Michael Brenner is Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and a Fellow of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS/Johns Hopkins. He was the Director of the International Relations & Global Studies Program at the University of Texas. Mr. Brenner has previously worked at the Foreign Service Institute, the U.S. Department of Defense and Westinghouse.

Brenner is the author of numerous books, and over 80 articles and published papers. His most recent works are: Democracy Promotion and Islam; Fear and Dread In The Middle East; Toward A More Independent Europe ; Narcissistic Public Personalities & Our Times. His writings include books with Cambridge University Press (Nuclear Power and Non-Proliferation), the Center For International Affairs at Harvard University (The Politics of International Monetary Reform), and the Brookings Institution (Reconcilable Differences, US-French Relations In The New Era).

The following are excerpts from Mr. Brenner’s interview with Robert Scheer, which can be found in its entirety here. I have excerpted those remarks pertaining directly to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

————————————————————————-

So please tell listeners what it is that you object to in the current narrative, and on what basis?

MB: Well, I mean, it’s the fundamentals. One, it has to do with the nature of the Russian regime, the character of Putin; what Soviet objectives, foreign policy and national security concerns are. I mean, what we’re getting is not only a cartoon caricature, but a portrait of the country and its leadership—and by the way, Putin is not a dictator. He is not all-powerful. The Soviet government is far more complex in its processes of decision-making.

RS: Well, you just said the Soviet government. You mean the Russian government.

MB: Russian government. [overlapping voices] You see, I’ve picked up by osmosis this conflating of Russian and Soviet. I mean, it’s far more complex [unclear]. And he is, Putin himself, an extraordinarily sophisticated thinker. But people don’t bother to read what he writes, or to listen to what he says …

PROFESSOR BRENNER ON THE INVASION ITSELF

One, this crisis, in leading to the Russian invasion, has little to do with Ukraine per se. Certainly not for Washington; for Moscow it’s otherwise. It’s had to do with Russia from the beginning. It’s been the objective of American foreign policy for at least a decade to render Russia weak and unable to assert itself in any manner of speaking in European affairs. We want it marginalized, we want to neuter it, as a power in Europe. And the ability of Putin to reconstitute a Russia that was stable, that also had its own sense of national interest, and a vision of the world different from ours, has been deeply frustrating to the political elites and the foreign policy elites of Washington.

Two, Putin and Russia are not interested in conquest or expansion. Three, Ukraine is prominent to them, not only for historical and cultural reasons, et cetera, but because it is linked to the expansion of NATO and an obvious attempt, as became tangible at the time of the Maidan coup [unclear], that they wished to turn Ukraine into a forward base for NATO. And against the background of Russian history, that is simply intolerable.

I think a point to keep in mind is that—and this relates to what I said a moment ago about policy-making in Moscow—that if one were to place the attitudes and the opinions of Russian leaders on a continuum from hawk to dove, Putin has always been well towards the dovish end of the continuum. In other words, the majority of the most powerful forces in Moscow—and it’s not just the military, it’s not just the oligarchs, it’s all types—the locust of the sentiment has been that Russia is being exploited, taken advantage of; that cooperation will become a part of a European system in which Russia is accepted as a legitimate player is illusory.

So we have to understand that, and I—OK, specifically we’ve gone to the current crisis. The Donbass, and that is not just Russian-speaking but a highly concentrated Russian region of Eastern Ukraine, which tried to separate itself after the Maidan coup—and by the way, Russian speakers in the country as a whole represent 40% of the population. You know, Russians, quite apart from intermarriage and cultural fusion—you know, Russians are not some small, marginal minority in the Ukraine.

OK, quickly down now to the present. I believe there is growing and now totally persuasive evidence that when the Biden people came to office, they made a decision to create a crisis over Donbass to provoke a Russian military reaction, and to use that as the basis for consolidating the West, unifying the West, in a program whose centerpiece was massive economic sanctions, with the aim of tanking the Russian economy and possibly and hopefully leading to a rebellion by the oligarchs that would topple Putin.

Now, no person who really knows Russia believes that it was ever at all plausible. But this was an idea which was very prominent in foreign policy circles in Washington, and certainly the Biden administration, and people like Blinken and Sullivan and Nuland believe in it. And so they set about strengthening even further the Ukrainian army, something we’ve been doing for eight years—Ukrainian army, thanks to our efforts, armaments, training advisors.

So the idea was you created—and it is now growing evident that in effect, an assault on the Donbass was planned. And that it was in November that the final decision was taken to go ahead with it, and the time set for February. And that is why Joe Biden and other members of the administration could begin to say, with complete confidence, in January that the Russians would be invading Ukraine. Because they knew and committed themselves to a major, a major military attack on the Donbass, and they knew that the Russians would respond. They didn’t know how large a response, how aggressive a response it would be, but they knew there would be a response.

You and listeners might recall Biden saying in February, second week of February that when the Russian invasion comes, if it is small, we’re still going to go ahead with sanctions, but we might have a fight within NATO as to whether to go whole hog. If it is large, there’ll be no problem, everybody will agree on killing Nord Stream II, and taking these unprecedented steps against the Russian Central Bank, et cetera. And he said that because he knew what was planned. And the Russians reached the conclusion about the same time. Well, they certainly understood what the broad game plan was.

And then they crystalized that this was going to happen soon, and the final blow came when the Ukrainians began massive artillery barrages on cities in the Donbass. Now, there had always been exchanges over the past eight years. On February 18, there was a 30-fold increase in the number of artillery shells, five from the Ukrainians into the Donbass, to which the Donbass militias did not retaliate in kind. It peaked on the 21st and continued to the 24th. And this apparently was the last confirmation that the assault would be coming soon, and forced Putin’s hand to preempt by activating plans which no doubt they’d had for some time to invade. I think that has become clear.

Now, this is of course the diametrical opposite of the fictional story that pervades all public discourse. And you can say “all” and only count on the fingers of your hands and toes the number of dissenters, right, that prevails. Now, let’s leave open the question of do you defend Putin’s actions. I, like you, find it very hard to defend, justify, any major military action that has the consequences that this does. Except in absolute, you know, self-defense.

But you know, that’s where we are. And if there had been the Ukrainian assault that was planned on the Donbass, Putin and Russia would have been in real, real trouble, if they limited themselves to resupplying the Donbass militias. Because given the way we had armed and trained the Ukrainians, they really couldn’t withstand them. So that would have been the end of [unclear] subordination of the Russian population and the suppression of Russia’s language, all of which are steps that the Ukrainian government has moved on and has in the work…

Now, in what passes for grand strategy among the American foreign policy community, not just the Biden people, they still—they’ve had a dual hope: one, that they could drive a wedge between Russia and China, an idea they entertain only because they know nothing or have forgotten anything they might have known about each of those countries. Or, second, to in effect neutralize Russia by what we talked about: breaking the Russian economy, maybe getting some regime change, so that they would be a negligible contributor, if at all, to ally with the Chinese. And of course we have failed utterly, because all of those mistaken premises were mistaken.

And this utterly unprecedented hubris, of course, is peculiarly American. I mean, from day one, we’ve always had the faith that we were born in a condition of original virtue, and we were born with some kind of providential mission to lead the world to a better, more enlightened condition. That we were therefore the singular exceptional nation, and that gave us the freedom and the liberty to judge all others. Now, that’s—and we’ve done a lot of good things in part because of that [unclear] dubious things.

But now that’s become so perverted. And as you said, it encourages or justifies the United States setting it up as the judge of what’s legitimate and what isn’t, what government’s legitimate and what isn’t, what policies are legitimate and which aren’t. Which self-defined national interests by other governments we can accept, and which we won’t accept. Of course, this is absurd in its hubris; at the same time it also defies [unclear] logic—Nixon and Kissinger really operated and were able to set aside or sort of, you know, surmount this ideological, philosophical, self-congratulatory faith in American unique prowess and legitimacy, based on strictly practical grounds.

And currently, though, we don’t exercise restraint based either upon a certain political-ideological humility, nor on realism grounds. And that’s why I say we’re living in a world of fantasy—a fantasy which clearly serves some vital psychological needs of the country of America, and especially of its political elites. Because they are the people who are supposed to have taken on the custodial responsibility for the welfare of the country and its people, and that requires maintaining a certain perspective and distance on who we are, on what we can and cannot do, of reality testing even the most basic and fundamental of American premises. And now we don’t do any of that.

And in that sense, I do believe it’s fair to say that we have been betrayed by our political elites, and I use that term, you know, fairly broadly. The susceptibility to propaganda, the susceptibility to allowing the popular mindset to be set the way it’s going on now, in giving in to hysterical impulse, means that yeah, there’s something wrong with society and culture as a whole. But even saying that is up to your political leaders and elites to protect you from that, to protect the populace from that, and to protect themselves from falling prey to similar fantasies and irrationalities, and instead we see just the opposite.

Links to Strategic-Culture.org are banned on Facebook. So I’m providing the text of the article below and a link to it here. The author is Alastair Crooke, a long-time British diplomat. I’m sharing the article because it is a good companion and supplement to my own article entitled, “Baseless Hatred and Tokens on a Risk Game Board.” As I’ve said before, I don’t know anything about the Strategic-Culture site nor do I care what its alleged liabilities are. The article by Crooke is extremely important and deserves wide readership. If you would feel better reading the original rather than this copy-paste reproduction, I have provided the link above.

————————————————————

As it dawns on the West that whereas sanctions are deemed capable of bringing countries to their knees, the reality is that such capitulation never has occurred (i.e. Cuba; North Korea; Iran). And, in the case of Russia, it is possible to say that just ain’t going to happen.

Team Biden still has not fully grasped the reasons why. One point is that they picked precisely the wrong economy to try to collapse via sanctions (Russia has minimal foreign supply lines and oodles of valuable commodities). Biden’s staffers too, have never comprehended the full ramifications of Putin’s monetary jujitsu linking the rouble to gold, and the rouble to energy.

They condescend to Putin’s monetary jujitsu as yet another forlorn strike versus the dollar’s ‘impregnable’ reserve currency status. So they choose to ignore it, and assume that if only the Europeans would take fewer hot showers, wear more woollen jumpers, forego Russian energy, and ‘stand with Ukraine’, the economic collapse finally would materialise. Hallelujah!

The other reason why the West misconstrues the strategic potential of sanctions is that the Russia-China war on western hegemony is assimilated by its peoples to be an existential one. For them, it is not just about taking fewer hot showers (as for Europeans), it is about their very survival – and consequently their pain threshold is much, much higher than the West’s. The west is not going to smoke their challengers out so ridiculously easily.

At bottom, the Russia-China axis possess food, energy, technology and most of the world’s key resources. History teaches that these elements make the winners in wars.

The strategic problem though, is two-fold: Firstly, the window for a Plan ‘B’ de-escalation via a political deal in Ukraine has passed. It is all or nothing now (unless Washington folds). And secondly, albeit in slightly differing context, both Europe and Team Biden have elected to take the stakes sky-high:

The conviction that the European liberal vision faces humiliation and disdain, were Putin to ‘win’, has taken hold. And in the Obama-Clinton-Deep State nexus, it is unimaginable that Putin and Russia still regarded as the author of Russiagate for many Americans, might prevail.

The logic to this conundrum is inexorable – Escalation.

For Biden, whose approval ratings continue to tank, disaster looms in the November mid-terms. The consensus amongst U.S. insiders is that the Democrats are set to lose 60–80 seats in Congress, and a small handful (4 or 5 seats) in the Senate too. Were this to come about, it would not be just a personal humiliation, but would token administrative paralysis for the Democrats until the notional end of Biden’s term.

The only possible path out from this approaching cataclysm would be for Biden to pull a rabbit from the Ukraine ‘hat’ (one that, at the very least, would distract from soaring inflation). The Neo-cons and the Deep State (but not the Pentagon) are all for it. The arms industry naturally are loving Biden’s laundering weapons into Ukraine (with huge ‘spillage’ somehow vanishing into ‘the black’). Many in DC profit from this well-funded boondoggle.

Why are we seeing such euphoria over such a seemingly reckless scheme of escalation? Well, strategists suggest that were the Republican leadership to go bi-partisan on escalation – become complicit in ‘more war’, as it were – they argue that it might prove possible to stem Democratic losses in the mid-terms and blunt an Opposition campaign assault focussed on a mismanaged economy.

How far might Biden go with this escalation? Well, the arms splurge is a no-brainer (another boondoggle), and Special Forces are already in theatre, poised to light a fuse to any escalation; moreover, the mooted no-fly zone seems to have the added advantage of enjoying European support, particularly in the UK, amongst the Baltics (of course) and from the German ‘Greens’, too. (Spoiler Alert! First, of course, in order to implement any no-fly zone, it would be necessary to control the airspace – which Russia already dominates, and over which it implements full electronic-magnetic exclusion).

Would this be enough? Dark voices are advising not. They want ‘boots on the ground’. They even talk of tactical nukes. They argue that Biden has nothing to lose by ‘going big’, especially if the GOP are persuaded to become accomplices. Indeed, it might just save him from ignominy, they urge. U.S. military insiders already point out that the arms supply will not ‘turn around’ the war. A ‘lost war’ must be avoided going into November at all costs.

