Inconvenient Truths

Opinion: Current Events Series

Mar 02, 2023

The Truth Hurts

“It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble; it's what we do know that ain't so.” Will Rogers

If you're reading this, it's probable that you are on a journey of discovery. At some point, you have come to the realization that all is not as it seems – specifically, that we are being lied to and manipulated by those who are supposed to be leaders with our best interests at heart. This discovery may be recent, perhaps even as recent as the plandemic, it may be lost in the mists of time or at any point in between. For those of a British persuasion, perhaps the furore that Brexit prompted was the match that fired the kindling. For those across the pond, it may have been an event of similar vintage; the election of Trump and the seemingly interminable Leftist shenanigans that followed might have caused the veil to fall from your eyes.

Whatever and whenever it was, there has almost certainly been time to pose an internal question – if they're doing this, what else are they doing? You may have gone some way down that path; or maybe not. Maybe you don't want to find out. Maybe the only reason that you were obliged to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth was because it had become unavoidable. Perhaps you had known for a long while, but had been able to relegate it to background noise. Maybe you sense that further investigation might make a deconstruction of your world view inevitable and the prospect is too painful to contemplate. Or, maybe you simply don't have the time. My point is that each of us is at a different point on the journey and that some of us are still moving, while others have called a temporary (or permanent) halt.

There are a number of narratives out there and we are required to demonstrate fealty to them all. I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of you harbour serious doubts about all things Covid and, further, than most of you are 'unvaccinated' (or, otherwise, experiencing a bad case of buyer's remorse), but that doesn't necessarily mean that you have been red-pilled across the board. You may still be a believer in climate change, for instance.

You may still think that Putin is the Devil incarnate and that Zelensky walks on water, despite knowing that life is messy and rarely quite so black and white. You may also be of the opinion that we are the victims of incompetence, rather than malevolence; that government's are peopled by dolts who continually mess things up. That seems to be a popular view in conservative media – popular and convenient, as professing it enables them to avoid the conflict that would be inevitable if they spoke the truth.

Before embarking on this read, I'd urge you to put as many preconceptions aside as you possibly can. I will set out the back story to the war in Ukraine and I'll warn you in advance that none of the participants (and there are more of them than you might think) come out of it smelling of roses. But, just as the establishment plandemic narrative is almost completely untrue, so it is with the conflict in the east. In truth, this shouldn't be much of a surprise, as it's the same people trying to sell us yet another bill of goods and, if they've lied to us about one subject, why would we automatically believe them about another? And, yes, I do mean lie. The odds of them simply being incompetent are statistically microscopic. Look at their track record on Covid:

“Transmission of the disease—wrong • Asymptomatic spread—wrong • PCR testing—wrong • Fatality rate—wrong • Lockdowns—wrong • Community triggers—wrong • Business closures—wrong • School closures—wrong • Quarantining healthy people—wrong • Impact on youth—wrong • Hospital overload—wrong • Plexiglass barriers—wrong • Social distancing—wrong • Outdoor spread—wrong • Masks—wrong • Variant impact—wrong • Natural immunity—wrong • Vaccine efficacy—wrong • Vaccine injury—wrong.”(1)

If they'd flipped a coin on every decision, they'd have at least got some right. And remember, despite the effort to make you think otherwise, most of the science existed prior to the discovery of Covid – they just ignored it because it didn't fit their narrative arc. It is, therefore, surely incumbent upon us to, at minimum, review other claims they've made and treat them with a heavy dollop of skepticism. Being victimized due to incompetence is one thing; being punished with malice aforethought is something else.

Any such review would do well to begin with the two other major topics that are the subject of the most vigorous attempts to shut down debate – climate change and, firstly, Ukraine. Here the establishment and its fellow travelers in the media are most committed to throwing around their usual hackneyed epithets, such as 'denier', 'misinformation', 'disinformation', 'Putin apologist' and so forth. As the saying goes, the more flak that's incoming, the more certain you can be that you are over the target.

There is a marked tendency among our authoritarian brethren to ignore what came before and simply apply their own narrative to current events – it keeps matters nice and binary, good v evil, the educated v the basket of deplorables. However, without the back story, we are unlikely to be fully informed about the reasons that the present is the way it is. So it is with Ukraine. First, some of the history that the establishment doesn't want you to know. I'll present this in three sections; ancient, 1945 – 2022 and the very recent lead-up to the current iteration of the war and I'll also document the break up of the Soviet Union and its aftermath.

Back in the day

Ukraine has rarely been a nation in its own right. From the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, it was part of Kievan Rus', an amalgam of principalities in Eastern and Northern Europe.

Figure 1

Thereafter, the area was the plaything of a succession of different empires, including the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austrian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and Tsarist Russia.(2) A Cossack state flourished in central Ukraine from 1648, although it was a vassal state of Russia even then.(3) The arrangement was terminated in 1764 when Ukraine effectively became part of Russia.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 prompted the formation of a short lived independent Ukraine, but the Bolsheviks regained control and designated the country as a constituent republic of the Soviet Union. In the 1930s, the country was ravaged by the Holomodor, an engineered famine that killed millions and, a decade later, the Nazis invaded. The traditional line, echoed by Wikipedia, is that Ukraine was devastated by the Germans. Certainly, it was devastating to the Jewish population, to ethnic Poles and to captured Soviet soldiers.

It is estimated that up to one and a half million Jews were slaughtered, often with the assistance of the locals and, while most Ukrainian volunteers served in the ranks of the Soviet Army, as many as 100,000 allied with the Nazi forces in the west of the country. Ethnic Ukrainians also made up a significant proportion of concentration camp guards.(4)(5) Six hundred thousand captured Soviet troops were largely left to die of malnutrition in camps on the steppes and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the military arm of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN)) massacred around 100,000 ethnic Poles.(6)

The OUN was led by Stepan Bandera, a young fascist, who was pro-Ukrainian and anti everybody else, which made for some unfortunate alliances; one of which resulted in his men joining the Einsatzgruppen in carrying out pogroms on the Jews in Lviv.(7) He himself had been sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp for three years, for daring to declare an independent state upon the arrival of the Germans in 1941.

