‘Kiev, US propaganda war leave little motive to let Russian aid in’

Kiev’s propaganda war over eastern Ukraine leaves no real motive to let the Russian humanitarian aid in, former US-Russia presidential commission adviser told RT. Similarly, US government and media are failing in their coverage of the humanitarian crisis.

The reason for poor coverage of the humanitarian catastrophe in eastern Ukraine is that it does not fit Washington’s one-sided narrative, giving the media an excuse not to pay proper attention to the crisis, said former advisor to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the State Department and Contributing Editor to the American Conservative magazine, James W. Carden.

RT:There is a small part of the convoy that has been cleared to cross the border yet Ukrainian side still refuses to say when it actually will be allowed to cross. Why do you believe they are stalling yet again?

James W. Carden: Both sides are not only engaged [in] what amounts to a civil war, but they are engaged in a propaganda war as well. So the Ukrainians don’t really have much of a motive to allow the Russian humanitarian convoy in. And so we saw that last Friday when news reports came across the wire saying that the Ukrainians had destroyed a Russian military convoy. That turned out to be false, but the reason why they did that was to sort of deflect attention away from the Russian convoy. The short answer is that it is just part of an ongoing propaganda war.

RT:The Red Cross says the situation in Ukraine is dire. Why hasn’t it drawn more international attention to it?

JC: I can speak to what the coverage has been like here. Basically American news media can only handle only one or two big stories at the time. So you had the death of a Hollywood actor last week, then you have the ongoing trouble in Ferguson, Missouri. And that pretty much crowds out everything else unfortunately. And that is a shame. If the White House and the State Department were actually talking about the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in the east, the media would be obliged to cover it. But, unfortunately that hasn’t been the case.

RT:In your recent article you say that humanitarian crisis is being largely overlooked by Washington. Why did you say that?

JC: Because it has been. In today’s Washington Post, for instance, you would search in vain for any stories regarding the number of civilian casualties, or the horrible refugee crisis that has been taken place now for months. What are their motives? It seems to me that reporting on this would sort of derail the Washington narrative, which is that there is one good guy and one bad guy in this situation. The bad guy of course is Russia and the good guy of course is Poroshenko and his Prime Minister Mr. Yatsenyuk. So any sort of reporting on the death toll, which is now greater than the death toll in Gaza, would absolutely derail this, would go off script in a sense.

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