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June 27, 2024 - Jim Fetzer
16:40
Aussie Journalist Johnee H Live from Belgorod - June 26, 2024
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Love your mind.
The Freeman Report and James Freeman on today's News Talk Radio, TNT.
And welcome back, and it's great to have Johnny H with us.
I know he's been with TNT a couple months ago, I think, and he's an Australian independent journalist, and he spent six months in Donesk and made a fantastic film, 30-minute film, it's short to watch and it's harrowing, called Danny, a hero from a heroic city.
So, Johnny, thanks so much for joining us today.
Actually, I've been one year almost in Donetsk.
But yeah, at this moment, I'm in Belgorod, which is a Russian territory, pre-war Russian territory, which has been shelled 24/7.
Just the day before yesterday, we had 20 drones attack at 2:00 a.m. in the morning.
It was quite horroring.
We could hear the drones moving around the city and just exploding wherever they were exploding.
And Philistines, that was a Russian territory that's been attacked by Ukrainian forces, is that correct?
Absolutely, yeah.
Just because sometimes we get confused.
No, and I actually want to start with something else if you don't mind.
I just want to fear the conversation from Wales because I'm Australian and I'm the only Australian journalist in Russia, be it independent, not independent, whatever.
And Julian Assange went to primary school eight kilometers from where I live in Northern New South Wales.
And Julian Assange has been very much an inspiration for me and I'm so delighted he is free and in some way we're all Julian Assange's because we're all testing the boundaries from where Big Brother is going to say enough and is going to shut us up.
No, he is an inspiration to anyone involved in media and to have the tenacity to hold your ground for those five years and not give in because you believe that actually what you have in WikiLeaks is so important to tell the truth is phenomenal.
So that is an inspiration, I think, to anyone involved in media and journalism.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
So yeah, that's why we're here.
That's what we're trying to show.
I mean, there's about 500 journalists on the other side.
There's hardly any journalists on this side.
There's a lot of brave Russian journalists.
Just two were killed in the last 10 days.
One of them was a member of mine.
There's a few people like you might know, Patrick Lancaster, an American journalist, but not many journalists covering the truth here and I try not to voice too many opinions.
I just try to be an eyewitness reporter to what's happening.
And I've been in Donetsk for a long, long time.
I've watched Western weapons kill civilians, and now the last two weeks I've been to Belgorod.
And Donetsk is a quiet place compared to Belgorod.
Belgorod is just shelled 24-7.
Yeah, I've made already three reports about attacks I've witnessed here.
The attack Day before yesterday, there was only one person died.
But the attack on the day I came, nine people died.
They were all civilians.
It was all civilians.
I mean, you can check all my reports.
I have a Telegram channel called Cafe Revolution.
And yeah, I just do eyewitness reporting.
I don't even ask for too much opinions.
I just want to show, come on, guys.
When a soldier fights a soldier, that's war.
But when you shell civilians day in and day out, that's terrorism, you know?
And, you know, I'm independent.
I don't even let Russia take me around.
I go around by myself.
And I don't see any military installations in the city.
I see a city, one of the most beautiful cities I've actually ever been to.
It was actually voted eight times the cleanest city in Russia.
Wow.
Tell us about, because there are stories, I guess, that journalists will want to follow the herd and report on, and obviously reporting on one side in this story.
But tell us, did you have a connection or what led you to actually going out first and reporting what you saw?
I've been to Russia and Ukraine before the SMO quite a few times.
And when the special military operations started and I saw all the lies being reported, I had to come here.
It was just my conscience.
I was a witness in Kiev in 2019 to big Nazi marches.
To big bandera marches, to the dark energy that was around Ukraine.
I also have many beautiful friends in Ukraine.
Ukraine and Russia is the same place.
When, pre-war, if you went to Ukraine, you wouldn't know if you're in Ukraine or Russia because everybody speaks Russian.
I didn't know anybody who actually speaks Ukrainian.
Now everybody speaks broken Ukrainian because they're forced to.
But if you study history, you know that Ukraine and Russia are one place.
Kiev was even considered at some stage like the capital of Russia.
And it's just one country.
It's really a civil war orchestrated by powers much greater than Ukraine.
