Biden’s Mammoth $33BN Ukraine Package Includes Help With Wartime Propaganda

Politico’s Christopher Miller noted earlier that the record-smashing $33 billion spending package that the White House is proposing for Ukraine actually “dwarfs the annual defense budgets of most nations.” To which we naturally asked: how many billions of dollars does it take to turn a ‘proxy’ war into a ‘direct conflict’?

For starters it’s clear that such a massive amount of taxpayer money means that Washington clearly doesn’t expect that the war will end anytime soon, as multiple US defense and intelligence officials have recently testified. In fact General Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee during the first week of this month that he sees this as a “very protracted conflict” to come that will be “at least measured in years.”

Biden in his Thursday rollout remarks described that the new aid package “begins the transition to longer-term security assistance.” But interestingly as part of this assistance, a key area that the US will fund is what’s essentially information warfare…

White House fact-sheet says part of the mammoth $33 billion spending package it’s requesting for Ukraine will be to “support independent media.” Because nothing screams “independent” like being directly funded by the US Government as part of its “information warfare” initiative pic.twitter.com/O3JshV1Mg9

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) April 28, 2022

Independent journalist and media commentator Michael Tracey has pointed out…

White House fact-sheet says part of the mammoth $33 billion spending package it’s requesting for Ukraine will be to “support independent media.” Because nothing screams “independent” like being directly funded by the US Government as part of its “information warfare” initiative.

Of course, going back to at least 2014 the US government has funded such Ukraine initiatives as “citizen journalism” to push back against ‘Russian influence’ in the country.

As WikiLeaks has documented long ago, there was similarly heavy State Department and US intelligence funding of “independent” and “opposition” media in Syria in the lead-up to and during the decade-long war to try and overthrow Assad.

But this marks a huge expansion of the United States much more directly assisting Ukraine in its media and wartime propaganda efforts. The White House fact sheet detailing the scope of the security aid package spells out in a bullet point:

• Counter Russian disinformation and propaganda narratives, promote accountability for Russian human rights violation, and support activists, journalists, and independent media to defend freedom of expression.

This as “freedom of expression” is often suppressed at home, ironically enough especially targeting independent media outlets.

Among recent examples of Ukraine’s current info war efforts is this nugget:

Ukraine is an information warfare superpower. https://t.co/S2PGYHhutg

— Nolan Peterson (@nolanwpeterson) March 11, 2022

Also of little comfort to the US taxpayer in terms of a potential eventual path to WW3 between two nuclear armed powers is this section under a header titled Help Ukraine Defend Itself Over the Long-Term…

• A stronger NATO security posture through support for U.S. troop deployments on NATO territory, including transportation of U.S. personnel and equipment, temporary duty, special pay, airlift, weapons system sustainment, and medical support.

Ultimately this means hundreds of millions will go toward propping up “independent media” which will actually in truth be US-state funded pro-NATO information efforts.