Since then, I've discovered the writings of Jacques F. Baud, a 67-year-old former Swiss army colonel and senior intelligence operative whose storied CV includes mission-leader service with the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in anti-terrorism, weapons inspection and human rights roles.

A prolific author and essayist, his works include Warsaw Pact Weapons Handbook (1989), Encyclopaedia of Intelligence and Secret Services (2004), Encyclopaedia of Terrorism (2016), The Navalny Affair: Conspiracy at the Service of Foreign Policy (2021) and last month's Putin: Master of the Game?

Despite this extensive experience, Wikipedia says his views "tick all the boxes for geopolitical conspiracy theories".

Maybe that's because he also wrote Governing by Fake News - International Conflicts: 30 years of fake news used by Westerners, published in 2020.

IN THE NEWS:

Earlier this month Baud published a 6000-word essay, The Military Situation in The Ukraine, online at various sites but first up, it seems, in The Postil Magazine, which sees its mission as "classical humanism, rooted in faith and reason", working for "a return to Christendom".

This piece (and a subsequent 3000-word update) starts with the 2014 Donetsk and Lugansk polls, and Baud's NATO role searching for the supply of arms to "the rebels", finding they came not from Russia, but from Russian-speaking Ukrainian units defecting to the other side.

Baud points out the "Minsk 1 (September 2014) and Minsk 2 (February 2015) agreements did not provide for the separation or independence of the republics, but their autonomy . . . (which) was to be negotiated between Kiev and . . . the republics, for an internal solution to the Ukraine".

"That is why since 2014, Russia has systematically demanded their implementation while refusing to be a party to the negotiations, because it was an internal matter of the Ukraine," Baud wrote.

"On the other side, the West - led by France - systematically tried to replace the Minsk Agreements with the 'Normandy format', which put Russians and Ukrainians face-to-face."

Baud says the Ukrainian army was "in a deplorable state" by 2018, quoting chief Ukrainian military prosecutor Anatoly Matios as saying Ukraine had lost 2700 men in the Donbass: 891 from illness, 318 from road accidents, 177 from other accidents, 175 from poisonings (alcohol, drugs), 172 from careless handling of weapons, 101 from security regulation breaches, 228 from murders and 615 from suicides.

Baud notes the integration of paramilitary militias, "essentially composed of foreign mercenaries, often extreme right-wing militants" - including the now widely reported Azov Regiment - quoting Reuters to say they numbered more than 102,000 or more than 40 per cent of Ukraine's forces by 2020.

"They were armed, financed and trained by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France. There were more than 19 nationalities, including Swiss. Western countries have thus clearly created and supported Ukrainian far-right militias."

Baud then deconstructs the start of the present conflict, presenting information from the 57-state Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE: the European and Russian spheres, plus the UK, US and Canada).

This, he says, shows "Joe Biden knew that the Ukrainians had begun shelling the civilian population of Donbass" - their own people, in other words - as early as February 16 this year.

"In his speech of February 24, Vladimir Putin stated the two objectives of his operation: 'demilitarise' and 'denazify' the Ukraine," Baud wrote.

"So, it is not a question of taking over the Ukraine, nor even, presumably, of occupying it; and certainly not of destroying it.

"From then on, our visibility on the course of the operation is limited: the Russians have an excellent security of operations, and the details of their planning are not known.

"But fairly quickly, the course of the operation allows us to understand how the strategic objectives were translated on the operational level."

Baud blames Western politicians - not their intelligence services - for the way the situation is perceived in the West.

"The problem is that it is the politicians who decide - the best intelligence service in the world is useless if the decision-maker does not listen," Baud wrote.

"This is what happened during this crisis."

I implore readers to examine his evidence for themselves. And why is this important here, on the other side of the world?

Well, apart from possible nuclear war over Ukraine, the AUKUS deal ties us closer than ever to the United States and an east coast submarine base, possibly in Newcastle.

I don't have a problem with that, but we need to keep our eyes open.

THE JACQUES BAUD ARTICLES:

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: