Did Google and Bing shadowban "The Ukrainian Russian American Observer" from their search engine results?
By Greg Krasovsky
May 25, 2023
Hint: Read this post until the very end for a compelling answer!
FYI:
The Ukrainian-Russian-American Observer
Gregory Krasovsky's commentary on Russia, Ukraine, the United States of America, including politics, economics, culture, religion and human rights.
Blogspot: https://ura-observer.blogspot.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/URA_Observer
Telegram channel: https://t.me/URA_Observer_2022
YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@uraobserver/
What?
You don't believe me?
Isn't "The Ukrainian Russian American Observer" ("URA Observer") hosted on Blogspot/Blogger, Google's own blog portal?
So, am I acting just like another weird Conspiracy Theorist?
Well, just to make sure...
Here are screenshots of search results for "The Ukrainian Russian American Observer" on the following search engines/sites:
A. American search engines:
1. Google.com
- No BlogSpot results
- Links only to URA Observer's YouTube and Twitter pages
2. Bing.com
- No links at all
3. Yahoo.com
- Link only to URA Observer Blogspot page
4. Duckduckgo.com
- Link only to URA Observer Blogspot page
B. Russian Search
5. Yandex.ru - Russia's leading alternative to Google
- Links to URA Observer's Blogspot and Twitter pages
- Link to Greg Krasovsky's personal Telegram channel post on where to find URA Observer
-- see https://t.me/krasovsky2020/16
6. Mail.ru - now uses Yandex search
- Uses Yandex.ru search, same results as Yandex
7. Rambler.ru
- Blogspot website
- Telegram channel
- Twitter Page
- Link to Greg Krasovsky's Yandex Dzen page with links to URA Observer page(s)
-- see https://dzen.ru/id/5f21ad52eba54634bd0453eb
- Link to The Law Offices of Gregory Krasovsky's Blogspot page with links to URA Observer page(s)
-- see https://krasovsky911.blogspot.com/
Ironically, there's only one entry "Krasovsky Law Facebook account disabled on March 24, 2020 over COVID-19 post!"
So why did Google shadow-ban The URA Observer?
It had to do with a U.S. citizen being killed in August of 2014 in Eastern Ukraine through a clear war crime committed by the Ukrainian military (Armed Forces of Ukraine, AFU) and Radical Ukrainian Nationalist Volunteer Battalions (e.g. Aidar Battalion) in its effort to defeat the local Pro-Russian separatist insurgents and to punish the local population that supported them.
BTW, such war crimes were known, approved and facilitated by U.S. government military (US DOD), intelligence (CIA) and civilian (e.g. State Department) employees as well as private military contractors active in Ukraine.
The deceased U.S. citizen happened to be my maternal grandmother, Antonina Lavrentyevna Krasovskaya (AKA Antonina Krasowska). May She rest in Peace!
After I found out about my grandmother's death on August 10, 2014, I was furious and reached out to certain major American and European media outlets.
All listened intently, but no one dared to publish anything about my grandmother's death.
When I made further inquiries, I was told that my grandmother's death would not receive any coverage due to National Security concerns -- i.e. the rule not to expose and/or compromise ongoing U.S. foreign policy and intelligence operations abroad.
So I wrote a letter to President Obama, then to VP Joe Biden when he visited Kiev, Ukraine, to Ukraine's President Poroshenko and to every member of Ukraine's parliament, The Rada.
You can read the entire letter at https://ura-observer.blogspot.com/2016/08/when-they-came-for.html
Guess what? I received an informal answer from only one (1!) Ukrainian Rada Deputy who had a slight Pro-Russian stance. The deputy said that no one would respond to my letter or launch any inquiry because they were all afraid of repercussions from America.
Later, Gmail, citing security concerns, refused me access to the email account that I specifically set up to write my letters to American and Ukrainian government officials.
That's what I expected before I mailed my letters and this is why I did not use my regular email accounts so not to lose access.
So I decided to go "public" and write about her on Facebook on her 100th birthday anniversary 16-APR-2016 (see below) and then on the second anniversary of her death in The URA Observer on August 10, 2014 and included the letter that I wrote to President Obama:
---
When they came for...
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
“Greg Krasovsky: Today on August 10, 2014 my maternal grandmother died as a victim of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Lugansk Region of Eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Coal Basin (AKA "Donbass").
For a brief biography of her life please see a Facebook post dedicated to her 100 birthday "Today, my late maternal grandmother, Antonina Krasovskaya, (Antonina Krasowska) would have turned 100."
On the 2nd anniversary of her death I remembered "First they came ..." - a famous statement and provocative poem written by Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power and the subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group.”
