What does that statement – Russia threatens to use nuclear weapons once again – make you think of? Surely, that Russia has already used nuclear weapons. Then, of course, if you are a little bit knowledgeable about the history of the latest 100 years, you begin to raise your eyebrows and search your memory for the event in which Russia used a nuclear weapon.
Russia threatens to use nuclear weapons again – that statement was made by Ursula von der Leyen during her laudation at the 2023 Atlantic Council Awards on September 20. In all likelihood very few people paid attention to the speech. After all, such speeches do not attract many listeners: they are like peas in a pod: the usual clap-trap about democracy, human rights accompanied by attacks levelled at the “political rogues” that is right extremists (somehow never left extremists) and selected states and their leaders: Russia, China, Syria, Iran, North Korea and some others. In her laudation occasioned by the awarding of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Ursula von der Leyen took exception to – how otherwise! – Russia. She used the fact that the Japanese prime minister was born in Hiroshima and, briefly recalling the bombing of that city – she constructed a sleight of hand of mendacity: she said that the remembrance of the bombing of Hiroshima was a warning, “especially at a time when Russia threatens to use nuclear weapons once again (emphasis added). She really said it in public and you can read the script of her speech on the official site of the European Commission.
And you know what? Her face did not even go red once she told this glaring lie! See for yourself (6:33 into the clip)! Nor did her nose become longer! She said the sentence matter-of-factly like she was making small talk about the weather.
Sure, she could not let the occasion slip without reminding the listeners of the “butchery in (the Ukrainian town of) Bucha” of a few months ago, which is just another sleight of hand, a phonetic pun. If you happened to believe in the veracity of the reports about Bucha, then von der Leyen’s downright lie about “Russia once again using nuclear weapons” should make you wise up. Whatever we are told by them – the managers of the world, the commissioners, the presidents and prime ministers – are such sleights of hand.
