04/03/2025
John Pilger saw this coming 10 years ago…
“Why do we tolerate the threat of another world war in our name? Why do we allow lies that justify this risk? The scale of our indoctrination, wrote Harold Pinter, is a "brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis", as if the truth "never happened even while it was happening".
“Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his "updated summary of the record of US foreign policy" which shows that, since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.
“In many cases Britain has been a collaborator. The degree of human suffering, let alone criminality, is little acknowledged in the west, despite the presence of the world's most advanced communications and nominally most free journalism. That the most numerous victims of terrorism – "our" terrorism – are Muslims, is unsayable. That extreme jihadism, which led to 9/11, was nurtured as a weapon of Anglo-American policy (Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan) is suppressed. In April the US state department noted that, following Nato's campaign in 2011, "Libya has become a terrorist safe haven".
[…]
“Washington's role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the US is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last "buffer state" bordering Russia – Ukraine – is being torn apart by fascist forces unleashed by the US and the EU. We in the west are now backing neo-N***s in a country where Ukrainian N***s backed Hi**er.
“Having masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington's planned seizure of Russia's historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century.
“But Nato's military encirclement has accelerated, along with US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained "pariah" role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.
“Instead, Putin has confounded the war party by seeking an accommodation with Washington and the EU, by withdrawing Russian troops from the Ukrainian border and urging ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon the weekend's provocative referendum. These Russian-speaking and bilingual people – a third of Ukraine's population – have long sought a democratic federation that reflects the country's ethnic diversity and is both autonomous of Kiev and independent of Moscow. Most are neither "separatists" nor "rebels", as the western media calls them, but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland.
“Like the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine has been turned into a CIA theme park – run personally by CIA director John Brennan in Kiev, with dozens of "special units" from the CIA and FBI setting up a "security structure" that oversees savage attacks on those who opposed the February coup. Watch the videos, read the eye-witness reports from the massacre in Odessa this month. Bussed fascist thugs burned the trade union headquarters, killing 41 people trapped inside. Watch the police standing by.
“A doctor described trying to rescue people, "but I was stopped by pro-Ukrainian N**i radicals. One of them pushed me away rudely, promising that soon me and other Jews of Odessa are going to meet the same fate. What occurred yesterday didn't even take place during the fascist occupation in my town in world war two. I wonder, why the whole world is keeping silent."
“Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting for survival. When Putin announced the withdrawal of Russian troops from the border, the Kiev junta's defence secretary, Andriy Parubiy – a founding member of the fascist Svoboda party – boasted that attacks on "insurgents" would continue. In Orwellian style, propaganda in the west has inverted this to Moscow "trying to orchestrate conflict and provocation", according to William Hague. His cynicism is matched by Obama's grotesque congratulations to the coup junta on its "remarkable restraint" after the Odessa massacre. The junta, says Obama, is "duly elected". As Henry Kissinger once said: "It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but what is perceived to be true."“
- John Pilger
https://archive.is/2024.11.07-234539/https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger
This has always been a proxy war by the US. For them it is win-win. They have cost the Russian economy a lot of money (not nearly as much as they thought they would), but critically, they have disrupted Russias energy supply to Europe, something likely to be used as leverage in any upcoming deal. See:
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/energysource/us-energy-dominance-is-putins-worst-nightmare-as-russia-enters-its-fourth-year-of-war-crimes/
Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University broke down the timeline superbly in this speech.
“Here are some excerpts:
“This started […] February 9th 1990.”
“James Baker III, our secretary of state, said to Mikhail Gorbachev, ‘NATO will not move one inch eastward if you agree to German unification’, basically ending World War II.”
“The US cheated on this, starting in 1994 when Clinton signed off on a plan to expand NATO all the way to Ukraine.”
“The expansion of NATO started in 1999 with Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic […] Then the US led the bombing of Serbia in 1999. That was bad by the way, because that was the use of NATO to bomb a European capital, Belgrade, 78 straight days to break the country apart. The Russians didn’t like that very much.”
“Putin started out pro-European, pro-American actually, even asked ‘maybe we should join NATO’ when there was still the idea of some kind of mutually respectful relationship. Then 9/11 came and the Russians said ‘yeah, we’ll support you […] to root out terror’.”