Is such a consensus for escalation realistic? Well, yes, it is possible. Recall that Hillary (Clinton) was the alchemist who fused the 1980s Neoconservative wing to the 1990s Neoliberals to create an interventionist broad-tent that could serve all tastes: Europeans could imagine themselves wielding economic power in a globally significant way for the first time, whilst the Neo-cons have resurrected their insistence on forceful military intervention as the requisite to maintaining the rules-based order. The latter are cock-a-hoop that financial war is failing.

From the Neo-cons’ perspective, it puts military action firmly back on the table and with a new ‘front’ opening: The Neo-cons today, precisely are questioning the premise that a nuclear exchange with Russia must be avoided at all costs. And from this shift away from the prohibition on actions that could trigger a nuclear exchanger, they say that circumscribing the Ukraine conflict on such basis is unnecessary and a strategic error – asserting that in their view, Putin would be unlikely to resort to nuclear weapons.

How can this Neo-con-Liberal interventionist élite superstructure wield such influence when the broader American political class historically has been ‘anti-war’? Well, the Neo-cons are the archetypal chameleons. Loved by the war industry, a regular loud presence on the networks, they rotate in and out of power, with the ‘China hawks’ nesting in the Trump corridors, whilst the ‘Russia hawks’ are migrated to populate the Biden State Department.

Is escalation already ‘baked-in’? There may yet be one iconoclastic ‘fly in the ointment’: Mr Trump! – through his symbolic act of endorsing J.D. Vance for the GOP Senate Primary in Ohio, against the wishes of the GOP Establishment.

Vance is one (amongst many) representatives of America’s populist tradition seeking office in the coming Congressional ‘churn’. But the salience here is that Vance has been questioning the rush to escalation in Ukraine. Many other would-be populist contenders among the GOP’s new crop of interesting senators and senators-in-waiting already have succumbed to GOP old-establishment pressure to endorse war. (Boondoggles again).

The GOP is divided on Ukraine at its upper representational level, but the popular base traditionally is sceptical of foreign wars. With this political endorsement, Trump is nudging the GOP towards opposing escalation in Ukraine. Ross Douthat in the NY Times confirms that the Vance endorsement connects more closely to the sources of Trump’s 2016 popularity, as he mined the anti-war sentiment amongst the deplorables, whose focus more is with caring for their own country’s welfare.

Shortly after the endorsement, Trump issued a statement:

“It doesn’t make sense that Russia and Ukraine aren’t sitting down and working out some kind of an agreement. If they don’t do it soon, there will be nothing left but death, destruction, and carnage. This is a war that never should have happened, but it did. The solution can never be as good as it would have been before the shooting started, but there is a solution, and it should be figured out now—not later—when everyone will be DEAD!”, Trump said.

Trump effectively is wedging apart the possible key fault-line for the coming elections (even if some GOP panjandrums – many of whom are funded by the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) – favour a more robust military involvement).

Trump too, always has an instinct for an opponent’s jugular: Biden may be highly attracted to the argument for escalation, but he is known to be sensitive to the thought of body-bags coming home to the U.S. before November becoming his legacy. Hence Trump’s exaggeration that sooner rather than later, everyone in Ukraine “will be DEAD!”.

Again, the fear amongst Democrats with military understanding is that the western weapons airlift to the borders of Ukraine will not change the course of war, and that Russia would prevail, even were NATO to engage. Or, in other words, the ‘unthinkable’ will occur: The West will lose to Russia. They argue that Team Biden has little choice: Better to bet on escalation than to risk losing all with a debacle in Ukraine (particularly after Afghanistan).

The eschew escalation presents such a challenge to the American missionary psyche of global leadership that momentum for it may not be overcome through Biden’s innate caution alone. The Washington Post already is reporting that “the Biden Administration is shrugging off fresh Russian warnings against providing Ukrainian forces with more advanced arms and new training – in what appears to be a calculated risk Moscow won’t escalate the war”.

The EU élites, by contrast, are not just persuaded (Hungary and one faction in Germany, apart) by the logic of escalation, they are frankly intoxicated by it. At the Munich Conference in February, it was as if the EU leaders were intent on out-bidding each other in their enthusiasm for war: Josep Borrell re-confirmed his commitment to a military solution in Ukraine: “Yes, normally wars have been won or lost on the battlefield”, he said upon arrival for a meeting of the EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg, when asked to comment on his previous statement that “this war will be won on the battlefield”.

Their euphoria is centred around the belief that the EU – for the first time – is wielding its economic power in a globally significant way, and, at the same time, enabling and arming a proxy war against Russia (through imagining the EU as a real Carolingian empire, actually winning on the battlefield!).

The euphoria of the EU élites – so completely de-coupled from national identities and local interests, and loyal rather to a cosmopolitan vision in which men and women of consequence network endlessly amongst themselves and bask in their peer approval – is opening deep polarisation within their own societies.

The unease arises among those who do not regard patriotism, or a scepticism towards today’s Russiaphobia, as necessarily ‘gauche’. They are concerned that perception-delimited EU élites, advocating sanctions on Russia and NATO engagement with a nuclear power, will bring disaster to Europe.

The Euro-élites are on a crusade – too highly invested in the emotional charge and euphoria of the Ukraine ‘cause’ to have even considered a Plan ‘B’.

And even if a Plan ‘B’ were to be considered, the EU has less of a reverse-gear than the U.S. The Brussels zeitgeist is set in concrete. Structurally, the EU is incapable of self-reform, or of radically changing course and wider Europe now lacks the ‘vessels’ through which decisive political change can be effected.

Hold onto your hats!

Former President Obama recently delivered a speech on the danger of disinformation. Here is the sort of thing he said.

People like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, and Steve Bannon for that matter, understand it’s not necessary for people to believe this information in order to weaken democratic institutions. You just have to flood a country’s public square with enough raw sewage. You just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing, that citizens no longer know what to believe,

Once they lose trust in their leaders, mainstream media, in political institutions, in each other, the possibility of truth — the game’s won.

I would like to make two observations. (1) In my response to his remarks, I do not attack Obama. I do not make fun of him, impugn his character, his intelligence, his behavior, or his lifestyle. It is not my intention or strategy to make you think less of him before I address what he says. If I were to take that approach, I would be guilty of committing a logical fallacy called “argument against the man.”

I hate logical fallacies. They are almost always committed by people who don’t want to engage in rational discussion or who are ill-equipped to do so. So unless it involves an argument against voting for a certain person running for public office, we should reject discourse that focuses on the character, intelligence, behavior, lifestyle, etc. of candidates and other public figures. In other words, if a person has taken a questionable position on a public issue, it is a fallacy to introduce discourse intended to make us think less of that person in order to discredit WHAT HE SAYS. Rational discussion must focus exclusively on the ISSUES and not on the person. What we think of Obama is irrelevant to whether what he argues has merit or not. The same is true of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin or Elon Musk.

(2) What Obama said in his speech on disinformation is infested with fallacies. He is trying to get social media companies and other internet platforms to censor what he calls “disinformation.” Not once in his speech does he identify this disinformation or offer any evidence at all that it is, in fact, disinformation. Instead, he offers remarks like the following.

People like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, and Steve Bannon for that matter, understand it’s not necessary for people to believe this information in order to weaken democratic institutions.

First, Obama doesn’t know what Putin or Bannon understand. He only implies that he knows because he wants his audience to BELIEVE that those two people seek to “weaken democratic institutions,” and he wants to do it without presenting any evidence supporting that proposition. Instead of evidence, he implies his sage insight into their understanding. He assumes that his audience will agree that this is Putin’s goal and slips (“for that matter”) Steve Bannon in there to share Putin’s insidious and malicious intentions. Now Steve Bannon (and by implication, those who present disinformation similar to that of Bannon) is on the same team as Vladimir Putin, at least for the sake of Obama’s argument.

Second, Obama wants his audience to believe that anything Putin and Bannon say is corrupted by their insidious and malicious intentions to weaken destroy democratic institutions. Indeed, the quality of what Putin and Bannon say is characterized with phrases like “raw sewage,” “dirt,” and “conspiracy theorizing.” Certainly dirt shoveled out for the insidious and malicious purpose of weakening our stalwart democratic institutions should be censored by every responsible lover of American democracy.

Third, Obama’s explicit argument is that Putin and Bannon’s tactic of flooding the internet with disinformation does not require that we believe that disinformation. For their sinister purposes, it is enough just to confuse us so that we don’t know what or whom to believe. In that way, we Americans “lose trust” in our democratic institutions. How many times have you heard someone say, “I just don’t know who to believe anymore”? See? Putin’s winning. And because Putin is winning the disinformation war, so is Bannon and the crowd of populists he represents.

Once they lose trust in their leaders, mainstream media, in political institutions, in each other, the possibility of truth — the game’s won.

This sentence is a humdinger. Obama presents three examples of the “democratic institutions” which he fears are in danger from the disinformation being spread by Putin, Bannon and those who in any way align with them in the information they present. Notice that Obama wants his audience to accept an implicit proposition: that losing trust in those institutions eliminates the possibility of truth.

This of course also presumes that Bannon and those like-minded don’t present truth. Only our esteemed leaders, the mainstream media and our political institutions present truth (by “political institutions,” I presume he means outfits like the DOJ, the State Department, Homeland Security, the FDA, CDC and the Intelligence Community, etc.). Democracy requires that we trust these and not Putin or Bannon. The position that our leaders, the corporate media and our political institutions might actually be purveyors of disinformation is implicitly a threat to democracy. That seems to be what Obama wants us to believe.

Therefore, for the sake of preserving democracy, censoring the likes of Putin and Bannon is the only responsible, patriotic and moral thing to do. To hell with the Constitution. Apparently Obama has a less precise idea of democracy in mind. Something less precise than CONSTITUTIONAL democracy anyway. All of this seems to ignore the importance of a free press and free speech in our constitutional democracy. So he must have something else in mind.

But I doubt whether Obama’ vision of democracy is really that unclear. The only vagueness is in his rhetoric. I think Obama has a very clear idea of what he means by democracy. It is a democracy in which dissent is not allowed, and dissident voices are not heard. When they are heard, it is just confusing. Some things are not open to debate. Trust your leaders. Trust the Washington Post. Trust the Attorney General. Don’t trust Putin or Bannon or anybody else that challenges these bastions of truth.

Earlier, I stated that Obama failed to identify any instances of disinformation. But this is not a problem for the social media companies. They know what he means. Anything that challenges the narrative coming from our “democratic institutions” is clearly disinformation. It is not to be trusted and worthy of censorship.

In contrast, I would suggest we not trust any democratic institution Obama endorses. But then, I don’t have much faith in his vision of democracy. And my lack of faith has nothing to do with his character, his intelligence or his behavior.

Reflecting afterwards on the tragic destruction of the Jewish Temple in AD 70, the rabbis of the Talmud blamed the calamity not on the evils or military strength of Rome but considered it punishment from God for the  שִׂנְאָה חִנָּם   (“baseless hatred”) of the Jews at the time.

I am neither rabbi nor prophet, but I wonder if we might characterize the present mood among many in the U.S. and Europe as something very similar to the baseless hatred of the Jewish Zealots who brought the destruction of their country down on themselves. I’ll let the reader decide if our hatred of Putin and Russia today is baseless or well deserved.

A WAR THAT COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED

Back in the early winter during all the hysteria over Russian forces supposedly massed at Ukraine’s borders preparing for an invasion, I took two positions. First, I doubted that Russia intended to invade unless one of its red lines were crossed, and second, I argued that the U.S. State Department wanted Russia to invade.

My reasoning was simple because the solution to the problem was simple. Implementing the Minsk Agreements would have solved the Donbass problem. Giving Russia the written security guarantees it demanded would have solved the NATO expansion problem. Ukraine had signed the Minsk Agreements and the U.S. had voted in the UN Security Council to approve them, thus constituting them as international law. Russia has demanded their implementation since 2015, and Ukraine has been violating them and refusing to implement them for the same length of time. If the U.S. really wanted to prevent a war in Ukraine, it could have pressured Ukraine to implement the Minsk Agreements. I could see no reason for not doing so. Unless, of course, the U.S. really didn’t want to prevent a war.

The problem of Ukraine membership in NATO was equally simple. First, the U.S. and other NATO members promised the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand eastward from Germany. Second, Russia clearly had legitimate, well-known security concerns involving Ukraine’s NATO membership. And third, Ukraine had no legal or moral right to join NATO.

Upon reading the first part of this article, a good friend, who is relatively informed on Russian history, protested that I am defending a dictator and a leadership class in Russia who are arrogant, ethnocentric, and incompetent “dicks.” I’m afraid that either he has misread my intentions or I have poorly communicated what they are. I don’t care about Russian values, and I have no interest in defending Putin or the Russians. What I care about is their perceptions about U.S. intentions. And equally important, I care about the reality of what U.S. intentions in fact are. The following paragraphs review U.S. diplomatic activity leading up to the Russian invasion that suggest answers to both concerns. Again, what are the intentions of those in the U.S. who are in charge of foreign policy, and what are Russia’s perceptions of those intentions?