Post war and, indeed, post Stalin, Ukraine was gifted Crimea by Khrushchev, for economic reasons and as a sign of friendship – it had previously been a part of the Russian Republic. In the decade to 1954, both within Ukraine and also Crimea, much forcible resettling of populations occurred, resulting in a far more homogenised demographic of ethnic Ukrainians and Russians. Other peoples, such as the Crimean Tartars, were deported.(8)

In 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Crimea's designation was changed to that of an autonomous republic, as a result of a referendum in which 94% voted aye.(9) A year later, the now Autonomous Republic of Crimea was incorporated within Ukraine itself, the rest of the country, having held their own referendum in which 92% voted for independence. So far, so good; Western involvement in Ukraine (and Russia itself) has thusfar been minimal, but this is about to change. The first effect is tangential, but profound. It may throw some light on the motivations and beliefs of those currently in power in Moscow, in particular.

When Yeltsin took over, in the aftermath of Gorbachev's dismantling of the USSR, he dramatically re-organized the Russian economy on free market lines. Clinton, upon election, became the other Boris's bosom buddy, sponsoring Yeltsin's hugely unpopular policies (6% approval rating). Those US stalwarts, the World Bank and the IMF, helped privatize state owned industries and lift price controls, enriching a handful of oligarchs and a large number of Wall Street banks. In the process, Russia was devastated. More than 80% of Russian farms went bankrupt, unemployment rose to 30%, there was rampant inflation such that pensions and savings evaporated and 74 million Russians found themselves living below the poverty line – 37 million of them in conditions described as desperate.(10)

During the 1990s, drug addiction in Russian went up by 900%. The suicide rate almost doubled and AIDS became a nationwide epidemic affecting millions. Russia's population declined by 6.6 million between 1992 and 2006. The US was the primary instigator of this chaos and it was far from blind as to the consequences of its actions:

“An entire population of people who had lived with guaranteed employment, guaranteed healthcare, old age pensions, and a planned economy saw the social safety net swept from underneath them, as widely unpopular policies, backed by Washington, were imposed on the country. US Senator Bill Bradley describes the tone of US diplomats in their interactions with Russia, saying Clinton administration officials spoke of “stuffing shit down Boris throat,” gleefully taking pleasure in ordering him to wreck his country’s economy.”(11)

Putin's ascension to the presidency was the catalyst for change. He dropped most of the extreme free market policies advocated by Clinton and his cronies and re-established economic soundness via state controlled, publicly owned oil and gas industries. As a result, during the first eight years of his presidency, Russia enjoyed an industrial expansion rate of over 70%. The country's GDP increased from $764 billion to $2096.8 billion between 2007 and 2014.(12) If one were of a cynical mindset, one might posit that, far from helping, Clinton had been duping Yeltsin into consenting to the destruction of Russia by way of economic warfare; a continuation of NATO (US) policy by other means. Putin's arrival put an end to that particular plan and upended the gravy train. One might speculate that he may not be very popular with Washington, as a result.

Other duplicitous conduct was also ongoing, this time around the role of NATO and its expansion or otherwise. Again, as with Yeltsin's dance with the Clinton devil, this undertaking is also fully documented, both in the US National Security Archives and elsewhere. The break-up of the Soviet Union also spelt the demise of the Warsaw Pact, a collective military defense treaty between Russia and seven other countries – Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland and Romania. Russia was therefore isolated, without allies. The US gave repeated assurances that any NATO expansion would go “not one inch eastwards”.(13) In 1990, the West German Foreign Minister had this to say in a major public speech:

“...the changes in Eastern Europe and the German unification process must not lead to an ‘impairment of Soviet security interests”; therefore, NATO should rule out an “expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.”(14)

The German government even proposed to leave the East German portion of the country out of NATO in the event of reunification. In fact, this was part of the deal struck between Gorbachev and the Germans; the former agreed to the principle of a unified Germany in NATO, provided that NATO did not venture further east.(15) Many other heads of state (including Mitterand, Kohl, Thatcher and Major) assured Gorbachev that this was the furthest thing from their minds. There was also much discussion about how to involve the Russians in new European security structures.

The Americans, in the form of the the Secretary of State James Baker, were explicit. In his meetings with the Russian leader he stated that:

“NATO expansion is unacceptable...neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place,” and that the Americans understood that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.”(16)

That is not the rhetoric of a politician giving himself wiggle room. Similarly, the NATO Secretary General of the time, when addressing Russian delegates in Brussels in 1991, stated that “We should not allow […] the isolation of the USSR from the European community.”(17) It is conceivable, perhaps even probable (due to the definitive language used) that these assurances were genuinely given. Regrettably, future Western governments decided that they were not bound by the promises of their predecessors.

The Russian concerns over NATO expansion have merit. Despite what apologists may say, the organisation has always been a a military organisation whose explicit mission has been to oppose Soviet expansion westwards. It has failed to recalibrate itself in the past thirty years. For decades, the communist Soviet Union posed a genuine threat and NATO had a role to play. But Russia isn't the Soviet Union. Nor is she any longer communist. But the Americans, in particular, cannot let it go; perhaps, because it gives them dispensation to rule the roost over Western Europe militarily. In any event, expansion eastward is what happened whether Russia liked it or not.

“The plan to increase the membership of NATO fails to take account of the real international situation following the end of the Cold War and proceeds in accord with a logic that made sense only during the Cold War....nobody is trying to re-divide Europe. It is therefore absurd to claim, as some have, that it is necessary to take new members into NATO to avoid a future division of Europe; if NATO is to be the principal instrument for unifying the continent, then logically the only way it can do so is by expanding to include all European countries.”(18)

So said the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1987-91. And this was also Putin's ambition; he is on the record as saying that he wanted to join NATO and Western European culture.(19) But, instead of truly neutralising any perceived residual threat from Russia, the United States and NATO (one and the same, in all but name) have continued to poke the Russian bear. Even Biden, back when he was simply a senator with a room temperature IQ, rather than a cognitively impaired, illegitimate president, recognised that.(20)

From a base of sixteen member states in 1990, NATO now totals thirty – 28 in Europe - and every single one of the new additions is more than an inch eastwards. In fact, four of them were members of the Warsaw Pact and all were members of the Soviet Bloc.

