Interview with Maria Zakharova, coming soon!

 

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Stay tuned for @MintPressNews journalist @EvaKBartlett's exclusive interview with Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Ministry, who says the US has been interfering in Russia. pic.twitter.com/5Hjguh2bdX

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) September 4, 2019

I am very pleased that my interview & conversation with Maria Zakharova will be published soon on MintPress News.   Mint has tweeted a short trailer.

Maria’s words are powerful, she is a sage voice in the face of endless Western media and politicians’ lies and, frankly, fake news.  I thank her for the generous amount of time she gave me, and for her integrity.
*I’ve been working very hard on this. It would have been out a week or more ago, but I did have a technical problem: the video editing file and the backup file which I had almost completed work on suddenly failed and would not open. I had to start over from the beginning, while travelling & doing some interviews in Crimea. 

In spite of tech issues, I finally finished the last bit yesterday. I’m grateful to Mint for adding very nice finishing and professional touches, and for publishing the interview!

Very pleased my interview & conversation with Maria Zakharova will be published soon on MintPress News.

I've been working very hard on this.

In spite of tech issues, I finally finished the last bit today. Grateful to Mint for adding very nice finishing touches 👏 https://t.co/Wkei19xl1H

— Eva Bartlett (@EvaKBartlett) September 4, 2019

 

Ukraine’s War on Donbass: An Interview With Filmmaker Maxim Fadeev

The following is an interview conducted by email with a documentary maker based in Donetsk, who has been documenting Ukraine’s war on the Donetsk People’s Republic and the tragedies this has caused civilians living there.

‘Maxim Fadeev’ is actually the pseudonym of a correspondent whose family lives in an area of Ukraine controlled by the government. To protect his family, Maxim, like many journalists whose families live on the other side, opted to use a pseudonym, due to persecution by the Ukrainian authorities.

In fact, even journalists living and working in such areas openly and transparently are persecuted. One prime example is that of Kirill Vyshinsky, editor of RIA Novosti Ukraine, arrested and imprisoned by Ukraine in May 2018, the authorities alleging treason. Vyshinky has 15 months later still not had an actual trial.

UPDATE: As of August 28, Kirill Vyshinsky has finally been released, although he still has not had a fair trial. Sadly, his case is not unique; journalists in Ukraine have very real fears of being persecuted, as do their lawyers. Maxim Fadeev and his family would be a prime target, given the nature of his courageous and damning documentary work.

More on Maxim, as told to me by his colleague:

“Max Fadeev is one of the most prominent filmmakers who has captured the war in the east of Ukraine: his unique footage from the fighting in the midst of the battles was shown on both Russian State TV channels as well as US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Very few in the industry have dared plunge so deeply into unfolding events. At one stage, he was living with the rebels (militia fighters) for several days during a bloody assault on the terminal building at Donetsk airport, the enemy, the Ukrainian military, being stationed only a hundred meters away. Max daringly filmed an offensive operation from within the Marinka settlement, which is located close to the city of Donetsk. The footage was used by a dozen clip makers – almost every video about Donbass contains his footage (the most famous example has almost 3 million views on YouTube: https://youtu.be/NyCD3LqfbJ8).

Max Fadeev has shot 16 films since May 2014 (https://vimeo.com/maxfadeev), and now, despite the fact that this war is almost forgotten, he and his team independently continue to work on serious documentary projects to show and document what is happening on his native land.”

Lovely Encounters In Sevastopol, Crimea

I have a lot to update on from various areas of Russia over the past few weeks, but have been working hard on a special project that takes priority over all my other work and over even simple updates (and which unfortunately two days ago I had to re-start from the beginning when my project and backup project inexplicably failed).

Yesterday was one of the few exceptions to me taking time from that project to post an update, because it’s just too lovely to not post while still buzzing from the happiness of the encounters I had in Crimea today, again.

Yesterday afternoon, I walked 25 minutes or so from my Simferopol hotel to the train station, managed to buy a ticket thanks to translation app (119 Rubles, several hundred fewer than the bus prices I was seeing online), and had a delightful train ride in a slow train filled with locals getting off/on the train periodically over the two hours of the journey.

Canadian journalist criticizing rallies attacked in Moscow with anti-Russian slogans

*I’m sure the title in Russian flowed better. I did amend it slightly to note and highlight that I was NOT attacked by a Russian, but likely an American/israeli.

Vadim Manukyan interviewed me regarding an incident that happened last Saturday.

**Please note: everyone I’ve met in Moscow, in Russia generally, has been *extremely* kind and helpful. The person who abused me had likely an American accent and Zionist motivations. I’m mainly posting this to both show ugly Zionism. This incident has delayed me a little in finishing off two important projects, but only due to the incident itself and taking the time to file a complaint with police**
Vadim Manukyan writes:

“Canadian journalist and blogger Eva Karene Bartlett came to Russia for tourism, journalism, including on the Moscow protests, and also to visit Crimea and Donbass.
It was she who owned the famous phrase about Moscow ‘opposition’:

‘These are the most apathetic of all the protesters in the world that I have seen.”

