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Let me help you...Vladimir Putin.
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Putin and Western interference/weaponry have been keeping it going. Innocent Ukrainians have sadly been caught in the middle and are being slaughtered.
I'm leaving it at that because this has become another circular argument. We're never going to see eye to eye on who all is responsible or "at what cost" peace should come.
I'm leaving it at that because this has become another circular argument. We're never going to see eye to eye on who all is responsible or "at what cost" peace should come.
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Or, rather, an ovular argument.
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Has anybody seen Zelenskyy's exchange with Trump in The White House??
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I saw snippets of it. It was certainly one of the tensest exchanges I've seen between a US President and the President of another country. Even JD Vance got involved.
It's clear why Zelensky preferred the Biden Administration, as they showered him with adulation and military equipment in exchange for fighting their proxy war with Russia.
Trump & Zelensky's SHOCKING SMACKDOWN: Glenn Reacts - YouTube
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There is no proxy war, supporting Ukraine is upholding an agreement made with that country and its also about protecting the territory of other European countries in the future.
As a result of the 1994 Budapest Agreement, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the United States, the UK and other NATO countries. These assurances included pledges to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Russia's invasion of Ukraine meant they broke that agreement and NATO countries had a responsibility to support Ukraine as a result.
When Russia seized Crimea, Obama's decision to do nothing emboldened Russia to attempt to take over the entire country. If NATO does nothing now, Putin's next move will be to invade Moldova, Estonia or Poland. Trump's decision to align with Putin and to stage manage that verbal assault on Zalenskyy was not only shameful but also shows the USA can't be trusted to keep agreements. This will eventually come back to bite the USA on the bum.
As a result of the 1994 Budapest Agreement, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the United States, the UK and other NATO countries. These assurances included pledges to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Russia's invasion of Ukraine meant they broke that agreement and NATO countries had a responsibility to support Ukraine as a result.
When Russia seized Crimea, Obama's decision to do nothing emboldened Russia to attempt to take over the entire country. If NATO does nothing now, Putin's next move will be to invade Moldova, Estonia or Poland. Trump's decision to align with Putin and to stage manage that verbal assault on Zalenskyy was not only shameful but also shows the USA can't be trusted to keep agreements. This will eventually come back to bite the USA on the bum.
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So the official version is all true... Phewwww -- what a relief!
Something Zelenskyy knows something about.
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The USA proved it can't be trusted to keep agreements when it broke its promise to not expand NATO.
Also, quite a bit happened leading up to Russia seizing Crimea and the subsequent invasion of Ukraine. Not surprisingly, the US's fingerprints are all over it.
Putin is a ruthless war monger, regardless of US provocation. However, members of the Biden Administration (particularly Victoria Nuland) and large swaths of Congress wanted this war to weaken Russia. Politicians and mainstream media pundits alike have also said the war is "great" because US defense contractors are profiting off of it.
Jeffrey Sachs wrote an article in 2023 that details Western provocation and duplicity. He also said the war will be won by negotiations rather than US weaponry.
He's right, of course, so why did the Biden Administration disregard that? Could it be that they wanted a proxy war with Russia all along?
By recognizing that the question of NATO enlargement is at the center of this war, we understand why U.S. weaponry will not end this war. Only diplomatic efforts can do that.
May 23, 2023
George Orwell wrote in 1984 that "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." Governments work relentlessly to distort public perceptions of the past. Regarding the Ukraine War, the Biden administration has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the Ukraine War started with an unprovoked attack by Russia on Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In fact, the war was provoked by the U.S. in ways that leading U.S. diplomats anticipated for decades in the lead-up to the war, meaning that the war could have been avoided and should now be stopped through negotiations.
Recognizing that the war was provoked helps us to understand how to stop it. It doesn’t justify Russia’s invasion. A far better approach for Russia might have been to step up diplomacy with Europe and with the non-Western world to explain and oppose U.S. militarism and unilateralism. In fact, the relentless U.S. push to expand NATO is widely opposed throughout the world, so Russian diplomacy rather than war would likely have been effective.