Figure 2

Figure 3

So, whatever one thinks of Putin in any other respect, one could be forgiven for having some level of understanding as to his skepticism of the West and the Americans, in particular. They have been the driving force behind catastrophic economic policies which impoverished Putin's homeland and which took perhaps twenty years to fully recover from. These are also the same people who did not keep their word on NATO expansion, not just the once, but a dozen or more times, effectively taking advantage of Russia's diminished state, a state they had been instrumental in creating. Not only that, but they have resisted his peaceful overtures, his desire to be a member of the club, and continued to treat his country as a pariah. This is a version of history that may be unpalatable to you. Nonetheless, every part of this narrative is verifiably true and it adds a little more color to the backdrop.

The more recent past, with reference to Ukraine

The fact that it is Ukraine that has proved to be the flashpoint is not mere coincidence. The US has noted its potential since the early nineties:

“Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire. Russia without Ukraine can still strive for imperial status, but it would then become a predominantly Asian imperial state.”(21)

That quote is from Zbigniew Brzezinski, who worked for both LBJ and Carter, in 1997. It doesn't sound like the words of a man who has become reconciled to a Russia that might be considered an ally, as she had been for four years in World War II. Instead, it sounds like a politician evincing a desire to keep the country in its place, the location of which is decided upon by him and others like him, and using Ukraine as the vehicle for getting her there.

In 2013, the democratically elected president, Victor Yanukovych, had been in office for three years. The election had been certified by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). He was seeking external funding to kick-start economic growth in Ukraine. The EU offer had come with too much in the way of detrimental small-print, which would have imposed a harsh austerity regime in exchange for access to German banks and he was inclined to accept a counter offer of $15 billion from Russia. Yanukovych was not a fan of the US, NATO or the EU. This course of action was not acceptable to the Russiaphobes in DC, who took it upon themselves to finance opposition groups and encourage protests. Senator John McCain and Assistant Secretary of State Nuland even attended the Maidan protests which erupted shortly thereafter.(22)

Again, this is not idle speculation. The United States funds a network of NGOs whose function is to mobilise political opposition and effect color revolutions against countries of choice, such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Syria and Ukraine. A principal vehicle is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

“NED, a $100 million-a-year agency created by the Reagan administration in 1983 to promote political action and psychological warfare against targeted states, lists 65 projects that it supports financially inside Ukraine, including training activists, supporting ‘journalists’ and promoting business groups, effectively creating a full-service structure primed and ready to destabilize a government in the name of promoting ‘democracy.’”(23)

The main actors in the protests were pro-Nazi organisations, such as Svoboda Party and Right Sector. For the denouement, several months later in February, about 50 snipers were brought in from other countries, including Georgia. Upon arrival in Kiev, they were met by an American in uniform who gave them their orders – to randomly target people in Maidan Square, protestors and police alike. Blame would then be apportioned to government forces, creating the chaos required to execute the coup d'état.(24) It worked like a charm; it's estimated that up to 50 people died of gunshots wounds and the President, realizing that his life was in danger, fled and a new, more malleable character was inserted into power; by the United States, whose officials' telephone conversation in which they choose the new leader was recorded and posted on YouTube, two and a half weeks before the coup occurred.(25) And how do we know the other details? Because of a wealth of open source documentation. And because the shooters were called to testify in Kiev and gave interviews detailing their roles.(26)

So, to recap. The Americans spent $5 billion promoting 'democracy',(27) worked with neo-Nazis, shipped in snipers who then randomly committed murder on their behalf and effected a color revolution by installing their own preferred candidate, illegitimately and in defiance of the country's constitution. The leaders of the Free World; the current defenders of Ukraine's democracy. One hopes that they were prepared for a reaction, but the ease with which their role can be uncovered does not betoken great intellects at work, so perhaps not. But they got a reaction anyway.

The Donbas and Crimea

The ethnic makeup of the two nascent republics in the Donbas, the part of eastern Ukraine which borders Russia, is as follows:

Luhansk - 51.9% ethnic Ukrainians and 44.4% ethnic Russians.

Donetsk – 50.7% ethnic Ukrainians and 43.6% ethnic Russians.(28)

In Crimea, the numbers are 15.1% and 65.3%, respectively, with 12% Crimean Tartars.(29) The Donbas has such a prominent Russian presence because the heavy industry which had been the region's lifeblood until the 90s attracted workers from all over Russia. Russian was (is) one of the official languages of the two oblasts. Crimea, as can be seen, is predominantly Russian. Russia has its warm water Black Sea port here in Sevastopol, which is effectively a closed city.(30)

In the immediate aftermath of the coup, Crimeans were swiftly out of the blocks. Within a month or so, the authorities held a referendum, at which 96.77% of voters supported joining Russia. The Russian military occupied key installations and the takeover was completed without a shot being fired.(31) Western claims of fraud are just that – claims with no evidential backing, as is so often the case.(32) But, without a doubt, the prospect of Crimea becoming a NATO base – a mere 12 miles from mainland Russia - would have been intolerable to Russians in general and Putin in particular.

The Donbas oblasts have had active separatist movements since the early 1990s, although not of violent character. The 2014 coup (or the laughably designated Revolution of Dignity) did not play well here, either. Accessing credible sources which accurately describe events and the triggers for them is difficult. Often, analysis starts downstream of the events that immediately preceded (the Maidan coup) and ignore any real context. It may be that Russia backed the insurgency that erupted post coup, but if they did, Putin's lukewarm response to the subsequent declarations of independence – he didn't recognize either of them as singular entities until 2022 – is puzzling.

