Brief Update: a field trip to the Donbass and some information for those of you who read and listen to German
John Mark Dougan took a friend to the Donbass--and she then recorded her thoughts and told of her experiences; 'Bonus' feature = two interviews in German I did earlier this month
The first couple of days of the academic year are always ‘special’, and this one isn’t particularly different. That means, in effect, that I’m a few days away from getting back to my previous rhythm, and I’m glad you’re all sticking with me until next Monday.
To (kinda) make up for it, here’s a couple of things I found quite interesting in the past 2-3 days, which means: I’d like to share them with you:
Independent journalist Thomas Röper—whom the Ministry of Truth™, while citing a piece by Belltower News (which, as you may know reading these pages, is funded in part by the German government via the Antonio Amadeu Stiftung), calls ‘pro-Kremlin’—posted a very interesting piece on his website, Anti-Spiegel.ru:
Here’s the translated text, you can find English-language video mentioned therein below. Mind you that I cannot verify Mr. Röper’s account, but do consider John Marc Dougan’s story, too: he’s an ex-soldier of the US military and former police officer out of Florida. Mr. Dougan now lives in exile in Russia—because, while working for a police dept. in Florida, he began exposing corruption, which is, well, how he tells it.
So, I suggest you read how the Daily Beast tells Mr. Dougan’s story, which you can find here (it’s the first version that appeared on 7 Dec. 2018, written by Kevin Poulsen, courtesy of the Wayback Machine—because, for some reason I cannot possibly understand [/irony], my browser won’t display the currently-linked version; maybe your browser can do that, though).
Once you’re through the above pice, why not venture over to the version of Mr. Dougan’s story as told by Russian news agency Sputnik, which you can find here.
Perhaps you’ll find some discrepancies…
And now: back to Mr. Röper’s piece (my translation and emphases):
John Marc Dougan is a very fascinating character. He is American and has lived in Moscow for six years. I met him during reporting trips to the Donbass and we became friends. Like me, he now travels there on his own. He not only reports in videos about what he experiences and sees, he also always brings humanitarian aid for the suffering people, which he often pays for out of his own funds. On this trip, too, he spent—without exaggeration—all his money to help the suffering people, so that on the way back to Moscow he did not even have money for a hotel, hence he had to sleep in the car.
John has a friend who is an avowed opponent of what she called ‘Russia’s war of aggression against the sovereign Ukraine’. She has taken part in illegal protests in Moscow against the Russian military invasion, for which she was also taken into custody by police and fined.
When John was planning his things for a new trip to the Donbass, the two happened to chat, and John offered her to accompany him and see for herself what was going on there, as an interpreter would be very helpful anyway. She spontaneously agreed and went off [to the Donbass] with him. This unbelievable-sounding story really happened like this.
I met the two of them in Rostov-on-Don after I had just returned from Donetsk. They were on their way to Donetsk, and I met John’s friend Maria (Masha) and had a long chat with her. She was completely convinced, based on the media reports she was following, that Russia was committing genocide in Ukraine.
When the two of them returned from the Donbass ten days later, I met a completely disturbed and shocked Masha in Moscow, because her previous worldview had completely collapsed within ten days in the Donbass.
After the trip, she told John on camera how she experienced the journey and what the experiences did to her. Unfortunately, the video is only available in English, but I really recommend it to anyone whose English is sufficient to understand it. It is extremely moving to see how Masha struggles with her composure as she talks about her experiences and how these few days have destroyed everything she had previously believed to be true.
So, without much further ado, here’s John Dougan’s recorded chat with his friend Masha:
Please let me know in the comments what you make of this. I cannot vouch for any of the above information provided by Mr. Röper, but I would say that I found the video quite believable.
What do you think?
For Those Who Understand German
As to the above-mentioned German-language issues: well, tomorrow I’ll be recording an extended conversation with a journalist from tkp.at. We’ll be talking about Covid in Norway, so, I’ll post the link and some more (original) work about this next week. I can also say that this will also be uploaded to Eviltube, but I will not guarantee that it shall stay there.
In the meantime, here’s a bunch of links to interviews (in German) I’ve done in the past couple of weeks; we’re talking about the long essay I recently posted:
If you understand German, do head over to check out my chat with Thomas Oysmüller of tkp.at, recorded on 7-8 Aug. 2022:
Yesterday, I also did an interview with the new Kontrafunk Radio station, which was broadcasted earlier today (my contribution starts at the 13:27 mark):
Donass about Donbass!