The Biden team uses the word “unprovoked” incessantly, most recently in Biden’s major speech on the first-year anniversary of the war, in a recent NATO statement, and in the most recent G7 statement. Mainstream media friendly to Biden simply parrot the White House. The New York Times is the lead culprit, describing the invasion as “unprovoked” no fewer than 26 times, in five editorials, 14 opinion columns by NYT writers, and seven guest op-eds!
There were in fact two main U.S. provocations. The first was the U.S. intention to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia in order to surround Russia in the Black Sea region by NATO countries (Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia, in counterclockwise order). The second was the U.S. role in installing a Russophobic regime in Ukraine by the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014. The shooting war in Ukraine began with Yanukovych’s overthrow nine years ago, not in February 2022 as the U.S. government, NATO, and the G7 leaders would have us believe.
The key to peace in Ukraine is through negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality and NATO non-enlargement.
Biden and his foreign policy team refuse to discuss these roots of the war. To recognize them would undermine the administration in three ways. First, it would expose the fact that the war could have been avoided, or stopped early, sparing Ukraine its current devastation and the U.S. more than $100 billion in outlays to date. Second, it would expose President Biden’s personal role in the war as a participant in the overthrow of Yanukovych, and before that as a staunch backer of the military-industrial complex and very early advocate of NATO enlargement. Third, it would push Biden to the negotiating table, undermining the administration’s continued push for NATO expansion.
The archives show irrefutably that the U.S. and German governments repeatedly promised to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move “one inch eastward” when the Soviet Union disbanded the Warsaw Pact military alliance. Nonetheless, U.S. planning for NATO expansion began early in the 1990s, well before Vladimir Putin was Russia’s president. In 1997, national security expert Zbigniew Brzezinski spelled out the NATO expansion timeline with remarkable precision.
U.S. diplomats and Ukraine’s own leaders knew well that NATO enlargement could lead to war. The great US scholar-statesman George Kennan called NATO enlargement a “fateful error,” writing in the New York Times that, “Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”
President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense William Perry considered resigning in protest against NATO enlargement. In reminiscing about this crucial moment in the mid-1990s, Perry said the following in 2016: “Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when NATO started to expand, bringing in eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia. At that time, we were working closely with Russia and they were beginning to get used to the idea that NATO could be a friend rather than an enemy ... but they were very uncomfortable about having NATO right up on their border and they made a strong appeal for us not to go ahead with that.”
In 2008, then U.S. Ambassador to Russia, and now CIA Director, William Burns, sent a cable to Washington warning at length of grave risks of NATO enlargement: “Ukraine and Georgia's NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia's influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.”
Ukraine’s leaders knew clearly that pressing for NATO enlargement to Ukraine would mean war. Former Zelensky advisor Oleksiy Arestovych declared in a 2019 interview “that our price for joining NATO is a big war with Russia.”
During 2010-2013, Yanukovych pushed neutrality, in line with Ukrainian public opinion. The U.S. worked covertly to overthrow Yanukovych, as captured vividly in the tape of then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt planning the post-Yanukovych government weeks before the violent overthrow of Yanukovych. Nuland makes clear on the call that she was coordinating closely with then Vice President Biden and his national security advisor Jake Sullivan, the same Biden-Nuland-Sullivan team now at the center of U.S. policy vis-à-vis Ukraine.
After Yanukovych’s overthrow, the war broke out in the Donbas, while Russia claimed Crimea. The new Ukrainian government appealed for NATO membership, and the U.S. armed and helped restructure the Ukrainian army to make it interoperable with NATO. In 2021, NATO and the Biden Administration strongly recommitted to Ukraine’s future in NATO.
In the immediate lead-up to Russia’s invasion, NATO enlargement was center stage. Putin’s draft US-Russia Treaty (December 17, 2021) called for a halt to NATO enlargement. Russia’s leaders put NATO enlargement as the cause of war in Russia’s National Security Council meeting on February 21, 2022. In his address to the nation that day, Putin declared NATO enlargement to be a central reason for the invasion.
