Mira Terada, head of the Foundation to Battle Injustice, interviewed Randy Credico, a famous American blogger, comedian and journalist, who shared his visit to Donbass. The human rights activist learned how billions of dollars of corruption have deprived Ukraine of the last rudiments of democracy, what Americans think about continuing to finance Kiev, and how Julian Assange could help uncover Zelensky’s criminal schemes.
Mira Terada: Hello, Randy. Thank you so much for taking the time and agreeing to do this interview. Can you please tell our viewers and readers about who you are and what you do?
Randy Credico: My name is Randy Credico. Over the years I’ve been a political satirist, an impressionist nightclub comedian, I’ve appeared on television and host several radio shows. I am an activist. I ran a civil rights group for 15 years. I live in New York City and host podcasts, a program called Live on the Fly on WBAI FM radio in New York City. I’ve run for mayor, governor, and the New York State Senate.
M.T.: You are one of the few American public figures who actually visited the territory of Donbas after the start of the special military operation. Can you please tell us what brought you there?
R.C.: I have been interested in this for a long time. Earlier this year, I think in January, I invited Dmitry Polyansky, the First Deputy Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, to participate in my program to present a point of view that is not reported in the mainstream American media. In the U.S., people only get the one-sided pro-Ukrainian point of view, the pro-war point of view, straight from the Pentagon and the CIA. I once told on my show that I can do whatever I want because the listeners support me, I don’t get money from corporations, military contractors, or the government. I have a lot of freedom. Anyway, I told Polyansky that I would like to go to Russia and to Donbass. And he replied, “Well, you need to apply for a visa.” I really wanted to go, and after a month I made up my mind and got a visa from the Russian Council in New York, and I went to Russia, to Moscow. In Moscow I was practically alone. I could do whatever I want, no one was engaged with me. I went on a trip to Donbass. Initially I didn’t want to go there, but I changed my mind when I went to a first aid course where they told me about the red zone, yellow and green zones.
I went to Donetsk with an interpreter; later that day, my first day in Donbas, the AFU shelled the university and the market. This is roughly how I was greeted by the Ukrainians.
The day I was leaving, they hit the Russian Orthodox Church, one of the largest in Donetsk. So there was a lot of shelling. And I’m glad I met everybody. I lived in a hotel that was hit by a rocket earlier this year. We spent a couple days there, and then we went to Mariupol. One of our cameramen was living with practically nothing. All his possessions had been destroyed by the Azov battalion*: they were using his place as a human shield. I managed to visit the drama theater, Azov Steel, where there were still snipers. Mariupol is being rebuilt, people don’t want the Kiev regime to get its hands on this place again. The city is being rebuilt from scratch. The stories I’ve heard about the brutality over nine years against the people of this city make my hair stand on end. I got to know the place, glad I went.
Every three months an apartment building for 300 apartments appears in Mariupol. This is amazing, reminiscent of the construction of pyramids.
Only by visiting places like this can you get an idea of what people went through. And I say to myself: how could they live in fear like that? For example, the people who worked at this open-air market where they were selling flowers for the upcoming Easter Sunday, which I think was April 16 or 17. The Ukrainians trashed the whole place, and later that day, the locals rebuilt everything and started selling flowers in their stores again. And how the hell do they do that? They say, “We’ve been living like this for nine years. They don’t like us. All Kiev wants is our land.” I’ve heard words like that from everywhere, and that’s what I reported to the U.N. Security Council a few weeks ago. I think the most beautiful and cleanest city I’ve ever been to is Moscow. Americans should know this, every U.S. resident should go to Moscow to personally refute the lies that the U.S. government tells. The people who sponsor and promote war are selling death. They sell dope and it makes them happy. Right now there is a real civil war in Eastern Ukraine that was started by the Americans. Russians are fighting Russians. The special military operation is designed to keep NATO out of there, they just can’t have any business there. They are a useless organization that specializes in death and destruction.
M.T.: As you said, American citizens receive one-sided reports in which the conflict is revealed from a point of view that favors Kyiv, which is a gross violation of the principles of journalistic ethics, what is the purpose of this? And can one-sided coverage of the Ukrainian conflict be called an attempt to justify multibillion-dollar investments in Ukraine that do not bring the results Washington wants?