Russia may well have assisted with weaponry and 'military specialists', but that phase of the conflict didn't commence until late April, despite prior skirmishes. Separatists demanded a referendum and, when the local government proved unresponsive, deposed them and proclaimed the Donetsk People's Republic on 7^th April. The Luhansk People's Republic was declared on 27^th April.

The Donetsk vote was scheduled for 11^th May, as was the Luhansk. The credibility of both is open to question and would have been no matter the circumstances, as Ukraine is a country with a well-deserved reputation for corruption. Polling in Donetsk in mid April, conducted by the Kiev Institute of Sociology (not by the locals) showed that only 10.6% preferred to keep the status quo; the rest were in favor of either decentralization or secession.(33) However, on May 2^nd in Odessa, a riot of neo Nazis burnt at least 40 pro-Russian demonstrators to death:

“The brutality of these neo-Nazis surfaced again on May 2 when right-wing toughs in Odessa attacked an encampment of ethnic Russian protesters driving them into a trade union building which was then set on fire with Molotov cocktails. As the building was engulfed in flames, some people who tried to flee were chased and beaten, while those trapped inside heard the Ukrainian nationalists liken them to black-and-red-striped potato beetles called Colorados, because those colors are used in pro-Russian ribbons.

‘Burn, Colorado, burn’ went the chant.

As the fire worsened, those dying inside were serenaded with the taunting singing of the Ukrainian national anthem. The building also was spray-painted with Swastika-like symbols and graffiti reading ‘Galician SS,’ a reference to the Ukrainian nationalist army that fought alongside the German Nazi SS in World War II, killing Russians on the eastern front.”(34)

This massacre almost certainly hardened opposition to Kiev. The official results show 89.07% in favor of independence in Donetsk and 96.2% in favor in Luhansk.(35) I'm not convinced that anybody is sure whether these numbers are accurate, but it seems likely that a simple majority (if given a binary choice) would reject the status quo and, in any event, almost half of the Donbas is ethnically Russian. And, once again, a reminder; the national government was now illegitimate. Far Right protesters had been seizing government buildings in Kiev for months, but the narrative demands that the Revolution of Dignity – complete with its lawlessness and Maidan massacre – is to be celebrated, whereas the counter revolution in the Donbas must be deplored.

“When a movement that is supported by about half the population and opposed by about half the population violently overthrows a democratically elected government, this may be given different names (e.g. coup), but it is certainly not a “popular revolution”.

The Maydan movement was never supported by more than about half the Ukrainian population. It was supported by a vast majority in Western Ukraine, by very few people in the East and South of the country, with people more evenly split in the center/North. This clearly was not a case of a government that had lost public support to such a degree that there was a general consensus that it should resign. It was the case of one political camp representing about half the country that had lost the last elections imposing its will with brutal deadly violence.”(36)

If a genuine majority wished to secede in the light of that, it wouldn't be wholly surprising.

Ongoing conflict

The war between the breakaway republics and the Ukrainian Army has been ongoing for just shy of nine years. It didn't start in February 2022, contrary to what every mainstream news organisation has been parroting. The war has largely involved the Ukrainian artillery raining down shells on the 'Line of Contact' (otherwise known as the civilian population, the same civilians that they say wanted to remain part of Ukraine) to the extent that the lives of around 14,000 people (37) – many of them children (38) – have been snuffed out. Additionally, around 1,500,000 have been displaced and 3.5 million have been left in need of humanitarian assistance. UNICEF notes that millions don't have access to clean drinking water; some have no access to water at all.(39)(40) The existence of a previously ongoing conflict, rather than Russia precipitating one last year, is finally being recognized by officialdom, whether by accident or design. The following is from Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO:

"The other thing I will say is that the war didn't start in February last year. The war started in 2014. And since 2014, NATO Allies have provided support to Ukraine, with training, with equipment, so the Ukrainian Armed Forces were much stronger in 2022, than they were in 2020, and 2014. And of course, that made a huge difference when President Putin decided to attack Ukraine.”(41)

On the face of it, while there's a break from the narrative, the rest of the quote is pretty bland. I'll come back to the question of who exactly was being trained a little later, but I'd like to tackle what isn't being said, but which should be said. The implication is that, after eight years, Putin has suddenly had a rush of blood to the head and decided to make it official. There is rather more to it than that, both back at the time of the 'peace negotiations' known as the Minsk Protocols and also in the run up to the deployment of the 'special military operation'.

Negotiations for a ceasefire were led by Germany and France and started almost immediately. Before 2014 was out, the first iteration was signed by all parties (including Russia and Ukraine). Even the then leaders of the self-proclaimed breakaway republics signed the agreement, despite the fact that their status was not recognized in the protocol. The protocol didn't take. So, a revised Minsk II was signed in February 2015. This included provisions such as constitutional reform granting some degree of self-government and the restoration of the state border.(42) This didn't take either, as Ukraine failed to implement any of the conditions.

The reason for this failure became apparent years later when Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany at the time of the negotiations, gave an incautious interview to Der Spiegel in which she asserted that none of France, Germany or Ukraine ever had any intention of abiding by the agreement.(43)(44) This is an agreement ratified by the UN Security Council, which includes the UK and the US, by the way. The sole purpose of the deception was to give Ukraine time to build up its military for the war yet to come. She clearly feels that this was a noble endeavor which, in a shabby kind of way it might be, if it's true that Putin was always going to attack at some point. But the cunning plan suffers from two major shortcomings; firstly, if the lies about NATO expansion and the acts of deliberate economic harm in the 90s weren't enough to rubbish the West's reputation for integrity, signing an international agreement whilst never intending to honor it might be thought to be the cherry on top. And, secondly, a further conundrum; if Putin was hell bent on an attack on Ukraine, why hasn't he done it before now?