Historian Geoffrey Roberts recently wrote: “Could war have been prevented by a Russian-Western deal that halted NATO expansion and neutralised Ukraine in return for solid guarantees of Ukrainian independence and sovereignty? Quite possibly.” In March 2022, Russia and Ukraine reported progress towards a quick negotiated end to the war based on Ukraine’s neutrality. According to Naftali Bennett, former Prime Minister of Israel, who was a mediator, an agreement was close to being reached before the U.S., U.K., and France blocked it.
While the Biden administration declares Russia’s invasion to be unprovoked, Russia pursued diplomatic options in 2021 to avoid war, while Biden rejected diplomacy, insisting that Russia had no say whatsoever on the question of NATO enlargement. And Russia pushed diplomacy in March 2022, while the Biden team again blocked a diplomatic end to the war.
By recognizing that the question of NATO enlargement is at the center of this war, we understand why U.S. weaponry will not end this war. Russia will escalate as necessary to prevent NATO enlargement to Ukraine. The key to peace in Ukraine is through negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality and NATO non-enlargement. The Biden administration’s insistence on NATO enlargement to Ukraine has made Ukraine a victim of misconceived and unachievable U.S. military aspirations. It’s time for the provocations to stop, and for negotiations to restore peace to Ukraine.
Source: The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace — Jeffrey D. Sachs
Also, quite a bit happened leading up to Russia seizing Crimea and the subsequent invasion of Ukraine. Not surprisingly, the US's fingerprints are all over it.
Putin is a ruthless war monger, regardless of US provocation. However, members of the Biden Administration (particularly Victoria Nuland) and large swaths of Congress wanted this war to weaken Russia. Politicians and mainstream media pundits alike have also said the war is "great" because US defense contractors are profiting off of it.
Jeffrey Sachs wrote an article in 2023 that details Western provocation and duplicity. He also said the war will be won by negotiations rather than US weaponry.
He's right, of course, so why did the Biden Administration disregard that? Could it be that they wanted a proxy war with Russia all along?
The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace
By recognizing that the question of NATO enlargement is at the center of this war, we understand why U.S. weaponry will not end this war. Only diplomatic efforts can do that.
May 23, 2023
George Orwell wrote in 1984 that "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." Governments work relentlessly to distort public perceptions of the past. Regarding the Ukraine War, the Biden administration has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the Ukraine War started with an unprovoked attack by Russia on Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In fact, the war was provoked by the U.S. in ways that leading U.S. diplomats anticipated for decades in the lead-up to the war, meaning that the war could have been avoided and should now be stopped through negotiations.
Recognizing that the war was provoked helps us to understand how to stop it. It doesn’t justify Russia’s invasion. A far better approach for Russia might have been to step up diplomacy with Europe and with the non-Western world to explain and oppose U.S. militarism and unilateralism. In fact, the relentless U.S. push to expand NATO is widely opposed throughout the world, so Russian diplomacy rather than war would likely have been effective.
The Biden team uses the word “unprovoked” incessantly, most recently in Biden’s major speech on the first-year anniversary of the war, in a recent NATO statement, and in the most recent G7 statement. Mainstream media friendly to Biden simply parrot the White House. The New York Times is the lead culprit, describing the invasion as “unprovoked” no fewer than 26 times, in five editorials, 14 opinion columns by NYT writers, and seven guest op-eds!
There were in fact two main U.S. provocations. The first was the U.S. intention to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia in order to surround Russia in the Black Sea region by NATO countries (Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia, in counterclockwise order). The second was the U.S. role in installing a Russophobic regime in Ukraine by the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014. The shooting war in Ukraine began with Yanukovych’s overthrow nine years ago, not in February 2022 as the U.S. government, NATO, and the G7 leaders would have us believe.
The key to peace in Ukraine is through negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality and NATO non-enlargement.
