American commentators and journalists do not often appear on Russian television. But if they appear, they come from the fringe. Today we will introduce you to a special person.
Former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer, former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), pro-Russian propagandist, convicted sex offender.
All this is about one person Scott Ritter. He’s best known for his biased takes on the Russo-Ukrainian War, his propaganda work for RT and for his sex offenses.
Service in the US Army and work at the United Nations
Ritter served as a junior military analyst during Operation Desert Storm. He then served as a member of the UNSCOM overseeing the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. His main objective was to find and destroy possible WMD’s and WMD-manufacturing capabilities in Iraq.
in 1998 after which Ritter declared in an interview by Jim Lehrer that “without effective inspections, without effective monitoring, Iraq can in a very short period of time measured in months, reconstitute chemical and biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their developing of nuclear weapons program”.
Journalist Matt Bai described Ritter as a person who “insists on his version of reality” and that he sees himself as the victim of a corrupted system.
Ritter’s views seems to be very much in line with his fellow ex-soldier, Douglas MacGregor, which we recently wrote about: most – if not all – of his predictions have gone wrong.
Conviction for sex offenses and arrests
Ritter was the subject of two law enforcement sting operations in 2001. He was charged in June 2001 with trying to set up a meeting with an undercover police officer posing as a 16-year-old girl. He was charged with a misdemeanor crime of “attempted endangerment of the welfare of a child”. The charge was dismissed and the record was sealed after he completed six months of pre-trial probation.
Ritter was arrested again in November 2009 over communications with a police decoy he met on an Internet chat site. Police said that he exposed himself, via a web camera, after the officer repeatedly identified himself as a 15-year-old girl. Ritter rejected a plea bargain and was in prison from Mar, 2012 until Sep, 2014.
Justification of Russia’s crimes
In an interview with Medhurst, Ritter replicates the entire set of Russian propaganda narratives regarding Ukraine over the past eight years, as well as the narratives launched with the start of a full-scale military invasion. About the ‘Nazis’ who allegedly seized power in Ukraine, the ‘liberation’ of Ukraine from the ‘fascists’ and others. Besides, in tune with the Russian media, he misinforms the audience about ‘the defeat of the Ukrainian army’, “NATO having nothing to counter Russia”, and so on.
He’s also said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb, 2022, was not “an unprovoked act of aggression, but rather a legitimate exercise of its right”. He also talked about Russia just defending the puppet states of Luhansk and Donetsk.
He’s said that the National Police of Ukraine are responsible for the Bucha massacre, and called Joe Biden a “war criminal” for shifting the blame on the massacre on the Russians.
The following day Newsweek reported his Twitter account had been reinstated. Scott Ritter writes various articles critical of NATO for the Russian channel RT (formerly Russia Today). In July 2022, Ritter was added to a list of pro-Russia propagandists compiled by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation.
After all, sooner or later anyone who supports the terrorist actions of Russia in Ukraine will be responsible for it. And Ritter is no exception.
