’s Rear,” headed by George Tuka, a Ukrainian politician. The site is also controlled by the Security Service of Ukraine and was created on the initiative of Anton Gerashchenko, the adviser to Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs. Gerashchenko faces charges of terrorism in the Russian Federation for his creation of the hit list.
In its early days, Myrotvorets published the names of so-called “Russian separatists” (residents of eastern Ukraine) who opposed the Maidan coup and believed it was economically unwise to break off relations with Russia. But later on, the site began publishing the personal data of public figures, journalists, activists and even children.
Myrotvorets became infamous following the murders of two Ukrainian public figures in 2015, whose private information was published on the website. Oles Buzina, a 45-year-old writer and journalist, and Oleg Kalashnikov, a 52-year-old deputy of the Ukrainian parliament, were killed just a few days after the publication of their home addresses.
In May 2016, Myrotvorets publicized the personal data of more than 4,500 journalists and media representatives from around the world who had received permission to work in the territory of Donbas. Investigators say that Myrotvorets’ administrators hacked the database of the Ministry of State Security of the Donetsk People’s Republic and gathered the phone numbers, email addresses and home addresses of foreign journalists whom Myrotvorets accuses of “collaborating with terrorists” because they are covering the war from territories not under Ukrainian control.
The journalists began receiving threatening phone calls and emails and experienced an increase in cyber-bullying and harassment on social networks. The government of Ukraine issued a statement that it had found no violations of the law in Myrotvorets’ actions, even though the human rights organization, “Committee to Protect Journalists,” condemned the site’s doxing of thousands of journalists working in eastern Ukraine.
The U.S. State Department confirmed that the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs was connected to the website, and acknowledged the publication of the journalists’ personal data, but the U.S. government has taken no action to block the website, although many Russian websites and alternative news media have been blocked by social media giants for publishing information about the war in Ukraine which does not line up with official narratives.
What’s more, there are companies in the U.S. which cooperate with Mirotvorets and provide the website with information.
An analysis of the site’s network protocol by the Foundation to Battle Injustice found that the database uses the technological services of a company in California. And, if you look at the main page of Myrotvorets, you will see the address “Langley, the CIA headquarters in Virginia.” There are posts on the site from accounts that have names of Western intelligence agencies: CIA, FBI, NATO, MI5, NSA.
Andrew Weisburd, an American intelligence analyst, publicly announced his cooperation with the Ukrainian government in January 2015, around the time when Myrotvorets began publishing the personal data of journalists. Weisburd stated, “I’m just trying to do my part to help make bad things happen to bad people who are in the service of the Kremlin. And for the record, I’m not an army of one. I’m more like a one-man intelligence service.”
According to George Eliason, an investigative journalist who has been living in the Donbas for several years and writes for Consortium News, Joel Harding is another American who was involved with the creation of Myrotvorets. Harding is a self-proclaimed “information operations expert” who says he is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer and that he was a senior adviser at NATO. Harding developed a cyber-support strategy to oust Russian media from the Ukrainian information field and, according to Eliason, he wanted to control what news and information Ukrainians have access to on social networks, the internet and television.
According to Eliason and confirmed by a number of Foundation sources, the head of Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins, trained Ukrainians to find people on social media and add their data to Mirotvorets. Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based international investigative and research contractor, gets financial support from non-profit organizations and individuals associated with British and American intelligence, according to a number of independent investigations. Higgins, a citizen of the UK, served as a senior researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.
The Foundation to Battle Injustice says it has evidence that a Bellingcat “operator,” Aric Toler, has personally trained Ukrainian nationalists to search for people’s personal information and enter it into the Myrotvorets database.
Foundation investigators also say they have sources and evidence connecting a group of cyber-activists known as “Ukrainian Cyberalyans” to Myrotvorets, and the group is accused of participating in attacks on Russian government and news websites, including the Russian Ministry of Defense, as far back as 2016. The intelligence data gathered from hacking those websites was reportedly handed to Ukrainian police and special services. Investigators believe that the “Cyberalyans” worked under the leadership of Dmytro Zolotukhin, a Ukrainian media expert.
A group of programmers, which the Foundation says was involved in the creation of Mirotvorets, has been collecting regular donations to bolster Ukraine’s participation in the “information war” since 2020. Their names are Artem Karpinsky, Andrey Baranovich, Alexander Galushchenko and Andriy Pereveziy. Though the programmers say they only received a few thousand dollars, data on transactions related to the group’s crypto wallets indicate the receipt of more than $100,000, according to Foundation investigators.
Under the guise of crowdfunding, investigators say, Myrotvorets receives considerable financial assistance from anonymous donors in the West. Virtually anyone can donate to the site, but the site’s most likely sponsors are Ukrainian nationalists living abroad and people associated with Western intelligence agencies who have enormous amounts of taxpayer money at their disposal.
The Foundation to Battle Injustice vows to continue its investigation of Myrotvorets until the website is finally removed.
Meanwhile, I’ll be rocking out to Pink Floyd.
[This article was previously published at medium.com and The Grayzone Project]
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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.
[…] https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/08/29/roger-waters-added–to-ukrainian-hit-list/ […]
This is really stupid and intellectually lazy, wonder why you ain’t working for CNN yet?
[…] Waters has been targeted by right-wing nationalists in Ukraine, backed by US intelligence (see https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/08/29/roger-waters-added-to-ukrainian-hit-list/). Waters has invited peace groups at every city on his tour to participate and table. Change Links […]
Deborah Armstrong’s piece on the Ukrainian hit list is very insightful and unique. As an extra element I would add the following News from the war-business front:
In the 20th century, it became an Anglo-Saxon specialty: “Easter eggs for Hitler” was written on their bombs by the British; in Afghanistan, American troops addressed their explosive devices to the “fags”.
