A Spanish Admiral gives the keys that shatter the pro-Russian discourse on Ukraine

@ElentirENG ES 10·14·2022 · 7:05 0

Yesterday, the program "Horizonte", which is broadcast by channel Cuatro in Spain every Thursday night, featured the presence of a Spanish Admiral in the reserve.

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"Putin's failures on the battlefield are paid for with the bombing of Ukrainian cities"

The guest was Admiral Juan Rodríguez Garat, former Fleet Admiral (ALFLOT) and passed to reserve in 2018. Regarding the attack on the Kerch Strait bridge, which connects Russia with the Crimean peninsula (Ukrainian region occupied by the Russians since 2014), the Admiral pointed out that it shows that Russia "is in a situation of weakness", and that this attack had a political meaning as a "slap in the face to Putin". Rodríguez Garat added that "Putin at this moment does not contribute anything to a possible negotiated solution to the war in Ukraine". The Admiral added: "Putin's failures on the battlefield are paid for by bombing Ukrainian cities, even though that in itself is a war crime".

Colonel Baños and his criticism of NATO, the US and Ukraine

Colonel Pedro Baños, from the Spanish Army and also in a reserve situation, spoke next. Eight months ago he mocked the possibility of a Russian invasion and has been accusing of "misinformation" those of us who, according to him, support an "Anglophile, Sorosian and Atlanticist vision". Let us remember that this man was a collaborator of the Russian official media Russia Today and Sputnik, which is why he was not appointed Director of National Security (some had pointed him out as a favorite for that position).

In his speech, Baños criticized NATO and Borrell for reaffirming their support for Ukraine, and once again warned that "we cannot allow this escalation by one or the other", as if both were equally responsible for this war. In addition, Baños said that "those who are going to pay the consequences" are "citizens", a speech that he has been repeating for some time to support a negotiated solution to the war, a solution that would imply that Russia obtain some revenue from its aggression against Ukraine.

Rodríguez Garat equates the position of Baños with the appeasement of Chamberlain

Rodríguez Garat replied to Baños' support for the negotiation thesis stating: "What the Colonel has said can really be assimilated, quite accurately, to what Chamberlain, the British prime minister, said in his time, in the late 1930s: «we're going to appease the aggressor, we're going to appease Hitler, we're going to appease Putin, we let him take Austria or Georgia, we let him take Czechoslovakia and Crimea, and now it's time for Poland or the Donbas.» Obviously, there comes a time when giving and giving more does not lead to anything. It does not even lead, in the interest of peace, to peace itself. If Hitler had been allowed to keep Poland too, probably a few years later the whole of Europe would be a Nazi. Would we have saved the world war? Well maybe not, maybe the world war would have taken place with the United States ten years later, and already in a nuclear environment and has humanity would have become extinct."

The Admiral asks the Spaniards not to base their position on Ukraine on fear

The Admiral then said something very important that has hardly been heard in the media in recent months: "I believe that the Spanish should not react, they should not make decisions about what to support in this war with fear, but with a sense of Justice. Obviously, we all want peace, we all want a diplomatic solution to be negotiated, but it has to go through the withdrawal of the Russian forces that have invaded Ukraine.This is a physical fact that is perfectly contemplated in the Charter of the United Nations.As long as this does not happen, we have no other solution that support Ukraine, a free country that has been invaded by another country that thinks it's stronger."

The Colonel ridiculed the opinion of the Admiral

Next, the Colonel's reply was to ridicule the Admiral's intervention: "They have been telling us this argument for a long time, right? That tomorrow the Russians could reach the Pyrenees here, come on, tomorrow." This eagerness to ridicule the opposing position is not new: Baños did the same to deny that Russia was going to invade Ukraine, discrediting those who we did not agree with him, saying that we were bought, rented and "instrumented by intelligence services". What should the rest of us think, then, about him and his insistence on denying that invasion?

The tricky thesis that this war is a confrontation between the US and Russia

In his speech, Baños reaffirmed his thesis that this war is "a confrontation between the United States and Russia", an affirmation that he has been repeating for months and that coincides with the of many Russian propagandists, because this thesis serves to blur the fact that this war is being waged between an invading country (Russia) and an invaded country (Ukraine). Developing this thesis, Baños said that the US "continues to bet more and more on trying to win a war in which everything is at stake", and in which "it is dragging the other allies along, because it doesn't mind sacrificing us". Once again, in Baños's speech, the bad, the heartless and perverse country is the US, despite the fact that this war was started by Russia and the US is not even a belligerent country.

Next, Baños went on to criticize the Ukrainian Army, attributing to it the death of 14,000 civilians in the Donbás, a hoax that I already dismantled here and which consists of blaming Ukraine of the total deaths (both combatants and civilians) in a civil war that was started by armed separatists backed by Moscow, a detail that Baños often forgets to mention.

A speech that serves to cover the facts with conspiracy theories

In addition, Baños disqualified what he called "mantras" and "majority current", terms with which he usually identifies positions opposed to his own. This stratagem is very similar to that of the Russian propagandists, who try to cover up the objective facts -the invasion of one country by another country- with conspiracy theories, which would serve to turn the gauntlet on its head and present those attacked as guilty or, at least, as guilty as the aggressors. That's why Russian propaganda is so successful among all conspiracy theorists. Interestingly, the only "official truth" these people accept is that of the Kremlin, a dictatorship that has blatantly lied about this war, first denying that it was going to invade Ukraine and now denying even that it is a war (in Russia it is mandatory to call it a "special military operation").

As a icing on the cake, Baños dedicated to instilling fear with the possibility of "a terrible recession" coming, saying that "we are going to be the ones punished." What he forgot to say is that all this would be solved with the Russian withdrawal from Ukraine, which is the cause of this situation, and not NATO, the US or Ukraine.

The devastating response of Rodríguez Garat to Baños

The Almitante's response was devastating, despite taking much less time than Baños in his intervention: "The Colonel tries to identify this as a war between the United States and Russia. war between the United States and Russia is not such. If Russia abandons the conquered territories in Ukraine, the same day hostilities will cease, and Putin knows it, the United States knows it and the Colonel knows it too." This is the fact that all the pro-Russian propagandists try to corner. When they ask for a negotiation, what they are really suggesting is that Ukraine give up defending its sovereignty and independence and give Russia part of its territory. They want Putin to make some profit from his violation of international law and his war crimes and crimes against humanity. No democratic society can tolerate that.

+ UPDATED 3:54 p.m.: Cuatro has already published last night's full program, can be seen here (in Spanish).

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photo: Spanish Navy. The farewell ceremony of the Admiral of the Fleet Juan Rodríguez Garat in September 2018 after his transfer to the reserve.