Paperback – May 22, 2025 Author: Benoit Paré, born in Paris, in 1961, is living in Greece since 1986. He is a French army reserve officer and former defense ministry analyst. Most importantly, Mr. Paré worked for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), as part of the seize-fire monitoring mission in Eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine 2015-2022.
A unique account of its kind, precise, sensitive, and personal, seen from the inside of an international mission at the heart of the Donbass war. The reality on the ground, from the front lines. New revelations, notably concerning civilian casualties, human rights violations, conflict-related trials, and the manipulation of facts. And then, how the US-sponsored Ukrainian ultra-nationalist project provoked Moscow’s reaction. This book is primarily intended for those who prioritize facts over partisanship and who want to understand how the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II came about.
Video interview conducted by Pascal Lottaz, Neutrality Studies. Premiered on August 5, 2025: “Today I’m talking to Benoît Paré, a French army reserve officer and former defense ministry analyst. Most importantly, Mr. Paré worked for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), as part of the seize-fire monitoring mission in Eastern Ukraine. He also wrote a book about this experiences in the Donbas with the title “What I saw in Ukraine: 2015-2022, Diary of an international Observer”.”
Lee Hu Fang (born October 31, 1986) is an independent American journalist, who was an investigative reporter at The Intercept, and now reporting primarily on Substack via http://leefang.com He is also a contributing editor at Unherd – https://unherd.com. He participates also in the 2023 award winning documentary film Praying for Armageddon, lately published on YouTube.
Lee Fang published on April 11, 2024, on his X Twitter timeline a thread of 8 posts about USAID. All posts are derived from the investigation published in the article:
On February 14, 2024, Professor Glenn Diesen[1][2][3][4] published several posts[1][2][3][4] on X in which he reports on the cancel and censorship culture, as practiced by the Norwegian Aage Borchgrevink[1]. Although Borchgrevink is listed on various websites and Wikipedia pages as a human rights activist, works at the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, and is chairman of the Norwegian NFFO, the Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers and Translators Association, he is not who he pretends to be. What Glenn Diesen describes in the following articles, posted on X, corresponds with the experiences so many others and also I had with Aage Borchgrevink on X: there is zero willingness to be informed about the scientific facts regarding political issues. He distorts facts, creates misinformation, and is a USA propaganda activist, not a human rights activist. The same applies to the Helsinki Committee, and the NFFO.
…….. announced that they cancelled their participation as a co-organiser for a public debate about the conflict in the Middle East because I am one of the speakers. I wear this as a badge of honour. One of Norway’s leading propagandists who has been writing hit-pieces about me for years in the media just happens to be a chairman of NFFO who announced the cancellation. So, the person behind the organisation that cancelled their participation, because I am allegedly controversial, is the same person who has been working tirelessly to depict me as controversial to have me fired as a professor from the university. These are two cheeks of the same arse, but this is conveniently omitted by those reporting on this story.
I do not use the term “propagandist” lightly. This propagandist works for the Helsinki Committee, a “human rights organisation” financed by the CIA-cutout National Endowment for Democracy (NED). When Reagan established NED as an extension of the CIA in 1983, it was to manipulate civil society in other countries (see tweet below). NED and its proxies only focus on human rights in adversarial states and thus sell all great power conflicts as a fight between democracy and authoritarianism (good vs evil), while claiming the source credibility of a “human rights organisation” that enables them to dismiss critics as enemies of freedom. When this Norwegian “human rights activist” does not slander me in the media and shames my university for permitting academic freedom, he is campaigning against Julian Assange and other critics of the US.
This is not simply an issue to a silly propagandist discrediting NFFO. Censorship, cancellations and the corruption of institutions have detrimental effects on society. After a decade of war in Ukraine, Norwegians are still not exposed to any arguments and evidence that deviate from NATO’s narrative. Norway will give the US sovereign control over 15 military bases on its soil to confront Russia in the Arctic and Norway has become one of the most eager weapon suppliers in the Ukrainian proxy war – with almost no public debate about the impact on our security as only one argument is permitted and dissent comes with great social cost. Anyone attempting to explain the arguments of the opposing side can be denounced for “legitimising” the opponent and thus smeared as a “Putinist”.