PROMISES OF NO NATO EXPANSION

Many in the U.S. government, including current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, have casually dismissed and denied the claim that any such promises were made. However, declassified documents prove that in 1991 the U.S. and Europe emphatically and repeatedly promised that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward” from Germany if the Soviet Union would allow the Berlin wall to come down and Germany to reunite. This can be seen from a Der Speigel article here.  See another review of the documents here. The question is not only why the U.S. broke this promise twice in the past and intended to break it again in the case of Ukraine. The question is why, on top of this, the U.S. lied about making the promise.

When NATO broke its promise first in 1999 and then again in 2004, Russia was not happy but did not consider these expansions existential threats. However, when NATO announced the planned inclusion of  Georgia and Ukraine at the Bucharest Summit in 2008, Russia made its objection loud, clear and shrill. What’s more, the U.S. knew that they were serious. William J. Burns, the current CIA Director under Biden, was U.S. Ambassador to Russia at the time. Thanks to Wikileaks, we have the text of a memorandum Burns sent to the U.S. State Department warning that Ukraine membership in NATO was a red line for Russia. From an April 2019 article in The Atlantic:

The IMMEDIATE precedence that the cable bears shows that Ambassador Burns (now CIA Director) was addressing a priority issue under active consideration in Washington. Though it was 14 years ago, Burns’s interlocutor was the same Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Here is Burns’s introductory summary of his discussions with Lavrov:

“Summary. Following a muted first reaction to Ukraine’s intent to seek a NATO membership action plan at the [upcoming] Bucharest summit, Foreign Minister Lavrov and other senior officials have reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward expansion as a potential military threat. NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains ‘an emotional and neuralgic’ issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia…

Burns’s closing comment: “Russia’s opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia is both emotional and based on perceived strategic concerns about the impact on Russia’s interest in the region. … While Russian opposition to the first round of NATO enlargement in the mid-1990s was strong, Russia now feels itself able to respond more forcefully to what it perceives as actions contrary to its national interests.”

We don’t know whether Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice read Burns’s prescient remarks, but Lavrov’s warning clearly fell on deaf ears. On April 3, 2008, the NATO summit in Bucharest issued a formal declaration that “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.”

See the text from Burns’s cable to the Secretary of State here.

Burns’s warnings about Ukrainian membership in NATO being an existential red line issue for Russia were ignored and thus became prophetic visions of the future. And Burns was not a lone voice. Many other Russia experts gave the same warning. In 2017, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency issued an assessment concluding,

The Kremlin is convinced the United States is laying the groundwork for regime change in Russia, a conviction further reinforced by the events in Ukraine.

So we have known that Ukrainian membership in NATO was a real and serious problem for Russia since its proposal in 2008. So why has the U.S. not taken it seriously? Why have those responsible for foreign policy contemptuously dismissed Russia’s security concerns for at least the past 14 years? More to the point, when the U.S. became hysterical last winter over its certainty that Russia was about to invade Ukraine, why didn’t it take Russia’s security concerns seriously then? Why did we, in a mockery of diplomacy, arrange for emergency diplomatic meetings and shuttle high-level administration officials first here, then there, around the globe, sometimes Anthony Blinken, sometimes National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan,  sometimes Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and even CIA Director William Burns? But why in each and every meeting did these diplomats studiously ignore Russia’s security demands while instead focusing on the sanctions we were going to unleash if they invaded, and all the time knowing that the sanctions were not going to deter Russia from taking action if and when one of its red lines were crossed? Why all of this frivolous, pretend “diplomacy” apparently designed to waste Russia’s time and piss them off since we had no intention of negotiating anything? The most likely answer to me at the time was that we actually wanted Russia to invade Ukraine. Russia is not the only country with “dicks” in their leadership class. I would suggest that Russia reached the same conclusion. They fear our intentions as much as we fear theirs. And with much better evidence.

Finally, why did the U.S maintain the stupid fiction that NATO had an “open door” policy for any nation that wanted to join and that Ukraine had a right to join? This is so obviously false that it begs the question of why the U.S. so belligerently insisted that it was some lofty, sacred, and inalienable principle? If the door was always open, why did the U.S. not allow Russia to join back when they were seeking strong relationships with the West? Putin suggested the possibility to President Bill Clinton. The answer is simple to anyone who takes the time to read Article 10 of the NATO Charter.

Article 10

The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty. Any State so invited may become a Party to the Treaty by depositing its instrument of accession with the Government of the United States of America. The Government of the United States of America will inform each of the Parties of the deposit of each such instrument of accession.

Notice that it says nothing about an open door or the rights of a nation to join NATO. The only criterion for membership is “the security of the North Atlantic area.” Given Russia’s opposition to Ukraine’s membership and the warnings about the likely consequences, does it look like the inclusion of Ukraine enhances the security of the North Atlantic area or is rather a threat to its security? Duh. The blatant lie was obvious to the Russians.

On top of all that, Zelensky himself confided that the NATO has told him privately that Ukraine would never be included as a member but that publicly they would continue insisting on the “open door” policy.

He was speaking to Fareed Zakaria of CNN, and he made what I thought was a really telling admission about what he was told to say publicly about NATO before the war.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy:  I requested them personally to take…to say directly that we are going to accept into NATO in a year or two or five, just say it directly and clearly, or just say no.  And the response was very clear:  you are not going to be a NATO member, but publicly the doors will remain open.  (quoted from “US fighting Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’”)

METHOD TO OUR MADNESS?

I posted these thoughts in Facebook several times in the months leading up to the invasion. At that time, an article written several months previously kept coming back to me. The article was a publication of one of the neocon foreign policy think tanks. The writer proposed that the U.S. provoke Russia into armed conflict in Ukraine. His thinking was that the war in Ukraine would end up being so devastating to Russia that they would abandon its security interests on its western borders and turn its attention to China on its eastern border. The U.S. could then turn its attention eastward to deal with the Chinese menace, presumably, presumably with Russia as more or less an ally. The title of the article is “A Strategy for Avoiding Two-Front War.” Here is the link.)

I remember wondering at the time why the writer thought that Russia would fail so dismally in its military operations in Ukraine if it were to invade. His only point was that, having driven Russia into the arms of China, the neocons were hard pressed to solve the problem they themselves had created. I thought the proposal too far-fetched and wondered how something so absurd could get printed in supposedly prestigious foreign policy publications.  

The rest is history.   Russia went on to invade, and the U.S. went on to lead the West in unleashing the “sanctions from hell” on the invading pariah state. One of those sanctions was on the Russian Central Bank. The U.S. stole Russia’s foreign reserves and then manipulated the market to cause the Russian ruble to lose value. Joe Biden gloated in his State of the Union Address that the Russian ruble had been destroyed. The announced goal of this strategy was to create crippling inflation in the Russian economy, with the result that the people would rise up – not to mention the oligarchs – and oust Putin from power. In other words, the objective was regime change in Russia. Paraphrasing the words of Joe, “That boy’s got to go.” Putin overthrown and Navalny installed as U.S. puppet.

When Joe’s declaration at the conclusion of his Warsaw speech stirred up alarm and disapproval among our allies, the official position was that Joe just got carried away and let that slip out. I don’t think so. I think the U.S. was staging the European summit to promote Joe as the resolute leader of the Western world rallying the forces of freedom and democracy to a united stand against the evil Russian dictator reminiscent of John Kennedy’s 1963 speech in Berlin. The line about overthrowing Putin was not a hapless guffaw. Listen to or read the speech. It was the intended conclusion to which the entire speech was building. Only when the White House realized that publicly declaring regime change in Russia as the motive underlying Western policy was not popular, either in Europe or around the world – which was almost immediately – did they try to walk it back, denying that it is U.S. policy. In spite of our denial, it is clear that this has been U.S. policy for a long time.

U.S. POLICY SINCE THE FALL OF THE SOVIET UNION

But repressing Russia as a significant player in world affairs (which means overthrowing Putin), has been U.S. policy since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently summed up the intransigence of the U.S., Europe and Ukraine.

This is not about Ukraine, this is about a world order in which the United States wants to be the sole sovereign and dominate… This all is about removing the obstacle in the form of Russia on the way to building a unipolar world.      

Lavrov is right. This has been the explicit policy of the U.S. towards Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. As a strong leader primarily responsible for a strong Russia, Putin is perceived as the primary obstacle to the goal of U.S. uni-polar hegemony. As investigative journalist Aaron Mate reports,

The US agenda was made plain in September 2013, when Carl Gershman, head of the CIA-tied National Endowment for Democracy, declared that “Ukraine is the biggest prize.” If Ukraine could be pulled into the US-led order, Gershman explained, “Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.” In short, in Washington’s eyes, regime change in Kiev could redound to Moscow as well. (“Using Ukraine to Fight Russia“)

The goal of U.S. is world dominance, and therefore destruction of Russia and Putin, is what drives the neocons in the U.S. foreign policy establishment. The former Undersecretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, explained the strategy more than two decades ago.

Our first objective 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. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.

So the objective in our repression of Russia has two elements: first to prevent the rise of a new rival in the territory of the former Soviet Union that challenges U.S. dominance; and second to block further economic integration of Russia and Europe that would unavoidably lead to a massive free trade zone spanning Europe and Asia. The latter explains the infatuation of the State Department and certain members of Congress (e.g., Ted Cruz) with destroying the Nord Stream 2 pipeline deal. Michael Whitney, former editor at The Intercept and digital fundraising manager for Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, explains:

Russia’s has been gradually strengthening ties with Europe posing a serious challenge to US economic dominance. The building of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline– which would have greatly increased Europe’s dependency on Russian gas– meant that Washington’s influence would steadily erode while Europe and Asia would move closer to a common economic area in which neither the US Dollar nor NATO security would be necessary. This is why Washington went to such great lengths to provoke Russia to invade Ukraine. They needed to force the severing of economic ties to prevent further integration with EU markets.

THE ROLE OF THE U.S. IN OVERTHROWING UKRAINE’S GOVERNMENT

The events that exposed U.S. complicity in pushing Russia towards military action in Ukraine were orchestrated by the State Department and CIA in early 2014, when the U.S. backed the overthrow of the democratically Ukrainian government.

Writing immediately after the coup in February of 2014, F. William Engdahl expressed his astonishment at the turn of events.

The events in Ukraine since November 2013 are so astonishing as almost to defy belief.

An legitimately-elected (said by all international monitors) Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovich, has been driven from office, forced to flee as a war criminal after more than three months of violent protest and terrorist killings by so-called opposition.

Engdahl’s informative overview of the U.S. and neo-Nazi roles in the Maidan coup of 2014 entitled  “The Rape of Ukraine: Phase II Begins” details the scope of U.S. involvement, is a must read for anyone seeking to understand Russia’s perspective towards Ukraine, NATO and the U.S.

And here is the full recording of the phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Ukrainian Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt in which they can be heard deciding who in Ukraine would make up the puppet government after the overthrow of the elected government. It is important to note that this phone call took place before the coup itself took place.

Investigative journalist Aaron Mate presents additional evidence for U.S. support of the war against the ethnic Russians in the Donbass.

There’s that famous incident where [US Senators] Lindsey Graham and John McCain and Amy Klobuchar go to the front lines in late 2016, of the Ukrainian military’s fight against the rebels in the Donbas.  And Lindsey Graham says, ‘2017 is going to be the year of offense, and Russia has to pay a heavier price.’

Senator Lindsey Graham:  Your fight is our fight.  2017 will be the year of offense.  All of us will go back to Washington and we will push the case against Russia.  Enough of a Russian aggression.  It is time for them to pay a heavier price.

Senator John McCain:  I believe you will win.  I am convinced you will win.  And we will do everything we can to provide you with what you need to win.

See Aaron Mate’s excellent overview of the events leading up to the Russian invasion and U.S. culpability in those events here and here.

THE ROLE OF US-SUPPORTED NEO-NAZIS IN UKRAINE

This infatuation to destroy Russia underlies U.S. support of the neo-Nazi movement in Ukraine. The Ukrainian government, the U.S. government, and the corporate media have dismissed fascism and Naziism as a serious problem in Ukraine and have similarly dismissed this as one of Russia’s motives for the current invasion.

This is all a coverup typical of power in the U.S. these days. There have been numerous reports by the UN and other human rights organizations warning of the ultra-right nationalists and neo-Nazis in Ukraine. Leaders of these groups are influential in the Ukraine government, and the Azov regiment in the Ukrainian army is full of these people.

Video presenting the neo-Nazi role in the Maidan coup of 2014.

Another informative article by outstanding investigative reporter Aaron Mate explaining the U.S. and neo-Nazi role in the events leading up to and provoking the present Russian invasion in Ukraine. See also “Partnering with Neo-Nazis in Ukraine: An Inconvenient History.”

