Every important story has liars surrounding it, massaging facts, complicating the narrative, obscuring data, and sometimes fabricating from whole cloth things that appear to be facts. This story is not different than any other. In the telling here of the story of the various narratives, as opposed to a narrative itself, we will often find liars calling out other liars. We have to ignore that noise and seek the validity of various truth claims. Some of this truth will be told by dishonest people for their own purposes that we cannot fully understand. We do not consider all the people linked here as fully trustworthy, but if linked we trusted some of the facts they presented, in the narrow scope of the specific facts we believe appear true, more than those of people that disparage them. This whole thing is surrounded by people lying for presuppositional reasons.

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That there were foreign individuals, involved in the events of January 6^th, 2021, seen on video entering the Capitol is not in dispute. There are pictures of one such individual with Jake Angeli (Shaman guy) taken that day before people entered the Capitol, video exists of him rushing the Capitol, screaming encouragement in a foreign language – this is not disputed. Most do not even dispute the name of the individual, and that he has a history of being involved in extremists activities and violence in Ukraine. Most agree on those basic facts. The fact that these pictures exist, and the video, linked to two bizarre characters is enough to indicate something beyond mere coincidence.

 

The next logical question, that those facts demand to be asked is “who was the guy associated with and what was his purpose there?” That question has not been asked a lot, it has been ‘answered’ with certitude and confidence by some groups, but something about these so quickly fixing on a version of the explanation that aligns with their worldview is unsettling. It does not seem honest.

 

There is more we can know about this individual. He has a history of extremist activity in Ukraine and is associated with Pavry Sektor. He was even awarded a medal by Poroshenko. There appears to be an arrest warrant for him in Lugansk for crimes committed while working with Ukrainian ultra-nationalist.[1] There is general agreement that Sergei Dybynyn[2] was there, did these things, but this is where agreement ceases. Some claim he was a mere journalist, but this term has lost its weight in light of activist groups using these claims as cover for extremist activity.

 

Some claim his work in Ukraine was that of a Russian agent provocateur. Others that he was in fact a Ukrainian national and a believer in the ultra-nationalists cause. We cannot know for a fact, for certain which is true. The question has not been properly asked.

 

If we took just the agreed upon facts, it seems the questions deriving from those facts would be of top national security interests. The media would care, cover it and ask questions. Politicians that have long claimed that Russia is behind every bush of foreign interference, disinformation, and nefarious activity would make this the holy grail. It would be the thing, if Sergei were a Russian or if he and others were Ukrainians acting as a Russian agent. But it is not ‘the thing.’

 

If it becomes ‘the thing’, closer to the midterms, it will only add additional suspicion and implausibility to the entire story. The US Government is terrible at many things, but tracking a foreign agent, in the US, on camera, involved in something profound and then circling his communications and travel patterns is not such a weakness. If Sergei was the Russian agent so many are convinced he was, it would already be the story, and any decent American would want it to be.

 

It may become a story later, Sergei is a human with human nature and it is demonstrable that he has been involved in some shady extremism in his life. He may yet have a role to play, but if he was a Russian agent, acting at the behest of Putin, we would already know, it would have been leaked, briefed, and focused on. It would almost be enough to justify the war that so many seem to pine for at present. It would be Peter Schiff's primary talking point.

 

How is it them that normal progressives and conservatives, radical progressives, and neoliberals came to agree, so quickly that Sergei was a “Russian”? When they say Russian most will not entertain the question of if they mean a Russian that lived in Ukraine and was a Ukrainian Nationalist, an agent provocateur, and a Russian agent. Most leave it as “he was Russian”.

 

Soon after the events, the next week, the narratives that would become the certitude of each side began to form. The next morning Ukrainian sources began to publish pieces claiming that Russian language words were used. [3] [4]

The US government weighed in on 11 January through Voice of America’s ‘fact checking’ organization Polygraph to state that;

“After close examination, it appears the phrase “Get out of the way,” which can sound like“getouttadaway” when spoken quickly and excitedly, was mistaken for the Russian phrase. At that same point, the crowd is also chanting “U-S-A!”, which also may have been mistaken for the Russian phrase.” [5]

That article went on to state that  Serhiy Dubinin was a reporter that had covered the Donbas region for Inter, a Ukrainian news agency. So according to VOA, through Polygraph, there is nothing to see. Take note of the name change used by VOA.

 

This was not the end of the story of course. There is the fact that it appears that some arrested on or after January 6^th, speak Russian and needed interpreters during their arraignment.

“Yet another, who needed a Russian interpreter, told a judge, “I don’t know what unlawful entry you are referring to.’”[6]

The attempts by the VOA to gaslight on 11 January that people did not hear a foreign language being used on 6 January did not comport with facts. At least one person arrested needed a Russian interpreter to understand the judge.  There were speakers of a Slavic language present, and some were arrested very early on for doing something illegal.

 

The obvious question, the one we began with, haunts a rational thinker at this point. If some involved in the events that day apparently only speak Russian and they were arrested, why is that fact, plus the other individuals with foreign connections not the center of the story? If they are “Russians” and Putin is what we are so often told why has the story of that day not focused heavily on exposing the foreign cells, influence, and activity?

 

In the main, it is not the story. Not from the January 6^th Committee, not from politicians that have built their fame solely on the thesis that Russia is bad and is working against the US within the US. Any serious investigator, any rational person would begin from the questions these odd facts present. And yet, they have not, not in over a year.

 

The story does have legs though, on social media, some parties have quickly latched on to an explanation that very often agrees with their personally and collectively held presuppositions. One can find many examples of Ukrainian versus Russian at the core of it all in discussions, and by that, I mean ‘asset’ even if most simply talk of nationality. What you do not find very much of, is a person arguing that it might have been Ukrainian (at least assets that operated in Ukraine for a specific Ukrainian objective) if the person making the argument is of a progressive political outlook.

 

In terms of the “it was Russia” argument you find commonality between the whole spectrum of worldview. A person that occasionally dons black bloc will agree on the fundamentals of the story with someone that believes they hold a conservative outlook.[7]

 

I cannot speak to how the story grew legs and spread to progressive-minded people. I suspect I know, but that suspicion begins from my own bias. I cannot speak to how most of that persuasion came to believe they know, without questioning and without wondering why it is not the key topic of geopolitical conversations and internal investigations that “it was Russia”. Perhaps it was not so very different than how so many conservatives come to the same conclusion.

 

From the conservative side, we can know that there were voices, beginning the week after the event that immediately tackled the story and went to great lengths to explain the facts as they emerged in a way that aligned with the central theme of their message for years previous.