Please read the rest at https://ura-observer.blogspot.com/2016/08/when-they-came-for.html
---
But they don't forgive and forget, do they?
In 2018 I was added to the Ukrainian "Peacemaker" (Myrotvorets') website, which is for all practical purposes a public hitlist for Radical Ukrainian Nationalists to know, find and "punish" (beatings, kidnappings, torture and murder) the perceived enemies of Ukraine.
See https://myrotvorets.center/criminal/krasovskij-grigorij-okolevich/
The alleged formal reason for including me in this kill-list? My attendance in Moscow as a curious observer of a meeting of Pro-Russian Ukrainian refugees from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.
All done with the quiet blessing of the CIA and State Department (who effectively control the Ukrainian government, Pro-Western political parties and radical Ukrainian nationalist groups, including those operating this “peace-loving” website.
But you won't read about any of this in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Associated Press, Reuters or see it on CNN, MSNBC or even Fox News.
Because all these media outlets are controlled by the same people and their companies that control both parties, Republican and Democratic, and, through their loyal (owned) elected, appointed and senior civil service officials, control the U.S. government and EU governments.
So what are we going to do to get justice for my grandmother Antonina and my mother, Ekaterina Fedorovna Krasovskaya (AKA Katherina Krasowska).
As American citizens, taxpayers, voters and consumers -- who presumably support, are willing to defend and fight for Freedom Speech, Freedom of the Press and a government of the People and by the People, not one surreptitiously controlled by gargantuan transnational financial-industrial groups, their trusts, corporations, banks, think-tanks, "humanitarian non-profit organizations" and political action committees.
I know what I should do...but I'll write about that later.
In the meantime, any suggestions?
***
Greg Krasovsky's Facebook posts dedicated to his grandmother and mother:
***
April 16, 2017
Today, on April 16, 2017, my maternal grandmother, Antonina Lavrentyevna Krasovskaya (Krasowska), would have turned 101.
She didn't make it to see both Christians and Jews celebrate Pascha / Pesach / Easter on her birthday -- I think that she, a woman from a family background of Ukrainian Jews many of whom converted (albeit not entirely) to Russian Orthodoxy would have found it curiously pleasant, as she was comfortable in every house of worship knowing that there was only one God regardless of how various faiths and denominations called, defined and worshiped him
She lived through a lot of Antisemitism in her life as well as political persecutions, world wars and civil wars. She had seen both the good and bad side of humanity, but never lost her faith in people and her good spirits.
She liked helping others and took pride in helping raise children in our extended family.
Grandma Antonina had a very honest and pragmatic look at faith, having been brought up in a Russian Orthodox and secular Soviet environment.
I remember asking her what she thought of the divide between Christianity and Judaism. She felt that it was a theological divide based on cultural and ethnic differences as well as typical power struggles among religious leadership which led to further doctrinal differences and persecution of dissidents (heretics) to consolidate religious power and the material benefits that it brought to the priesthood and the secular kings who supported it (or were supported by it).
Obviously, Babushka Antonina never expressed it in those words, but I learned that was pretty much what she meant from many quiet conversations I had with her over G-d and faith.
Grandma Antonina was keenly aware of the difference between the symbolic and the literal in theology.
As an example, she believed in Jesus. But as great prophet.
When I asked her if she believed in the immaculate conception, she said Greg, based on my long life, I know that women conceive and give birth to children only one way and so did Mary. But she's the mother of a great man and deserved the honor given to her by the Church.
So when I asked her why she thought it was so important for Christians to celebrate Christmas, she said that it was an important holiday because it celebrated the birth of Jesus, the great prophet and the founder of Christianity.
I guess with that approach, if we had lived in Israel, a Muslim or a Buddhist country, I think that Grandma Antonina would have supported the country-wide celebrations of the birth of Abraham, Moses, Mohammed or Buddha as leading prophets and founders of their faith. But that's not a bad thing, is it?
When I asked her if she believed that Jesus was literally the son of G-d and the Messiah, she said that we're all children of G-d, but some are chosen by G-d (i.e. prophets) to spread his word and truth and Jesus was among them.
When I asked her if she believed in the literal resurrection, she said Greg, said Greg, based on my long life, I know that when you die, you die permanently, But what does Easter and Jesus' resurrection mean? She said it means that his spirit was so strong and pure that it stayed on to show his apostles that there was life after death and eternal salvation from G-d for those souls who followed his commandments.
But why don't Jews accept Jesus as the Messiah and Christians do? her answer was simple -- Jesus didn't bring peace on earth, freedom from the Romans, and worldwide acceptance of the Jewish G-d in his life like the Jewish priests demanded of the genuine Jewish Messiah. But to non-Jews he is the Messiah because he brought them (actually, his apostles) the word of G-d.