The comedian and left-wing commentator Jimmy Dore presents a video speech by Yeven Karas, a leader of C-14, a neo-Nazi group in Ukraine, bragging about their role in turning a peaceful protest in Maidan into a violent coup. The video also shows the extent to which these ulta-nationalist groups have permeated the Ukrainian government.

The State Department and the media keep telling us that Putin is hellbent on domination of Eastern Europe and that Ukraine is just the first step. There is no evidence of this. In fact, the evidence supports Russia’s long-standing concern with the Donbass region and the ethnic Russians who live there.

This U.S.-backed regime change operation is what prompted the outbreak of a civil war in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine. When pro-Russian separatists declared their independence from the fascist Ukrainian puppet government, it was unable to contain them. So the Azov battalion and other fascist militias were unleashed, leading to the death of some 14,000 people (just before the 2022 invasion, Putin recognized the independence of the two regions of the Donbas). Azov received backing from Ukraine’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov, as well as U.S. arms and training. Due to its purported effectiveness in fighting Russian separatists, the battalion was integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard in 2014, formally becoming part of the state.  (“Nazis in Ukraine: Seeing Through the Fog of War”)

As a result of the U.S. support for, and arming of, these radical groups, they would play a leading role in a U.S. proxy war with Russia.

The shock troops of this latest US-led proxy war will not be, as in Afghanistan, Islamic fundamentalist fighters, but the neo-Nazi forces which played a key role in Ukraine’s 2014 coup.

“We have been given so much weaponry… because we perform the tasks set forth by the West, because we like to fight, and we like to kill,” Yevhen Karas, leader of the neo-Nazi terrorist organization C-14, said in early February, before the war began. (“NATO Floods Ukraine with Weapons”)

The conclusion reached by one commentator is that “We are witnessing the final stages of a geo-political chess game that is designed to end in war” (“Ukraine Crisis – What You’re Not Being Told”).

The U.S. and NATO backed not only the neo-Nazi overthrow of Ukraine’s democratic government, but also the new, unelected government’s use of force against the ethnic Russian rebels in the Donbass.

Ethnic Russian Ukrainians in Crimea, the Donbass region and elsewhere in Ukraine rejected the puppet government installed by the U.S.  In April of 2014, The Guardian wrote,

After Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia, the bulk of the western media abandoned any hint of even-handed coverage. So Putin is now routinely compared to Hitler, while the role of the fascistic right on the streets and in the new Ukrainian regime has been airbrushed out of most reporting as Putinist propaganda.

So you don’t hear much about the Ukrainian government’s veneration of wartime Nazi collaborators and pogromists, or the arson attacks on the homes and offices of elected communist leaders, or the integration of the extreme Right Sector into the national guard, while the anti-semitism and white supremacism of the government’s ultra-nationalists is assiduously played down, and false identifications of Russian special forces are relayed as fact.

No Russian government could have acquiesced in such a threat from territory that was at the heart of both Russia and the Soviet Union. Putin’s absorption of Crimea and support for the rebellion in eastern Ukraine is clearly defensive, and the red line now drawn: the east of Ukraine, at least, is not going to be swallowed up by Nato or the EU. (“It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war”)

Why would the U.S. support neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine and then arm these groups to attack the ethnic Russian populations of the Donbass? The answer seems simple and obvious. The U.S. wanted Russia to intervene militarily in Ukraine.

ZELENSKY: ACTOR PLAYING A ROLE

I don’t understand the love affair Americans have with Zelensky. The oligarch (billionaire businessman-warlord) Igor Kolomoisky owned the communications company that produced the TV program “Servant of the People.” The story line of the show was an actor who accidentally became president of Ukraine. Kolomoisky selected the comedian-actor Volodymyr Zelensky to play the leading role and promoted the program far beyond normal marketing for TV shows. As a result, it became a sensation in Ukraine.

Then Kolomoisky formed the Servant of the People political party and promoted Zelensky as the star candidate for President of Ukraine. Zelensky campaigned on the promise that he would find a solution to bring peace to the Donbass and reproachment with Russia. On this promise and his popularity from the TV show, he won a landslide victory. Kolomoisky was influential in selecting the government around Zelensky. “The Comedian and the Oligarch,” an article in Politico written during Zelensky’s campaign, provides details to the relationship, and this article details Kolomoisky’s connections to the neo-Nazis and Washington.

Unwilling puppet of fascist, neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine

Anatoliyovych Yarosh, co-founder of the Right Sector, one of the radical nationalist, neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine, made it clear in an interview that Zelensky would be killed if he took steps necessary to achieve peace in the Donbass and reproachment with Russia.

Zelensky said in his inaugural speech that he was ready to lose ratings, popularity, position. No, he would lose his life. He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk if he betrays Ukraine and those people who died in the Revolution and the War.

The U.S. State Department knows that Zelensky is not his own man and cannot negotiate with Russia for peace without their backing, even if he wanted to. Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and Princeton University, contributing editor at The Nation, explained this in an interview before his death back in 2019.

Zelensky cannot go forward as I’ve explained. I mean, his life is being threatened literally by a quasi-fascist movement in Ukraine, he can’t go forward with full peace negotiations with Russia, with Putin, unless America has his back. Maybe that won’t be enough, but unless the White House encourages this diplomacy, Zelensky has no chance of negotiating an end to the war, so the stakes are enormously high.

Why did the U.S. not back Zelensky? Why did they support and arm the ulta-nationalists that were threatening him?

CATASTROPHE IN THE MAKING

So where are we now? In spite of Ukrainian deaths, economic consequences for Europe, the U.S. and the world, and in spite of the risk of nuclear war, we continue to escalate.

Ukrainian losses

It has seemed from the beginning that the U.S. and Europe are not only oblivious to the destruction their response to the invasion is bringing on themselves. They are seem also unaware or unconcerned about the lives being lost and destroyed in Ukraine. Our continued support for Ukraine’s defensive efforts, including the supply of arms, has no good outcome. As Andrei Maryanov points out,

It greatly encourages the Ukrainians to fight this war down to the last Ukrainian and the total destruction of the Ukrainian civil infrastructure.  Yes, the united West wants to genocide Russians by means of genociding Ukrainians. 

Economic consequences

Inflation, fuel and food prices were already rising, thanks to the Biden administrations economic policies. But the suicidal sanctions we’ve leveled against Russia are almost certainly hurting us more than they are hurting Russia. Russia has prepared for them. We have not. Nor did we think about the consequences. Europe, especially Germany, will probably never recover. The U.S. dollar is on its way out as the global reserve and petroleum market currency. Many are predicting the collapse of the Western world economy. There is a devastating shortage of fertilizer around the world. Did anybody stop and think what impact this will all have on the poorer nations? Many analysts are predicting widespread starvation.

And, as has been established already, the global fertilizer shortage (made much worse by U.S. sanctions on Russia and Belarus) coupled with Ukrainian wheat going offline means that up to 100 million Africans will need to get off the planet, or at least, leave Africa.  It will be a sight.  And this is just what we know for sure, so far. (“The Dreizin Report”)

Is what we are accomplishing or even might accomplish with sanctions worth the price that the world will have to pay?

I am reminded of a similar question posed to Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State under Clinton, about the sanctions we imposed on Iraq to punish Saddam Hussein after the end of the Gulf War in 1991. It was estimated that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children had starved to death as a result of those sanctions. Secretary Albright was asked if the price was worth it.  In her role as the great imperial ancestor of the foreign policy establishment today and mother of all neocons, Albright replied that she thought the price was worth it. After all, it was somebody else’s kids and grandchildren. That, I’m afraid, is the legacy being carried on by our foreign policy establishment today. See the great lady pronounce judgment here.

Nuclear Consequences

Again, comments from Andrei Maryanov:

What began as the “special military operation” is now turning into a total war of the united West against Russia, and that means that the goal for the West is not peace. It’s victory and a Russian defeat.  My personal conclusion is that the West will only stop doubling down if the US homeland itself is threatened by Russian conventional and nuclear strategic deterrence capabilities.

In spite of a growing number of commentators who dismiss nuclear war as something to be concerned about, most sane people are aware of the real risk and the catastrophic consequences. And the risk increases the longer the war goes on. And yet prolonging the war seems to be the U.S. objective.

NO INTEREST IN PEACE OR DIPLOMACY

Chas Freeman, veteran U.S. diplomat who has served in many senior positions, including as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, and as the principal US interpreter during President Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972, wonders why the U.S. are not interested in peace.

And more to the point, the United States is not part of any effort to negotiate an end to the fighting.  To the extent that there is mediation going on, it seems to be by Turkey, possibly Israel, maybe China.  That’s about it.  And the United States is not in the room.  Everything we are doing, rather than accelerating an end to the fighting and some compromise, seems to be aimed at prolonging the fighting, assisting the Ukrainian resistance—which is a noble cause, I suppose, but that will result in a lot of dead Ukrainians as well as dead Russians.  And, also, the sanctions have no goals attached to them.  There’re no conditions which we’ve stated which would result in their end. (“US fighting ‘to the last Ukrainian’”)

During negotiations with Russia in Istanbul, to the Russians’ surprise and the State Department’s fury, Zelensky agreed to several of Russia’s demands, only to withdraw them the next day. Apparently, the U.S. “convinced” Zelenski to stop any and all negotiations and to restate the Ukrainian ultra-right hardliners most extreme demands (including the Donbass and Crimea).  The U.S. intransigence makes negotiations not only pointless but also impossible. Obviously, that is what we want. Consequently,

Zelensky has banned all media coverage in Ukraine, save one, and alternative views favouring peace are … are a death sentence. War is the only sanctioned opinion allowed. Peace will get you arrested or shot. (“The Lies and the Eyes of Ukraine”)

Why? The State Department I used to know were men of diplomacy. They were statesmen, not war mongers. Can you imagine the U.S. NOT mediating a negotiation to end a war during the cold war era? We often negotiated directly with the Soviet Union, the “Evil Empire.” In contrast there’s not even been an attempt to negotiate for peace with Putin’s Russia. Why?

The answer seems clear. We wanted the war to break out, and we want it to continue down to the last Ukrainian.

Why? What do we have to gain? Once again, Joe Biden has the answer.

Now is a time when things are shifting. … There’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it. (Joe Biden)

With all of the serious geo-political and economic problems the world is facing President Biden can be relied on to let the cat out of the bag. A new world order that we need to lead.

WHAT ABOUT CHINA?

According to the NY Times, whose writers could not have written their piece without high-level sources, the Biden administration “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire without inciting a broader conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary or cutting off potential paths to de-escalation.”

And then we have this piece by by Niall Ferguson in Bloomberg, who also referenced the Times article above. Ferguson too is a journalist known for having sources inside Washington. Be sure to read it carefully with an eye out for the ultimate end-game strategy.

I have evidence from other sources to corroborate this. “The only end game now,” a senior administration official was heard to say at a private event earlier this month, “is the end of Putin regime. Until then, all the time Putin stays, [Russia] will be a pariah state that will never be welcomed back into the community of nations. China has made a huge error in thinking Putin will get away with it. Seeing Russia get cut off will not look like a good vector and they’ll have to re-evaluate the Sino-Russia axis. All this is to say that democracy and the West may well look back on this as a pivotal strengthening moment.”

I gather that senior British figures are talking in similar terms. There is a belief that “the U.K.’s No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.” Again and again, I hear such language. It helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the U.S. to secure a cease-fire. 

Did you catch that? It only caught my attention because of the article I mentioned earlier, the one in the neocon think tank publication on how to address the China-Russian alliance. In case you missed it, I’ll run it by you one more time.

“China has made a huge error in thinking Putin will get away with it. Seeing Russia get cut off will not look like a good vector, and they’ll have to re-evaluate the Sino-Russia axis. All this is to say that democracy and the West may well look back on this as a pivotal strengthening moment.”

This was not Ferguson’s own speculation. It was a statement overheard from “a senior administration official.” The strategic consensus is to “bleed Putin,” reducing Russia to “a pariah state.” So far, that’s little surprise. But the strategic objective is to cause China to have second thoughts about their alliance with Russia. This will be a “pivotal strengthening moment” because we will have taken Russia effectively out of the picture, thus isolating China so that we can pivot to the East and focus our attention on the growing menace there.

Hence the obsession in the State Department with threatening China to denounce Putin and stop helping Russia survive and overcome the sanctions.

Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, seems to understand at least part of the game Washington is playing.

This is an utterly serious change, even in the policy that the EU and the West under US leadership – there is no doubt about it – began to pursue after the start of our special military operation. A policy that reflects anger, in some ways even frenzy, and which, of course, is determined not only by [the situation in] Ukraine, but by Ukraine being transformed into a foothold for the final suppression of Russia.

NO REVERSE GEAR

Given this fanatical strategy, there’s no reverse gear because the U.S. foreign policy establishment, certain members of Congress, and most of corporate media are so heavily invested in the “bleed Putin” project that Russia must lose this war. It would become an intolerable defeat for the U.S. if Russia should win.  