He surely knows that NATO forces have been training and equipping Ukrainian forces. He knows that the Ukrainian military has greatly expanded. He knows that the Azov Battalion, whose leader wants to;

“...lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival… against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”(45)

Even the Americans know who it is they are interacting with. It's difficult not to notice.

Figure 4

The US can hardly claim to be unaware of the ideological underpinning of these groups. If that picture wasn't enough to give pause, it's known that the leader of yet another neo-Nazi gang, C-14, was a speaker at an event that they themselves organised.(46) There is also the small matter of the US military training this particular battalion and supplying them with hardware. This has been ongoing for at least five years, even though it is explicitly forbidden by a congressional provision stating that:

“none of the funds made available by this Act may be used to provide arms, training, or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.”(47)

So, the Russians know that the Americans are willing to ignore the fact that they are working with real live neo Nazis, which makes them pretty committed to the Ukrainian cause, and yet they still retreat to a neutral corner and give the opposition years in which to catch its breath? In addition to not grasping an obvious pretext to war by failing to recognize the right of the breakaways to chose their own fate? I'm not immediately persuaded that we're barking up the right tree, here. What if it's the other way around? What if the plan actually involves Ukrainian aggression instead? Might that explain the long hiatus better?

Poking the Russian Bear – repeatedly

NATO knows that the accession of Ukraine (or Georgia) is an absolute no-no for the Russians. In the case of the former, it means that, as there is only 470 miles of flat land between Kiev and Moscow, NATO would have a considerable strategic advantage. This despite the long-standing American Monroe doctrine – which holds that the new world and the old world are to remain separate spheres of influence -de facto, no foreign power would be allowed to form a military alliance in the entire western hemisphere.(48) It seems that this is a one way doctrine – no similar courtesy is to be extended to Russia and, despite the fact that Ukraine is clearly not a NATO member, it appears that the US has a naval base there as well. NATO and Ukraine have also held joint exercises in the Ukraine.(49) In fact, it's not just the regular troops that are being prepped for conflict:

“Since 2014, the United States has given Ukraine military equipment and set up a training mission in the Western portion of the country, away from the contact line. U.S. troops have helped Ukraine stand up better special operations units.”(50)

And yet, despite the fact that NATO would not dream of tolerating such activity in their own backyard, they ignore the obvious and keep pushing the Russians:

“Ukraine entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”(51)

Presumably, simply because it's the Russians and Putin won't play ball and because the natural resources that Ukraine possesses make it worth the risk; perhaps? There are major deposits of coal, iron ore, manganese, nickel and uranium as well as the largest sulphur and second largest mercury reserves in the world. I imagine that the bankers have been salivating at the prospect of a punitive loan or two that can be reliably defaulted on.(52) And that's before taking stock of the natural resources under Russia's control.

A lot of hard work has gone into propagandising us about Putin and co. That's not to say that he's necessarily a good man. He was a colonel in the KGB, after all. But the demonising of the Russians has been relentless over the past nine or ten years. In case you'd forgotten, there was the long-running saga of Russiagate sandwiched between Ukraine part one and Ukraine part two, despite the fact that there was never any evidence of any wrongdoing by Trump or the Russians. The elites really don't like Putin. Perhaps there are some fairly straightforward reasons for the marked antipathy:

“The Russia-gate story fits neatly into a geopolitical strategy that long predates the 2016 election. Since Wall Street and the U.S. government lost the dominant position in Russia that existed under the pliable President Boris Yeltsin, the strategy has been to put pressure on getting rid of Putin to restore a U.S. friendly leader in Moscow. There is substance to Russia's concerns about American designs for ‘regime change’ in the Kremlin.”(53)

Russiagate, lest we forget, is the acme of establishment dishonesty. CNN, MSNBC, every other mainstream news station other than Fox, The Washington Post, New York Times, the BBC and Channel Four spent four years divesting themselves of any residual credibility they had thusfar managed to retain. So much so, that the US media has the lowest credibility rating (at 26%) among 46 nations sampled by Reuters, the well known liberal/Leftist agency. Additionally, 46% of the UK public say that they avoid the news sometimes or often, almost double the level recorded in 2016.(54)

To us, in the West, the trashing of Russia on the international stage is probably no biggee. We're not Russian. But I imagine it may sting a little if you are. And perhaps Putin has other reasons for distrusting the West:

“Moscow sees an aggressive America expanding NATO and putting 30,000 NATO troops on its borders; trying to overthrow a secular ally in Syria with terrorists who threaten Russia itself; backing a coup in Ukraine as a possible prelude to moves against Russia; and using American NGOs to foment unrest inside Russia before they were forced to register as foreign agents.”(55)

The lead up to the invasion

The temperature started rising again in March 2021. Bear in mind that the Donbas conflict had transformed into an impasse, with fixed front lines and regular, at times indiscriminate, shelling of the separatists and civilian centers by the Ukrainian Army. Any ground offensive, by either side, would have been costly against well dug in defenders. Instead, the Ukrainians declared their intention to retake Crimea, including Sevastopol. Zelensky announced the creation of a Crimean Platform Initiative, a thinly veiled attempt to curry international support in order that Ukraine might achieve the “de-occupation” of Crimea.(56)

This escalation followed hard on the heels of a series of anti-Russian crackdowns and military build ups.(57) These build-ups, particularly along the contact line, combined with the steady increase in the inflow of weaponry into Ukraine, served to put the Russians on notice, as did Zelensky's declaration that the Minsk Protocols had been taken off life support and transferred to the morgue.(58)

At this point, two months into his term, Biden hadn't even spoken to Zelenky. Perhaps the Americans weren't overly keen on talking to a politician who had been elected on a platform which rejected militaristic nationalism and espoused a desire to negotiate with the Russians, a policy supported by 73% of the voting public, comprised of both Russian and non-Russian speakers – until the Azov and other assorted neo Nazis threatened to hang him from the nearest lamppost if he so much as spoke to the Russians.(59) It's not unreasonable to assume that the United States was the instigator of that particular threat; they were training and equipping those very formations at the time.