So I asked my grandmother if she considered her views Christian? She said sure, not understanding that for such views she could have been burnt at the stake and/or tortured by the Inquisition for heresy or hidden Judaism up to the 20th century.
But when I started to light Jewish Sabbath candles with her and brought her to my synagogue, she felt at home and remembered how her mother would discretely light the Sabbath candles and recite the blessings in Hebrew, a language that Babushka Antonina was never taught and didn't understand. This is the story of many Soviet Jews who had almost lost all their Jewish roots under Soviet atheism and/or Russian Imperial Antisemitism.
Probably the most important and holy thing about Grandma Antonina, a "simple" but very smart and independent woman who has spent 30 years working in a coal mine in East Ukraine, was her respect for and tolerance for and kindness to people of various faiths and ethnic traditions, regardless of whether their beliefs differed from hers.
She got along with everyone -- Europeans, Africans, Asians, native Americans, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Gypsies (Roma) -- and always homed in on the positive traits of every ethnic and religious that she encountered in the former Soviet Union, Italy and America.
When she encountered Ukrainians in America who has collaborated with the Nazis, participated in the Holocaust and committed other war crimes, she simply felt sorry for them without the hate and cry for vengeance that we often see in victims of genocide and their loved ones.
She said that these were simple people who had fallen under the sway and spell of evil and that they would have to account for their sins before G-d -- a punishment great enough that it didn't a difference of whether they met Him at 60 or 90 years of age.
She felt the same way about the genocide of Native Americans, the slavery of and the discrimination toward African-Americans and those who were responsible for it.
I'm grateful to her for passing on that viewpoint to my late mother and me. I just regret that she didn't have the opportunity to pass on her wisdom directly to her great-grandchildren when they were old enough to understand and appreciate it.
Below are some of my previous Facebook posts about or including my Grandmother Antonina, including the sad circumstances of her tragic death in August of 2014 in Lugansk, Ukraine as an innocent civilian victim of indiscriminate shelling by Ukrainian Armed Forces of the village of Khryaschevatoe.
Babushka Antonina, we all miss you, including your younger sister Lidiya (98 years old) and brother Nikolai (90 years old) who are still alive and surviving in today's civil war torn Lugansk, Ukraine.
May you rest in peace and may your soul have joined its maker if its time her on earth had come to an end!
Knowing Grandma Antonina, her care for others, especially for helping children in need and what's happening in Ukraine today, somehow I don't think that her soul would prefer resting with G-d to staying on here to help others in any way possible.
****
March 8, 2017
On this International Women's Day, let's not forget to thank all the grandmothers who loved and cared for us in their special way!
I remember being embarrassed when my maternal grandmother Antonina Krasovskaya would meet me after high school to walk home with me and talk, even in the dark on cold winter days after wrestling practice.
She'd tell me stories from her youth and always include lessons on holistic medicine.
It's only when you're older that you begin to appreciate those lessons.
To all mothers and grandmothers - thank you for everything that you've done for humanity!
https://www.facebook.com/gkrasovsky/posts/10154589243493742 [Facebook page disabled & deleted]
***
When they came for...
Greg Krasovsky: Today on August 10, 2014 my maternal grandmother died as a victim of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Lugansk Region of Eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Coal Basin (AKA "Donbass").
http://ura-observer.blogspot.ru/2016/08/when-they-came-for.html
***
April 17, 2016
Today, my late maternal grandmother, Antonina Krasovskaya, (Antonina Krasowska) would have turned 100.
She was born on April 16, 1916 in the village of Novostankovatoe, Dobrovelichkovsky section of Elizavetgrad Governorate, Ukraine, Russian Empire to Lavrentyi Krasovsky, a postal clerk, and Olga Krasovskaya, a homemaker.
Her parents were from Ukrainian-Jewish families with converts to Russian Orthodoxy.
She was born during World War I and a year before the October 1917 Bolshevik Communist revolution.
She lived through
- the Russian civil war from 1917 to 1922. She witnessed the creation of a short-lived independent Ukrainian People's Republic in 1918 led by President Symon Petliura.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symon_Petliura
- the forced nationalization of private individual Ukrainian farms through their expropriation and merger into state-owned and run collective farms known as Kolhozy.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_Union
- the 1933 artificial famine known as Holodomor. This famine was caused by the communist Soviet Union's forced confiscation of all grains from collective farms after they did not fulfill their state quotas due to a poor harvest.
