If you insist on talking or writing about the war in the Ukraine kindly get your facts right and do not repeat the one-sided, subjective and monotonous clap trap and fairy tales that CNN and the other international media networks are continuously churning out.
Any student of modern history will tell you that the Russians were never the villains when it comes to acts of barbarity committed against sovereign nation states and against the oppresed people of the world.
That notorious title goes to the Americans, the Western European nations and their allies.
More than any other nation on earth the Russians supported the liberation struggle of African, South American, South-East Asian and Third World countries and fought against colonialism, neo-colonialism, imperialism, apartheid and racial and religious suppression and bigotry.
Quite apart from that kindly consider the following:
The Russians never enslaved black people. They never stole them from their homes, took them from their land, sold them as chattel or regarded them as nothing more that one quarter of a human being.
They never used black babies as fishing bait for alligators or described them as “gator meat!”
They never threw hundreds of thousands of black people into the sea as they transported them on slave ships from Africa to the West Indies and America.
They never acquired colonies all over the world where they stole and plundered the mineral resources and treasure of their subjects and destroyed their future and destinies.
They never indulged in neo-colonialism. They never enslaved the nations of the Third World by saddling them with massive debts which can hardly ever be paid off.
They never caused the death of 20 million people in World War I. They never caused the death of 50 million people in World War II.
They never dropped nuclear bombs on Japanese cities murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the process and poisoning the land.
They never bombed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians to death and starved to death over 500,000 Iraqi children. They never bombed the beautiful city of Belgrade and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Serbians.
They never wiped out the Red Indians of the western prairies of north America and they never herded the few that were left alive into horrendous concentration camps which they described as “reservations” and where they turned them into drunkards and alcoholics.
They never decimated and destroyed the black Aborigines of Australia and the Native indigenous Indians of Canada. They never flooded China with opium and other lethal drugs turning millions of Chinese men, women and children into helpless and feeble drug addicts.
They never stole massive traits of land from the sovereign nation of Mexico at gunpoint. They never gassed 6 million Jews to death. They never butchered and committed genocide against millions of Armenians.
They never flooded the black ghettos of major U.S. cities with heroin in order to turn the local black population into docile, feeble and weak-minded drug addicts. They never claimed to be masters of the world or members of the Aryan race.
They never sought to subjugate the Palestinians and strip them of their dignity and humanity.
They never killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis. They never attempted to conquer Vietnam. They never attempted to conquer Korea.
They never destroyed Iraq, Syria, Lebanon or Libya. They never sought to impose a New World Order.
They never set up, established and funded Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Shabab and other Islamist armies and terrorist organisations.
They never imposed unelected puppet rulers, blood-thirsty monarchs and ruthless regimes throughout the Arab world that have suppressed and killed their own people.
They never wiped out and exterminated the black population in Argentina.
They never killed foreign Presidents and Heads of States and toppled foreign governments. They never encouraged, funded and supported vicious and brutal leaders and military dictators.
They never wiped out the American Black Panthers, killed John F. Kennedy, murdered Martin Luther King, butchered Malcom X and slaughtered so many others.
I could go on and on.
It was not the Russians that killed Patrice Lumumba. It was not the Russians that killed Muammar Ghaddafi. It was not the Russians that killed Kwame Nkrumah.
It was not the Russians that killed Salvador Allende. It was not the Russians that killed Thomas Sankara. It was not the Russians that killed Samora Machel.
It was not the Russians that killed Pasteur Bizimungo. It was not the Russians that killed Gamal Abdel Nasser. It was not the Russians that killed Murtala Muhammed.
It was not the Russians that killed Tafawa Balewa. It was not the Russians that killed Sani Abacha.
It was not the Russians that killed MKO Abiola. It was not the Russians that killed Saddam Hussein. It was not the Russians that claimed to “own” the Congo and everything and everyone in it and that slaughtered 10 million African Congolese.
In all these cases we know who it was that used their local agents, their servile surrogates and their murderous associates to murder these leaders.
The orders to do so came directly from Uncle Sam and those that are now baying for Vladimir Putin’s blood and attempting to establish a New World Order.
I will never condemn mother Russia in her attempt to defend herself and protect her borders from the expansionist and hegemonist agenda of the Americans and NATO because she is perfectly within her rights to do so.
Again I will never condemn her because I am conversant with world history and I am fully aware of the massive provocation and hideous injustice that Vladimir Putin and the Russian people have been subjected to over the years.
Both Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler and the French people under Napolean Bonaparte learnt the hard way that Russia can never be conquered.
The Americans are about to learn the same lesson.
The Russians are a resilient and fearless people who take pride in who they are and in defending their nation.
This assertion will be proved over the next few weeks as the Ukrainian war rages and the conflict widens.
Despite the massive and well-orchestrated disinformation ans misinformation campaign against the Russians when it comes to the Ukrainian war, in the end the world will know the truth and that truth will set them free!
•Chief Femi Fani-Kayode is the author of this essay. He is a former Minister of Aviation in Nigeria and the Sadaukin Shinkafi
