The TRUE Story of the Russia-Ukraine War
It Ain't What Governments and the News Media Report
"The first casualty when war comes is truth" - Hiram W Johnson
So true!
Disinformation, gaslighting propaganda, censorship of truth and fraudulent narratives are far more prevalent in the world than truth - by a 5-to-1 ratio. When it comes to war, that ratio of lies-to-truth soars to 10-to-1 or worse.
No different for the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Western governments and all mainstream news media portray Russia as 1930s Germany and Putin as Hitler, conducting expansionist aggression to take over Europe. Russia’s invasion of Donbass in 2022 is presented as an unprovoked, vicious attack on an innocent democracy for no reason other than to take over Ukraine, as a stepping stone to conquer all of Europe.
“Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond. If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you: He will not.”
President Biden, opening remarks of 2024 State of the Union address
Biden’s statements are representative of what Western governments and the news media tell the public 24/7. Unfortunately, their entire narrative is false and a pack of lies, omissions and misdirections.
I often disagree with Jeffrey Sachs, but he is right on target about the Russia-Ukraine war:
“The American people urgently need to know the true history of the war in Ukraine and its current prospects. Unfortunately, the mainstream media - The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, MSNBC, and CNN - have become mere mouthpieces of the government, repeating US President Joe Biden’s lies and hiding history from the public.”
“The War in Ukraine Was Provoked - and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace. By recognizing that the question of NATO enlargement is at the center of this war, we understand why U.S. weaponry will not end this war. Only diplomatic efforts can do that.”
- Jeffrey Sachs
It’s tragic and unfortunate that the majority of people are unaware of the chain of events over the past 30 years that culminated in Russia’s invasion of Donbass. So let’s cover the full and exact timeline and ascertain the TRUE causes of and responsibilities for this war.
US and USSR Relations and Policy
George Kennan was an esteemed diplomat and historian whose writings inspired US foreign policy under President Truman and beyond. In particular, he was an advocate of containing the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the Soviet Union) during the Cold War. He believed the Soviet Union was expansionist and needed to be contained; this was of vital strategic importance to the US. Kennan played a major role in developing US Cold War policy toward the USSR in the 1950s, 1960s and beyond.
Yet Kennan said this in 1997:
“Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/05/opinion/a-fateful-error.html
What happened? Did Kennan simply change his mind? No, the situation changed drastically from the 1940s to the 1990s. He recognized that the Cold War was over and the Soviet Union lost. The Soviet Union no longer existed. Now it was time for a new policy, as the old policy was mostly successful but no longer applied since the Soviet Union and Cold War were over.
But US government policy toward Russia under Clinton and beyond didn’t change much with the changing situation. US and NATO continued to operate as if the same threat existed. US and NATO continued to expand as before, intending to go all the way to Russia’s borders.
Imagine if Russia or China took over Mexico and Canada and placed military bases and missiles there. Would the US tolerate this, or would the US consider this an act of war and take all possible action against Russia or China?
President John F. Kennedy and the US government faced this exact situation in 1962. And look at how they dealt with it. The US government not only initiated a naval blockade, it was fully ready and willing to engage in all-out war to protect the nation against a serious threat to its security.
This is similar to what Russia faced from US/NATO, from their point of view. Yet Russia is condemned for having the same attitude as the US in 1962.
On June 26, 1997 a group of 50 prominent foreign policy experts that included former senators, retired military officers, diplomats and academicians, sent an open letter to President Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion.
“We, the undersigned, believe that the current U.S.led effort to expand NATO, the focus of the recent Helsinki and Paris Summits, is a policy error of historic proportions. We believe that NATO expansion will decrease allied security and unsettle European stability for the following reasons:”
John Mearsheimer is an eminent, highly respected political scientist. He has warned for years that NATO's Ukraine policy would lead to disaster.
“Why is Ukraine the West's Fault?” - John Mearsheimer
“It's crucial to acknowledge that Russia, rather than constituting a substantial threat to the U.S., has the potential to be an ally in containing China. However, the U.S.-supported campaign in Ukraine has inadvertently drawn Russia closer to China, contravening the principles of balance-of-power politics, and this commitment to Ukraine is likely to remain.” - John Mearsheimer
Many other knowledgeable insiders have voiced similar concerns over the years, that U.S. and NATO actions and decisions were creating conflicts and could lead to war.