Certainly, and it helps the weapons industry, the war industry, which I think is the key for a number of countries.
But tell us about the conversations with civilians.
I mean, in that film, Danny, from Heroic City, you were just going out and talking to people, showing cemeteries, showing what was happening.
Let us know some of the conversations you've had with the public who are suffering in the middle of this.
Look, I've interviewed hundreds of civilians and have had conversations with thousands.
You know what fascinates me more than anything?
Russians don't hate.
And I will say this again, Russians don't hate.
They have, you know, sometimes when I go to a sport and there's still blood and there's still dead bodies, they will curse and they will curse Zelensky.
But they won't curse Ukraine.
Because, you know, most people actually have relatives on the other side.
You know, it's like most people talk with the other side, especially in Donetsk and all these border regions.
Most people talk with the other side every single day, you know, because there's Telegram, there's WhatsApp, there's not a problem to talk and they check on each other's well-being.
So they don't hate the other side.
I think only Out of all my conversations I've had in the heat of shelling, maybe two, three times people said Ukraine should be destroyed.
Most of the time they just tell me, come on, we're brothers, we need to sit and talk.
We need to remove France and UK and the US out of the equation, and we need to sit and talk.
And if somebody let us talk, just us, Ukraine and Russia, no other participants, we'll sort it out really quick.
And I believe that to be the case, you know.
Russians don't even hate the West.
They're starting to pity the West, you know.
They see it as a society that's lost its way completely, you know.
I mean, Russia is a pumping economy.
Don't believe anything you see in the media.
I mean, Russia is so...
I mean, the cafes I go to in Belgorod, even the cafes in Melbourne are not so nice.
You know, they're really hip.
You know, I had I had for breakfast smashed avocado with poached eggs and sun-dried tomatoes for about 20 cents of 20 percent of the price in Melbourne.
And, you know, Russia is very modern.
I mean, don't people don't get what Russia is, you know, and they're not so concerned with us also because Russia is not a country, it's a continent.
It's more than a continent.
The sun rises on one side, it sets on the other side.
They don't need more territory.
They were forced into this conflict by the West.
They don't want this conflict.
Contrary to a lot of Western media, Russia does not want to go to the Polish border.
Russia would like to just stop this conflict just with the four new regions and that's it.
I know there's a lot of pro-Russian commentators that say, ah, Russia should go to Kiev, Russia should go to Odessa.
That's not what I'm hearing on the ground here.
People want the conflict over.
They're not seeking any more expansion.
And I've certainly found it strange that in the West there is no call for peace.
In fact, whenever someone, whenever Nigel Farage talked about he wants the war to end, and maybe this isn't all one-sided as the West tells us, he was attacked and ridiculed and mocked and every newspaper has come out against him attacking him for that.
But this drive to more war, If you've got a war on the edge of Europe, surely Europe would just want peace.
Let's sit down and have peace.
And it's a very curious situation that we find ourselves in, this push for war from Europe, which are neighbours to the conflict.
Man, this is really weird.
This is really weird.
The West has become totally peacemongers.
I mean, not peacemongers, but warmongers.
They pretend to want peace, but they don't want peace.
I mean, they started this war.
I mean, I know the history of this conflict.
Like I said to you, I was many times in Russia and Ukraine.
2014, the West initiated this conflict.
They helped overthrow a legitimately Voted government, the government of Yanukovych.
And it doesn't matter if Yanukovych was corrupt or not corrupt.
Every president in Ukrainian history has been corrupt.
But he was voted in because he was pro-Russian.
He wasn't even pro-Russian.
He just wanted to balance Russia and Europe, you know.
And he was overthrown by Soros Kudetan.
They call it revolution, whatever purple, velvet, whatever color they give.
And they're supporting really dark elements in Ukraine.
And the reason I'm saying dark elements, because I believe that most Ukrainians are really good people.
But they're supporting really dark, radical elements in Ukraine that want this war, that need this war.
I mean, elements that worship Stefan Bandera, which basically was a Hitler
admirer for Laura and things like this and I mean I thought we were about democracy and freedom I mean I'm sure I mean I have this I don't know if you can see it I'm an old hippie I have a my only tattoo a peace sign you know what I mean and I didn't come here to be a war correspondent I've come here to show the futility of war you know and that's why I cover only civilian casualties because I feel if soldier fights another soldier well
Tough luck.