The Soviet authorities believed that the farmers were hoarding grain and sabotaging the industrialization efforts. As a result, up to ten million of innocent Ukrainian and Russian peasants died.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932–33
After about 90% of her village succumbed to hunger, Grandma Antonina fled to the Lugansk Region of East Ukraine's Donetsk Coal basin, where
- She lived through the Nazi German occupation of East Ukraine from 1942 to 1943 and saw horrible war crimes committed by Nazi soldiers and their Ukrainian collaborators.
She also saw innocent German farmers who were drafted into the German army, dragged away from their families, forced to participate in the war crimes committed by the Nazi war machine and then perish under Stalingrad.
Her husband Fyodor, my maternal grandfather, went MIA during WWII and never got to see his daughter (my mom) who was born in August of 1941.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht
- She worked for over 30 years at local coal mines until her retirement to take care of her newborn grandson (me) in 1968.
I remember visiting her coal mine in 1992 and coughing black soot for three days -- and this was after spending just 20 minutes above ground where women help unload the coal wagons!
Grandma Antonina moved to Moscow to join my mother and me in 1972 and lived there until she followed us to the United States - to Philadelphia - in 1980 as part of Soviet Jewish emigration.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refusenik
She became a member of Philadelphia's Ukrainian community and took pride in her Ukrainian heritage.
Her best friend was Dr. Natalia Pazuniak, a Ukrainian scholar and the secretary of the Ukrainian Government in Exile.
See http://articles.philly.com/1992-08-31/news/25990744_1_ukrainian-leader-exile-regime-exile-group
But she could never understand the virulent anti-Russian (Russophobic) and Anti-Semitic sentiments of some West Ukrainian immigrants who came to the United States after WWII to avoid prosecution in the Soviet Union for anti-Soviet activities and collaboration with Nazi Germany.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Russian_sentiment
She enjoyed America and was glad to have left the Soviet Union, a country where she had herself experienced state corruption and intolerance of criticism toward the communist party.
During her years in Ukraine, she had helped raise many children in her extended family and was considered our extended family's matriarch.
Even though she was able to study only in elementary school before having to start work in the coal mines, my grandmother was an avid reader and a very intelligent self-taught woman who understood the value of education and the need to know history and current events.
She was very tolerant and accepting of other people no matter what their race, ethnicity or religion. She was equally comfortable in synagogue and in church, regardless of whether it was a catholic or a Russian Orthodox one, as she believed and taught me that there is only one G-d, regardless of how he's called or worshiped by different faiths.
She was very knowledgeable in holistic medicine and was a walking encyclopedia on medicinal herbs and plants.
Plus my grandmother made the best borscht and was able to pass on her recipe to my wife.
After my mother was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's Disease in 1995, my grandmother took care of her until she lost her mobility in 2007 due to a femur fracture.
She moved with us to Fairfax, Virginia in 2008 and lived there under my care until the spring of 2014.
My grandmother was fortunate to have great home aides in Fairfax from 2008 to 2014. They were hard-working and caring women who immigrated to the United States from Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone. They talked to her in English and she talked back to them in Ukrainian and Russian.
Fustina, Rita and Nailey, thank you for all that you did to help my mom and grandmother! Keep up the good work, but never at the expense of your wonderful families!
On May 5, 2014 I took my mother and grandmother to Lugansk, Ukraine for what was supposed to be a quick two week trip to visit my grandmother's sister (she's now 98 and still living in Lugansk) and brother (he's 89, a decorated WWII veteran). Considering how old everyone was, we believed that this was going to be the last opportunity for them to see each other.
Unfortunately, on May 11, 2014 we witnessed the local referendum where about 90% of local residents voted for governmental autonomy from the new US-backed Turchinov-Yatsenyuk government in Kyiv.
We all came down with a nasty flu and my mother came down with pneumonia, so we postponed our 5/18/14 departure back to the U.S. for a couple of weeks.
Then right after President Poroshenko was elected on 5/25/14, the Ukrainian Air Force destroyed Donetsk International Airport to prevent it from falling into the hands of local Donetsk separatists, so our travel plans had to change.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbass
The Ukrainian civil war caught us in Lugansk on June 2, 2014, when fighting broke out literally in our neighborhood. The Ukrainian military admitted conducting over 150 air-strikes during the day in the Luhansk area.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_the_Luhansk_Border_Base
My mother died on June 3, 2014 from pneumonia that could not be properly treated due to the fighting and we buried her with artillery fire in the distance a couple of days later.
Our relatives asked me to stay and help. When I started to organize humanitarian aid for Lugansk's hospitals in June of 2014, my grandmother supported my decision,
While I traveled to meet my children in Russia, my grandmother remained in Lugansk under the care of her sister, brother and nieces.