In any event, shortly thereafter, Biden's attention turned to Ukraine, his old stomping ground from when he was Obama's point man. He'd made six official visits during that tenure.(60) Now he involved himself once more. In June 2021 the US set out a roadmap for Ukraine to join NATO and in November signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership with Zelensky, which included the following statement:

“Ukraine’s right to decide its own future foreign policy course free from outside interference, including with respect to Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO.”(61) Putin had had fair warning as to Biden's direction of travel, as Biden had reiterated his commitment to Ukraine in a telephone call in April of that year.(62) This after calling Putin “a killer” the previous month and threatening repercussions for the Russiagate hoax.(63) Nonetheless, it wasn't until November that Russian troops began massing on Ukraine's border, not before.

Even then, Putin gave it one last shot, asking for guarantees that, among other things, there would be no more NATO expansion to the east, that the US should remove missile systems that it had supplied to Romania and Poland and that Ukraine and several other countries should remain neutral buffer states.(64) He received no such assurances and it's my judgement that he was never going to.(65) Despite the clear wishes of the public, Zelensky was effectively under the control of the neo Nazi elements in his own country, many of whom had been appointed to government positions.(66) And they, in turn, were working hand-in-glove with the Americans. Zelensky was (and is) trapped.

Figure 4 US troops training Ukrainian neo-Nazis

The die was almost cast. All it required was one further bad-faith move on behalf of Biden or Zelensky and it wasn't long in coming. On February 16^th 2022, the Ukrainian Army began a heavy artillery bombardment of civilian areas in eastern Ukraine. In all, over 4,000 shells were fired, with a peak of 2,026 on the 19^th. These numbers are not supplied by the combatants; they were observed by a mission of the OSCE, there in

their professional capacity.(67)

Figure 5

To be clear, once again the Ukrainians were shelling their own Russian speaking citizenry, as well as the ethnic Ukrainians who form a narrow majority of the population. Therefore, even if we ignore all the provocations that had come before, are we still able to say that this act – the indiscriminate killing of civilians - wasn't in itself a provocation? I think not. A week later, Putin launched his special military operation.

The legal position

Before Putin sent his tanks over the border, he invoked United Nations Article 51; you probably didn't know that, as the mainstream, legacy media has not seen fit to give you all the facts in order that you might make your own judgement. They prefer to spoon-feed you want they want you to know. This is from the transcript of Putin's speech on the day of the invasion:

“...did not leave us [Russia] any other option for defending Russia and our people, other than the one we are forced to use today. In these circumstances, we have to take bold and immediate action. The people’s republics of Donbass have asked Russia for help. In this context, in accordance with Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, ... I made a decision to carry out a special military operation.”(68)

And does Article 51 provide a sound legal basis for Russia's intervention? One might suspect that it does as, if it didn't, one assumes that the legacy media would be all over it like a rash. In truth, you'd be three quarters right. As it's written, Article 51 provides for “collective self defense”.(69) So, prior to 24^th February, Putin recognized the Donbas republics as sovereign nations.(70) The subsequent 'invasion', at the behest of said republics, cannot be designated as the act of a hostile force under international law.

It might be thought that the declaration of autonomy by both republics in 2014 is contrary to norms, but it isn't. The Hague Convention, Article 42, states that:

“Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.”(71)

Donetsk and Luhansk don't see the Russians as hostile. However, the West doesn't recognize them as independent states. Does that mean that they aren't, simply because the West doesn't want to acknowledge them? Here's some text from the Montevideo Convention of 1933:

“The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications:

a permanent population;

b. a defined territory;

c. government; and

d. capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”(72)

For the avoidance of doubt, Article 3 of the Convention further states:

“The political existence of the state is independent of recognition by the other states.”(73)

Despite these legal texts, Article 5 – in an unadorned reading – is still problematic in this instance. Russia itself had not been specifically threatened; its newly minted neighbors had, if one can make the case that a Ukrainian military build-up and an intensified shelling campaign warrant such a designation. But Article 51, while unaltered in its charter wording, is not now unadorned and clear cut and the responsibility for that state of affairs lies with America herself – firstly with Clinton and then with Bush junior, both of whom chafed under the restrictions that the United Nations placed upon their aggression.

Clinton wanted to bomb the Serbs during the Kosovo War in 1999. Article 51 wouldn't permit him to do so and so he crafted a novel legal theory that would allow him to circumvent it. This theory postulated that

“...normative expectation that permits anticipatory collective self-defense actions by regional security or self-defense organizations where the organization is not entirely dominated by a single member...” was, henceforth, legitimate.(74)

Which rather ignored the fact that NATO is the very definition of a regional self defense organisation dominated by a single member. And the fact that Article 51 concerns itself with self defence against an actual armed attack, not an anticipatory attack launched in the face of some open-ended, subjective assessment of threat to security. Article 51 was intended to be utilized when matters moved too swiftly for the UN to have the opportunity to deliberate and pass a Security Council resolution.

Bush's subsequent reinterpretation left the reservation entirely. Having failed to browbeat Saddam into abiding by UN resolutions, Bush soft-launched his brainchild in a speech at West Point, when he asserted that while:

“...in some cases deterrence still applied, new threats required new thinking … if we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.”(75)

The doctrine of pre-exemption was born. But it wasn't to be viewed as a tool to be used by the Security Council; this was a gift to be jealously guarded and deployed solely on the say so of NATO (once again, read the US and their mini-me, the UK). It was made explicit in the US National Security Strategy 2002:

“Given the goals of the rogue states and terrorists, the U.S. can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. The inability to deter a potential attacker…and the magnitude of potential harm that could be caused by our adversaries’ choice of weapons do not permit that option. We cannot let our enemies strike first.”(76)