Biden and his foreign policy team refuse to discuss these roots of the war. To recognize them would undermine the administration in three ways. First, it would expose the fact that the war could have been avoided, or stopped early, sparing Ukraine its current devastation and the U.S. more than $100 billion in outlays to date. Second, it would expose President Biden’s personal role in the war as a participant in the overthrow of Yanukovych, and before that as a staunch backer of the military-industrial complex and very early advocate of NATO enlargement. Third, it would push Biden to the negotiating table, undermining the administration’s continued push for NATO expansion.
The archives show irrefutably that the U.S. and German governments repeatedly promised to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move “one inch eastward” when the Soviet Union disbanded the Warsaw Pact military alliance. Nonetheless, U.S. planning for NATO expansion began early in the 1990s, well before Vladimir Putin was Russia’s president. In 1997, national security expert Zbigniew Brzezinski spelled out the NATO expansion timeline with remarkable precision.
U.S. diplomats and Ukraine’s own leaders knew well that NATO enlargement could lead to war. The great US scholar-statesman George Kennan called NATO enlargement a “fateful error,” writing in the New York Times that, “Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”
President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense William Perry considered resigning in protest against NATO enlargement. In reminiscing about this crucial moment in the mid-1990s, Perry said the following in 2016: “Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when NATO started to expand, bringing in eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia. At that time, we were working closely with Russia and they were beginning to get used to the idea that NATO could be a friend rather than an enemy ... but they were very uncomfortable about having NATO right up on their border and they made a strong appeal for us not to go ahead with that.”
In 2008, then U.S. Ambassador to Russia, and now CIA Director, William Burns, sent a cable to Washington warning at length of grave risks of NATO enlargement: “Ukraine and Georgia's NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia's influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.”
Ukraine’s leaders knew clearly that pressing for NATO enlargement to Ukraine would mean war. Former Zelensky advisor Oleksiy Arestovych declared in a 2019 interview “that our price for joining NATO is a big war with Russia.”
During 2010-2013, Yanukovych pushed neutrality, in line with Ukrainian public opinion. The U.S. worked covertly to overthrow Yanukovych, as captured vividly in the tape of then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt planning the post-Yanukovych government weeks before the violent overthrow of Yanukovych. Nuland makes clear on the call that she was coordinating closely with then Vice President Biden and his national security advisor Jake Sullivan, the same Biden-Nuland-Sullivan team now at the center of U.S. policy vis-à-vis Ukraine.
After Yanukovych’s overthrow, the war broke out in the Donbas, while Russia claimed Crimea. The new Ukrainian government appealed for NATO membership, and the U.S. armed and helped restructure the Ukrainian army to make it interoperable with NATO. In 2021, NATO and the Biden Administration strongly recommitted to Ukraine’s future in NATO.
In the immediate lead-up to Russia’s invasion, NATO enlargement was center stage. Putin’s draft US-Russia Treaty (December 17, 2021) called for a halt to NATO enlargement. Russia’s leaders put NATO enlargement as the cause of war in Russia’s National Security Council meeting on February 21, 2022. In his address to the nation that day, Putin declared NATO enlargement to be a central reason for the invasion.
Historian Geoffrey Roberts recently wrote: “Could war have been prevented by a Russian-Western deal that halted NATO expansion and neutralised Ukraine in return for solid guarantees of Ukrainian independence and sovereignty? Quite possibly.” In March 2022, Russia and Ukraine reported progress towards a quick negotiated end to the war based on Ukraine’s neutrality. According to Naftali Bennett, former Prime Minister of Israel, who was a mediator, an agreement was close to being reached before the U.S., U.K., and France blocked it.
While the Biden administration declares Russia’s invasion to be unprovoked, Russia pursued diplomatic options in 2021 to avoid war, while Biden rejected diplomacy, insisting that Russia had no say whatsoever on the question of NATO enlargement. And Russia pushed diplomacy in March 2022, while the Biden team again blocked a diplomatic end to the war.