But on July 15, 2014 Ukrainian Armed Forces indiscriminately shelled her residential neighborhood in the middle of the day and many innocent people died right next to her apartment building.
There were no military targets in her neighborhood and people died while sitting at a cafe, playing soccer and walking a baby. That's a war crime.
Afterwards, my grandmother's senior home aide evacuated her to the village of Khryaschevatoe, a quiet little spot right outside of Lugansk.
My grandmother died on August 10, 2014 at the age of 98 in the village of Khryaschevatoe, outside of Lugansk, Ukraine. She died of injuries sustained from a shell that exploded during the day outside the home of her medical aide.
The village of Khryaschevatoe was shelled without warning on August 5, 2014 by the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Aydar Volunteer battalion in their attempt to cut off access to Lugansk from the Russian border.
Nevertheless, the shelling of Khryaschevatoe a constituted war crime, as the village did not have any military targets or Pro-Russian separatist insurgents.
The evacuation team that I sent for her arrived a day late on 8/11/14 and was only able to film her grave being filled in with dirt. Later, after the village was occupied (liberated) by Ukrainian Armed Forces, they mined the cemetery where my grandmother is still buried.
As far as I know, my mother and grandmother were the only American civilian non-combatants (both became naturalized US citizens) to have died in the Ukrainian civil war.
But you won't read about it in U.S. media, as this is not the story that the establishment wants you to hear. Had my grandmother died from shelling by Pro-Russian separatists, she would have been on the front page of the New York Times or Washington Post.
The U.S. Government, military and intelligence community call that collateral damage. I call it a war crime and I'm very disappointed that U.S. military and intelligence personnel took part in anti-insurgent military actions - and war crimes - in Lugansk during the summer of 2014. But that's a separate story.
Now I know how families who have lost their loved ones (especially innocent civilian women and children) in local conflicts with U.S. intervention feel in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.
I never thought that this would happen to our family and especially in Europe, but then again we forgot what happened in the Former Yugoslavia in 1999 and afterwards too quickly.
We can't change what happened to my mother and grandmother, but we can learn the right lessons and try to do everything in our power to prevent more senseless deaths of innocent civilians in avoidable civil conflicts that are externally fomented for regime changes and other geopolitical reasons (most of which come down to competition over material, financial and natural resources).
We can't influence or stop every dictator around the world, but we can at least try to make sure that the U.S. government and its so-called allies around the world respect human rights and don't engage in crimes against humanity and war crimes.
How about starting with Ukraine, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Colombia and Indonesia?
In the meantime, we all miss grandmother Antonina and regret that she didn't have a chance to see and nurse our daughter, Bella Antonina Krasovskaya, who was born this year. I hope that Bella will have her great grandmother's longevity and celebrate her 100th birthday on January 1, 2116! Wish I could be there!
Attached is a photo from my grandmother's humble birthday celebration in April of 2013 in Vienna, Virginia. When you're 97 years old, there are few, if any, peers left to celebrate with you, so you celebrate with your family!
Babushka (Babtsya) Antonina, may you rest in peace! Thank your for everything that you did for our family and countless other people that you helped during your life!
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153722543438742 [Facebook page disabled & deleted by Facebook]
***
December 18, 2014
So where's the truth about Russia and Ukraine?
Who can we believe?
...
My late maternal grandmother, Antonina Krasovskaya, taught me to respect and help common people and to support states & political that defend and help people, even in a world where states, regimes and poticians are just shades of grey and geopolitics is just murk.
Unfortunately, grandma Antonina died on 8/10/14 at the age of 98 in the village of Hryaschevatoe just outside of Lugansk. She died from heart failre caused by hypertension after the village, which did not have any insurgents, was shelled without warning on 8/5/14 by the Ukrainian Army.
My grandmother Antonina, a proud U.S. citizen since around 1996, was evacuated to Hryaschevatoe by here home aide from Lugansk after her residential neighborhood was devastated by Ukrainian Army shelling on or about 7/15/14 (without warning or opportunity for residnets to flee) with a Soviet made multiple-launch rocket system called "Grad".
She was probably either first or the second U.S. citizen civilian to die in Ukraine. But you didn't hear about it in mainstream media.
Regardless, I know that grandmother Antonina enjoyed the freedom of press and democracy in the U.S. and would have wanted me to do anything that I could to defend them.
So here's a shot. If you think that this post has any value, regardless of whether you agree with my position, then please repost-it and/or let me know your thoughts either publicly in comments or "privately" by Facebook message.
https://www.facebook.com/gkrasovsky/posts/10152643817523742 [Facebook page disabled & deleted by Facebook]
***
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