Media Cry, ‘Stop the Mediators, Keep the War Going!’

March 14, 2022 (EIRNS)—The U.S. and European press along with Biden Administration officials are quickly attacking and attempting to discredit any international leading figure or country proposing to mediate between Russia and Ukraine.

Both the London Telegraph and The Hill have out March 14 hit pieces on Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett since his series of telephone calls with Russian President Putin and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy seeking to mediate. The Telegraph called Bennett “a disaster for the West”; and The Hill started its article with the completely unsupported statement that Bennett has “flipped” Israel’s position from neutral to pro-Russia. Ukraine officials now will not speak even to Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who has denounced Russia’s military action.

CNBC ran an out-of-the-blue hit piece today on Angela Merkel—who has thus far held her silence on the war in Ukraine—calling her completely discredited since Chancellor Olaf Scholz has reversed her policy, and she “made Germany dependent on Russia,” etc. Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is being denounced across the German media after meeting with Putin. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has been attacked in the South African press and criticized directly by State Department officials Molly Phee and Eric O’Brien for having made a “BRICS to BRICS” phone call to Putin, and one to Zelenskyy. The list goes on to include former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, Turkish President Erdogan, and others.

China, as reported elsewhere here, is under full attack in world media for supposedly entertaining military assistance requests from Russia, and got a threatening visit by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to Chinese senior diplomat Yang Jiechi Monday in Rome, after China had said it wanted to work with France and Germany for peace. Sullivan is demanding that China block Russia’s access to its reserves both of gold and of yuan held in the People’s Bank of China, reportedly about $20 billion worth, or face severe consequences.

While Ukraine is negotiating, clearly the U.K. and U.S. governments, and particularly Congress and Parliament, do not want it to agree to anything with Russia. The delegation of four Senators now in Poland trying to get Polish MiG jets flown into Ukraine to fight Russian aircraft, has led to the entire Problem Solvers Caucus, 58 members in both Houses, writing to President Joe Biden demanding this World War III provocation be carried out immediately.

And President Zelenskyy, whose constantly shifting demands for a settlement range far beyond those of his negotiators and signal that a peace agreement is unlikely, is addressing a joint session of Congress March 16. (After his last appeal, $15 billion in COVID testing, screening and treatment funds abruptly disappeared from the House’s budget authorization for FY2022, replaced by $14 billion aid to Ukraine—mostly via the Pentagon budget. Who knows what other budget lines will vanish Wednesday.)