By recognizing that the question of NATO enlargement is at the center of this war, we understand why U.S. weaponry will not end this war. Russia will escalate as necessary to prevent NATO enlargement to Ukraine. The key to peace in Ukraine is through negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality and NATO non-enlargement. The Biden administration’s insistence on NATO enlargement to Ukraine has made Ukraine a victim of misconceived and unachievable U.S. military aspirations. It’s time for the provocations to stop, and for negotiations to restore peace to Ukraine.
Source: The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace — Jeffrey D. Sachs
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There was no promise, there was no agreement. There is no documentation, Press release or official communique to support the view that NATO wouldn't be expanded. You are just repeating Putin propaganda to justify the Russian invasion.
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I don't think anybody here is justifying Russia's invasion -- just that the truth is often more complicated and that Putin isn't the only liar.
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It would be nice if you were capable of debating in good faith. It's actually not "Putin propaganda," and I've posted the following excerpt several times to support that:
"Putin's central demand is that NATO remove troops from countries that joined the group of U.S.-allied nations after 1997. In 1990, under George H.W. Bush, Secretary of State James Baker repeatedly promised Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders that if the USSR let the Warsaw Pact nations leave, NATO would not 'move one inch eastward.' As is detailed in declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents released in 2017, Bush and the leaders of West Germany, the U.K. and France gave similar assurances.
When the German magazine Der Spiegel examined these documents and interviewed those involved, its reporters concluded that "there was no doubt that the West did everything it could to give the Soviets the impression that NATO membership was out of the question for countries like Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia."
Today, those three former Warsaw Pact countries and two others, in addition to the three former Baltic Soviet republics and several formerly neutral countries, are members of NATO.
Putin and other Russian leaders have complained bitterly about this Western duplicity, complaints echoed by Gorbachev. Numerous others have made similar criticisms, including former CIA Director Robert Gates, Cold War diplomat and historian George Kennan, and Jack Matlock, the last U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union.
In 1995, 18 retired U.S. foreign service and State and Defense Department officers signed a letter denouncing these NATO recruitments, saying they would convince Russians that the U.S. was seeking to 'isolate, encircle, and subordinate them.' It is this NATO penetration into Russia's sphere that is the root cause of the current conflict." - Source: Yes, Putin's a tyrant — that doesn't mean his Ukraine demands are unreasonable | Salon.com
Also, I've said that nothing justifies Putin's invasion of Ukraine. However, that doesn't mean the US was justified in provoking the war either. I also called Putin a madman and a war monger several times in this very thread. You can disagree with me all you want, but it would be nice if you had the decency to not misrepresent what I say or to pretend that I don't substantiate my claims. Accusing me of "Putin propaganda" and "justifying the Russian invasion" is disingenuous trash considering what I've actually posted here.
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American political scientist John Mearsheimer was asked if Putin would feel emboldened to invade other countries in Eastern Europe. This was his response:
"Well, I think with regard to your first question, Putin has no interest in conquering all of Ukraine, much less conquering countries in Eastern Europe.
He has never said he had any interest in conquering all of Ukraine, much less recreating the Soviet Union or anything like that. Furthermore, he simply doesn't have the capability to do that. You can see how much trouble he has had just conquering the Eastern one-fifth of Ukraine.
The idea that this is the Wehrmacht and it's highly poised to overrun Europe is not a serious argument. He wants a big chunk of territory in Eastern Europe, and he is in all likelihood going to get that, in large part because he's winning on the battlefield.
One of the reasons that Trump is now cutting our losses is that Trump and his lieutenants understand that we have lost on the battlefield. Or, to put it in slightly different terms, the Ukrainians have lost. We have no leverage anymore. Trump is facing up to reality. So I don't think there's any danger of Vladimir Putin finishing off Eastern Ukraine and then moving into Western Ukraine and then moving into Eastern Europe."
"Well, I think with regard to your first question, Putin has no interest in conquering all of Ukraine, much less conquering countries in Eastern Europe.
He has never said he had any interest in conquering all of Ukraine, much less recreating the Soviet Union or anything like that. Furthermore, he simply doesn't have the capability to do that. You can see how much trouble he has had just conquering the Eastern one-fifth of Ukraine.