There's nothing particularly clever about this strategy; it's just the biggest kid in the playground bullying all the others and to hell with the rules. Or, put another way, it was just the US government attempting to re-write international law. Article 51 already existed; if they wanted to update it, they could have tried to do so at the UN. But they knew that they would fail in that endeavor, at least partly due to their previously cavalier attitude to the Charter, such as with the invasions of Panama – where civilians were targeted - (77) and Grenada, when even a fig leaf of legal justification was absent. And, when they attempted to obtain a Resolution authorizing an attack on Iraq in 2003, they did indeed come up short. The Bush doctrine was poorly received, which is diplomatic speak for 'roundly condemned':

“A global strategy based on the new Bush doctrine of preemption means the end of the system of international institutions, laws, and norms that we have worked to build for more than half a century. What is at stake is nothing less than a fundamental shift in America’s place in the world. Rather than continuing to serve as first among equals in the postwar international system, the United States would act as a law unto itself, creating new rules of international engagement without the consent of other nations.”(78)

This was the view shared by Kofi Annan, the Secretary General, who held that a new UN resolution would be required if the US were to go to war win Iraq. That view was ignored. Iraq, plus further entanglements in Belgrade, Libya and Syria are all justified by the stretched interpretation of Article 51 with which NATO has rewarded itself. It's still not in the UN Charter.

However, Putin has clearly decided that what's good for the goose is good for the gander and, in contrast to NATO campaigns waged far from the alliance's borders, at least Putin's military adventurism is taking place right next door. In truth, a case can be made either way. Take your pick – technically illegal under the UN Charter, unless the US doctrines that attempt to re-define Article 51 are utilized. Or legal under the Montevideo Convention, as a state can invite foreign forces onto its territory.

The same dynamic is at play when addressing the legality of the annexation of Crimea. The West has accused Russia of violating the 1994 Budapest agreement, whereby Russia agreed to “to respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine?”(79) Well, on the face of it, yes. Russia is at fault. Except the stricture applied equally to the other signatories too, namely Ukraine, the UK and the US. Except that the agreement was effectively void, already. By supporting the coup, giving speeches to the protesters and spending $5 billion in Ukraine to undermine the government, leading to a putsch despite the President having effectively handed over power to the opposition, the US and their allies had gone back on their word before the Russians set foot in Ukraine. So, if the agreement was effectively void, the answer to the West's accusation might have to be no, instead.

Either way, any NATO bleating over Russian disregard for international law is hypocrisy of the highest order. And if that isn't the real reason for all the provocations and subsequent hyperventilating – if it's just the pretext to justify sending hundreds of billions of aid and materiel to a non-Alliance country – what is the real reason?

Underlying motivations

First, a quick trot through the justifications that are produced for our consumption; ones which can easily waylay us, if we're lazy and allow our prejudices to overwhelm our ability to think critically. Just like the Leftists do continually:

a) We must protect Ukraine's sovereign borders. See Iraq, Syria, Libya and so forth. We have no respect for any country's sovereign borders when it suits us not to.

b) To appease Putin would be to repeat the mistake of Chamberlain and his “peace in our time” delusion. Putin isn't Hitler, despite what you've been repeatedly told. Hitler had a weak and divided Europe on his doorstep. Putin has NATO and Article 5 on his. Putin has never expressed a desire to recreate the Soviet Union. He's quite content with a sovereign Russia; he's just not going to put up with NATO missiles trained on Moscow from bordering countries. He'd like those states to be neutral. This doesn't seem unreasonable.

c) We must stand with the Ukrainian people. Why, exactly? They are not in NATO, they are one of the most corrupt countries in the world (122^nd, two places above the democratic paradise of Mexico)(80), 10 million of them have left the country (the vast majority having no interest in returning)(81) and if we really wanted to help the people, we'd have let Zelensky sue for peace. It's a little known fact (for all the usual reasons), but in March 2022 there were ceasefire negotiations in Turkey; they went well enough for Russia and Ukraine to cobble together a 15 point plan – Russia would withdraw, Ukraine would be neutral and would refrain from hosting foreign military bases on its territory.(82)

Bear in mind that this is a year ago, shortly after Putin's campaign began. And also bear in mind, that this seems to have been the reason for that campaign. It was why the original force was limited and the objectives circumscribed – the intention was to force Zelensky to the negotiating table. But then the West got wind of the talks and, in misreading the tea leaves, made a consequential error. Consequential for Ukraine, that is. Not for the West. The other Boris made a flying visit to Kiev (on April 9^th)and informed Zelensky that, contrary to the collective West's previous advice – which was that Zelensky should surrender and get the Hell out of Dodge – the new assessment was that Putin wasn't as powerful as previously imagined and Zelensky was therefore obliged to “press” Putin.(83) The message didn't take long to permeate. Zelensky wasted no time in pulling the plug on the peace talks – he announced their suspension only three days later. Since then, it's simply been a case of Western treasure paying for a proxy war that will continue until the last Ukrainian bites the dust.

The country is already a basket case, a failed state. The casualties inflicted on the Ukrainian Army are so catastrophic that the authorities and press-ganging 16 year olds and 60 year olds. If they were winning, this would not be happening. Imminent victory over Mother Russia is just another lie; I'll go into more detail on the conduct of the war next time around. However, the true objective of the collective West isn't to help Ukraine win the war. It's regime change in Moscow; or, at least, it was.