“Then came two decisive actions: in 2002 the United States unilaterally walked out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. This was probably the most decisive event never discussed in this context, but what it did was trigger the US putting missile systems in eastern Europe that Russia views as a dire, direct threat.”
“In 2004-5, we engaged in a soft regime change operation in Ukraine, but in 2009, Yanukovych won the election, and in 2010, he became president on the basis of neutrality for Ukraine. That calmed things down because the US was pushing NATO, but the people of Ukraine, on the opinion polls, didn’t even want to be part of NATO. They knew the country is divided between ethnic Ukrainian, ethnic Russian. ‘What do we want with this? We want to stay away from your problems!’”
“So on February 22nd 2014, the United States participated actively in the overthrow of Yanukovych. A typical US regime change operation, have no doubt about it. And the Russians did us a favour, they intercepted a really ugly call between Victoria Nuland and […] the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt […] and they talked about regime change.”
“Putin kept saying ‘stop, you promised no NATO enlargement’ […] by the way, I forgot to mention in 2004, it’s been Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, seven more countries in the ‘not one inch eastward’.”
“The US kept rejecting the basic idea, don’t expand NATO to Russia’s border in a context where we’re putting in god damn missile systems after breaking a treaty. 2019 we walked out of the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty.”
“On December 15th 2021, Putin put on the table a draft Russia-US security agreement, you can find it online. The basis of it is no NATO enlargement.”
“I called the White House […] begging them, take the negotiations, Putin’s offered something, avoid this war. ‘Oh Jeff, there’s not gonna be a war […] Oh, don’t worry, NATO’s not gonna enlarge’. I said ‘Oh, you’re gonna have a war over something that’s not gonna happen?’
'“They turned down the negotiations then the Special Military Operation started and five days later, Zelensky says ‘okay, neutrality’ and then the United States and Britain said ‘no way, you guys fight on!’”
[…]
“The New York Times confirmed that the CIA and MI6 began a covert war against Russia in 2014, building 12 bases to turn Ukraine into a spy bridgehead.
“US meddling in Ukraine was a clear violation of the Minsk agreements, meaning by this point, the US had broken three deals (one every eight years). US officials were laughing about the Minsk agreements behind closed doors and telling the Ukrainians they will continue arming them. Zelensky admitted in 2019 and 2022 he never planned to honour the Minsk agreements.
“Ukraine fought an eight-year civil war against ethnic Russians who wanted independence from western Ukraine, killing 13,000 people with an army that often wore N**i symbols. This meant Russia was forced to make a decision on whether to intervene or stay out of it, a decision that ultimately centred around Russia’s security.
“The NYT article explained:
“At the end of 2021, Putin was considering whether to launch a full-scale invasion. He met with the head of one of Russia's main spy services, who told him that the CIA, together with British intelligence MI6, controlled Ukraine and turned it into a staging ground for operations against Moscow.”
“This was a rare admission by western media that there was more to this conflict than we were told, yet those who repeat the claims of the article are called “Putin puppets”. We are not even allowed to highlight the things the empire’s propagandists admit to.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/councilestatemedia/p/here-is-everything-that-neoliberals?r=510fyb&utm_medium=ios
The Biden administration fleeced Ukraine going in, the Trump administration will fleece Ukraine on the way out, both the Democrats and Republicans who facilitate this will be lining their pockets, it will be the Ukrainian people who suffer the most.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/167AFiCUJg/?mibextid=wwXIfr
This war has been purposely prolonged, with Zalensky himself acting as the biggest obstacle to peace, albeit at the orders of the US and UK, as Aaron Maté describes;
“In insisting that Putin can’t be trusted, Zelensky omitted his own record in undermining diplomacy with Moscow.
“The December 2019 Paris agreement recommitted Ukraine and Russia to the Minsk peace process, the UN Security Council-endorsed framework for ending the war that broke out in 2014 between the post-coup Ukrainian government and Russian-backed eastern Ukrainian rebels.