For this reason, we now have people like Senator Chris Cooms ranting like a madman. The U.S. State Department, Congress and NATO have too many people like Cooms, who has just floated the use of American combat troops in Ukraine. According to Cooms,

If Putin is allowed to “continue to massacre civilians, to commit war crimes throughout Ukraine without NATO, without the West coming more forcefully to its aid,” then he worries that “we will see Ukraine turn into Syria.”

And then the key line: “Putin will only stop when we stop him.”

First, Cooms knows that the Russians are not massacring civilians or committing war crimes. They all know the Ukraine government propaganda along these lines is bullshit. They know Russia is being careful NOT to harm civilians or destroy civilian infrastructure. What they don’t know is how far Putin plans to take the invasion. Many analysts think he will not try to take Kiev or any part of Western Ukraine. But nobody knows. So the assertion that “Putin will only stop when we stop him” is pure speculation. Why would anyone advocate putting Americans in harm’s way and risk nuclear war based on pure speculation?

This is the sort of thing that Col. Douglas Macgregor is afraid of.

My fear is that when it becomes abundantly clear that all of these discussions about the collapsing Russian army and the great, victorious Ukrainians fall apart, then people really will say, “Well we’ve got to do something, or we in Washington, who’ve made all of these claims, will look ridiculous yet again.” That worries me … and I think it’s a valid one. (Interview with Dan Ball on Real America)

They all know that Russia is winning both the military war and the economic war. In spite of the propaganda being cranked out by Ukraine and channeled through the corporate media, the Russian army is accomplishing every objective they’ve set out to accomplish. On top of that, the sanctions aren’t having the effect that Washington and Brussels had intended. The conspirators in the West are desperate. They are frantic. They are like madmen, and if we let them, there’s a good chance that they will take us all down with them.

Once again Madeleine Albright, the Mother of All Neocons, provides insight into the mindset of the neocons in our foreign policy establishment. The Washington Post reports the conflict between Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State and Colin Powell, his Secretary of Defense.

Albright was an early opponent of the Powell doctrine that the United States should restrict its military interventions to situations in which its vital interests are threatened, and should always insist on using overwhelming force. In his memoirs, Powell recalled that he almost had “an aneurysm” when Albright challenged him to explain “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”

Powell had to patiently explain to her that soldiers were not toy soldiers. And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with our foreign policy elite. They think they’re playing a full-scale game of Risk. In their war with Russia “to the last Ukrainian,” their insistence that Ukrainian soldiers be offered up as cannon fodder on the altar of American hegemony and exceptionalism is identical to their willingness to sacrifice American men and women on the same altar. They don’t care about either. They don’t care about the people of Ukraine. They don’t care about the American people and our national interest. They don’t even really care about America. People, soldiers, starving children, and whole nations are little more than tokens and map elements on a Risk board.

Ukraine has always been an existential issue for Russia. It was never one for the U.S. … until the Russophobic fanatics made it one. Now neither side can back down.

So why can’t we give Russia the security guarantees it demands?

Why can’t we take steps to secure peace, security and freedom for the ethnic Russians in the Donbass?

Why can’t we allow those Ukrainians in areas occupied by Russia to conduct referendums to determine what their future status will be: Ukrainian, Russian, or independent? You know, democracy.

Why do we support prolonging the war “down to the last Ukrainian” and the destruction of Ukraine?

Why must we not back down or allow Ukraine to negotiate for peace, even if it means committing American men and women to combat and risking nuclear war?

The truth is we do not need to continue on the present path. There are realistic solutions. Peace is possible. Security for Russia on their terms is possible. Security for the ethnic Russians in Ukraine is possible. But the White House, the foreign policy establishment, and even the corporate media have too much invested in this war to lose it now. No real solutions will be considered by these people until young American men and women start being shipped back home in body bags or Russia lobs a couple hypersonic nukes into Western soil.

But what about the American people? Can we, the people somehow step back from the madness and bring some sanity to the table?

A Ukrainian who recently escaped from the war in the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine gave his story to an American reporter in Poland. He was ethnically a Russian Jew. The American journalist recorded his passionate take on why he and the Ukrainian people in Eastern Ukraine are suffering.

Over that next hour, as I scribbled furiously, Abram told me of being trapped in Markivka as the war began, not by the Russians but by the Ukrainian Army (AFU), what he repeatedly called the “Banderists.” Those following this series know what that means: Nazis.

Abram is a Russian Jew and proudly admits to serving in the Red Army, particularly in Afghanistan. “We did many wrong things there,” he began, “but these Banderists they hate, their hearts, full of hate. Always hate. Many years, only hate!” Stupidly I offered the leading question, “why?.” Abram, who had been looking down while delivering his thoughts straightened in a start, now looking me in the eyes like a father scolding a child, “Because we are Russian!”

Because the Banderists hate Russia. Because you… I’m sorry.. your country… hates Russia. And we are Russian in our hearts! We do not hate America. We love Ukraine! But you… I’m sorry again… your country, it hates Russia!  (“The Lies and Eyes of Ukraine”)

This ethnic Russian Ukrainian is not alone. One of the reasons that over 80% of the Russian people have united around Putin in support of the war is their growing realization that the U.S. and Europe hate them, and they have no choice but to secure the neutrality of Ukraine.

OK, so they’re all “dicks,” and we don’t sympathize with them or care about them at all. That’s not my own position, but I empathize with it. My position is that I don’t care whether they are all “dicks” or not. My position is that the war is catastrophically bad for Ukraine and catastrophically dangerous for the U.S., Europe and the world. And the solution is obvious.  What is preventing the American people from insisting that our government take diplomatic steps to achieve that solution? If our current foreign policy ends up leading to the destruction of Ukraine, Europe, the U.S. and much of the world, will the future rabbis of foreign policy issue the same judgement that the rabbis of the Talmud reached:

They destroyed themselves as a result of their baseless hatred?

Write your congressman or congresswoman. Feel free to share this post, in part or in full.

About a year ago, I wrote a few posts about potential fraud in the 2020 elections. In two of my posts presenting evidence for probable fraud in Michigan and Pennsylvania, I listed evidence for ballots cast by voters who were not constitutionally qualified to cast them and ballots cast in a manner that was not consistent with constitutional prescriptions. All of this, I conceded was but circumstantial evidence and proved nothing. It merely suggested a likelihood that too many illegal ballots were cast to determine who actually won. It did not establish the mechanism of how any fraud was committed.  My Pennsylvania study can be found here and the Michigan study here.

The “how it was done” question has perhaps been answered by an extensive and ingenious investigation conducted by an organization called True the Vote. The presentation of the findings of that investigation will be presented in a documentary movie currently in production and which should be released in the next couple months. It is entitled “2,000 Mules.”

The Newsweek article here gives a decent introduction to the documentary and presents the trailer. In general, the investigators use cell phone geo-tracking records to identify and track “mules,” people who traffic in illegal ballots. The investigators track these mules on routes to and from various political organization headquarters and various ballot drop boxes. Through FOIA requests, they obtain as much drop box surveillance video as they can acquire and check the video for mules delivering the ballots to the drop boxes.

They focused their investigation on Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona. They conclude that over 4 million illegal ballots were cast in this manner, but their investigation does not claim to uncover all of the illegal ballot trafficking. Due to the vast amount of data, they were forced to limit the scope of what they could uncover and prove. No matter how many illegal ballots they can prove were cast, they seem to have provided irrefutable evidence that illegal ballot trafficking was organized, systematic and widespread.

Gregg Phillips and Catherine Engelbrecht led the investigation and present samples of their investigation here in an interview by Charlie Kirk. For your convenience I have provided a brief list of topics covered in the interview with corresponding time stamps below.

9:00 Explanation of geo-tracking on cell phones

16:00 – 20:00 Investigators’ hypothesis and methodology

21:20 Explanation of first sample drop box video (interrupted by Kirk’s facile questions)

25:00 First drop box video

29:30 Explanation of systematic nature of the ballot trafficking

30:00 Second drop box video

31:00 Discussion of where the ballots came from

31:30 The role of dirty voter roles in the conspiracy

33:00 Summary of how the conspiracy worked

38:40 Third drop box video

41:00 Discussion of the numbers

44:10 Ballot trafficking in the January U.S. Senate run-off election in Georgia

50:00 Georgia governor, GBI and FBI obstruction

NOTE 1: A mule was defined as a person whose geo-tracking revealed they visited 10 or more drop boxes in connection with visits to five or more democratic political organizations. There were more ballot traffickers than these, but this is where the investigators set the minimum bar.

NOTE 2: On one 24-hour day at the ballot box in the video, geo-tracking revealed that approximately 270 people visited the ballot box. 24 hours of video surveillance confirmed that 271 people visited the box.  However, according to the official chain-of-custody documents in that county, by the end of the 24-hour period,1,962 ballots had been collected from the box.

NOTE 3: The data collected was limited to the amount that could be investigated in the time invested. There is no reason to believe that the amount of trafficking the investigation proves is the full extent of trafficking that actually occurred. There could have been and probably was much more than is established by the investigation.

A book presenting the investigation can be preordered at Amazon here.

Patrick Lancaster is an independent journalist who has been covering the civil war in the Donbass for the past eight years. This is one of his reports, focusing on an interview with a Ukrainian national in Mariupol.

The essence of her report is that Azov Ukrainian forces were shelling the civilian area around the hospital, which was still functioning until the Ukrainian forces closed it down and occupied it themselves.

She also reports that Azov Ukrainian snipers were shooting Ukrainian civilians wearing white arm bands.

Finally, she testifies that Ukrainian forces opened fire on Ukrainian citizens attempting to evacuate Mariupol.

The study of 2,007 French people conducted by IFOP on behalf of the Reboot Foundation – established to research and advocate for more critical thinking education – found 52 percent of French people believe at least one of Russia’s false motives for invading Ukraine.

Speaking of critical thinking, this article is a good example of how critical thinking sheds light on the bias of the American media.

The first clue is in the very first paragraph quoted above. Notice that the writer seems incapable of reporting objectively that 52 percent of French people believe at least one of Russia’s stated motives for invading. She seems compelled to make sure the reader knows that those motives are FALSE. Also notice that she provides no evidence of this claim.

I’ve noticed this a lot in the corporate media, including the NY Times and the Washington Post. In reports of Trump’s activities, for example, they report that he is still making the FALSE claim that the election was stolen from him. Why not simply report that he’s still making the same claim and let the reader decide whether Trump is right or wrong? It appears that they don’t trust the reader to make that determination and want to make sure we remember what the correct position is on that issue.

This suggests to me that the corporate media has taken a position on certain key issues and has become an advocate for that position. Advocacy and reporting are not the same thing.

People either on the far left or the far right of the political spectrum were also more likely to be susceptible to misinformation, the study found.

Who decides what is “misinformation”? That has already become clear in the article. Anything that contradicts the mainstream narrative about Russia’s invasion is misinformation. So if you the reader are NOT at one of the far ends of the political spectrum, you can rest more secure in your confident investment in the mainstream narrative. Which is consistent with my own observations. Those in the middle are just as likely to be invested in the official line on the issues, and are more distrustful of information that comes from the “fringe” – meaning, anything that does not come from the orthodox mainstream.

We did the study in relation to social media frequency and found that there was a direct correlation between heavier use of social media and higher susceptibility to Russian misinformation.

Again the unproven assertion that the statements of Russian motives are “misinformation,” even on the part of the researcher. Social media is certainly a factor in the spread of misinformation. It doesn’t require a study to establish the obvious. Social media is a tool for spreading all kinds of information, both good and bad.

What seems to be the concern of the writer is that social media is competing with the corporate media for the attention of the consumer of information. Those who stay off Youtube are on more solid ground, and those who get some of their information there are flirting with the fringe. There is also a veiled implication that social media companies are justified in censoring some of this “misinformation.”

Because social media is so big it just amplifies our susceptibility to misinformation, because social media companies prey on our emotions.

Apart from the instance of the word “because” twice in one sentence, there is the assertion that social media companies prey on our emotions. First, what social media company does that? Facebook? Twitter? Youtube? Reddit? Rumble? Independent blogs? Independent journalism? And is this to suggest that the corporate media does not play on our emotions? How about all of the images and interviews of Ukrainians suffering at the hands of the evil Russians? How about the emotional appeals depicting Zelensky as a hero standing for freedom, democracy and the American way? I could go on and on.

I don’t know about those “on the fringes” of the political spectrum, but the information I pay attention to on the internet does not appeal to emotions. Quite the contrary. Rather than focusing on supposed Russian misinformation and social media in their study, those really interested in critical thinking education might better achieve their goals by focusing on the actual skills that comprise critical thinking. Like logic. Like valid arguments. Like valid evidence. This article – not to mention the study – suggests that we have a long way to go in achieving that sort of educational goal. It also suggests that critical thinking is not really their agenda.

Advance intelligence suggests another false flag on the part of Ukraine. They are losing the war so decisively that their only strategy is to murder civilians and then blame it on the Russians. The goal is to get the hapless dorks in the West so morally outraged that we insist that NATO step in and stop the atrocities.

