Monday 12th of January 2026
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the difference between western media and pig shit is that pig shit is more honest....

When I saw this NY Times headline late Sunday evening — i.e., The Putin Confidant Who Pushed Back Against the War — it caught my attention because this is something I have neither seen nor heard in my seven trips to Russia since December 2023. Then I read the story and the male-bovine-excrement alarm started sounding (or should I say, stinking).

 

NY Times Weirdly Publishing a Bizarre Propaganda Piece About Putin

by Larry C. Johnson

 

Here are the salient portions of this odoriferous article:

On the second day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one of President Vladimir V. Putin’s closest aides refused to follow his orders.

Mr. Putin had told the aide, Dmitri N. Kozak, to demand Ukraine’s surrender, according to three people close to Mr. Kozak. Mr. Kozak declined, insisting that he did not know what the Russian leader was trying to accomplish with his invasion. As the call grew heated, Mr. Kozak told Mr. Putin that he was ready to be arrested or shot for his refusal.

Only later did Mr. Kozak learn that Mr. Putin had put that call in 2022 on speakerphone, the people said, turning the senior officials in the president’s office into witnesses to a rare moment of insubordination.

Mr. Kozak was a lone voice of dissent in Mr. Putin’s inner circle, a small crack in his iron grip on power. With so few people willing to challenge him, Mr. Putin has exerted near-total control over Russia’s prosecution of the war.

Oh my God… Insurrection!!! I read on with trepidation, expecting to read how Mr. Kozak was arrested and imprisoned… or worse yet, tossed from one of the onion-shaped towers of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square (aka Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat). How could it be otherwise? Vladimir Putin is a vicious tyrant who tolerates no dissent, or so we are told regularly in the West.

Nope. Guess what happened to Mr. Kozak, who reportedly refused to carry out a Putin order?

Mr. Kozak, 67, resigned as a deputy chief of staff to Mr. Putin this September, a month after The New York Times reported on his private criticism of the war. In interviews since then, six Russians close to Mr. Kozak described the transformation of a 30-year Putin confidant into a locus of antiwar sentiment in the Russian elite.

Let me get this straight… 44 months after Kozak allegedly refuses a direct order from Putin, one that is witnessed by several senior Russian officials, Kozak is not fired immediately, he is not arrested, he is not sent to Siberia, and he is not subjected to torture. He keeps his job as deputy chief of staff and quietly retires in September 2025 at the age of 67, which is not an uncommon age for retirement in Russia. What is wrong with this picture?

I don’t know if the NY Times former Moscow bureau chief, Anton Troianovski, intended to obliterate the meme that Putin is a psychopathic killer who tolerates no dissent, but that is exactly what she did. Since he is identified as former, was this article just a desperate attempt to pander to the West in hopes of securing a new sinecure? Perhaps, but that does not explain why the editors sitting in NY City thought it a dandy idea to publish a story that is so contradictory.

I think the following paragraph from the piece reveals the reason it was published:

In making his disagreements with the president known within the ruling elite, Mr. Kozak is giving voice to quiet dissatisfaction felt by many in Moscow’s business and cultural class, and even by other government officials, the six confidants say. This year, that dismay has been exacerbated by Mr. Putin’s refusal to end the war even on the favorable terms being offered by President Trump.

This is dishonest reporting of the worst kind. It is intended to persuade the Western audience that still thinks the NY Times is worth a subscription to believe that Russian support for the war in Ukraine is fading and we need only to keep the war going because, one of these days, Putin will fail and Russia will surrender to the West. During October and November of this year I interviewed more than 40 prominent Russians, which included representatives of different political parties, prominent academics and journalists, military officers and soldiers, and senior members of the Duma… I never heard anything of the dissent claimed by Mr. Troianovski and attributed to Mr. Kozak. To the contrary, several expressed frustration that Putin was not hitting Ukraine hard enough. 