“Interference by the United States and its NATO allies in Ukraine’s civil struggle has exacerbated the crisis within Ukraine, undermined the possibility of bringing the two easternmost provinces back under Kyiv’s control, and raised the specter of possible conflict between nuclear-armed powers. Furthermore, in denying that Russia has a “right” to oppose extension of a hostile military alliance to its national borders, the United States ignores its own history of declaring and enforcing for two centuries a sphere of influence in the Western hemisphere.”
“Was this crisis predictable? Absolutely. NATO expansion was the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. In 1997, when the question of adding more NATO members arose, I was asked to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In my introductory remarks, I made the following statement:
“ ‘I consider the administration's recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed.’ ” - Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador to the Soviet Union
“Many have pointed to the expansion of NATO in the mid-1990s as a critical provocation. At the time, I opposed that expansion, in part for fear of the effect on Russian-U.S. relations….Still, the first step in finding a solution [to the war in Ukraine] is acknowledging the problem and recognizing that our actions have contributed to that hostility.” - William J. Perry, Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton
“Trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching, … recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests.” - Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush
All these highly intelligent and knowledgeable experts foresaw that continued US/NATO expansion was not only unnecessary given that the Cold War was over and the Soviet Union dissolved, but also incendiary and counter-productive. History would prove them right.
“Not only is there no threat from Russia that is independent of American policy, but it is also the expansion of NATO to ‘meet the threat from Russia’ that creates the very threat that expansion was supposed to meet.” - Alistair Crooke
“The Ukrainian Crisis - It's not All Putin's Fault
“The consensus view in Washington and in the U.S. mainstream media is that the Ukrainian crisis, which some have called the worst international crisis of our time, is due solely to Russian aggression under President Vladimir Putin. [But] U.S. policy since the 1990s is largely responsible, and that unless this is acknowledged at least in part by Washington, no successful negotiated end to the crisis will be possible.”
- Prof. Stephen Cohen
US, NATO, Ukraine and Russia
November-December 2004. The “Orange Revolution” occurs in Ukraine, a revolution aided and abetted by by the US government. Western nations announced this revolution as a “people’s choice for democracy in Ukraine.” The Russian government characterized it as a “grab for power with overt and covert US support.” The Russian characterization was more accurate than that of the Western nations.
“The [Orange Revolution] is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes. …The Democratic party’s National Democratic Institute, the Republican party’s International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros’s open society institute.”
Over the next few years, the US and NATO pushed to have Ukraine and Georgia join NATO. Russia naturally viewed this as a direct threat to their security - just as the US would if the roles were reversed.
In 2014, the Obama administration, CIA and State Department staged a coup in Ukraine, replacing their Russia-friendly government under Yanukovych with one that was pro-US and cool toward Russia. This was essentially a US puppet government, from the Russian point of view.
“January 28, 2014. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt plot regime change in Ukraine in a call that is intercepted and posted on YouTube on February 7, in which Nuland notes that ‘[Vice President] Biden’s willing’ to help close the deal.”
Chronology article here
Crimea
In 2014, Russia annexes Crimea - without firing a single shot or killing a single individual. The US and other governments are up in arms over this, and they and the news media portray this as a Russian invasion and illegal takeover of Crimea.
The truth is very different.
Crimea was part of Russia from 1783 until 1954 - 171 years. The USSR transferred Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (UkrSSR). Ukraine was a part of the USSR at that time, not a separate nation. So the USSR simply shifted Crimea to one of its own republics, but still part of the USSR. In other words, the USSR moved Crimea within itself.
75-80% of Crimeans are Russian. 82% of Crimeans speak Russian at home, as their native language. Crimea is more naturally and organically a part of Russia than Ukraine.
After annexing Crimea in 2014, Russia held a vote there, and the vast majority of Crimeans voted to join the Russian Federation. While the US and Western nations cried foul, there is no valid evidence of election fraud or voter intimidation. It should also be noted there hasn’t been a single instance of conflict or trouble within Crimea as a result of Russian annexation - because the Crimean people overwhelmingly agreed to join with Russia.