The idea that this is the Wehrmacht and it's highly poised to overrun Europe is not a serious argument. He wants a big chunk of territory in Eastern Europe, and he is in all likelihood going to get that, in large part because he's winning on the battlefield.
One of the reasons that Trump is now cutting our losses is that Trump and his lieutenants understand that we have lost on the battlefield. Or, to put it in slightly different terms, the Ukrainians have lost. We have no leverage anymore. Trump is facing up to reality. So I don't think there's any danger of Vladimir Putin finishing off Eastern Ukraine and then moving into Western Ukraine and then moving into Eastern Europe."
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I really don't understand why you give so much credence to this when there was no agreement signed and no public statement made regarding no eastward expansion of NATO. If it was agreed, surely for something as important as that there would be some documentation to support the claim.
It was only a suggestion that was discussed in negotiations over the reunification of Germany and there was never an agreement about NATO not expanding eastwards. It was Russia who claimed the USA agreed this with Gorbachev even though there is no hard evidence to support this which is why I say it is repeating Russian propaganda.
You only have to read what he has said in the past to realise that the restoration of the Soviet Union is Putin's ultimate aim.
Vladimir Putin: The rebuilding of ‘Soviet’ Russia
The world was stunned when Russia invaded Crimea, but should it have been, asks author and journalist Oliver Bullough.
www.bbc.co.uk
Putin’s speech harked back to Russia’s empire – the threat doesn’t end with Ukraine | Keir Giles
Moscow is acting with total disregard for European norms. The west’s line of military defence must now be bolstered, says Keir Giles of Chatham House
www.theguardian.com
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From what I've gathered, it was George H.W. Bush's Secretary of State who vowed that "NATO would not move one inch eastward." That sounds like an assurance to me. CIA Director Robert Gates criticized “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen”. I give it credence because it's backed by many top US officials and journalists, and such accounts can be found in publications other than the one named after a "beauty parlor."
Then Putin is just as contradictory as most US politicians. In 2015, Putin said he had “no desire to recreate the empire, to resurrect the Soviet Union, but [had] to protect our Russian independence and sovereignty.” Even if he wanted to, it doesn't sound like he has the capability if he's been struggling for 3 years just to conquer part of Ukraine.You only have to read what he has said in the past to realise that the restoration of the Soviet Union is Putin's ultimate aim.
Vladimir Putin: The rebuilding of ‘Soviet’ Russia
The world was stunned when Russia invaded Crimea, but should it have been, asks author and journalist Oliver Bullough.
Putin’s speech harked back to Russia’s empire – the threat doesn’t end with Ukraine | Keir Giles
Moscow is acting with total disregard for European norms. The west’s line of military defence must now be bolstered, says Keir Giles of Chatham House
After three years of throwing weapons at the problem, I'm not sure what the end goal is supposed to be. Is the US supposed to continue spending billions to fight a war they provoked while innocent Ukrainians continue to be killed? Is there no path to peace because of what Putin might do? And then there's Putin's threat to use nuclear weapons.
It's all so bleak and depressing.
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Also, the Ukrainian nazis (which the American media once admitted existed until three years ago) have threatened Zelenskyy with death. (And I wonder who's funding those nazis).
So even if tons of dollars, and naughty sex tapes, don't drive the politicians to permit the murders of millions of innocent citizens (and it usually does) then fear for their own lives certainly does.
So even if tons of dollars, and naughty sex tapes, don't drive the politicians to permit the murders of millions of innocent citizens (and it usually does) then fear for their own lives certainly does.
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I have not read all posts in the thread (nor do I intend to), but this part annoys me.
No one had a right to promise the Soviet Union what other countries could or could not do. It's their own decisions to make. The US and the UK can't promise anything regarding other countries and which unions and alliances they make or join.
The only reason Finland and Sweden even considered joining NATO (and did join) is 100% because of Putin. So if Putin didn't want NATO to expand, he should not have provoced us FOR YEARS AND YEARS, and then start a war in Europe. He only has himself to blame. Enough was enough. I hated the thought of Sweden joining NATO. Most Swedes were sceptical of, or 100% against, NATO for years. But Putin changed that, single-handed. Even I realized it was the only alternative.