Our discourse subsequently consists of clichés and slogans without substance, simplified and dumbed down to a narrative of goodies versus baddies in which ever-more weapons are the path to peace, diplomacy and negotiations are dangerous, and censorship is vital to protect our democracy.
All is not well with freedom of speech and academic freedom in this country. I have published 11 academic books, which have been translated into several languages. Yet, an organisation devoted to academic writing cancelled their participation as a co-organiser because a ridiculous NED-financed “human rights activist” has accused me of working for Russia. Also, the debate they withdrew support from is not even about Russia, but the Middle East…
…….. should be designated as a propaganda organisation due to its funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED): – Washington Post writes that NED has been the “sugar daddy of overt operations” and “what used to be called ‘propaganda’ and can now simply be called ‘information'”. – NED was inaugurated by President Reagan to conceal influence operations by US intelligence as work on democracy and human rights. – Documents released by the Reagan presidential library reveal that NED cooperated closely with CIA propaganda initiatives. – Allen Weinstein, a cofounder of NED, acknowledged: “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA”. – Philip Agee, a CIA whistle-blower, explained that NED was established as a “propaganda and inducement program” to subvert foreign nations and style it as a democracy promotion initiatives.
The Norwegian Helsinki Committee wrote a 7-page long article about me (plus front page), in which they pressured the university to terminate my employment as I allegedly violate international law by supporting Russian war propaganda. – This is a strange allegation as I have been very openly opposed to the war from day one, but my crime as a professor of Russian politics has been to engage with Russian media. And this is allegedly in breach of international law. – The article makes no sense and was published in a newspaper where the author’s wife is an editor, but it is nonetheless cited in numerous efforts to censor and cancel. – It is beyond absurd that government-funded “non-governmental organisations” masquerading as “human rights organisations” can routinely attack academic freedoms and manipulate civil society in our country to ensure there is only one acceptable narrativ
Notice how in all these tweets (and all his articles), he attempts to shame the university into cancelling dissent. Is this normal for a state-financed “human rights activist” and a chairman of an organisation for authors? Click picture to enlarge:
The subjects “propaganda“, “freedom of speech“, and “censorship” start at 16:34 in the video ”Is America in decline: The US could lose the war against Russia – CBC Weekly Talk (Azerbaijan)”
Anastasia Lavrina: I don’t know if you watched the last interview of Vladimir Putin to American journalist Tucker Carlson and immediately after the West started to criticize the journalist for this interview. Why do you think the West turned against the American journalist in this particular interview is there any specific issues on the agenda?
Glenn Diesen: Well, they denounced the interview as propaganda before had even been released so I think it’s quite obvious that this doesn’t look good in terms of our principle of free speech because a lot of the attacks you know calling him a Putin puppet and you know this kind of name calling it’s not just childish but it’s also completely devoid of any substance. There’s no real criticism of you know the questions he asked or the direction he took it, so I think it demonstrates I think an unwillingness to present the opposite side of the argument and this is a huge problem. I always make the point that at least during the Cold War we knew what Moscow’s arguments were. We didn’t feel the need to censor it but these days there’s a huge amount of censorship going on now here in the west, not only censoring Russian media but also journalist academics within the West who dare to explain what the Russians are thinking, what they’re doing, are accused of legitimizing what the Russians are doing, and one sees the call for censorship and cancellation immediately arises, so I think that a lot of the war narrative which we have been building over the past two years is based on their flawed assumption.
I don’t think many people anymore in the west really know much about very basic facts which can be proven, so I think there’s a huge concern that the whole narrative for war is disappearing and so the the need for narrative control. I think this is the greatest concern, and why there was such a fierce opposition to the Tucker Carlson interview of President Putin.
6. Glenn Diesen about Arestovych, the former advisor of Zelensky, and propaganda
This post is a comment on the video “Ugly and Russophobic”, that was published on YouTube by Jeffrey Sachs. The video has been removed however, by Jeffrey Sachs. The United Nations has published a video about Russophobia as well: ‘Russophobia’ Term Used to Justify Moscow’s War Crimes in Ukraine (Briefer) | United Nations
I have watched Jeffrey Sachs’s video before it was removed, and I can and have to state therefore that he did not use the word Russophobia to justify Russian war crimes in Ukraine, at all. He explained, that the in the west started russophobia is used by the west to create hatred against Russia in order to make their own proxy war, their provoked war, their provocations towards Russia, legal, justified. A kind of: “It is necessary to kill the Russians.” Sachs is right.
I consider the conclusion of the UN, that the word russophobia is used to justify Russian war crimes, as a misinterpretation, misinformation, therefore false, and even very effective western propaganda for the war industry.
My comment on the word “russophobia”.
It started a long time ago. In 1956 I was 8 years young and sensed the intense fear of my parents for the Russians who invaded Hungary. My father was a Russophobe: the reason for that were Stalin, Khrushchev, and what he knew about communism.
Russophobia. “Anti-Russian sentiment, commonly referred to as russophobia, is dislike or fear of Russia, the Russians, Russian culture, or Russian policy. The Collins English Dictionary defines it as intense and often irrational hatred of Russia. It is often related to anti-Soviet and occasionally also to anti-Slavic sentiment.” (Wiki)
In my opinion russophobia is a logic result, caused by the Russian Tsars, and the leaders of the communist party that followed after, like Stalin, Khrushchev. The word russophobia today is therefore in my opinion only the fear for Russian politics and their leaders.
People in the west were, because of the taboo in the west to be interested in Russia, Russian culture and so on, not informed and mostly even misinformed about the Russian people, their culture. Western peoples assumed that Russians were enthusiastically following their leaders, and therefore to be disgusted.
The phobia for Russian political leaders however existed also in the Russian people, intensified sometimes to unbearable levels, transformed because of that into an unstoppable courage. Russian composer Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 evokes the first uprising of 1905, when peasants stormed the Tsar’s Palace.
Painting by Russian painter Makovsky: The Ninth of January, 1905
The 1917 Russian Revolution brought an end to the power of the Tsar era, the Russian royal dictators.
This shows that the western interpretation of the word russophobia is based on the same fear and disgust as the common Russian people experienced for their own leaders and their politics.
Therefore the word russophobia should be replaced by a word that fathoms the fear in peoples, worldwide, for the [totalitarian] regime in their country, and the absence of, or censored independent journalism, next to physical, emotional and mental punishments, torture, terrorism that these regimes practice against those who could be a threat for informing the people about facts, and create revolutions.
This kind of regimes are everywhere, and yes, also USA, EU, the entire “democratic” west, have regime-like governments that practice and/or contribute to censorship, shadow banning, torture, terrorism, murder, cruelties. [Julian Assange]
My conclusion: The phobia for Russia is not sustainable: it does not create any positive perspective or condition for a real future for mankind. The future is cooperation, and only cooperation, which is possible when there is a will to communicate, to talk, and to find the hard core of the problems, the truth of it. The common sense of solutions. Phobia is hatred, fear is hatred, it is a closed door to communication and negotiation. It is based on one-sided information, indoctrination, ignorance, is based on absence of self reflection. Factually Russophobia is based on the phobia for the True Self, the psychological dark side, the darkness of the unconsciousness within, whereabout Carl Gustav Jung spoke and wrote, and it is within every single human being.
Others are the mirror of the self. You see in another one what is inside of you, but are not aware of. You cannot remove the dirt from the glass of the mirror: it is not there. USA does the same with Russia, and all who are Russophobic should watch inside and check there that one should work at, and solve. USA is scared to watch and admit the existence of their own darkness. USA prefers to show the mask of The Saviour of Humanity. It works. USA shows how easy it is fool people, to control the media, to mislead people, to indoctrinate people, to create enemies, to create hatred, to fuel hatred, that make people believe that the war-industry is a deity, a holy must, and the war crimes are legitimate. Finally people like war. It is good. Their hatred grows into unstoppable passionate aggression, lust for war. There is even war in the social media, and if one is against USA, you are of course for Putin[post number 8], a Russian troll. I am against war. It is outdated and will sooner or later extinct all life forms. War has to be exterminated. It can! By truth.
Additional
Russophobia – Professor Glenn Diesen – See Springer Link
Documentary (2019) “State Funeral“, the funeral of Joseph Stalin. / The documentary ends with: According to historical research, more than 27 million Soviet citizens were murdered, executed, tortured to death, imprisoned, sent to Gulag labor camps, or deported during Stalin’s regime. An additional 15 million people are estimated to have starved to death.
Sustainable Politics 