This isn't really a secret. After just two months of the conflict, the Biden administration was hinting at its true goal:

“The strategy that we’ve put in place — massive support for Ukraine, massive pressure against Russia, solidarity with more than 30 countries engaged in these efforts — is having real results.The bottom line is this: We don’t know how the rest of this war will unfold, but we do know that a sovereign independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene.”(84)

Biden himself, as is his wont, had already let the cat out of the bag, even if his aides later tried to walk it back. But it's difficult to walk back “For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power”.(85) Especially when it's accompanied by “...and we have to show resolve so he knows what’s coming and so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them. That’s what this is all about.”(86) Boris' spokesperson was even more explicit; he said that the sanctions on Russia “...we are introducing, that large parts of the world are introducing, are to bring down the Putin regime.”(87) I don't really think further clarification was needed, but we got some anyway, from James Heappey, minister for the armed forces:

“His failure must be complete; Ukrainian sovereignty must be restored, and the Russian people empowered to see how little he cares for them. In showing them that, Putin’s days as President will surely be numbered and so too will those of the kleptocratic elite that surround him. He’ll lose power and he won’t get to choose his successor.”(88)

Politicians lecturing us about the sanctity of borders or democracy is always nauseating – especially the current generation, the ones responsible for all the undemocratic mandates and targeted psyops of the past three years. Nauseating and implausible. Neither Ukraine nor the United States are true democracies. 2014 was not the first occasion that the Americans had manipulated the Ukrainian body politic into doing its bidding. Ten years prior, in 2004, the Bush administration and the collective West had fanned what became the Orange Revolution, when they amplified claims that the recent election had been rigged. The subsequent re-do produced a more acceptable result, with the Western backed candidate prevailing.(89) So, it seems election denialism is just fine when it's the establishment doing the denying.

But in 2010, Yanukovych (the eventual loser in 2004) ran again and won. And we all know how that turned out. And we ought to know - certainly, by now – how fraudulent the US 2020 presidential election was. The same people who manufactured the 'Revolution of Dignity' were behind Russiagate which, substantively, was a failed coup attempt. Trump's ouster was the fallback plan. Democracy is, demonstrably, not a priority for western regimes.

There is a little more to it than a simple hatred of the Russians, although that is also genuine. Merkel is on the record as saying “that the Cold War never really ended, because ultimately Russia was never pacified.”(90) Yes, pacified. Russia isn't servile enough. The economic tsunami of the 90s didn't ultimately produce the compliant state that was anticipated thanks, in large part, to Putin. Nothing to do with defeating communism. And so, for decades, there has been talk of somehow dismantling Russia. The Wolfowitz Doctrine, drafted in 1992, still holds true. It states that the top priority of US foreign policy:

“is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.”(91)

The threat isn't a reference to ideology, by the way. A Congressional report fills in the blanks:

“The U.S. goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia... is a policy choice reflecting two judgments: that given the amount of people, resources, and economic activity in Eurasia, a regional hegemon in Eurasia would represent a concentration of power large enough to be able to threaten vital U.S. interests...”(92)

Clearly, not a policy that has carried the day, but Ukraine is the latest opportunity to road test it again and they've been willing to invest over $100 billion in the attempt. For his part, Putin is aware of American intentions:

“The goal of our enemies is to weaken and break up our country. This has been the case for centuries.. They believe our country is too big and poses a threat (to them), which is why it must be weakened and divided. For our part, we always pursued a different approach; we always wanted to be a part of the so-called ‘civilized (western) world.’ And after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we thought we would finally become a part of that ‘world’. But, as it turned out, we weren’t welcome despite all our efforts. Our attempts to become a part of that world were rejected.”(93)

Despite its best efforts, the West has almost certainly worked out that its stated aim will not be realized, once again. There are 100,000 volunteers serving in Putin's armies.(94) He enjoys an 80% approval rating at home.(95) The Ukrainians have lost at least 150,000 troops. 90% of their drones have been destroyed. The air force was decimated on day one. They're running out of ammunition.(96) And so, there is evidence that there may soon be a pivot towards a Plan B; a long term insurgency, similar to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

While it's not common knowledge, the Americans suckered the Soviets into a war that was designed to bleed them dry. The official version has the CIA first providing aid to the mujahideen some time after the invasion of December 24^th 1979. However, President Carter authorised secret aid for the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime on July 3^rd 1979. We know this from that man Brzezinski again:

“The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.’ Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.”(97)

This is what will be hoped for this time around, also. Russia must be defeated. But outside Europe and the Anglosphere, Russia is not viewed as the bogeyman. Indeed, for the 6.3 billion people who live outside of the West, 66% view Russia's conduct positively.(98) 80% of Indians view Russia as an ally, as do 69% of Turks (which is illuminating, as Turkey is a NATO member). It seems that the rest of the international community is deeply skeptical about a proxy war for 'democracy'. The prevailing view is that it's instead about the West's obsession with domination over Russia.(99) They have some valid reasons for holding these views.

Far from obsessing about gender, climate change and lock-downs, the rest of the world is concerned with more prosaic matters, such as famine and high energy prices due to the global warming scam and the West's continued financing of the war. Next to that, the actual war in Ukraine pales in significance. Further, it is viewed as a European concern, not a global one. And there are three additional factors; the world economy is no longer dominated by the US - there are options - the 'rules based international order' lacks credibility and the West's fondness for self serving sanctions isn't a vote winner, either. The rest of the world can see obvious truths that we are blind to:

“For decades now, for many in the Global South, the West is seen to have had its way with the world without regard to anyone else’s views. Several countries were invaded at will, mostly without Security Council authorization. These include the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Under what “rules” were those countries attacked or devastated, and were those wars provoked or unprovoked?”(100)

They have a point. I would contend that we in the West, even those of us on the journey, still have some way to go. I wouldn't be surprised if many deniers – of both Covid and climate change – are still reflexively Russiaphobic. It's in our bones. But Russia isn't the Soviet Union. Russia is the target of choice for the elites, for reasons that have little to do with ideology and much more to do with the most fundamental driver of all; power. However, if they want us along for the ride, they need to make it existential. And so they have.

We shouldn't exercise critical thinking selectively. If we do, we will still have a skewed view of the world, just like the true believers in the narrative. Ours may be slightly less make believe, but it will won't be properly in focus. I don't think Russia is the enemy. I don't stand in solidarity with the regime in Ukraine. With some of the people, those not wedded to a fascist philosophy, I feel the flavor of pity that I would feel for anyone who find themselves in the cross-hairs through no fault of their own. But I believe that a fundamental shift in perception is required. The blame for the destruction of Ukraine lies primarily with the West, not with Russia.

Citations

(1)