We just keep getting attacked by Russia. Mainly cyber attacks. My work place was without the Internet for 2 weeks because of a Russian ransomeware attack. It cost millions. Russia keeps provocing by entering Swedish airspace or Swedish water. They keep spreading lies. They have spies planted. Every chance they can get to provoce and disrupt, they will take. It's been going on for decades, but intensified with Putin. And for what? Sweden hasn't done a bloody darn thing to Russia except being a western nation with our own values and culture.
And now, it's so very difficult to like the US. Many want to stop buying American products because of Trump and Musk. The way Trump keeps lying and lying and lying... Making up numbers and bullying his way forward. His current ongoing lie about the US giving Ukraine more money than Europe is just an example of his "repeat it enough times and people will think it's true" tactic is so dangerous. His appalling attacks on Ukraine and Zelenskyy and playing Putin's lapdog is mindblowing. Does Putin have a secret hold on Trump? Knowledge of something Trump want hidden? Or is he just fascinated by Putin because they truely are one of a kind?
I have decided to zoom out from the news. I can't do anything about the poor state of the world, so I will not waste the little energy I have. Let the world burn. Start WW3. I give up, I surrender.
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Countries need unanimous approval from NATO members to join. Thus, the US and UK had the right to promise Russia that NATO would not move "one inch eastward."
Finland and Sweden officially partnered with NATO in 1994 (they just lacked the security guarantees under Article 5 which they're now entitled to.) Putin's clearly an imperialist just like many political leaders in the West. Nothing justifies his acts of aggression, but perhaps he targeted Sweden because of their involvement with NATO.
The 2014 US-backed coup in Ukraine and duplicity regarding NATO expansion led to both the invasion of Ukraine and more NATO expansion (just as the West wanted):
"NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg clearly and repeatedly acknowledged that Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine because of fears of NATO expansionism.
His comments, initially flagged by journalist Thomas Fazi, read as follows:
‘The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we did not sign that.
The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.
So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.'
Stoltenberg made these remarks as part of a general gloat about the fact that Putin invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO expansion and yet the invasion has resulted in Sweden and Finland applying to join the alliance, saying it ‘demonstrates that when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he’s getting the exact opposite.’"
Source: New Age | NATO expansion caused Russian invasion
Oliver Stone on Facebook writes that rabid anti-Russian propaganda has set the stage for a false flag low-yield nuclear explosion in Ukraine that the world has been trained to interpret as Russia’s doing. The success of Washington’s perception war and saturation of the CNN/Fox airwaves with condemnation of Russia could lead to hopes that a false flag nuclear event would bring down Putin’s government. A new Yeltsin installed would return Russia to Washington’s control and leave China, alone, as the next target. Such an event is not a fantasy. It is an expression of Stone’s understanding of the neoconservatives commitment to Washington’s hegemony. Biden officials have made it clear that they are at war with Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy, with the goal of exhausting Russia into weakness and disposing of Putin.
A false flag event is not the only avenue to nuclear war. The expansion of NATO to Finland and Sweden is another. Washington is not only pressuring the governments to apply for NATO membership but also is bribing Swedish and Finnish government officials to do so.
Think about this expansion of NATO for a minute. One reason for Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is the stark refusal of Washington and NATO to take Russia’s security concerns seriously. Ukraine’s membership in NATO is totally unacceptable to Russia, so why was it pushed? With Western intervention in Ukraine threatening to spin the conflict out of control, why pour gasoline on the fire by bringing Sweden and Finland into NATO? Currently Scandinavia and the Baltics are nuclear free. Finland’s entry into NATO would bring more NATO to Russia’s border, a development that the Kremlin has declared as unacceptable. By piling on more provocations, Washington and NATO are intentionally widening a conflict that was deliberately provoked.