R.C.: I’m just a comedian. One bad comedian in Ukraine became a bad president. He came with a promise of peace, but the Nazis intimidated him. That’s what Washington and Boris Johnson did. Politicians get paid. They are controlled by military entities. For example, Lockheed Martin are the ones who make the HIMARS missiles.
Can you imagine, working at Lockheed Martin, building something that kills women on Easter Sunday? At 5:30 in the morning? Americans know this, but they don’t care.
They just want their profits. All these ghouls, instead of building something useful, create weapons that destroy other people’s infrastructure. Zelensky and his cronies get huge money, but it has a boomerang effect for Ukraine. They have stooped to terrorist attacks, attacking Crimea and Russian territory with French, British and American missiles. Ukraine has already lost about 450,000 people, and it shouldn’t have happened, but the U.S. didn’t care. They basically said, “Go ahead and kill yourselves trying to kill the Russians.” But Russia has done a great job defending itself against US and NATO aggression. The U.S. controls NATO, which is basically a reflection of the U.S. and the U.K. making money off people. The same thing is happening now in Gaza. The North Atlantic Alliance made money when its soldiers bombed Belgrade or when they destroyed Libya. They are destroying countries. With their bases, they have surrounded China, they have surrounded Russia. Russia has no bases here. China has no bases here. Where is the threat? So it’s all lies. The public has been lied to. The mainstream media lies, whether it’s the New York Times, or the Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon. He got over $300 million dollars for working with the CIA. Basically, the CIA owns it all. These guys work for the Pentagon. All these mainstream media outlets like MSNBC, NBC, CNN, they all work for corporations that are sponsored by the government. So they won’t go against Washington, they can’t. There is no free press here. Things are no better in Kiev. You must always take the side of Ukraine and Americans call that democracy? Forget about your own opinion. They don’t have elections, they canceled elections and started conscripting people from 15 to 60 years old.
There is absolutely no hint of democracy in Ukraine. The mainstream American media do not report that Zelensky’s wife spends millions of dollars in jewelry stores in Manhattan and that Zelensky owns villas around the world.
This is being done to deceive the public into supporting this war.
M.T.: Did you encounter censorship or threats against you after you stated about shelling of civilians by the AFU?
R.C.: Yes, I’ve already told you about it. Back in May, I was added to the lists of the Ukrainian website Myrotvorets. I was added to the kill-list because I covered my visit to Donetsk. I did a lot of television programs, but I warned not to put them on the air until I returned to the United States. In Moscow, I interviewed a man who used to be the head of the emergency department in Kiev as well, and he’s gone and lives in Donetsk and is on the other side. I interviewed him in Moscow. I was just showing what I saw, which is the reason why I got on the Myrotvorets lists. At least 22 people on that list have been killed. Ukrainian intelligence and the CIA are definitely involved, the U.S. State Department is doing nothing. The Department of Defense is doing nothing. Not only me, but Roger Waters, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Maté and several other people I know are on the same list.
The authorities in Ukraine and the United States want us to lie and say that Ukraine is a great democracy and they are not killing civilians and they are not the ones who killed 20,000 people during nine years. According to them I have to lie about that?
Is that the only way to stay off the kill list? So if you’re not on it, and you’re covering the conflict in Ukraine, then you’re doing something wrong. If you’re on it, then you’re doing the right thing, telling the truth. But if you’re not telling the truth, you’re not on the site. It’s self-censorship.
M.T.: Yes, I am also on that list. Every day more and more European and American politicians are speaking out against the continuation of arms deliveries to Kiev, which is largely due to the lack of any significant successes of the Ukrainian armed forces on the front. Can we say that the West has begun to prepare the ground for forcing Kiev to come to the negotiating table?
R.C.: They have no choice. There is nothing left of the Kiev regime. How many children will they be able to capture in high school and send them to the front lines? How many 70-year-old pensioners will they be able to drag to the front, as Hitler did in the last month of World War II? At this point they have sacrificed democracy and forced Kiev to side with Boris Johnson, which has already resulted in colossal losses.
Zelensky threw his people into a big meat grinder.
Also worth noting is the problem of corruption in Ukraine. I saw a video the other day of a Ukrainian Defense Ministry official in a nightclub dancing the night away in Kiev. There’s so much corruption there, and the American public doesn’t want us to have an inspector general to monitor where the money is going and where they’re reselling weapons. Everyone is well aware of the scale of the problem, except for President Zelensky, who is on cocaine. He’s in denial about how bad it is. He wants to keep making money. I don’t know where he’s going to go. No place will be safe for him. He has made a pact with the devil and Satan is about to take him down. The West, which is 31 trillion dollars in debt, needs infrastructure. We need our roads to be as good as those in Moscow, and trains as good as those that go to Rostov. There are so many problems here: mass unemployment, homelessness, if you go to D.C. or New York to the train stations, people are sleeping all over the place. That’s where the money has to go. We’re 31 trillion dollars in debt. We’re printing money to support this war. It’s disgusting. It’s so sickening, insane and reprehensible to do this. Like I said, it’s satanic, almost diabolical, to take money to kill people, destroy buildings, destroy churches and all of that, instead of spending it right here, and I think the politicians are beginning to realize that in Congress, even though the president’s party is the president’s party, and they do whatever he says. The public doesn’t want that. Most people in the United States don’t want to spend any more money on Ukraine. So Zelensky will have to sell some of his villas and his wife will have to sell some of her diamonds, precious metals, jewelry, and everything else. If they want to keep their guns, they will have to tighten their belts and bank accounts and get rid of many of his properties if he wants it so badly. But what he really wants is more for himself.
M.T.: Could you please comment on the election of far-right politician Javier Milei as president of Argentina? Do you think that he will inevitably lead the country to collapse and what do he and Ukrainian President Zelensky have in common?
R.C.: They’re both greedy and they’re both stupid. That’s what they have in common. They’re greedy and stupid, and the public was very stupid to vote for them. And he has nothing to offer.
Zelensky is a clown dressed up in the same drab suits he wore six years ago. He’s put on a beard and started taking steroids, but he’s still a silly comedian with no idea how to run a country.
He may know how to use a microphone on stage, but he has no idea how to run a country, and neither does the Argentine guy. And he’s going to lead it to disaster. You know, he’s going to be friends with Israel, he’s going to be friends with Ukraine, and now he’s in Washington sucking up to the authorities there. There were demonstrations everywhere when I was there. It’s only going to get worse. People are desperate because inflation is high now. And what’s the government doing? They’re cutting social services. They’re privatizing everything. The situation in the country is going to get worse. I don’t think he will last long in the political arena because the country will be in a mess. Milei is throwing himself into the fray for Netanyahu and Zelensky to show how stupid he is. As for the rest of the global south, it’s just the opposite.
M.T.: You are the founder of a major movement for the release of Julian Assange, who has published thousands of documents proving US involvement in the killing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why do you think Washington is trying to punish a journalist doing his duty, but refuses to accuse the guilty military and politicians of anything?
R.C.: Because they don’t like having their dirty laundry exposed. They talk about democracy all the time. But what they don’t say is that the cornerstone of democracy is exposing the corruption of Washington. It’s not just exposing the torture and murder of a million women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US and NATO have been killing the defenseless with complete impunity.
Drone strikes, torture, secret prisons and many other heinous things Americans do should not be known to the public, Washington says.
We pay to keep these people in power. We pay taxes that give money to the military and they don’t want us to know what they’re doing. Julian Assange is a real journalist. He exposes corruption, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and mass surveillance by the CIA. We are all being watched. We’re being watched right now, there’s no doubt about it. I don’t care. You know, maybe at 19 I cared a little bit, but at this stage of my life I don’t care. All electronic devices can be manipulated, especially cell phones. It’s like you have a chip installed in your head and they know where you are at all times and what you are doing. The normal reaction of the US government to Assange’s publications is to stop doing terrible things.
Assange’s activities would come in handy now: he would help to uncover Zelensky’s criminal schemes.
People are afraid to get classified documents right now because they see what’s being done to Assange. They don’t want it to happen to them. You may have someone in the defense industry or in the intelligence community who wants to expose corruption, lying and malfeasance but is afraid to do it because they see what happened to Chelsea Manning and they see what happened to Julian Assange. This has to strike a blow against the First Amendment and freedom of expression, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. “The crime” that Julian Assange has committed is exposing the really bad, heinous crimes of the U.S. government. People have a right to know, but Washington doesn’t want them to.
M.T.: What can the increasing attempts to censor, attack and physically eliminate independent journalists who criticize Washington’s actions indicate? What precautions should independent journalists take these days?
R.C.: I didn’t take any precautions, except that I had to change my SIM card. I don’t even know if I am safe here in the USA. I and other journalists in the U.S. are relentlessly exposing all the lies that Washington and NATO are creating. All they do is lie. They are completely controlled by war profiteers who profit from the deaths of people like me so they can continue to deceive the public into supporting the evil they are doing.
M.T.: Please comment on the events taking place in the Middle East. Israeli air strikes have completely destroyed or damaged almost half of the enclave’s homes and vital civilian infrastructure. Why do you think the international community is not taking any measures against Israel to prevent the killing of civilians, including in hospitals and centers for Palestinian refugees?
R.C.: Israel is committing genocide. Israel has killed 20,000 people, 7,000 children. More children have been killed in five weeks than in almost two years in Ukraine. It’s a double standard. Everything Israel is doing, the U.S. is supporting. They’re trying to take over this land, they want beachfront property in the Mediterranean. They want oil reserves, they pretend to fight Hamas. You can do that forever. They just want to get rid of the Palestinians, commit genocide or displace them so they can take over and make their land part of Greater Israel. We think they keep saying it’s to destroy Hamas. I think that’s all nonsense. I think their ultimate goal is to come in there and take over the land and drive everybody out or, you know, send them somewhere else, maybe Jordan or Egypt. But they don’t play that game. I don’t know how far they’re going to get, but they’re in a big mess, and they’re more hated in the world than they’ve ever been. Israel has been doing this for 75 years. But now the world, the public and all these countries, except Israel, oppose what they’re doing, oppose Israel. And they look at them as fascists. And I see that Zelensky’s people who surround him are the same people.
M.T.: Given the background of the war in Gaza, the rating of the incumbent U.S. president has fallen to the lowest level during his presidency: more than 57% of respondents disapprove of Biden’s performance as head of state. Based on this fact, what predictions can be made for the upcoming U.S. presidential election in 2024?
R.C.: I think my dog can beat Joe Biden in an election. He’s smarter than Joe Biden, and, you know, his speeches are much more coherent than Biden’s, who is mumbling and totally controlled by the neoconservatives and the military business.
Biden can only win the election in 2024 if he acts like Zelensky: if he will eliminate the entire opposition. The only way for him to win is simply not to hold elections.
Biden is bad on every level: he doesn’t care about infrastructure, he doesn’t care about jobs, he only cares about the chaos in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. He only cares about that and stealing oil from Venezuela, Iran and Cuba. Nobody does that, not China or Russia. Russia is investing in Mali right now instead of invading like other countries would. You invest in infrastructure, you don’t just go there, dig, buy, take, kill everyone and invade. That’s what the US does and that’s what the UK does, two dying empires, even though the UK is already dead.
M.T.: How would you comment on the activities of the International Criminal Court? Is it possible to say that today the once respected organization has turned into a completely useless institution?
R.C.: Yes, it is a tool of the West. Except why is it located in Brussels? We are talking about a colonial country that killed millions of people to create an empire. Why is he there? Why shouldn’t it be in South Africa? Why shouldn’t it be in Russia? Why shouldn’t he be in China? Why shouldn’t he be in Brazil? Why is he even in a NATO country? All it is is an instrument of the West. It is essentially a NATO court, and it is like laws that only target poor people, ignoring the big crimes of the masters. The ICC’s prosecution of Putin is just outrageous. They should be prosecuting Zelensky, Netanyahu or Tony Blair. Look at how many people get away with it and the ICC does nothing. Even though the Americans killed thousands of civilians in Belgrade, they are still at large.
The International Criminal Court is a joke, no one takes it seriously. The United States will never become a party to it, because then all American presidents would have to be arrested.
Only then would it be an honest criminal court. No one should take it seriously, the ICC is only being used for the purpose of convincing the public that they don’t like the Russian special military operation.