—————————————

“Official Kiev, with the support from several Western countries, continues to plan barbarous and ruthless actions with mass killings of civilians in the Lugansk People’s Republic to later accuse the Russian armed forces and LPR troops,” he said.

According to Mizintsev, a provocation is planned in the Ragovka community in the Kiev region. The Ukrainian side, in his words, is plotting to shoot a fake video about searches of places of mass burials of civilians allegedly killed by Russian troops. “A team of Ukrainian forensic experts and police officers will be involved in the provocation to make it look more trustworthy,” he said.

“Reporters from foreign mass media outlets have arrived in the city of Kremennaya in the Severodonetsk district and have accommodated in the building of the local hospital. They are supposed to record the Ukrainian army’s provocation with the alleged selling of ambulance cars carrying patients by Russian troops,” he said.

Apart from that, he said that Ukrainian nationalists have mined reservoirs with chlorine at a water utility in the Popyasnaya district and plan to blow them up when forces of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) approach the city.

The above headline in an ATLANTIC magazine article is literally a tricky one. It is tricky because it assumes a proposition that it proposes to provide a causal explanation. It assumes that Ukraine is winning the war. But what if that proposition is false? In fact what if nearly everything we are reading or hearing in the corporate media is false? I know it’s hard to conceive of such an absurdity, especially after such stellar media reporting on the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, the 2020 election contests, the Covid Pandemic, and the Jan 6 “insurrection.”

And especially after media reporting on the WMD hoax that served as a pretext for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Remember those WMDs the U.S. military went in to get? One of the “alternative narrative” voices that warned that it was all bullshit was Scott Ritter, a UN weapons inspector. In the following interview, he presents a similar alternative narrative regarding the war in Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian Conflict Is a U.S./NATO Proxy War, but One Which Russia Is Poised to Win Decisively” – Scott Ritter

Again, Facebook banned the link to the interview, stating that the site violated their “community standards,” whatever those are. I don’t know anything about the site. I merely followed a link to the interview. Regardless, I have copied and pasted the interview below and have provided a link to this page in my Facebook post. The interview is conducted by Finian Cunningham at Strategic-Culture DOT org, for those who would like to visit the site.

—————————————

The West has sown the wind in sanctioning Russia; Russia will not reap the whirlwind, says Scott Ritter in an interview with the Strategic Culture Foundation.

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who has gained international respect for his independence and integrity as a commentator on conflicts and foreign relations. This week, he was banned on the Twitter social media platform for challenging Western claims of a massacre in Bucha, Ukraine, allegedly carried out by Russian troops. Moscow denies the claims, as have other independent analysts who point to evidence that the incident was a false-flag provocation perpetrated by NATO-backed Ukrainian Nazi regiments to undermine Russia internationally and bolster Western objectives. It is a foreboding sign of the times that Ritter should be banned for daring to question dubious narratives. (He was later reinstated following a public outcry against censorship.)

In the following interview for Strategic Culture Foundation, he makes the crucial point that Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is exposing the involvement of the U.S. and NATO in the training and weaponizing of that country’s dominant Nazi regiments. That is why Western media have been so vehement in trying to distort the conflict and blame Russia. The truth about Western dirty involvement in Ukraine would be too much to bear for the Western public.

When Ritter served as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s he later challenged Western media and government claims that Iraq was harboring WMDs. Those claims were used as a pretext for the U.S.-British war on Iraq launched in 1993 that cost over one million lives, destroyed a nation, created millions of displaced and millions of casualties, as well as spawned international terrorism. It later turned out that the WMD claims were based on deliberate lies for which no Western leader has been held accountable. Scott Ritter was vindicated in his warnings against that war and it is one reason why he is widely respected among international public opinion.

Ritter is a critical commentator on U.S. conflicts and foreign relations. He is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the Soviet Union implementing nuclear arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and as a UN inspector in Iraq (1991-98) overseeing the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction. He is the author of Scorpion King: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump (Clarity Press, 2020).

Interview

Question: Do you think that Russia has a just cause in launching its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24?

Scott Ritter: I believe Russia has articulated a cognizable claim of preemptive collective self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. The threat posed by NATO expansion, and Ukraine’s eight-year bombardment of the civilians of the Donbass fall under this umbrella.

Question: Do you think Russia has legitimate concerns about the Pentagon sponsoring biological weapons programs in laboratories in Ukraine?

Scott Ritter: The Pentagon denies any biological weapons program, but admits biological research programs on Ukrainian soil. Documents captured by Russia have allegedly uncovered the existence of programs the components of which could be construed as having offensive biological warfare applications. The U.S. should be required to explain the purpose of these programs.

Question: What do you make of allegations in Western media that Russian troops committed war crimes in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities? It is claimed that Russian forces summarily executed civilians.

Scott Ritter: All claims of war crimes must be thoroughly investigated, including Ukrainian allegations that Russia killed Ukrainian civilians in Bucha. However, the data available about the Bucha incident does not sustain the Ukrainian claims, and as such, the media should refrain from echoing these claims as fact until a proper investigation of the evidence is conducted, either by the media, or unbiased authorities.

Question: Do you think the alleged Russian bombing of a hospital and an art theater in Mariupol were false-flag provocations?

Scott Ritter: Both locations are available for detailed forensic examination that would either confirm or refute Ukrainian allegations that these locations were struck by Russian aerial bombs. Other data, such as the existence of any NATO radar data that would put Russian aircraft over these two locations at the time of the alleged attack, should be collected. A detailed forensic examination of each site would go a long way in proving or disproving the Ukrainian claims through the collection of weapons fragments and the evaluation of environmental samples which would show the chemical composition of any explosive used, thereby allowing a better idea of what weapon or explosive was used to destroy the sites.

Question: Western governments and mainstream media have denigrated Russian objectives to “demilitarize and deNazify” Ukraine. The West says Russia has invented or grossly exaggerated these problems as a pretext for invasion. Do you think this Western denialism is because it doesn’t want to acknowledge that Russia may indeed have legitimate concerns, and secondly that to acknowledge would mean admitting that the West is part of the problem in the current war?

Scott Ritter: The irony is that the West had thoroughly documented the extent of the Nazi ideology in Ukraine’s civil, political, and military structures during and after the 2014 Maidan coup. This documented reality was deliberately obscured by the same sources that had previously documented its existence once the Russian invasion occurred. To acknowledge the existence of this odious ideology by NATO would require NATO to acknowledge the role it played in training and equipping Azov regiment personnel since 2015. The Russian documentation of its ongoing de-Nazification effort in Ukraine is a source of continual embarrassment to NATO, as it exposes the scope and scale of NATO’s role in empowering the militarization of Nazi ideology in Ukraine.

Question: For about four months before the Russian intervention in Ukraine, the Biden administration was asserting non-stop that Moscow was planning an invasion. Do you think this is a case of great intelligence on the part of Washington or the culmination of provocation by Washington resulting in Russian military action in Ukraine?

Scott Ritter: We now know that the U.S. intelligence community under the Biden administration is committed to a policy of haphazardly “declassifying” intelligence for the purpose of shaping public opinion (so-called “getting ahead of the story”). There is no evidence that the intelligence regarding potential Russian military action was based upon anything other than politicized speculation derived from a crude analysis of Russian military dispositions void of any context. Any genuine intelligence assessment regarding the timing of any Russian military action would have incorporated the domestic political imperative of getting Duma [Russian parliamentary] approval for the deployment of Russian forces outside the borders of Russia, which carries with it the requirement of a cognizable justification for this military action under the UN Charter. This required political steps such as Donetsk and Lugansk declaring independence, and then petitioning the Russian parliament to recognize this independence, so that Russia could legitimately invoke Article 51. None of these factors was knowable when the Biden administration was issuing its warnings of imminent attack, thereby certifying the “intelligence” as being derived from fact-free speculation, and not intelligence at all.

Question: The Western media are reporting that the Russian military operation in Ukraine is floundering because it has not over-run Ukraine entirely. As a military expert, how do you see the Russian operation proceeding?

Scott Ritter: Russia is fighting a very difficult campaign hampered by its own constraint designed to limit civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure and the fact that Ukraine possesses a very well-trained military that is well led and equipped. Russia deployed some 200,000 troops in support of this operation. They are facing some 600,000 Ukrainian forces. The first phase of the Russian operation was designed to shape the battlefield to Russia’s advantage while diminishing the size and capacity of the Ukrainian ability to wage large-scale conflict. The second phase is focused on destroying the main Ukrainian force concentration in eastern Ukraine. Russia is well on its way to accomplishing this task.

Question: Do you see danger from Ukraine being turned into a proxy war by the United States and NATO partners against Russia in a way that attempts to repeat the West’s covert war in Syria or the Afghanistan war (1979-89) with the Soviet Union? There are reports of foreign legions being sent to Ukraine via NATO countries. Do you think there is a Western plan to embroil Russia in a proxy war that is aimed at sapping Russia politically, economically, and militarily?

Scott Ritter: The Ukrainian conflict is a proxy war, but one which Russia is poised to win decisively. While there appears to be a NATO/western plan to embroil Russia in a “new Afghanistan”, I don’t see any risk of this conflict dragging on for more than a few more weeks at the most before Russia accomplishes a strategic victory over Ukraine.

Question: There is an arrogant assumption among Western governments that they can impose crippling economic sanctions on Russia in a similar way to what they did on Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea among others. But would you agree that if Russia begins to impose its own counter-sanctions by restricting oil and gas exports then the Western states may end up reaping a whirlwind that is devastating to their societies?

Scott Ritter: Russia was warned well in advance about the scope and scale of U.S.-led sanctions that would be imposed if Russia were to invade Ukraine. Russia has prepared its own counter-sanction strategy which will not only defeat the Western sanctions but further strengthen Russia’s economy by decoupling it from the West and Western control/influence. We see evidence of the effectiveness of this counter-campaign as the Russian ruble is strengthened, the Russian stock market enjoys positive traction, and Europe and the U.S. flounder economically. The West has sown the wind in sanctioning Russia; Russia will not reap the whirlwind.

This is an article written by Boyd Cathey at the Unz Review, which I have copied and pasted in its entirety. The Unz Review is a site of some notoriety and is banned on Facebook (I am not a regular reader; I only followed the link a friend emailed me), so I am not going to provide the link, but I do want to give Mr. Boyd credit. I don’t know anything about him (or The Unz Review) except that I too endorse the article written by Jacques Baud, which I had previously read at The Postil site, and which is thoroughly consistent with other sources I do regularly follow.
————————————————

Over the past three months I’ve authored six articles about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine: that’s six out of eleven installments that have showed up at MY CORNER and then published in such venues as LEWROCKWELL.com and THE UNZ REVIEW.

That may seem excessive—and I acknowledge that. But the issue is, I would suggest, one of staggering significance to the United States and, indeed, to the future of the world.

As you might imagine, I have some friends who disagree with what I’ve written and have taken me to task for my views and assertions. There has even been a suggestion calling into question my use of sources and how I evaluate information and news which comes across my desk top computer. While I freely admit that I have a longstanding predisposition to distrust the standard American sources on the conflict in that part of Europe—and that my reading about and study of post-Communist Russia over the past twenty years inclines me to be more open to the Russian position in this crisis—at the same time I am very conscious that the first thing to suffer and disappear during war time is truth. And that both sides in this gruesome conflict employ propaganda and whatever media sources available to them.

Obviously, the Western media, that is, the major American news organs (Fox, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, etc.) and their equivalents in Europe are unanimously and zealously pro-Ukrainian. And there are some very important reasons for that, including the fact that nearly the entirety of that media reflects a globalist and neoconservative perspective on the conflict.

Indeed, there is a real symbiosis between the major American media and the political establishment, centered in Washington D.C. That virtual unity includes both the Democrats and the Republicans, who, if anything, are more war like than their supposed opponents. Indeed, a friend of mine commented that he thought it significant that on the war the positions of Fox News and CNN were almost identical; he said that because he believed that since all the major news sources were in agreement, then certainly what they presented was truthful.

But that has not been and is not how I evaluate the news coming out of Ukraine and Russia. Every assertion I write about I try to back up with a variety of sources; I attempt to verify the best I can. Some of the information I present is highly contentious or debatable; I offer it to counter what I consider to be the over-the-top, at times hysterical reporting that shows up on Fox or CNN. As another friend recently said to me concerning the claims of Russian “war crimes”: “Maybe at the end of this thing we’ll see who was right?”

I am certainly willing to continue to evaluate seriously what is reported, and I hope that at some point there will be a final accounting of what is fact, what is mere supposition, and what is indeed fake and propaganda.

Nevertheless, the more I read, each morning dozens of sources from all over the world, the more I seriously doubt the commonly-held mantra of the near-totality of our major news media.

And that, given the critical issues involved in this question, is why I continue to write about it and offer a contrary view to much of what can be seen on Fox News or spewed forth by a Brian Kilmeade. And why I attempt to do that as intelligently as I can.

