Kiev Hit List Targets Schiller Institute and Associates as “Information Terrorists”

As reported above, a blacklist published by the Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), based in Kiev, accuses 79 international “speakers” of being purveyors of “Russian propaganda”, of which the first 30 are experts who have participated in Schiller Institute international conferences this year. That fact alone demonstrates the key role of the SI in organizing a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine, while exposing those western powers and NATO that are cynically using that war to destroy Russia and impose their “rules-based order”.

The CCD was created in April 2021, but according to Andriy Yermak, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine for President Zelenskyy, the idea for it had “been brewing since 2014”. That puts it in the context of the Maidan coup, the preparation for which had been funded by the U.S. State Department to the tune of $5 billion, according to the notorious Victoria Nuland.

A number of the 79 individuals named have warned that this is de facto a hit list, and a threat to their personal security. Andriy Shapovalov, acting head of the CCD, has made that threat explicit. In an address to an international roundtable on countering disinformation on July 14 — the very day the blacklist was released, he charged that people who deliberately spread disinformation are “information terrorists,” subject to be tried as “war criminals.”

As reported on the CCD’s “Events” page: Shapovalov emphasized to the (unnamed) participating “representatives of state authorities, public organizations, mass media and international experts,” that “‘people who deliberately spread disinformation are information terrorists….Information terrorists should know that they will have to answer to the law as war criminals’.”

The U.S. State Department played a key role in organizing and funding the roundtable to which Shapovalov delivered this chilling threat. Indeed, according to the CCD, the conference was “supported”, that is, funded, by the United States State Department, while the U.S.-headquartered Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF Global Ukraine) was responsible for organizing the event, along with several Ukrainian outfits. The CRDF Global Ukraine is a public-private organization “founded in 1995 in response to the collapse of the Soviet Union.” Its funders officially include various agencies of the State Department and Defense Department, as well as the “U.K. government,” and its Counter Proliferation & Arms Control Centre.

Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who is also on the CCD blacklist, points out in an open letter to his Congressional delegation dated July 27, that the State Department, under its direct aid program, pays the salaries of Ukrainian civil servants, which would “logically” include those employed by the CCD, an outfit that intimidates U.S. citizens from exercising their rights to free speech. In addition, he notes that “Ukraine has a history of converting ‘blacklists’ into ‘kill lists’, where those who speak out against the policies of the Ukrainian government are being murdered or threatened with violence”.

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