But it was left to the Ukrainians to commercialize it.
http://www.signmyrocket.com is the name of the website where, for a few hundred dollars, you can have a message to the Russians painted on a grenade.
In return, you get a photo or a video.
If you want to be sure that your projectile really kills an “Orc”, the provider recommends a precision grenade of the Excalibur type. They are convinced that a dead Russian should be worth $700.
The operators have collected about 270,000 dollars so far. In return, they buy the soldiers what they apparently don’t get from the government: Food and medicine.
[…] Roger Waters Added to Ukrainian Hit List, by Deborah Armstrong […]
[…] Roger Waters, Henry Kissinger and a 13 year-old girl are reportedly listed on Ukrainian ‘kill list’ web site. “Myrotvorets is a database which lists thousands of journalists, activists, and anyone else who is declared an ‘Enemy of Ukraine’. Their personal information is published, such as the addresses of their homes, phone numbers and bank account numbers; anything that can help them be easily located. When the people on this list are murdered, like Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli was, the word ЛИКВИДИРОВАН, (LIQUIDATED), written in Ukrainian, is stamped across their picture in big red letters…. Investigators say that the hit list, which was created in 2014, is supervised by the public organization Myrotvorets Center, which is headed by Roman Zaitsev, a former employee of Ukrainian Special Services, and by the public organization, People’s Rear, headed by George Tuka, a Ukrainian politician. The site is also controlled by the Security Service of Ukraine and was created on the initiative of Anton Gerashchenko, the adviser to Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs. Gerashchenko faces charges of terrorism in the Russian Federation for his creation of the hit list…. An analysis of the site’s network protocol by the Foundation to Battle Injustice found that the database uses the technological services of a company in California. And, if you look at the main page of Myrotvorets, you will see the address ‘Langley, the CIA headquarters in Virginia’. There are posts on the site from accounts that have names of Western intelligence agencies: CIA, FBI, NATO, MI5, NSA.” https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/08/29/roger-waters-added-to-ukrainian-hit-list/ […]
I do not think Roger Waters supports Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a few months ago he sent a letter to a 19 year old Ukrainian girl in which he made the following comment.
Dear Alina,
I read your letter, I feel your pain, I am disgusted by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it is a criminal mistake, in my opinion, the act of a gangster, there must be an immediate ceasefire
One need not be a supporter of the war or a cheerleader for Russia to recognize the truth that this was an intentional proxy war set up by the U.S. Of this there can be little doubt. The U.S. State Dep’t’s neocons (Victoria Nuland, et al), with Joe Biden personally giving the ok, engineered the 2014 coup to get rid of the democratically elected Pres. Yanukovych, immediately following his announcement of a peace- and economic security-sealing deal with Russia.
The Washington-selected replacement government soon thereafter adopted legislation putting ethnic Russian Ukrainians in the crosshairs, enabling Nazi paramilitaries (eventually absorbed into the main Ukraine Armed Forces) to begin ethnic cleaning. In the process they burned dozens alive in the Odessa Union Hall, alarming Crimeans who voted to petition Russia for annexation. The remaining ethnic Russian majorities in Donestsk and Lugansk autonomous regions declared independence- as Ukraine had refused to honor the terms of the Minsk Accords which it had signed.
Ukraine had also, with the U.S.’ blessing, announced it’s hope to join NATO.. which would put U.S. strategic weapons on Russia’s border, minutes from Russia’s main population centers. Russia had long ago declared that such a move would represent an existential threat to Russia, a security concern that many western high-ranking military, intel and diplomatic officers, as well as Russia-expert scholars and international relations experts had warned was legitimate and should not be ignored by the U.S. and NATO.
When the other parties (Germany & France) refused to step up to ensure that the Minsk Accords were honored, Russia then pleaded with Ukraine and the U.S. to enter negotiations re. its security concerns, but both of the latter dismissed Russia’s demands – with the Biden Administration saying they were “non-starters’.
When Ukraine escalated, in late 2021, the shelling of the Donbass and the surge of military equipment there, Putin finally agreed (after having initially resisting) to acknowledge Donetsk and Lugansk’s independence; and after all negotiations were refused by the West, began the invasion.
Those of us who are inherently anti-war regretted that it had come to this, feeling that perhaps there was still a way to avoid the war. Yet in retrospect, one must ask the obvious question: what alternatives did the U.S. and Ukraine offer to Russia aside from just allowing the complete encirclement- this time completed by a Nazi-influenced hostile government?
People in the West may forget that an est. 27 Million people in the USSR were killed by the previous Nazi invasion from the West. But the Russians never will. And they will never allow it to happen again. Putting the shoe on the other foot for a moment, we must ask ourselves: what would the U.S. do if, for example, Russia set up or enabled a coup in Mexico, replacing its government with its friends, and Mexico joined a military bloc with Russia, and put the latter’s weapons across the U.S. southern border?
Well we know damn well what would happen. The Cuban Missile Crisis already illustrated that… we were ready to launch nukes to destroy the USSR.
I am very proud of Roger for taking courageous stands against agression and murder. His CNN interview was perfect. When will Americans who think they are on the left realize they are spouting Imperialist talking points?
Are you sure these people think they are on the left or are they “progressives”? The wokerati think of themselves as tolerant, liberal people, and would be shocked at how actual leftists essentially see them as fascistic as they support militarism, imperialism, and various queer theories (they don’t even remember that many homosexuals find queer an insult). They are so sure they are right about everything — being very careful never to allow actual information to enter their heads — it is far easier to talk to Republicans than the woke.