Just recently I came across perhaps the clearest and most reasonable account of what has been going on in Ukraine. Its importance comes due to the fact that its author, Jacques Baud, a retired colonel in the Swiss intelligence service, was variously a highly placed, major participant in NATO training operations in Ukraine. Over the years, he also had extensive dealings with his Russian counterparts. His long essay first appeared (in French) at the respected Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement. A literal translation appeared at The Postil (April 1, 2022). I have gone back to the original French and edited the article down some and rendered it, I hope, in more idiomatic English. I do not think in editing it I have damaged Baud’s fascinating account. For in a real sense, what he has done is “to let the cat out of the bag.”

In the past I’ve read accounts and reports that either confirm or in some way match the narrative that he offers. Some of these that I’ve written about or cited are by: Dr. John Mearsheimer, Archbishop Carlo Vigano, Glenn Greenwald, Sohrab Ahmari, Colonel Douglas Macgregor, Mike Whitney, and others. But none of these writers has offered the first-hand, in depth, and comprehensive account as Colonel Baud, clearly and knowledgeably, has done.

It is still a bit lengthy, despite my editing. But I urge you to read and ponder Baud’s commentary. Along with the historical accounts of historian John Mearsheimer, it should be required reading for those zealous policy hawks, both in the GOP and the Democratic Party, who are pushing us into World War III:

The Military Situation In The Ukraine

https://cf2r.org/documentation/la-situation-militaire-en-ukraine/

March 2022 BY Jacques Baud

Part One: The Road To War

For years, from Mali to Afghanistan, I have worked for peace and risked my life for it. It is therefore not a question of justifying war, but of understanding what led us to it. [….]

Let’s try to examine the roots of the [Ukrainian] conflict. It starts with those who for the last eight years have been talking about “separatists” or “independentists” from Donbass. This is a misnomer. The referendums conducted by the two self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in May 2014, were not referendums of “independence” (независимость), as some unscrupulous journalists have claimed, but referendums of “self-determination” or “autonomy” (самостоятельность). The qualifier “pro-Russian” suggests that Russia was a party to the conflict, which was not the case, and the term “Russian speakers” would have been more honest. Moreover, these referendums were conducted against the advice of Vladimir Putin.

In fact, these Republics were not seeking to separate from Ukraine, but to have a status of autonomy, guaranteeing them the use of the Russian language as an official language–because the first legislative act of the new government resulting from the American-sponsored overthrow of [the democratically-elected] President Yanukovych, was the abolition, on February 23, 2014, of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law of 2012 that made Russian an official language in Ukraine. A bit like if German putschists decided that French and Italian would no longer be official languages in Switzerland.

This decision caused a storm in the Russian-speaking population. The result was fierce repression against the Russian-speaking regions (Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk) which was carried out beginning in February 2014 and led to a militarization of the situation and some horrific massacres of the Russian population (in Odessa and Mariupol, the most notable).

At this stage, too rigid and engrossed in a doctrinaire approach to operations, the Ukrainian general staff subdued the enemy but without managing to actually prevail. The war waged by the autonomists [consisted in].… highly mobile operations conducted with light means. With a more flexible and less doctrinaire approach, the rebels were able to exploit the inertia of Ukrainian forces to repeatedly “trap” them.

In 2014, when I was at NATO, I was responsible for the fight against the proliferation of small arms, and we were trying to detect Russian arms deliveries to the rebels, to see if Moscow was involved. The information we received then came almost entirely from Polish intelligence services and did not “fit” with the information coming from the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe]—and despite rather crude allegations, there were no deliveries of weapons and military equipment from Russia.

The rebels were armed thanks to the defection of Russian-speaking Ukrainian units that went over to the rebel side. As Ukrainian failures continued, tank, artillery and anti-aircraft battalions swelled the ranks of the autonomists. This is what pushed the Ukrainians to commit to the Minsk Agreements.

But just after signing the Minsk 1 Agreements, the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko launched a massive “anti-terrorist operation” (ATO/Антитерористична операція) against the Donbass. Poorly advised by NATO officers, the Ukrainians suffered a crushing defeat in Debaltsevo, which forced them to engage in the Minsk 2 Agreements.

It is essential to recall here that Minsk 1 (September 2014) and Minsk 2 (February 2015) Agreements did not provide for the separation or independence of the Republics, but their autonomy within the framework of Ukraine. Those who have read the Agreements (there are very few who actually have) will note that it is written that the status of the Republics was to be negotiated between Kiev and the representatives of the Republics, for an internal solution within Ukraine.

That is why since 2014, Russia has systematically demanded the implementation of the Minsk Agreements while refusing to be a party to the negotiations, because it was an internal matter of Ukraine. On the other side, the West—led by France—systematically tried to replace Minsk Agreements with the “Normandy format,” which put Russians and Ukrainians face-to-face. However, let us remember that there were never any Russian troops in the Donbass before 23-24 February 2022. Moreover, OSCE observers have never observed the slightest trace of Russian units operating in the Donbass before then. For example, the U.S. intelligence map published by the Washington Post on December 3, 2021 does not show Russian troops in the Donbass.

In October 2015, Vasyl Hrytsak, director of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), confessed that only 56 Russian fighters had been observed in the Donbass. This was exactly comparable to the Swiss who went to fight in Bosnia on weekends, in the 1990s, or the French who go to fight in Ukraine today.

The Ukrainian army was then in a deplorable state. In October 2018, after four years of war, the chief Ukrainian military prosecutor, Anatoly Matios, stated that Ukraine had lost 2,700 men in the Donbass: 891 from illnesses, 318 from road accidents, 177 from other accidents, 175 from poisonings (alcohol, drugs), 172 from careless handling of weapons, 101 from breaches of security regulations, 228 from murders and 615 from suicides.

In fact, the Ukrainian army was undermined by the corruption of its cadres and no longer enjoyed the support of the population. According to a British Home Office report, in the March/April 2014 recall of reservists, 70 percent did not show up for the first session, 80 percent for the second, 90 percent for the third, and 95 percent for the fourth. In October/November 2017, 70% of conscripts did not show up for the “Fall 2017” recall campaign. This is not counting suicides and desertions (often over to the autonomists), which reached up to 30 percent of the workforce in the ATO area. Young Ukrainians refused to go and fight in the Donbass and preferred emigration, which also explains, at least partially, the demographic deficit of the country.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense then turned to NATO to help make its armed forces more “attractive.” Having already worked on similar projects within the framework of the United Nations, I was asked by NATO to participate in a program to restore the image of the Ukrainian armed forces. But this is a long-term process and the Ukrainians wanted to move quickly.

So, to compensate for the lack of soldiers, the Ukrainian government resorted to paramilitary militias…. In 2020, they constituted about 40 percent of the Ukrainian forces and numbered about 102,000 men, according to Reuters. They were armed, financed and trained by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France. There were more than 19 nationalities.

These militias had been operating in the Donbass since 2014, with Western support. Even if one can argue about the term “Nazi,” the fact remains that these militias are violent, convey a nauseating ideology and are virulently anti-Semitic…[and] are composed of fanatical and brutal individuals. The best known of these is the Azov Regiment, whose emblem is reminiscent of the 2nd SS Das Reich Panzer Division, which is revered in the Ukraine for liberating Kharkov from the Soviets in 1943, before carrying out the 1944 Oradour-sur-Glane massacre in France. [….]

The characterization of the Ukrainian paramilitaries as “Nazis” or “neo-Nazis” is considered Russian propaganda. But that’s not the view of the Times of Israel, or the West Point Academy’s Center for Counterterrorism. In 2014, Newsweek magazine seemed to associate them more with… the Islamic State. Take your pick!

So, the West supported and continued to arm militias that have been guilty of numerous crimes against civilian populations since 2014: rape, torture and massacres….

The integration of these paramilitary forces into the Ukrainian National Guard was not at all accompanied by a “denazification,” as some claim.

Among the many examples, that of the Azov Regiment’s insignia is instructive:

In 2022, very schematically, the Ukrainian armed forces fighting the Russian offensive were organized as:

• The Army, subordinated to the Ministry of Defense. It is organized into 3 army corps and composed of maneuver formations (tanks, heavy artillery, missiles, etc.).
• The National Guard, which depends on the Ministry of the Interior and is organized into 5 territorial commands.

The National Guard is therefore a territorial defense force that is not part of the Ukrainian army. It includes paramilitary militias, called “volunteer battalions” (добровольчі батальйоні), also known by the evocative name of “reprisal battalions,” and composed of infantry. Primarily trained for urban combat, they now defend cities such as Kharkov, Mariupol, Odessa, Kiev, etc.

Part Two: The War

As a former head of analysis of Warsaw Pact forces in the Swiss strategic intelligence service, I observe with sadness—but not astonishment—that our services are no longer able to understand the military situation in Ukraine. The self-proclaimed “experts” who parade on our TV screens tirelessly relay the same information modulated by the claim that Russia—and Vladimir Putin—is irrational. Let’s take a step back.

1. The Outbreak Of War

Since November 2021, the Americans have been constantly threatening a Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, the Ukrainians at first did not seem to agree. Why not?

We have to go back to March 24, 2021. On that day, Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree for the recapture of the Crimea, and began to deploy his forces to the south of the country. At the same time, several NATO exercises were conducted between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, accompanied by a significant increase in reconnaissance flights along the Russian border. Russia then conducted several exercises to test the operational readiness of its troops and to show that it was following the evolution of the situation.

Things calmed down until October-November with the end of the ZAPAD 21 exercises, whose troop movements were interpreted as a reinforcement for an offensive against Ukraine. However, even the Ukrainian authorities refuted the idea of Russian preparations for a war, and Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukrainian Minister of Defense, states that there had been no change on its border since the spring.

In violation of the Minsk Agreements, Ukraine was conducting air operations in Donbass using drones, including at least one strike against a fuel depot in Donetsk in October 2021. The American press noted this, but not the Europeans; and no one condemned these violations.

In February 2022, events came to a head. On February 7, during his visit to Moscow, Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed to Vladimir Putin his commitment to the Minsk Agreements, a commitment he would repeat after his meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky the next day. But on February 11, in Berlin, after nine hours of work, the meeting of political advisors to the leaders of the “Normandy format” ended without any concrete result: the Ukrainians still refused to apply the Minsk Agreements, apparently under pressure from the United States. Vladimir Putin noted that Macron had made empty promises and that the West was not ready to enforce the agreements, the same opposition to a settlement it had exhibited for eight years.

Ukrainian preparations in the contact zone continued. The Russian Parliament became alarmed; and on February 15 it asked Vladimir Putin to recognize the independence of the Republics, which he initially refused to do.

On 17 February, President Joe Biden announced that Russia would attack Ukraine in the next few days. How did he know this? It is a mystery. But since the 16th, the artillery shelling of the population of Donbass had increased dramatically, as the daily reports of the OSCE observers show. Naturally, neither the media, nor the European Union, nor NATO, nor any Western government reacted or intervened. It would be said later that this was Russian disinformation. In fact, it seems that the European Union and some countries have deliberately kept silent about the massacre of the Donbass population, knowing that this would provoke a Russian intervention.

At the same time, there were reports of sabotage in the Donbass. On 18 January, Donbass fighters intercepted saboteurs, who spoke Polish and were equipped with Western equipment and who were seeking to create chemical incidents in Gorlivka. They could have been CIA mercenaries, led or “advised” by Americans and composed of Ukrainian or European fighters, to carry out sabotage actions in the Donbass Republics.

In fact, as early as February 16, Joe Biden knew that the Ukrainians had begun intense shelling the civilian population of Donbass, forcing Vladimir Putin to make a difficult choice: to help Donbass militarily and create an international problem, or to stand by and watch the Russian-speaking people of Donbass being crushed.

If he decided to intervene, Putin could invoke the international obligation of “Responsibility To Protect” (R2P). But he knew that whatever its nature or scale, the intervention would trigger a storm of sanctions. Therefore, whether Russian intervention were limited to the Donbass or went further to put pressure on the West over the status of the Ukraine, the price to pay would be the same. This is what he explained in his speech on February 21. On that day, he agreed to the request of the Duma and recognized the independence of the two Donbass Republics and, at the same time, he signed friendship and assistance treaties with them.

The Ukrainian artillery bombardment of the Donbass population continued, and, on 23 February, the two Republics asked for military assistance from Russia. On 24 February, Vladimir Putin invoked Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which provides for mutual military assistance in the framework of a defensive alliance.

Subscribe to New Columns

In order to make the Russian intervention seem totally illegal in the eyes of the public, Western powers deliberately hid the fact that the war actually started on February 16. The Ukrainian army was preparing to attack the Donbass as early as 2021, as some Russian and European intelligence services were well aware.

In his speech of February 24, Vladimir Putin stated the two objectives of his operation: “demilitarize” and “denazify” the Ukraine. So, it was not a question of taking over Ukraine, nor even, presumably, of occupying it; and certainly not of destroying it.

