Neither claim is true, but are based on Kremlin propaganda outlets such as RT.com which may have a small audience on television, but gain a wider circulation from an Internet site and YouTube channel disseminated through social media.

Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of New York University and Princeton University, appeared on the Thom Hartmann “progressive” radio show on January 26, falsely claiming that the US was training “extremely right-wing” fighters in the Ukrainian military and Americans were fighting alongside them.

To understand why Cohen could be receptive to such claims, it’s helpful to know that he has a long history of tilting toward the Kremlin in his critique of the American government, and in recent years has been openly supportive of President Vladimir Putin.



Cohen also believes that World War III is about to break out, as he told Thom Hartmann during the show:



Washington is determined to strike at Russia, short of militarily — but maybe that, too — as hard as possible. Europe is divided. About half of Europe wants the sanctions to end against Russia partly because they’re having an economic blowback in Europe.

In fact, it’s not really “half of Europe” but as even Russian propagandists are forced to concede, just seven countries highlighted in recent weeks which are believed to be advocating the lifting of sanctions, but which have not prevailed in internal EU debates. They include Austria, Hungary, Italy, Cyprus, Slovakia, France and the Czech Republic — countries either heavily dependent on Russian gas, or who do significant business with Russia, or where right-wing governments have allied with Putin.

As we reported today, Greece has just joined this group with the election of a new government, an alliance between the far-left SYRIZA and the far-right ANEL parties, two pro-Putin parties now stalling the EU’s effort to extend sanctions over Russia’s war in Ukraine.



Cohen spoke of an “Archduke Ferdinand” scenario where “the dominoes crash, and you end up with World War III.” It starts, he says, because “oil glues the economies of these countries” in the European Union dependent on Russian gas and oil.

Cohen describes how fierce fighting was renewed in a large and important city last weekend (he means Mariupol) — and says while Washington is blaming Russia for this escalation, “it’s not clear.” He then contends:



Now we get reports — confirmed — that an American general…Benjamin Hodges, has arrived in that area to train what they call the National Guard. This is in effect these battalions — often extremely right-wing — some would say neo-fascist — I won’t say that but there is that suspicion fighting against the Russian-backed rebels in the eastern Ukraine.

“The renewed fighting in the Ukraine might mean such a domino,” he says, as a political dispute in Ukraine becomes a Ukrainian civil war. He claimed to have predicted that “the two sides would align with Russia and Washington, and would become a proxy war,” and that now this “proxy war could lead us to a Cuban Missile crisis situation.”

In fact, as Defense News explains, American soldiers will begin training four companies of the Ukrainian National Guard only in April, as Lt. Gen. Hodges, head of US Army in Europe said during his first visit to Kiev on January 21. There are no trainers in Mariupol now.

Russian war propaganda repeatedly ties the ultranationalist group Right Sector to the National Guard, but has not substantiated claims of atrocities.



And the companies that the US will be training are in the National Guard, not the volunteer battalions per se. There has been no indication that this training relates to two volunteer battalions, Aidar and Azov, heavily covered in some Western and Russian state media, and implicated in some abuses such as kidnappings. They are described as using Nazi-like insignia and espousing “fascistic” views.

Aidar Battalion is a “territorial defense battalion” and reports to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and Azov Battalion reports to the Interior Ministry. These battalions, made up of volunteers, are members of the National Guard, and as such, are a reserve component of the Armed Forces of Ukraine under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They are not just a band of partisans.

Amnesty International documented four incidents of kidnappings in a report last year and suspects more based on some citizens’ testimonies, but these allegations, while serious, are minimal compare to the thousands reported by the UN and OSCE regarding the Russian-backed separatist fighters, for example in a report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights regarding 812 kidnappings, some involving torture and even death, released last year.

Even without investigations by international monitors, the Russian-backed separatists’ own war propaganda films amply record their torture of POWs, as we reported on those taken after the battles at the Donetsk Airport and at Krasny Partizan.



Whatever units that Hodges’ officers do train, we can be sure that this operation will receive maximum scrutiny not only from US media, but Congress, given the numerous press claims that certain battalions in Ukraine have mistreated POWs.

That will be far more scrutiny than Russian tanks and troops get from the same media, although as have been reporting, there is ample proof of Russian military presence in Ukraine, both in the form of volunteers and contract soldiers that are regular recruits re-booked as contractors to maintain “plausible deniability” that Russia’s “little green men,” as they have come to be called, are not “really” in Ukraine.



Cohen also made the false claim that “Americans are fighting in Ukraine”:

Yesterday, there were video reports, that seemed to indicate, by the voices speaking, Americans, fighting with Ukrainian forces. So let’s say this is true, and an American is killed by somebody — a sniper — by his own troops — Ukrainian troops, in Ukraine, that’s the kind of tripwire, with NATO, the United States and Russia not quite eyeball-to-eyeball but let’s say witihn shouting distance militarily, in Ukraine, eastern Ukraine, that could lead to this horrible scenario.

This is based on disinformation widely publicized in recent days regarding a man in camouflage with a backpack filmed after the city of Mariupol was shelled by Russian-backed forces, headed by a Russian Grad crew commander.



We investigated the claims and found that the Mariupol TV video, and another video made by the Azov Battalion showed the same man, who turned out to be a British citizen named Chris “Swampy” Garrett from the Isle of Man.

Garrett, an expert on de-mining, was in Ukraine to help remove unexploded ordnance, including Grad rockets that had not detonated discovered on the playground of Day Care Center No. 42.

Garrett denied that he was any “American mercenary”; he is a volunteer who just wanted to help the Ukrainian people.

Russian propagandists have also made much of an American citizen named Mark Paslawsky (@BSpringnote on Twitter) who was killed in the battle of Ilovaisk last August. Paslawsky, a US citizen of Ukrainian heritage who hailed from New Jersey, moved to Kiev some years ago where he worked in finance. He also decided on his own to join the Donbass Battalion. RT.com, the best-known Kremlin mouthpieces has made much of the fact that Paslawsky was the nephew of Mykola Lebed, a Ukrainian resistance fighter convicted, and imprisoned for the murder of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki, in 1934, who escaped and was accused of collaboration with the Nazis in the 1940s.

Lebed’s history has been debated over the years, as Ukrainians claim that the Soviet KGB tried to discredit those who opposed Soviet rule with the Nazi label. Even so, Lebed’s group may indeed have been involved in the murder of Poles and Jews. There’s another principle here, however, which is that a nephew should not be responsible for his uncle’s actions — a point never acknowledged by the Russian government.

Other than Paslawsky, we’re not aware of any Americans who fought in Ukraine or died — and we can point out that when Paslawsy was killed last August, no American military response followed.



That hasn’t stopped Russian disinformation shops from periodically peddling the story that “hundreds” of American mercenaries are fighting in Ukraine.

Last summer, the notorious Col. Igor Strelkov claimed grotesquely at a new conference that the bodies of dozens of black American fighters were strew across the fields of the Donbass and he could prove this to reporters. He never did. In the end, only one terrified prisoner of the “DPR” was released — a British citizen named Mohammed Yahia Abu El Gasim, 21, who had been studying medicine in Donetsk, who later told the story of how he was arrested and forced to perform slave labor to the British press.

UPDATE:

RT.com sent us an email:







