Scott Ritter Banned From Traveling for Giving His Opinion on the Russia-Ukraine conflict
To the U.S. establishment, former U.S. Marine officer and United Nations Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter is a discredited trouble-maker.
According to Eric London, writing in the World Socialist Web Site, U.S. citizen Ritter was about to take a flight to Istanbul, Turkey and then fly to St. Petersburg, Russia on June 3rd to attend an economic forum as a guest speaker. However, he was forced to make a detour, being taken off the plane and having his passport revoked.
London writes that, “The decision by the State Department to confiscate Ritter’s passport is a flagrant violation of American law. US citizens possess a constitutional right to travel outside the country regardless of their political beliefs, pursuant to a 1964 decision Apthecker v. Secretary of State.” The Supreme Court has not allowed the State Department to restrict a citizen’s movement to travel based on one’s political beliefs.
London quotes the Supreme Court’s decision:
“Since freedom of association is itself guaranteed in the First Amendment, restrictions imposed upon the right to travel cannot be dismissed by asserting that the right to travel could be fully exercised if the individual would first yield up his membership in a given association.”
Ritter was quoted by London from an interview by Russia Today, saying that the revocation was a “deliberate ambush” and Ritter was “100 percent certain” it was based on his political views. When the TASS news agency asked for a comment by the State Department, the latter only said, “We cannot comment on the status of the passport of a private U.S. citizen.” So, Ritters’ passport was revoked, just because…? In other words, no reason?
Radio Habana Cuba also quoted Ritter in that same interview: “I was boarding the flight. Three officers pulled me aside. They took my passport. When I asked why, they said ‘orders of the State Department.’ They had no further no information for me.”
There may be a clue, however. Ritter was to attend what was called the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, which took place June 5th through the 8th. The theme for the forum was titled, “The Foundations of a Multipolar World – The Formation of New Areas of Growth.” The USA has been used to a unipolar world where it dominates. Thus, the organizing of a multipolar world be a threat to the USA’s imperial foreign policy.
Ritter has spoken a lot about the Russia-Ukraine war. While he doesn’t support the war, Ritter looks at the root causes, that is, the expansion of U.S./NATO alliance eastward and the arming of Ukraine, among other neighboring countries. There is a series of U.S.-made weapons aimed at Russia along its border. While the Russian invasion of Ukraine can be technically called illegal, the U.S./NATO alliance is in a sense committing an illegal act based on its ulterior motives, and promising the Soviet Union/Russia that it would expand “not one inch” eastward.
In a May 14, 2024 article published in Sputnik News about how the Russia-Ukraine war is going, the following is quoted: “According to Ritter, [the] combination of economic and military leadership is far from a sign of Russian weakness, suggesting that the West may underestimate Russia’s strategic positioning.”
Ritter was published in the June 12, 2024 edition of Consortium News of an article he wrote in March 2024 about the CIA’s role in the war. It was around the time leading up to Russia’s presidential election where Vladimir Putin won the presidency for the fifth time in a row. For the latter, this is of course overdoing it and there may have been inconsistencies in the voting process. But in a time of war, a country’s population will largely support its leader who is in power at the time, although some Russians oppose the war in Ukraine.
Just before the election, there were a series of attacks on the territory of Russia and ironically the perpetrators were Russian paramilitary organizations. Ritter reveals that, “The operation was months in the planning, and involved the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), the Freedom of the Russian Legion (LSR) and the Siberia Battalion. Ritter also revealed that these organizations have been controlled by “the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, or GUR…”
The GUR has been assisted by the C.I.A., and Ritter writes that it would not be surprising that the C.I.A. was aware or involved in the attacks. Given the C.I.A.’s role in past, anti-democratic actions, this would not be surprising.
Ritter also revealed that, “While Ukraine maintains the attacks by the RDK, LSR, and Siberia Battalion are the actions of “patriotic Russians” opposed to Putin, the involvement of the GUR in organizing, training, equipping, and directing these forces makes their attack on Russian soil a direct extension of a proxy war between Russia and the West.”
Not surprisingly, the C.I.A. was involved in other misdeeds in a “well-established relationship” with the GUR that emerged in 2014. Both set up a network of bases along the Ukrainian-Russian border to use for “intelligence operations against Russia,” including missions on Russian territory. Ritter asserts that in 1948, Russians served in the “neo-Nazi, Ukrainian nationalist, paramilitary organization known as the Azov Regiment,” where eventually the Russian members separated to what is called the Russian Volunteer Corps, or RDK. Ritter adds that, “The RDK modeled itself after the Russian Liberation Army, an entity organized, trained and equipped by the Nazi Germans during World War Two which was comprised of Russian prisoners of war.” Further, the Freedom of Russia Legion (LSR) was organized after the Russian invasion, an entity that is mainly comprised of Russian military defectors and prisoners of war. And, the Siberian Battalion is made up of Russian and non-Russian ethnicities from Siberia in the Russian Federation.
The Russian government estimated that the perpetrators of the attack in Russia numbered about 2,500 men. Ritter writes that they were “supported by at least 35 tanks and scores of armored vehicles, including a significant number of U.S.-supplied M-2 Bradley IFVs.” Ritter asserts that due to the scale of the military operation, the C.I.A. must have had knowledge of it.
Since 2005, the C.I.A. has made moves to try and discredit Putin and the Russian government. Combined with British intelligence, the C.I.A. has attempted to create reputable political opposition inside Russia. Ritter cites Alexei Navalny as an opponent who is “believed to have been a creation of the C.I.A.” But its’ efforts have largely failed.
Ritter describes a hypothetical situation where “one only [needs] to reflect on how the United States would react if Russian intelligence collaborated with Mexican drug cartels to create a well-armed insurgent army composed of Mexican-Americans who attacked U.S. territory from across the U.S.-Mexican border in order to influence the outcome of November’s U.S. presidential election.
“The United States would view it as an act of war and respond accordingly.”
The C.I.A. has supposedly “green-lighted” an invasion of the Russian Federation that would involve it in the planning, preparation and execution of it. Ritter writes, “Never in the history of the nuclear era has such danger of nuclear war been so manifest.” Russia would not tolerate such an invasion.
Ritter called the C.I.A. “a rogue intelligence agency that long ago abandoned any pretense of accountability and operating under the rule of law.”
Speaking of accountability and the law, Ritter may not be able to travel out of the USA indefinitely since his passport was revoked. If that’s the case, then we have U.S. authorities acting as rogue elements.
But that hasn’t stopped Ritter’s detractors from condemning him. Writing an opinion piece in the Kyiv Post, Saahil Menon may be on the right side of the political spectrum as he does condemn Ritter. Menon does take a lot of cheap shots at Ritter. For example:
• “Moscow propagandists and Kremlin supporters in the West are having a field day with disgraced former US Marine and self-proclaimed Russophile travel problem on the way to St. Petersburg.”
That’s how Menon starts off his hit piece. And not being able to help himself, he continues:
• “Convicted pedophile Scott Ritter is not your average, run-of-the-mill Putin apologist. His criminal background and troubling fetishes aside, the self-proclaimed ‘blood-blooded American patriot’ masquerades as a voice of reason on a virtuous quest to course-correct the deeply strained bilateral relationship between Moscow and Washington.”
Sounding like a writer for the National Enquirer, Menon would bring up Ritter’s past misdeeds in such a rhetorical fashion. Ritter paid the price for his wrong-doing years ago. But does that mean he’s a compulsive liar? Not really. Ritter comes off as sincere in his analysis of the Russia-Ukraine war. It’s just that Menon has an axe to grind because Ritter opposes the current Ukrainian government.
• “Despite having repeatedly stressed that he does not plan to leave the United States, there are tell-tale signs of Ritter being groomed as an FSB asset and flirting with the idea of seeking asylum in Russia.”
Menon is sure consistent with his gossipy opinion, making assumptions on what Ritter will do.
• “Stripping or temporarily withholding the citizenship of those who pose a clear and present danger to their homeland is, by no means, unusual. The White House was well within its right to pre-empt a potential Snowden 2.0 scenario from unfolding given Ritter’s previous career in espionage coupled with his subsequent seven-year stint as a UN Special Weapons inspector.”
Menon alludes to the exposing of secret government documents to the press by Edward Snowden. While this technically violated the Espionage Act of 1917, Snowden was trying to inform the public of the government’s overreach with its surveillance programs. It was the ethical thing to do and trumps the technicality. But Menon apparently takes the side of the government and thus seems to tolerate the massive spying on a homeland’s citizens.
• “Given his penchant for cozying up to enemies of the free world and shamelessly monetizing his deep-seated abhorrence of everything the United States stands for, it is high time draconian action were taken by the [Biden] administration to bring Scott Ritter back down the earth.”
Menon comes off sounding like a cliché with the use of the term “free world.” Is it really free, for most of the world’s population? And it is doubtful Ritter hates everything the USA stands for. He is opposed to the U.S.’s imperial foreign policy.
So, Menon comes across like some establishment hack who not surprisingly got his sarcastic opinion published in the Kyiv Post. While some condemn Russian information as propaganda, Ukraine has more than its share of propaganda.
One thing Ritter has been saying for months is that Russia is near to being victorious. In an article he wrote for RT, Ritter analyses how Russia has been approaching the war. For the West, Russia’s approach appears primitive, “a throwback to trench warfare of conflicts past, where human life was a commodity readily traded in exchange for a few hundred meters of shell-pocked landscape.”
Ritter then writes, “Upon closer scrutiny, and with the benefit of 27 months of accumulated data, the Russian approach to warfare emerges as a progressive application of military art that considers small-unit tactics, weapons capability, intelligence, communications, logistics, the defense economy, and political reality.”
Ritter brings up an important factor in the war: how Ukraine is doing in getting military aid from the U.S./NATO alliance. The alliance has pretty much propped up the Zelensky government in what seems like a never-ending flow of aid. Ukraine has made some progress on the battlefield, but Russia has had the momentum.
Ukraine has had a problem recruiting soldiers since much of the youth have been killed in the war. Or some youth have fled the country. Out of desperation, what the Ukrainian military has done is forcibly grab Ukrainian males off the street and conscript them. The average age for a Ukrainian soldier has been 43. So, Ukraine’s situation isn’t the rosy picture that the Western media portrays it to be.
Ritter has described Ukraine’s situation as being basically unsuccessful. On the one hand, “With NATO’s assistance, Kiev was able to rebuild its depleted military and go over on the counterattack, pushing Russian forces back in the vicinity of Kharkov and Kherson. This military success proved to be the undoing of Ukraine and its Western allies. The impressive territorial gains achieved in the offensives proved to be a narcotic.” Ukrainians and their NATO partners assumed that there could be a major counteroffensive in summer 2023. “This hope proved to be in vain.”
Ritter writes that, “It was in this juncture that the principles of attritional warfare began to be applied by the Russians in a more comprehensive form.” Ukraine recovered and arranged military capability for another attempt at a counteroffensive, thanks to its NATO partners. In battles in and around the city of Bakhmut, Ritter writes that, “These battles produced massive casualties on both sides.” But Russia was able to absorb the losses because of having strategic reserves. “Ukraine, on the other hand, squandered tens of thousands of troops and billions of dollars of hard-to-replace materiel…” Ukraine had used up its armed forces and reserves. It was a “spent force militarily.”
From that point on, Russia has had the advantage. Ukraine and its NATO partners were exhausted, but have kept on trying to recover, Western aid being of major help. But it only fuels the war even more, like there’s no end in sight. It has to end with negotiations.
Ritter concluded his RT article by writing, “The goal of a war of attrition is to wear your enemy down to the point where continued resistance is impossible.” But the question remains of whether victory will finally be attained. Ritter has been confident.
Scott Ritter may have a few skeletons in his closet, but his analysis of the Russia-Ukraine war has been significant. It’s a matter of bringing out inconvenient truths, something the Western media doesn’t usually report.
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