[*Note: My emphasis on apathy was NOT any call to violence, it was noting the lack of interest protesters displayed, compared to passionate and vibrant protests I’ve witnessed elsewhere, like Caracas for example.]

Interviewed by Russian Blogger & Public Figure: From Moscow to Donbass

The other day, I was interviewed by Vadim Manukyan on the Moscow protests but also on issues related to Syria, Gaza, Venezuela and western corporate media propaganda.

*Vadim Manukyan is a blogger, public figure, and an “expert of the Council for the Development of the Information Society and Media at the State Duma”, as described on his Facebook profile.

*Photo by Eva Bartlett. Journalist taking selfie in front of Russian police. Many journalists at the protest had a visible fixation with framing their photos with police. The intent seems clear enough to me. Police, by the way, did not react to this nor to further harassment by journalists.

 

“Canadian journalist and blogger Eva Bartlett attended an opposition rally on Sakharov Avenue in Moscow on August 10 and called the protesters “the most apathetic she had seen” The journalist shared her thoughts on Facebook.

[Eva note: My emphasis on APATHETIC was to highlight the sense that many of the protesters were not there for reasons to do with “democracy”, etc, but were, lets say, persuaded by other interests… ]

For this “liberty”, according to tradition, some of the Russian social network users harassed her, Eva was accused of “propaganda” and “work for the Russian media”.

In order to clarify the position of Eva Bartlett on all pressing issues, Vadim Manukyan spoke with her specifically for the Federal News Agency.

 

*Photo by Eva Bartlett. Protesters in Moscow August 10, 2019.

A Syrian Leader Tells His Country’s Story: An Interview with SAA General Hassan Hassan

Eva Bartlett sits down for an exclusive interview with the head of the Syrian Arab Army’s Political Administration, General Hassan Hassan.

August 5, 2019, Mint Press News

For years, international headlines spotlighting Syria have claimed that the Syrian government, army, and its allies were guilty of a variety of atrocities. Yet as time has passed, many of the accusations levied at government and its allies have been shown to have been either falsified, staged (as in the case of allegations of chemical attacks in eastern Ghouta), or actually committed by the myriad terrorist groups operating in the country.

For their part, Syrian leadership has maintained from the start that the demonstrations in their country were not peaceful, from 2011 and on. Media in the West and the Gulf vilified Syria’s leadership, featuring story after story of government-imposed violence while ignoring or whitewashing the violence of the burgeoning armed groups flooding into Syria.

From as early as 2011, armed groups were throwing civilians from rooftops and committing beheadings, kidnappings, and massacres. The year 2011 alone saw multiple massacres of civilians and security forces committed by what the media called “unarmed protesters” and later by the “Free Syrian Army.” This was the same year that many in the media were insisting that a “peaceful revolution” was underway.

Since that time, those same armed groups, as well as the many iterations they spawned, have starved, tortured, imprisoned, murdered, maimed and even harvested the organs of Syrian civilians, in addition to killing Syrian and allied soldiers and journalists and destroying much of the country’s infrastructure.

To give a voice to the often ignored “other side” — those Syrians that have been working to defend their country since 2011 —  Eva Bartlett interviewed the Syrian Arab Army’s Head of Political Administration, General Hassan Hassan. General Hassan’s shelves and large wooden desk are covered with stacks of books, family photos, and various homages to the country he serves — the general holds a Ph.D. in geopolitical studies. The following is a transcript of Bartlett’s interview with Hassan following the 74th anniversary of the founding of the Syrian Arab Army.

Remembering Andrei Stenin, a Russian Photojournalist Killed in eastern Ukraine

 

August 7, 2019

Yesterday, visiting Rossiya Segodnya (which translates to Russia Today–but is not actually RT) in Moscow, I was told about a photojournalist named Andrei Stenin, who was martyred 5 years ago yesterday, in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. According to Sputnik, Stenin was killed on August 6,

“the car he was driving was fired upon; its charred remains were found on the highway.

The photojournalist specialised in documenting the human side of accidents, riots, military interventions and armed conflicts. His work took him to some of the world’s most dangerous places, including Syria, the Gaza Strip, Libya and Turkey, among other places.”

 

*I am reminded of the many Syrian and allied journalists who have been killed by terrorists in Syria, Palestinian journalists killed by Israel.

My 2014 article is not out-dated, but anyway:

Media Black-Out on Arab Journalists and Civilians Beheaded in Syria by Western-Backed Mercenaries

Related:

The Andrei Stenin International Photo Contest

Missing Russian journalist Andrey Stenin confirmed dead in Ukraine

In the line of fire: Journalists killed and abducted in Eastern Ukraine

The life and work of Andrey Stenin