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By pointing to dramatic footage of recent events in Sri Lanka and telling everyone that President Putin was personally responsible for provoking chaos in a far-away land, Blinken is scaremongering by getting Westerners to fear that their country might be the next to go bankrupt and subsequently descend into disorder unless they support all of their government’s efforts to preemptively “thwart this tyrant”.
US Secretary of State Blinken flipped reality on its head over the weekend by blaming Russia for Sri Lanka’s bankruptcy crisis. According to him, “We’re seeing the impact of this Russian aggression playing out everywhere. It may have contributed to the situation in Sri Lanka; we’re concerned about the implications around the world.” There’s no basis whatsoever to his claim, which is nothing more than a propagandistic talking point that’s intended to smear Russia’s regional reputation as it “Returns to South Asia”. This process is geo-economically driven and led by the energy assistance that Moscow’s extended to its partners in this part of the world, especially geostrategically positioned Sri Lanka.
Far from being responsible for that country’s crisis, which the author explained last week is actually attributable to a confluence of policymaking mistakes, Russia was recently asked by the Sri Lankan authorities to scale up the support that it’s been providing to alleviate it. This is proven by Prime Minister Wickremesinghe asking for that to happen earlier this month in an exclusive interview that he gave to TASS. It’s unbelievable that he’d have done this if he felt that Moscow was responsible for the mess that Sri Lanka’s found itself in over the past few months. To the contrary, its premier appreciates the support that Russia’s since extended to it and is eager for the Kremlin to do more to help his people.
Blinken knows this, yet he’s shamelessly lying through his teeth for reasons that will now be explained. There’s no way that he expects anyone in South Asia to listen to what he said since everyone is aware that it’s nothing but a blatant falsehood, which suggests that his targeted audience is actually the Western one. Without reliable access to Russian media due to its flagships either being officially censored there or put under such state pressure that they could no longer properly operate, most people in this part of the world only receive their information from the US-led Mainstream Media (MSM).
Everything that they’ve been told thus far is that Russia is supposedly holding the entire Global South hostage by depriving it of much-needed fertilizer and food. It should be mentioned that these same developing countries don’t believe that one bit and are aware of the artificially manufactured origins of this crisis, yet most Westerners don’t doubt that weaponized information warfare narrative for a second. In their mind, President Putin is either a “monster” or a “madman” who simply wants to kill as many people as possible just for the fun of it, especially non-Caucasians, since they’ve been indoctrinated into ridiculously imagining that he’s the reincarnation of Hitler.
The only reason why the Secretary of State would say something as bonkers as President Putin being responsible for Sri Lanka’s crisis when that second-mentioned country’s Prime Minister and even its recently resigned President both publicly requested Russia to scale up its support for their people is because he expects his targeted Western audience to believe it. This is all part of the US’ unprecedented propaganda campaign against that Eurasian Great Power, which in this context is intended to convince Westerners to back whatever means their governments say are required in order to “stop Russia and save the world.”
By pointing to dramatic footage of recent events in Sri Lanka and telling everyone that President Putin was personally responsible for provoking chaos in a far-away land, Blinken is scaremongering by getting Westerners to fear that their country might be the next to go bankrupt and subsequently descend into disorder unless they support all of their government’s efforts to preemptively “thwart this tyrant”. This isn’t just limited to restricting more civil liberties at home or plotting a provocative naval operation in the Black Sea under the false pretext of “protecting Ukrainian grain exports”, but can also be extended to further pressuring those South Asian states like India that continue closely cooperating with Russia.
In sum, Blinken blatantly lied about Russia’s alleged culpability in Sri Lanka’s bankruptcy crisis in order to manipulate Westerners, not anyone in South Asia who knows better than to believe this easily debunked falsehood. It’s an insult to everyone’s intellect that he’d say something that’s so obviously unbelievable, but that just goes to show how little he thinks about his own people’s intelligence that he didn’t even think that they’d google what he just claimed. Those that do so will learn that the Sri Lankan Prime Minister and President both publicly requested that Russia scale up the assistance it’s providing to alleviate their country’s crisis, which in turn exposes Blinken as a bald-faced liar.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