That's what war is about.
So but I covered the civilian suffering, you know, I covered the civilian story, because I think we should be concerned with the civilian story, like the civilian story in Gaza, like other civilian stories.
It's like, you know, look, Journalists are being killed everywhere.
In Gaza, 70 or 75 journalists have been killed because they're trying to show the civilian story.
Here in Russia already, quite a few dozen journalists have been killed, mostly trying to cover the civilian story.
It's like, come on guys, if you want to fight each other, you can fight, but stop harming civilians, you know, because that's terrorism.
When you just shell civilians, that's terrorism.
I mean, somebody asked me today in my channel, but are there no military bases in Belgorod?
No, there are absolutely no military bases in Belgorod.
There's hardly even any soldiers.
You know, in Donetsk, because it's been a frontline city for 10 years, you always see soldiers.
Soldiers are an R&R in Donetsk.
Donetsk is like, it's a frontline.
It's been fighting for 10 years, you know.
But Belgorod, It's a purely civilian city.
There's actually thousands of foreign students studying in the university here.
I interviewed a few of them the other day.
There's nothing here.
You know, there's nothing that's worth sharing.
It's a psychological terrorist campaign.
They think the civilian population will run away.
But I had a really powerful incident the other day.
You can see it also in my Telegram channel.
There was a Siren.
And so I helped a few mothers with prams into, into the shelter.
And then of course, I went last into the shelter.
And, you know, the mothers were all quiet, just talking normal talk.
And the kids were all relaxed.
And what I noticed, the mothers were just talking small talk.
They weren't talking anything about what was happening.
They just kept everything peaceful.
And then the siren was over.
They went out.
We heard a few explosions above us.
So it was very lucky we were at the shelter because the anti-air missile and some debris fell down.
And then we went out.
And then I was thinking to myself, if this happened in London or New York or Sydney, the mothers will be screaming.
They will be totally panicked in the shelter.
Russians are a different breed and if you think you're going to cower them or make them run away by shelling their city, you have the wrong idea.
It's really the wrong idea.
It's not how Ukraine or the West are going to beat Russia.
They're not going to beat Russia because Russia's Never lost, you know, but it's just a pity.
It's just a pity that all of us, Australia, UK, Canada, America, we're drumming the drums of war on a conflict that most of us don't even know what it's about.
Well, Russians are hardy and just the last two minutes or so, obviously Putin has put a proposed peace deal and I keep thinking the money will run out in the West, but I know the US have just sent another huge package of more weaponry, more armaments.
How do you see this ending?
Because eventually Ukraine will have to agree to a peace deal from Russia.
That's the only way I see out of this.
Look, every war through history ends up with a sign, a signature, with a deal, you know.
So I think the West will get tired of it.
They'll probably get rid of Zelensky because he probably would have served their purpose.
He knows too much probably also.
And then they'll bring somebody that Russia would agree to sign a deal with because Zelensky is actually According to Ukrainian law, he's not any more a legit president.
So they'll have to bring somebody that will be acceptable to Russia and acceptable to the West, and they'll probably sign a deal.
And as I know Russia, Russia will probably compromise on something also.
It will be mostly on Russian terms, but you see Russia doesn't want to humiliate Ukraine also and Russia doesn't want a failed state on its border.
So people don't understand the Russian mind.
A lot of people are saying from the pro-Russia camp saying Russia should take Odessa.
But if Russia takes Odessa, Ukraine will be a failed state because we have no access to the sea and Ukraine is mainly an agricultural exporter.
So I don't think, and I could be wrong, but I don't think Russia wants a failed state, failed terrorist state on its border.
It wants a prosperous Ukraine, a neutral Ukraine on its border.
So, I mean, that's my take on it.
Okay, well, Johnny, thank you so much for joining us.
I love the film.
Thank you so much for giving us your thoughts.
And thank you to the viewers and listeners for tuning in.
You've been with The Freedom Report and I will be back with you tomorrow, as usual, filling in for James.
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