From then on, our knowledge of the course of the operation is limited: the Russians have excellent security for their operations (OPSEC) and the details of their planning are not known. But fairly quickly, the course of the operation allows us to understand how the strategic objectives were translated on the operational level.

Demilitarization:

• ground destruction of Ukrainian aviation, air defense systems and reconnaissance assets;
• neutralization of command and intelligence structures (C3I), as well as the main logistical routes in the depth of the territory;
• encirclement of the bulk of the Ukrainian army massed in the southeast of the country.

Denazification:

• destruction or neutralization of volunteer battalions operating in the cities of Odessa, Kharkov, and Mariupol, as well as in various facilities in the territory.

2. Demilitarization

The Russian offensive was carried out in a very “classic” manner. Initially—as the Israelis had done in 1967—with the destruction on the ground of the air force in the very first hours. Then, we witnessed a simultaneous progression along several axes according to the principle of “flowing water”: advance everywhere where resistance was weak and leave the cities (very demanding in terms of troops) for later. In the north, the Chernobyl power plant was occupied immediately to prevent acts of sabotage. The images of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers guarding the plant together are of course not shown.

The idea that Russia is trying to take over Kiev, the capital, to eliminate Zelensky, comes typically from the West…. But Vladimir Putin never intended to shoot or topple Zelensky. Instead, Russia seeks to keep him in power by pushing him to negotiate, by surrounding Kiev. The Russians want to obtain the neutrality of Ukraine.

Many Western commentators were surprised that the Russians continued to seek a negotiated solution while conducting military operations. The explanation lies in the Russian strategic outlook since the Soviet era. For the West, war begins when politics ends. However, the Russian approach follows a Clausewitzian inspiration: war is the continuity of politics and one can move fluidly from one to the other, even during combat. This allows one to create pressure on the adversary and push him to negotiate.

From an operational point of view, the Russian offensive was an example of previous military action and planning: in six days, the Russians seized a territory as large as the United Kingdom, with a speed of advance greater than what the Wehrmacht had achieved in 1940.

The bulk of the Ukrainian army was deployed in the south of the country in preparation for a major operation against the Donbass. This is why Russian forces were able to encircle it from the beginning of March in the “cauldron” between Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk, with a thrust from the East through Kharkov and another from the South from Crimea. Troops from the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) Republics are complementing the Russian forces with a push from the East.

At this stage, Russian forces are slowly tightening the noose, but are no longer under any time pressure or schedule. Their demilitarization goal is all but achieved and the remaining Ukrainian forces no longer have an operational and strategic command structure.

The “slowdown” that our “experts” attribute to poor logistics is only the consequence of having achieved their objectives. Russia does not want to engage in an occupation of the entire Ukrainian territory. In fact, it appears that Russia is trying to limit its advance to the linguistic border of the country.

Our media speak of indiscriminate bombardments against the civilian population, especially in Kharkov, and horrific images are widely broadcast. However, Gonzalo Lira, a Latin American correspondent who lives there, presents us with a calm city on March 10 and March 11. It is true that it is a large city and we do not see everything—but this seems to indicate that we are not in the total war that we are served continuously on our TV screens. As for the Donbass Republics, they have “liberated” their own territories and are fighting in the city of Mariupol.

3. Denazification

In cities like Kharkov, Mariupol and Odessa, the Ukrainian defense is provided by the paramilitary militias. They know that the objective of “denazification” is aimed primarily at them. For an attacker in an urbanized area, civilians are a problem. This is why Russia is seeking to create humanitarian corridors to empty cities of civilians and leave only the militias, to fight them more easily.

Conversely, these militias seek to keep civilians in the cities from evacuating in order to dissuade the Russian army from fighting there. This is why they are reluctant to implement these corridors and do everything to ensure that Russian efforts are unsuccessful—they use the civilian population as “human shields.” Videos showing civilians trying to leave Mariupol and beaten up by fighters of the Azov regiment are of course carefully censored by the Western media.

On Facebook, the Azov group was considered in the same category as the Islamic State [ISIS] and subject to the platform’s “policy on dangerous individuals and organizations.” It was therefore forbidden to glorify its activities, and “posts” that were favorable to it were systematically banned. But on February 24, Facebook changed its policy and allowed posts favorable to the militia. In the same spirit, in March, the platform authorized, in the former Eastern countries, calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders. So much for the values that inspire our leaders.

Our media propagate a romantic image of popular resistance by the Ukrainian people. It is this image that led the European Union to finance the distribution of arms to the civilian population. In my capacity as head of peacekeeping at the UN, I worked on the issue of civilian protection. We found that violence against civilians occurred in very specific contexts. In particular, when weapons are abundant and there are no command structures.

These command structures are the essence of armies: their function is to channel the use of force towards an objective. By arming citizens in a haphazard manner, as is currently the case, the EU is turning them into combatants, with the consequential effect of making them potential targets. Moreover, without command, without operational goals, the distribution of arms leads inevitably to settling of scores, banditry and actions that are more deadly than effective. War becomes a matter of emotions. Force becomes violence. This is what happened in Tawarga (Libya) from 11 to 13 August 2011, where 30,000 black Africans were massacred with weapons parachuted (illegally) by France. By the way, the British Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (RUSI) does not see any added value in these arms deliveries.

Moreover, by delivering arms to a country at war, one exposes oneself to being considered a belligerent. The Russian strikes of March 13, 2022, against the Mykolayev air base follow Russian warnings that arms shipments would be treated as hostile targets.

The EU is repeating the disastrous experience of the Third Reich in the final hours of the Battle of Berlin. War must be left to the military and when one side has lost, it must be admitted. And if there is to be resistance, it must be led and structured. But we are doing exactly the opposite—we are pushing citizens to go and fight, and at the same time, Facebook authorizes calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders. So much for the values that inspire us.

Some intelligence services see this irresponsible decision as a way to use the Ukrainian population as cannon fodder to fight Vladimir Putin’s Russia…. It would have been better to engage in negotiations and thus obtain guarantees for the civilian population than to add fuel to the fire. It is easy to be combative with the blood of others.

4. The Maternity Hospital At Mariupol

It is important to understand beforehand that it is not the Ukrainian army that is defending Mariupol, but the Azov militia, composed of foreign mercenaries.

In its March 7, 2022 summary of the situation, the Russian UN mission in New York stated that “Residents report that Ukrainian armed forces expelled staff from the Mariupol city birth hospital No. 1 and set up a firing post inside the facility.” On March 8, the independent Russian media Lenta.ru, published the testimony of civilians from Mariupol who told that the maternity hospital was taken over by the militia of the Azov regiment, and who drove out the civilian occupants by threatening them with their weapons. They confirmed the statements of the Russian ambassador a few hours earlier.

The hospital in Mariupol occupies a dominant position, perfectly suited for the installation of anti-tank weapons and for observation. On 9 March, Russian forces struck the building. According to CNN, 17 people were wounded, but the images do not show any casualties in the building and there is no evidence that the victims mentioned are related to this strike. There is talk of children, but in reality, there is nothing. This does not prevent the leaders of the EU from seeing this as a war crime. And this allows Zelensky to call for a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

In reality, we do not know exactly what happened. But the sequence of events tends to confirm that Russian forces struck a position of the Azov regiment and that the maternity ward was then free of civilians.

The problem is that the paramilitary militias that defend the cities are encouraged by the international community not to respect the rules of war. It seems that the Ukrainians have replayed the scenario of the Kuwait City maternity hospital in 1990, which was totally staged by the firm Hill & Knowlton for $10.7 million in order to convince the United Nations Security Council to intervene in Iraq for Operation Desert Shield/Storm.

Western politicians have accepted civilian strikes in the Donbass for eight years without adopting any sanctions against the Ukrainian government. We have long since entered a dynamic where Western politicians have agreed to sacrifice international law towards their goal of weakening Russia.

Part Three: Conclusions

As an ex-intelligence professional, the first thing that strikes me is the total absence of Western intelligence services in accurately representing the situation over the past year…. In fact, it seems that throughout the Western world intelligence services have been overwhelmed by the politicians. The problem is that it is the politicians who decide—the best intelligence service in the world is useless if the decision-maker does not listen. This is what has happened during this crisis.

That said, while a few intelligence services had a very accurate and rational picture of the situation, others clearly had the same picture as that propagated by our media… The problem is that, from experience, I have found them to be extremely bad at the analytical level—doctrinaire, they lack the intellectual and political independence necessary to assess a situation with military “quality.”

Second, it seems that in some European countries, politicians have deliberately responded ideologically to the situation. That is why this crisis has been irrational from the beginning. It should be noted that all the documents that were presented to the public during this crisis were presented by politicians based on commercial sources.

Some Western politicians obviously wanted there to be a conflict. In the United States, the attack scenarios presented by Anthony Blinken to the UN Security Council were only the product of the imagination of a Tiger Team working for him—he did exactly as Donald Rumsfeld did in 2002, who “bypassed” the CIA and other intelligence services that were much less assertive about Iraqi chemical weapons.

The dramatic developments we are witnessing today have causes that we knew about but refused to see:

• on the strategic level, the expansion of NATO (which we have not dealt with here);
• on the political level, the Western refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements;
• and operationally, the continuous and repeated attacks on the civilian population of the Donbass over the past years and the dramatic increase in late February 2022.

In other words, we can naturally deplore and condemn the Russian attack. But WE (that is: the United States, France and the European Union in the lead) have created the conditions for a conflict to break out. We show compassion for the Ukrainian people and the two million refugees. That is fine. But if we had had a modicum of compassion for the same number of refugees from the Ukrainian populations of Donbass massacred by their own government and who sought refuge in Russia for eight years, none of this would probably have happened.

[….]

Whether the term “genocide” applies to the abuses suffered by the people of Donbass is an open question. The term is generally reserved for cases of greater magnitude (Holocaust, etc.). But the definition given by the Genocide Convention is probably broad enough to apply to this case.

Clearly, this conflict has led us into hysteria. Sanctions seem to have become the preferred tool of our foreign policies. If we had insisted that Ukraine abide by the Minsk Agreements, which we had negotiated and endorsed, none of this would have happened. Vladimir Putin’s condemnation is also ours. There is no point in whining afterwards—we should have acted earlier. However, neither Emmanuel Macron (as guarantor and member of the UN Security Council), nor Olaf Scholz, nor Volodymyr Zelensky have respected their commitments. In the end, the real defeat is that of those who have no voice.

The European Union was unable to promote the implementation of the Minsk agreements—on the contrary, it did not react when Ukraine was bombing its own population in the Donbass. Had it done so, Vladimir Putin would not have needed to react. Absent from the diplomatic phase, the EU distinguished itself by fueling the conflict. On February 27, the Ukrainian government agreed to enter into negotiations with Russia. But a few hours later, the European Union voted a budget of 450 million euros to supply arms to the Ukraine, adding fuel to the fire. From then on, the Ukrainians felt that they did not need to reach an agreement. The resistance of the Azov militia in Mariupol even led to a boost of 500 million euros for weapons.

In Ukraine, with the blessing of the Western countries, those who are in favor of a negotiation have been eliminated. This is the case of Denis Kireyev, one of the Ukrainian negotiators, assassinated on March 5 by the Ukrainian secret service (SBU) because he was too favorable to Russia and was considered a traitor. The same fate befell Dmitry Demyanenko, former deputy head of the SBU’s main directorate for Kiev and its region, who was assassinated on March 10 because he was too favorable to an agreement with Russia—he was shot by the Mirotvorets (“Peacemaker”) militia. This militia is associated with the Mirotvorets website, which lists the “enemies of Ukraine,” with their personal data, addresses and telephone numbers, so that they can be harassed or even eliminated; a practice that is punishable in many countries, but not in the Ukraine. The UN and some European countries have demanded the closure of this site—but that demand was refused by the Rada [Ukrainian parliament].

In the end, the price will be high, but Vladimir Putin will likely achieve the goals he set for himself. We have pushed him into the arms of China. His ties with Beijing have solidified. China is emerging as a mediator in the conflict…. The Americans have to ask Venezuela and Iran for oil to get out of the energy impasse they have put themselves in—and the United States has to piteously backtrack on the sanctions imposed on its enemies.

Western ministers who seek to collapse the Russian economy and make the Russian people suffer, or even call for the assassination of Putin, show (even if they have partially reversed the form of their words, but not the substance!) that our leaders are no better than those we hate—sanctioning Russian athletes in the Para-Olympic Games or Russian artists has nothing to do with fighting Putin. [….]

What makes the conflict in Ukraine more blameworthy than our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya? What sanctions have we adopted against those who deliberately lied to the international community in order to wage unjust, unjustified and murderous wars?….Have we adopted a single sanction against the countries, companies or politicians who are supplying weapons to the conflict in Yemen, considered to be the “worst humanitarian disaster in the world?”

To ask the question is to answer it… and the answer is not pretty.

Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight, at NATO, against the proliferation of small arms. He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les fake news , L’affaire Navalny . His latest book is Poutine, maître du jeu? published by Max Milo.

This article appears through the gracious courtesy of Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement, Paris.