“After initially taking some positive steps toward implementation, Zelensky ultimately refused to comply, a stance that he previewed in Putin’s company. During a joint news conference in Paris, Zelensky visibly smirked as Putin discussed the importance of following through with Minsk. The following March, Zelensky, under pressure from Ukraine’s ultra-nationalists and US-funded NGOs, abandoned a pledge to hold direct talks with representatives of the breakaway Donbas republics, which would be granted limited autonomy under Minsk.
“By that point, the Kremlin had begun raising concerns that Zelensky was not following through. A Kremlin readout of a call between Putin and Zelensky the previous month noted that Putin had “stressed the importance of the full and unconditional fulfillment of all measures and decisions made in Minsk and adopted at the Normandy summits, including the one held in Paris on December 9, 2019... Vladimir Putin directly asked if Kyiv intends to really implement the Minsk agreements.”
“Zelensky kept signaling that he had no such intention. In mid-July 2020, Zelensky’s party proposed a measure that would hold local elections throughout Ukraine – yet in a deliberate omission, the plan excluded Donbas, which was supposed to have new elections under Minsk. By that point, Zelensky was openly contemptuous of Donbas residents. “The people of the Donbas have been brainwashed,” Zelensky complained. “They live in the Russian information space... I can’t reach them.”
“The entry of the Biden team to the Oval Office in January 2021 encouraged Zelensky’s confrontational path. In February 2021 – one year before Russia invaded – Zelensky shut down three television networks tied to his main political opposition, which advocated better ties with Russia. A Zelensky aide later disclosed that this crackdown was “conceived as a welcome gift to the Biden administration,” which offered its enthusiastic endorsement of Zelensky’s effort to “counter Russia’s malign influence.”
“The following month, the Biden administration returned the favor by approving its first military package for Ukraine, valued at $125 million. That encouraged even more bellicosity from Zelensky’s government. Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council approved a strategy to recover all of Crimea from Russian control, including by force. Ukrainian military leaders also announced that they were “ready” to retake Donbas by force, with the help of NATO allies.
“By this point, Zelensky was openly disdainful of the diplomatic path that he had signed onto in Paris. “I have no intention of talking to terrorists, and it is just impossible for me in my position,” he declared in April 2021. Zelensky also demanded changes to Minsk. “I’m now participating in the process that was designed before my time,” he said. “The Minsk process should be more flexible in this situation. It should serve the purposes of today not of the past.”
“Zelensky and his aides maintained this stance in the weeks before Russia’s February 2022 invasion. “The position of Ukraine, which has been expressed many times at different levels, is unchanged,” top Zelensky advisor Andrii Yermak said. “There have not been and will not be any direct negotiations with the separatists.” Added Ukrainian security chief Oleksiy Danilov: “The fulfillment of the Minsk agreement means the country’s destruction.” Perhaps to underscore the point, Zelensky’s government escalated attacks on rebel-controlled areas.
“The Russian invasion forced Zelensky to abandon his hostility to negotiations, resulting in the Istanbul talks of March-April 2022. While Zelensky now claims that Russia cannot be negotiated with, his own representatives in Istanbul hold a much different view.
“We managed to find a very real compromise,” Oleksandr Chalyi, a senior member of the Ukrainian negotiating team, recalled in December 2023. “We were very close in the middle of April, in the end of April, to finalize our war with some peaceful settlement.” Putin, he added, “tried to do everything possible to conclude [an] agreement with Ukraine.”
According to former Zelensky advisor Oleksiy Arestovich, who also took part in the talks, “the Istanbul peace initiatives were very good.” While Ukraine “made concessions,” he said, “the amount of their [Russia’s] concessions was greater. This will never happen again.” The Ukraine war, Arestovich concluded, “could have ended with the Istanbul agreements, and several hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive.”
“The US and UK sabotaged the Istanbul talks by refusing to provide Ukraine with security guarantees and encouraging Zelensky to keep fighting instead. Zelensky’s decision to obey their dictates helps explain why he is so desperate to obtain a security guarantee from Trump. Having walked away from a peace deal that would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, Zelensky needs a tangible Western security commitment to show for it.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/mate/p/zelenskys-hostility-to-peace-triggers?r=510fyb&utm_medium=
