Phil Butler - Putin's Praetorians - Confessions of the Top Kremlin Trolls

I quoted Hanlan’s razor a lot — “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” And, stupidity and ignorance they were — a favorite being John McCain’s notion that the appropriate venue for a response to a Putin piece in the NYT was Pravda. And then he picked the wrong Pravda! But he won’t hate Russia or Putin any the less if he were told that, would he?) At some point, I came to understand that malice was the real driver.

I suppose it grew on me bit by bit — all the stupidity converged on the same point, and it never stopped, but real stupidity and ignorance don’t work that way: people learn, however slowly. I think the change for me was Libya. I started out thinking stupidity but, as it piled up, it became apparent that it was malice. I’d seen lies in the Kosovo war but it was Libya that convinced me that it wasn’t just a few lies, it was all lies. My guess is that Libya was a significant development in Putin’s view of NATO/US too.

Naive perhaps but, for most of history, stupidity has adequately explained things and malice is, after all, a species of stupidity.

So, what’s the point of writing? I’ll never convince the Russia haters, and there’s little chance of getting through to the stupid and ignorant. And most people aren’t very interested anyway.

Well, this is where malice meets stupidity. If we consider the Project for a New American Century , the neocon game plan “to promote American global leadership,” what do we see twenty years later? Brzezinski laid out the strategy in The Grand Chessboard at the same time. What today? Well, last year he had to admit that the “era” of US dominance, he was so confident of twenty years earlier, was over. There’s no need to belabor the point: while the US by most measures is still the world’s dominant power, its mighty military is defeated everywhere and doesn’t realize it, its manufacturing capacity has been mostly outsourced to China, domestic politics and stability degenerate while we watch and there’s opioids, spectacular debt levels, incarceration, infant mortality, недоговороспособны and on and on. Donald Trump was elected on the promise to Make America Great… Again . Hardly the hyperpower to lead the Globe, is it?

The Twentieth Century was the “American Century” thanks to unlimited manufacturing capacity allied to great inventiveness anchored on a stable political base. What is left of these three in 2017? Can America be made “great” again? And wars: wars everywhere and everywhere the same. And what other than malice has brought it to this state? Malice has become stupidity: the neocons, Brzezinskis, the Russia haters, the “ Exceptionalists ,” scheming “to promote American global leadership,” have weakened the USA. Perhaps irreparably.

So, who’s the audience today? The converted and people at the point when a little push can break their conditioning have always been there. But now there is a potentially huge audience for our efforts: the audience of the awakening .

Which brings me back to where I started. Except that it’s the USA this time: IT’S NOT WORKING!

We’re here, and we’re waiting for you: you’ve been lied to, but that doesn’t mean that everything is a lie.

I’ll never forget the first time I watched Graham Phillips broadcasting from Ukraine. The British journalist and videographer had already been living in the country for some time, and cataloging everything from concerts to travel experiences when the Euromaidan protests erupted. Phillips was one of those present in Maidan Square when Ukraine turned upside down, and across the revolutionary front from Donbass to Crimea. I first caught sight of him working with RT for Sloviansk in April 2014 at the onset of hostilities in between the Kiev regime and the pro-Russian separatists. I recall Phillips broadcasting without a helmet or flak vest, from inside a burned-out transport with a giant rocket hole in its side. I also remember thinking at the time, “Okay, this guy won’t be alive long once the shrapnel starts flying.” Clearly, I was wrong. Phillips did survive, and he became a sort of urban legend for his brash war-front encounters and for his bravado standing among the fierce Donbass militiamen fighting off Ukraine regulars.

At the time, I had no idea Graham and I would become friends. Then later that same year Graham was captured at Donetsk Airport by the UKROPS. Fans of his video reports and his Twitter feed went frantic, fearful the Nazi right wing of Ukraine would surely kill the British journalist for what they would allege — but knew was really not — Russian propaganda against them. I came to Graham’s aid as well, and publicly warned the illegitimate Kiev regime leadership and its US enablers of the massive backlash they would incur should Phillips come to harm. Interrogated, somewhat abused and ultimately banished from Ukraine, Graham lived to tell the tale that no other journalists, especially the western media, seemed able to tell at the time.

Deeply embedded with the pro-Russia forces of Donbass, Phillips showed the willing world a real war correspondent’s view of the civil conflict. RT eventually dropped Phillips’ coverage for yet undisclosed reasons, but the broadcasts continued with the aid of photojournalist Patrick Lancaster. Phillips reported while taking cover from fire at the Donetsk Airport, from Crimea and Odessa, and even at DPR cookouts with Donbass heroes. For the UKROPS (Ukrainian Association of Patriots or Nazis), people like this would certainly be labeled “birdwatchers” in spy slang.

For me, Graham is a friend and an example. He is an ordinary person who took on an extraordinary responsibility. I watched his cataloging of the utter catastrophe that Ukraine became. Phillips walked side-by-side with Donbass heroes Motorola (Arsen Sergeyevich Pavlov) and Givi (Mikhail Sergeyevich Tolstykh), and with my “brat” (brother) Russell “Texas” Bonner Bentley, who will also be profiled here.

Phillips delivers perhaps the best example of fearless journalism covering the Ukraine uprising. Here is his story as a Kremlin Troll, told in his own words.

When Euromaidan got going, I was living in Odessa, in the south of Ukraine. Before this, from 2011 to the start of 2013, I had lived in Kiev. It was during this span I first noticed a change in the political situation of the country.

After the October 2012 elections, this was when the neo-Nazi party Svoboda captured around 10% of the vote, some seats in parliament, and when the almost daily disorder began. Svoboda started using their ballot boost, fueled by a general turn to ultra-nationalism, to ramp up their ultra-nationalist, far-right program. Their strategies included regular protests, coordinated attacks on events, aggression toward people not fitting their agendas, and a high-octane Congress in as of December 2012. It was via my capacity as a freelance journalist that I first covered all these events and more. So, from the start of Maidan, seeing the people I’d covered in Kiev, such as Svoboda, behind it, I knew that nothing good would come of it.