In addition to all these facts, Russia felt compelled to annex Crimea, because of the US/UK staged and financed Ukraine coup in 2014. Russia was convinced - and they were correct - that the US would take over the port at Sevastopol. Sevastopol is Russia’s only warm-water port, and losing this port would deal a major strategic blow to Russia. So of course they couldn’t allow this to happen. (Losing Sevastopol is comparable to the U.S. losing its port and naval base in Norfolk, VA.)
“Sen. John McCain was wrong to write that Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea without provocation.” - Ray McGovern, former chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch of the CIA
“What people don’t realize from the media is that we started it [the 2014 coup in Ukraine in which a pro-Russia government was supplanted by a pro-Western regime]. One of the heads of one of the most prestigious think tanks, Stratfor, [George Friedman] said famously in December that the coup in Kiev, Ukraine on this 22nd of February 2014 was ‘the most blatant coup in the history of mankind.’ ” - Ray McGovern
The US and NATO nations continued to push expansion to the Russian borders, and continued to push Ukraine into their orbit - all of which caused more and more concern for the Russian government. Russia communicated their concerns over and over for several years, through various channels including the UN. They repeatedly asked for consideration of their security concerns, and were ignored and dismissed at every turn.
“Washington’s proxy war with Russia is the result of a carefully constructed plan to embroil Russia in conflict with its Ukrainian neighbor. From the moment that President Putin indicated that his government would not tolerate a NATO military presence on Russia’s doorstep in Ukraine, Washington sought to expedite Ukraine’s development into a regional military power hostile to Russia. The Maidan coup allowed Washington’s agents in Kiev to install a government that would cooperate with this project. PM Merkel’s recent admission that she and her European colleagues sought to exploit the Minsk Accords to buy time for the military building in Ukraine confirms the tragic truth of this matter.”
“How the West Brought War to Ukraine. Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe”
Col. Douglas Macgregor is a decorated combat veteran and brilliant military strategist. He is a recognized expert in foreign policy and war, and served as a chief military advisor under Trump.
He has been accurate and truthful about the Russia-Ukraine conflict from the beginning. He talks about the “empire of lies” constructed by the US and UK governments over the Russia-Ukraine war, and provides valuable and factual analysis of this war. He has been accurate every step of the way since Russia invaded Donbass.
Here are a few interviews and articles by Col. Macgregor:
“Washington’s proxy war with Russia is the result of a carefully constructed plan to embroil Russia in conflict with its Ukrainian neighbor.”
“Radical repudiation of the truth. Washington and its NATO allies always knew that NATO expansion to Russia’s borders would precipitate an armed conflict with Moscow, but NATO’s ruling globalist class did not care. …Eighteen months later Ukraine is in ruins. … By comparison, Russian losses were minimal.”
“What is the truth about the war in Ukraine? What are the origins of the conflict? What brought the disagreement between the governments of Ukrainian and Russia—a disagreement that had been simmering for many years—to a full-blown crisis in early 2022?”
And more data and analysis about the root causes of this war and why it is being prolonged:
“Target: Ukraine – How Foreign Intervention is Tearing the Country Apart. As the Ukrainian crisis continues to unfold, the foreign funding and backing for the current destabilization becomes more apparent. Now geopolitical analysts across the board analyze the roots of the situation, and whether this conflict is sowing the seeds of the next major war. That major war was part of our analysis eight years ago in the immediate wake of the Euromaidan.”
“IS NATO HELPING UKRAINE TO FIGHT RUSSIA OR IS IT USING UKRAINE TO FIGHT RUSSIA?”
“The bloc [NATO} could help end the conflict at any time by addressing issues around its expansion plans. The Western public, like others, is justly appalled by the human suffering and the horrors of the Ukrainian war. Empathy is one of the great virtues of humanity, which in this instance translates into the demand to help Ukrainians. Yet, propaganda commonly weaponises the best in human nature, such as compassion, to bring out the worst. As sympathy and the desire to assist the displaced are used to mobilise public support for confrontation and war with Russia, it is necessary to ask if the Western public and Ukrainians are being manipulated to support a proxy war.”
“Hundreds of thousands of people are dead because of what should have been a fully avoidable war had someone been in charge on the West’s side that wanted peace.
“But the West didn’t want peace. It froze the conflict in 2014 with the Minsk Agreements because Vladimir Putin believed German Chancellor Angela Merkel was honorable. He traded liberating the Donbass fully for building Nordstream 2 hoping that the pipeline would finally tie Germany and Russia together in a that bond couldn’t be broken.
This was Putin’s greatest mistake. And he’s still paying for it to this day.”
- Tom Luongo
Tucker Carlson interviewed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in July 2024. RFK, Jr present a great deal of accurate data and details leading up to Russia’s invasion of Donbass - details that have been documented and corroborated by multiple sources and are in the public record. The portion of the interview addressing the Russia-Ukraine war starts at the 11:50 mark, and goes until 40:00 or so.
Russian Invasion of Donbass
The real reasons for the Russian invasion of Donbass in February 2022 is nothing like our politicians and news media have reported. All reasons and justifications given - “stopping Russian aggression,” “preserving democracy in Ukraine (which never existed in the first place),” “U.S. national security” and “humanitarian” reasons - are all lies and gaslighting propaganda.
Russia had been appealing to the US and UN for years to cease NATO encroachment up to Russian borders. Russia attempted to work within the channels of diplomacy and the UN to resolve what they considered a serious threat to their national security.
But all such attempts fell on deaf ears.
The above articles and videos factual timelines of events leading up to this war. There is a great deal more to know about the true causes of this conflict.
“The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition to not invade Ukraine. Of course, we didn’t sign that.” - NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the joint meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) and the Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE)
“On February 16, 2022, a full week before Putin sent combat troops into Ukraine, the Ukrainian Army began the heavy bombardment of the area (in east Ukraine) occupied by mainly ethnic Russians. Officials from the Observer Mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were located in the vicinity at the time and kept a record of the shelling as it took place. What the OSCE discovered was that the bombardment dramatically intensified as the week went on until it reached a peak on February 19, when a total of 2,026 artillery strikes were recorded. Keep in mind, the Ukrainian Army was, in fact, shelling civilian areas along the Line of Contact that were occupied by other Ukrainians.
“We want to emphasize that the officials from the OSCE were operating in their professional capacity gathering first-hand evidence of shelling in the area. What their data shows is that Ukrainian Forces were bombing and killing their own people. This has all been documented and has not been challenged.”
“Let’s try to examine the roots of the conflict.” - Jacques Baud, former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries and trained in American and British intelligence services.
“Before the war, far right Ukrainian nationalist groups like the Azov Brigade were soundly condemned by the US Congress. Kiev’s determined campaign against the Russian language is analogous to the Canadian government trying to ban French in Quebec. Ukrainian shells have killed hundreds of civilians in the Donbas and there are emerging reports of Ukrainian war crimes. The truly moral course of action would be to end this war with negotiations rather than prolong the suffering the Ukrainian people in a conflict they are unlikely to win without risking American lives.” - Ambassador Michael Gfoeller and David H. Rundell
Why does the Russia-Ukraine war continue as of the date of this article - even though it is clear that Ukraine has already lost and is on the verge of extinction as an independent nation?
“Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán claimed that U.S. lobbying was significant in preventing Ukraine from signing a peace deal with Russia shortly after the conflict between the two countries intensified in February 2022.
“Speaking with the national Kossuth Rádió, Orbán agreed with former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that the U.S. had undermined the Istanbul peace talks in March 2022.
“ ‘What the former German chancellor said is a well-known fact in the world of diplomacy,’ Orbán said. ‘And we also know this from all kinds of reports and intelligence sources, that indeed in 2022 in Istanbul, where all kinds of covert negotiations took place, there was essentially an agreement, which - so says the diplomatic rumor - the Ukrainians did not sign on American instructions.”
“In an interview last month, Schroeder told the newspaper Berliner Zeitung that the Ukrainians ‘were not allowed to’ make peace, as they ‘first had to ask the Americans about everything.’ ”
Retired General Harld Kujat, who served in the German Air Force and was the chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 2002 to 2005, has emerged in Germany as another outspoken critic of the way NATO and the Europeans are abusing Ukraine for the geopolitical benefit of the US.
“The real turning point was the coup d’état orchestrated by the USA in February 2014 in Kyiv. This triggered the Civil War in Donbass and the denial of minority rights to the Russian speaking population. This was agreed-upon in the Minsk II agreement which was arranged by Angela Merkel and the French president.
“After that, Ukraine was supposed to carry out a constitutional amendment which would grant the Russian minority the same rights as the Ukrainian speaking citizens.
“In the US, quite a few are convinced the war could’ve been prevented. This would have been possible if there were serious discussions about Ukraine’s NATO membership and greater autonomy for the Russian speaking population of Donbass.
“The war also could’ve been ended after six weeks. In the Istanbul negotiations at the end of March 2022, Ukraine and Russia reached a mutually acceptable outcome. It was agreed that Ukraine would give up NATO membership and adopt a neutral status. In return, Russian troops were to withdraw to their positions before the war. This agreement was not signed by Ukraine under pressure from the West.” - German General Harld Kujat
“More Evidence That the West Sabotaged Peace in Ukraine. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in an interview posted to his YouTube channel on Saturday that the US and its Western allies “blocked” his efforts of mediating between Russia and Ukraine to bring an end to the war in its early days.”
“The Newsweek article provides a useful admission that Washington is recklessly – and criminally – fueling hostilities towards Russia, the world’s biggest nuclear power in terms of its arsenal. The Biden administration and its military-intelligence apparatus are risking an escalation of the proxy war to an all-out nuclear conflagration.
“The CIA and its British counterparts are running the Neo-Nazi cesspit that Ukraine has been turned into.”
“The war in Ukraine is the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement. The Biden Administration is packed with the same neocons who championed the US wars of choice in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Syria (2011), Libya (2011), and who did so much to provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The neocon track record is one of unmitigated disaster, yet Biden has staffed his team with neocons. As a result, Biden is steering Ukraine, the US, and the European Union towards yet another geopolitical debacle. If Europe has any insight, it will separate itself from these US foreign policy debacles.” - Jeffrey Sachs
“The 2014 coup in Ukraine was about two things: getting Ukraine into NATO, and seizing Russia’s biggest naval base, which ever since 1783 has been in Crimea, which (Crimea) the Soviet dictator had transferred to Ukraine in 1954 while still continuing Crimea as the Soviet Union’s biggest naval base. Obama, already by no later than June 2013, was planning to grab that naval base and turn it into yet another U.S. naval base.
However, in order to get that coup-installed new regime to last as being a ‘democracy’, Obama needed to be sure that Crimea, which had voted 75% for Yanukovych, and that Donbass, which had voted more than 90% for Yanukovych, be ethnically cleansed of those especially favorable-toward-Russia voters.”
“Maidan 10 Years on… The Western-Backed Coup Unleashed Nazism, War and Destruction. Ten years on from the Maidan uprising in Kiev, the country of the Ukraine has descended into utter chaos, corruption, fascism, destruction and suffering.”
As with all wars, corruption is one of the main factors at the heart of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
“Thus we see how the DoD, its defense contractor cronies, the Biden administration, and whoever is running Ukraine appear to have created the perfect machine for enriching themselves with American taxpayer money (or debt, to be more precise). With so much money flowing, and so little accountability for it, I do not expect to see any interest in seeking a negotiated settlement to end the war. Instead we will continue hearing that the war must continue indefinitely, perhaps until there are no men left to fight or artillery rounds to fire.” - JS Leake
“Putin's claim that Boris Johnson scuttled peace deal confirmed by witnesses.” - John Leake
SUMMARY
Governments NEVER tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Governments ALWAYS gaslight people, feeding the public only what the government wants believed. Untruths, half-truths, omissions, deflections, misdirections sprinkled with a few truths for the sake of credibility - gaslighting propaganda, in other words.
And the mainstream news media is in lockstep with this false narrative.
The material in this article provides the truth about this war, and the role US, UK and NATO have played and continue to play in it.
This is a great article, well researched, very clear and respectful of the reader. I hope that you have enough of an audience to keep writing these. This needs be read by thousands.