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Since the start of the Ukraine War, the Western media has featured headlines and photos of civilian deaths resulting in Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
As a result of this focus, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been portrayed as a murderous dictator while increasing the public’s hatred for the general Russian population.
For example, The New York Times ran a graphic photograph on its cover on Monday that reportedly showed a family fleeing the Ukrainian city of Irpin that was gunned down by Russian forces. At least three family members for four died from the gunshots—including two young children.
The United Nations estimated that 474 Ukrainian civilians have died since the start of the war and 1.7 million have fled the country. Russia has been accused of targeting civilians who were fleeing cities during the onslaught as well as launching missiles against civilian infrastructure.
Nearly every major news outlet has angled their stories on the civilian death toll from the conflict. CNN ran a headline, “UKRAINE SLAMS MOSCOW’S OFFER TO EVACUATE CIVILIANS TO RUSSIA AND BELARUS AS IMMORAL,” and The Wall Street Journal ran a story, “RUSSIA PUMMELS CIVILIAN TARGETS WHILE TALKS MAKE SCANT PROGRESS.”
While media outlets condemn Russian military actions that have killed Ukrainian civilians, these same outlets did not feature front page photos, and day-after-day headlines of the civilian deaths directly and indirectly to the American and NATO military interventions in countries like Iraq, Syria, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, etc. (See “HEY STUPID! PROPAGANDA NETWORKS WILL TELL YOU ‘WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT UKRAINE.”)
TRENDPOST: Moscow has said it will continue the fight until Kyiv gives up, and then it will stop its aggression at a “moment’s notice.” There is no mention of Ukraine’s decision to fight to the end against Russia and the impact that that decision will have on the civilian death toll in the country. Russia will not stop its assault and Ukrainian civilians will absorb the costs.
As Gerald Celente has noted, Ukraine will not defeat the Russian military and all of the hype about Ukrainian heroes fighting the Russian invaders is only making a deadly situation much worse. As the cover of this week’s Trends Journal clearly illustrates: Negotiate for Peace, or Rest in Peace.
Numbers Game
Over 3 million Vietnamese were killed by Americans during the Vietnam War.
Serbian President Aleksander Vucic said in 2019 that at least 90 children were killed in NATO bombings in 1999. About 4,000 people were killed in the bombings, reports said. According to Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, over 500,000 Syrian civilians died in the war launched by President Obama and U.S. allies in 2011.
Up to 209,349 civilians were killed in Iraq following the U.S.’s 2003 invasion. All of these deaths, and hardly a mention about it in the mainstream media.
Brown University’s Watson Institute reported that 71,000 civilians have been killed in the Afghan War since it started, including a jump in casualties after the U.S., in 2017, “relaxed its rules of engagement for airstrikes,” which “resulted in a massive increase in civilian casualties.”
TRENDPOST: Every time the media runs “civilian” in the title, and shows an image of a dead child—it is a deliberate editorial decision to influence the public’s perception of the war. Again, as we clearly illustrate, these headlines and photos were virtually absent during the course of U.S.-NATO military interventions that we have listed.