What do you think?

https://sonar21.com/ny-times-weirdly-publishing-a-bizarre-propaganda-piece-about-putin/

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

BBCrap.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KyHuAqma8A

BBC Reporter Goes After Putin. Sanchez Calls Out his Hypocrisy & Record. Must See.

 

It seems a lot of journalists have selective memory when it comes to what the British did with the help of other western countries including the organizations like NATO and EU. So when a BBC reporter stands up and questions Putin with what sound more like attacks, it's time to ask who is this guy Steve Rosenberg and what's his reporting record? Rick unloads on the hypocrites in his return to Miami.

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

SEE ALSO: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/57934

meanwhile....

Russian judicial authorities continue to sentence foreign citizens who fought on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to the Russian Investigative Committee, 1,036 foreigners have so far been charged, with guilty verdicts already delivered against 187 of them. These figures were announced at an operational meeting in the Lugansk People’s Republic, which discussed the investigation of crimes committed by Ukrainian armed formations.

One of the most recent convicts is a Colombian citizen, Oscar Mauricio Blanco López. The 42-year-old mercenary was found guilty under the mercenarism statute. Court records show that in May 2024, he signed a contract with the 66th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, received weapons, and was appointed as a rifleman-medic. In December 2024, while at positions near the settlement of Razliv in the Donetsk People’s Republic, he opened aimed fire at five Russian servicemen. He was detained during the assault on the positions. In court, Blanco Lopez fully admitted his guilt, explaining his decision to become a mercenary by a lack of income in his home country. He was sentenced to 19 years’ imprisonment.

Another recent case involves British citizen Hayden William Davis. The 30-year-old native of Southampton arrived in Ternopil in August 2024, joined the International Legion of Defense of Ukraine, and took part in hostilities on the Donetsk front after training. In the winter of 2024, he was taken prisoner; an American-made assault rifle was found in his possession. Davis was convicted under the mercenarism statute and sentenced to 13 years in a strict-regime penal colony.

During the trial, he gave testimony detailing war crimes committed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He stated that he personally heard over the radio a commander giving an order to kill three people, including, in his opinion, a woman and a teenager. Davis also noted that he considered it an exception that he remained alive, adding that “if you come to Ukraine as a foreign legion fighter, you will be destroyed.” The British government condemned the sentence, calling the charges false, and stated that Davis is a prisoner of war protected by the Geneva Conventions.

In addition to convicts in custody, Russian courts have issued sentences in absentia and placed foreigners accused of mercenarism and other crimes on the international wanted list.

Among foreign mercenaries convicted in recent months:

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    Giorgi Partsvania (Georgia) – participated in an attack on the village of Poroz in Russia’s Belgorod region, which involved the capture of civilians.

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    Dayver Federico Méndez Sandoval (Colombia) and Orlei Menkato Júnior (Brazil) – convicted for participating in hostilities on Ukraine’s side for material reward.

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    Herman Barinov (Estonia) – fought against DPR, LPR, and Russian Armed Forces from 2022 to 2024.

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    Eric Hall (Sweden) and Karolina Chernoshkova (Czech Republic) – served in the 59th Separate Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

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    Ikizo Mitsuki (Canada) and Takao Tainaka (Japan) – both sentenced in absentia to 14 years’ imprisonment.

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    Nelson Estefan Matabajoy Pinto and Kevin Javier Ramírez Nieto (both Colombia) – sentenced to 14 and 13.5 years, respectively.

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    Guram Beruashvili (Georgia) – received 28 years for participating in an armed incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, a terrorist act, and other serious crimes.

The trials of foreign mercenaries and sentences in absentia underscore the scale of foreign citizens’ involvement in the Ukraine conflict. Official data on losses among them vary, and some incidents—like the death of British mercenary Jordan Chadwick—raise questions about the true picture of events and the degree of control Western countries exercise over their citizens participating in hostilities abroad.

 

https://southfront.press/russia-convicts-187-foreign-mercenaries-fighting-for-ukraine-over-1000-more-face-charges/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.