Doug Bandow, writing in the American Conservative, usefully highlights the criminality of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation hit list, of which he is a member. “I’ve ended up on a hate list from Ukraine’s propaganda operation, the so-called Center for Countering Disinformation, apparently funded in part by American taxpayers,” Bandow writes. His argument is that American interests should come first for Americans, that Ukraine should lay off, and he is rightfully upset that Ukraine labels him a promoter of Russian propaganda for saying so. “It is not enough for Congress to open wide the Treasury’s vaults and the Pentagon’s armories for Kiev. All Americans are supposed to speak in one voice, sing hosannas in praise of the Zelensky government, and unite behind Ukraine’s war aims,” he said.
Bandow, a CATO Institute fellow and former assistant to President Reagan, has previously spoken in favor of improving relations with Russia. In 2017 Bandow said that Trump’s effort to improve relations with Russia was his “most important policy initiative.” While he makes note of some others on the “CCD’s naughty list,” he declines to mention the prominent position of the Schiller Institute’s Helga Zepp-LaRouche, or any of the other members and collaborators of the LaRouche Movement.
While Bandow says he condemns Russia’s invasion into Ukraine and agrees with the sanctions, “the CCD’s hit piece suggests that Kiev fears rational debate as well as rational policy.” He goes on to discuss the “endemic corruption” in Ukraine, and raises the 2014 “political transition,” which eastern Ukrainians consider to be a “coup orchestrated by the West…Zelensky is less pure than the driven snow,” he writes, and wants to lie America into the war, as in the case where Zelensky claimed it was a Russian missile that hit Poland instead of Ukraine’s own missile. “A foreign leader who believes it is in his interest to involve America in a great power and potential nuclear war is no friend and, frankly, is more dangerous than Russia.” (emphasis in original)
