Who and What Caused the Russia-Ukraine War?
Russia, Ukraine, US, UK and NATO Are All Responsible
US and European politicians and the entire mainstream news media say that Russia’s invasion of the Donbass region in Ukraine was unprovoked, out-of-the-blue and an act of expansionist aggression.
These individuals and news agencies also point to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 as another unprovoked act of war and aggressive expansionism.
Is it this simple? Are US and European politicians and the news media right?
No. Wars and geopolitical/international relations are NEVER this simple. Nor are they EVER as portrayed by politicians and mainstream news.
"The first casualty when war comes is truth" - Hiram W Johnson
This is true of 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.” - Jeffrey Sachs, The Real History of the War in Ukraine
https://substack.com/inbox/post/135031022?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&nthPub=41
It’s tragic and unfortunate that the majority of Americans 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 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? This is similar to what Russia faced from US/NATO, from their point of view.
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:”
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997-06/arms-control-today/opposition-nato-expansion
John Mearsheimer, the eminent political scientist has warned for years that NATO's Ukraine policy would lead to disaster.
“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.” - Former U.S. Ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock
“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
https://www.codepink.org/usprovokedrussia
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
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/01/james-howard-kunstler/pretend-o-rama/
“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 from 1991
“The Ukrainian Crisis - It's not All Putin's Fault” - 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.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/05/chronology-of-the-ukrainian-coup/
https://portside.org/2014-09-02/why-ukraine-crisis-wests-fault-liberal-delusions-provoked-putin
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.”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/05/chronology-of-the-ukrainian-coup/
Crimea
In 2014, Russia annexes Crimea. The US and other governments were up in arms over this, and they and the news media portrayed 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.
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, it should be noted that 75-80% of Crimeans are Russian. 82% of Crimeans speak Russian at home, as their native language. And 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.
The US and NATO have never recognized the Crimean vote as legitimate. But there is NO evidence that the vote was rigged or falsified in any way.
“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
https://raymcgovern.com/2015/07/02/ray-gets-letter-printed-in-washpost/
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.”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/02/no_author/mercouris-something-big-is-on-the-way/
“How the West Brought War to Ukraine. Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe”
“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.”
“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
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/10/thomas-luongo/ukraine-was-always-the-uks-war-first/
Col. Douglas Macgregor provides valuable and fascinating analysis of this war:
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. Once again, the truth is the first and worst casualty of war.
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 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)
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_218172.htm?selectedLocale=en
“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.
https://mronline.org/2022/04/10/the-military-situation-in-the-ukraine/
“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
https://www.codepink.org/usprovokedrussia
Why the War Continues
“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.”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/11/no_author/orban-says-us-sabotaged-peace-for-ukraine/
“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 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.”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/04/no_author/861446-2/
“Evidence that Ukraine Has Been Run by Nazis Since February 2014”
“Ukraine’s Agent Zelensky - a puppet show produced by the West. Ukraine has become a massively indebted colony of Western capital that will be enslaved for decades to come.”
https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/07/21/ukraine-agent-zelensky-puppet-show-produced-by-west/
“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.”
“NATO ADMITS THAT UKRAINE WAR IS THE WAR OF NATO EXPANSION”
https://www.other-news.info/nato-admits-that-ukraine-war-is-the-war-of-nato-expansion/
“Russia-Ukraine war: How the US paved the way to Moscow's invasion. Nearly a year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the western narrative of an ‘unprovoked’ attack has become impossible to sustain.”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia-ukraine-us-invasion-paved-how
Retired General Harld Kujat, who served in the German Airforce 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
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.”
- J.S. Leake
“Putin's claim that Boris Johnson scuttled peace deal confirmed by witnesses.”
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 - propaganda, in other words. Untruths, half-truths, omissions, deflections, misdirections sprinkled with a few truths for the sake of credibility.
And the mainstream news media in the 21st century is in lockstep with whatever the US and European Union (EU) governments dictate.
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.
One final note: Ukraine is losing this war and losing it badly, and is on the verge of extinction as a nation. The opposite is being reported by the mainstream news media - more lies as usual.
“Ukraine is a complete disaster. I have been warning that our sources from UKRAINE, not Russia, have been warning that the country is on the brink of collapse. The American Neocons are being confronted with the fact that there NEVER was any chance that Ukraine would defeat Russia and putting this high-heel questionable gender dancer in high heels in charge of war was in itself a war crime. There is absolutely no way Ukraine can win anything. This is why Zelensky has been so desperate to drag in NATO because he knows they cannot retake the Donbas no less defeat Russia. The American Neocons were hoping to weaken Russia so they could contrive some scheme to justify going in for the kill.
“There are rumblings behind the curtain now that a peace deal has to be struck or Ukraine will collapse, if their own troops do not rise up and assassinate Zelensky for his profiteering and slaughter of his own people.”
- Martin Armstrong
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/08/chuck-baldwin/the-truth-about-ukraine/
Good job. Thanks.
Yup. This version is authentic. It reflected real-world behavior.