« L’Armada Rouen 2023 », for the Ukrainian community, seeing its national flag on Russian ship « Shtandart » would be a casus belli.

Cover image: 1. Vladimir Martus and Jean-Paul Rivière signing their contract in Canary islands, photo Armada 2013 – 2. Ukrainian flags fly in Kharkiv, October 19, 2022, marking the graves of soldiers killed in action after the Russian invasion , photo Carl Court/Getty Images.

Short URL : https://bit.ly/shtandart-profanation-en

On December 10, 2007, Rama Yade declared. « Colonel Gaddafi must understand that our country is not a doormat on which a leader, terrorist or not, can come and wipe his feet with the blood of his crimes. » Today, it is a maritime festival, « L’Armada Rouen 2023 », which wants to mop up the blood of Russian crimes with the Ukrainian flag, which it intends to make a marketing advantage for the Russian ship Shtandart.

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In Rouen, Normandy, a new Russian hijacking of the Ukrainian flag would be utterly disgusting.

“We will ask him (Shtandart’s captain) to raise the Ukrainian flag.“ The organization of the next Armada, which will take place in Rouen (Seine-Maritime) from June 8 to 18, 2023, maintains the invitation of the Russian boat Shtandart, provided that it flies the flag of Ukraine.

Comments reported by Joce Hue, on Jan 10, 2023 on « 76actu » (Fr).

The organization pretends to present this stratagem as a demand, a sort of moral pledge. Actually, this kind of display aims to maintain the illusion of a « Russian-Ukrainian » ship, to gain the good graces of the press and above all to attract visitors who, otherwise, would be repelled by the Russian flag meaning the heinous mass crimes committed in Ukraine. Such a staging is far from being a constraint for Vladimir Martus, the captain-owner of the Russian ship Shtandart. He finds his interest in it, judging by the dithyrambic and naive reactions of many media. Unless expressly prohibited local authorities, he indulges frantically in this hoiosting for all the ports he illegally occupies.

Jean-Paul Rivière, president of the association, « L’Armada de Rouen » is a « successful business man » with the 250th fortune in France. He « intends to manage the 2023 Armada ‘a bit like a business' » (76actu 16/01/22, Fr). Its advertising with the colors of Ukraine is misleading and felt, on the Ukrainian side, as particularly cynical. However, the subject is more duplicitous than it first appears. The scheme was agreed in advance between Vladimir Martus and Michel Balique, his salesman-lobbyist as the latter revealed on March 22, 2022, in a letter addressed to the various authorities as well as to the organizers of maritime events.

But, the first evidence of this manipulation can be identified 15 days before Balique’s letter. It dates back to exactly three months before the entry, on June 8, 2022, of the Shtandart in La Rochelle. We can read about it in the declaration, on March 8, 2022, of Patrice Bernier, chief petty offcier of the port of La Rochelle, close to Balique and Martus, co-director with Ludovic Pacciarella of the pro-Russian rump association « Aidons l’ Ukraine 17 ». He announced: « if it (Shtandart) appears neutral, without a flag or if it combines the two (Editor’s note: the Russian flag AND the Ukrainian flag), there is no reason not to welcome » (France 3, March 8, 2022, Fr). Nine months later, Jean-Paul Rivière takes up the same shameful scenario.

This « tailored media communication », as Balique puts it, outrages and deeply hurts the Ukrainian community as well as its French supporters. Putting the flag of the executioner and that of the victim on the same level is felt as an additional cruelty. In the Ukrainian territories occupied under Russian colors, people have been tortured, murdered and held hostage since 2014 simply for holding a Ukrainian flag. For his part, on June 15, 2022 (Fr), Balique, like Ségolène Royal later, speaks of « theories on war crimes ».

As journalist Joce Hue said on « 76actu » (Fr), the Russian flag, adopted in 1993, corresponds to six years of power of Yeltsin and 22 years of power of Putin. It represents, therefore, at 78%, Vladimir Putin, of which Martus is an ambassador thanks to his double language and his double game, as we will demonstrate below (Fr). We can also remember that this same flag, with horizontal tricolor stripes, was that of the 1st Russian National Army, which fought in the ranks of the Wehrmacht until May 1945.

Anyway, with or without the Ukrainian flag, the Russian flag is the emblem of a country declared a « sponsor of terrorism » on November 23, 2022, by the European Parliament. How could a citizen of Rouen, town of Joan of Arc’s martyrdom, accept that this symbol could float over his city from the mizzen antenna or from the stern mast of the Shtandart? « L’Armada Rouen 2023 » could just as well invite a dhow (daou) carrying the banner of « The Islamic State » (Daesh) and hang the flag of the city of Paris, there, to « honor » the dead of the « Bataclan Theater » . This would make a second « peace boat ».

In France and Spain, Ukrainians already opposed the way their their flag was used by the Shtandart’s network. See: « Camaret, the false testimony, on « Liberation », by Arthur Gazzarin, sailor on « Shtandart » » (Fr). The first Ukrainian flashmob in La Rochelle, on June 12, 2022, demanded that the Russian ship not fly the Ukrainian flag. At the end of June 2022, La Rochelle finally prohibited the Shtandart from hoisting the Russian flag and the Ukrainian flag. In the port of Douarnenez, on July 14, 2022, the Russian flag was once again prohibited. In Vigo, Spain, on July 23, 2022, the Guardia Civil came to check the Shtandart on the grounds that it had hoisted the Ukrainian flag. In Camaret, on August 15, 2022, after a 4 hours siege by a group made up of 90% Ukrainian women, Martus had to lower the Ukrainian flag at the request of the organizers and in the presence of the National Gendarmerie.

Will « L’Armada Rouen 2023 » be careful enough not to push Ukrainian patience, which is already largely bullied, to the limit ? Or, will it say, like Michel Balique, on June 15, 2022 (Fr), « the problem, in La Rochelle, is not the fact that the boat is Russian, the problem is the Ukrainians ». The same Ukrainians whose national flag he makes a marketing claim for the Russian ship Shtandart and for the maratime festivals which purchase its services.

If under the new presidency of Jean-Paul Rivière, « L’Armada Rouen 2023 » persisted in its trickery, consisting in exploiting the Ukrainian dead, it would demonstrate that it dos not diserve the title of « L’Armada de la liberté », it received from its founder Patrick Herr. The organizers of this maskirovka will not be forgiven any more than the sectarian Alexander Makogonov, spokesman for the Russian embassy in Paris, figurehad of the Putin regime and h