Clearly, it is irresponsible for Finland and Sweden to further destabilize the situation by joining NATO. Dmitry Medvedev has made it clear that NATO membership would mean the end of the nuclear-free Baltic. More NATO on Russia’s border creates an imbalance that Russia would have to correct with deployment of hypersonic nuclear missiles. How can it be possible for the governments of Finland and Sweden to regard NATO membership as an increase in security when the result is to have their countries targeted with nuclear weapons? Finland and Sweden are in no danger of being attacked by Russia unless they join NATO. No one in their right mind would see NATO membership for Finland and Sweden as anything but a reckless act of destabilization. Like Switzerland, Finland and Sweden have benefitted from their neutrality. It is nonsensical for them to turn themselves into nuclear targets.
Everyone needs to understand that the neoconservatives’ ideology of hegemony is an expansionist ideology like original 20th century International Communism. It is the American Empire that is expanding toward Russia, not Russia expanding into the West. It is truly amazing how opposite from the truth the anti-Russian propaganda is. Sooner or later the Kremlin will comprehend that Russia’s enemies are the American neoconservatives and that the pressure point on the neoconservatives is Israel.
As my audience knows, I have been concerned for years that Russia’s low-key response to provocations brings about more and more dangerous provocations that eventually will bring Armageddon upon us. I saw recently that the Chinese government thinks similarly when a Chinese spokesman said that China can accept no provocation from Washington as the result would be more and worse provocations.
The Kremlin’s policy of relying on reason, negotiations, and good will has not been reciprocated by the West. The Kremlin’s limited military operation in Ukraine was not of sufficient ferocity to convince the West to abandon its policy of provocation. It seems Washington will continue its provocations until the fatal line is crossed.
Source: The Neoconservatives Are Setting Up the World for Nuclear War |
Finland and Sweden officially partnered with NATO in 1994 (they just lacked the security guarantees under Article 5 which they're now entitled to.) Putin's clearly an imperialist just like many political leaders in the West. Nothing justifies his acts of aggression, but perhaps he targeted Sweden because of their involvement with NATO.
The 2014 US-backed coup in Ukraine and duplicity regarding NATO expansion led to both the invasion of Ukraine and more NATO expansion (just as the West wanted):
NATO expansion caused Russian invasion
"NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg clearly and repeatedly acknowledged that Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine because of fears of NATO expansionism.
His comments, initially flagged by journalist Thomas Fazi, read as follows:
‘The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we did not sign that.
The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.
So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.'
Stoltenberg made these remarks as part of a general gloat about the fact that Putin invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO expansion and yet the invasion has resulted in Sweden and Finland applying to join the alliance, saying it ‘demonstrates that when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he’s getting the exact opposite.’"
Source: New Age | NATO expansion caused Russian invasion
The Neoconservatives Are Setting Up the World for Nuclear War
Oliver Stone on Facebook writes that rabid anti-Russian propaganda has set the stage for a false flag low-yield nuclear explosion in Ukraine that the world has been trained to interpret as Russia’s doing. The success of Washington’s perception war and saturation of the CNN/Fox airwaves with condemnation of Russia could lead to hopes that a false flag nuclear event would bring down Putin’s government. A new Yeltsin installed would return Russia to Washington’s control and leave China, alone, as the next target. Such an event is not a fantasy. It is an expression of Stone’s understanding of the neoconservatives commitment to Washington’s hegemony. Biden officials have made it clear that they are at war with Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy, with the goal of exhausting Russia into weakness and disposing of Putin.
A false flag event is not the only avenue to nuclear war. The expansion of NATO to Finland and Sweden is another. Washington is not only pressuring the governments to apply for NATO membership but also is bribing Swedish and Finnish government officials to do so.
Think about this expansion of NATO for a minute. One reason for Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is the stark refusal of Washington and NATO to take Russia’s security concerns seriously. Ukraine’s membership in NATO is totally unacceptable to Russia, so why was it pushed? With Western intervention in Ukraine threatening to spin the conflict out of control, why pour gasoline on the fire by bringing Sweden and Finland into NATO? Currently Scandinavia and the Baltics are nuclear free. Finland’s entry into NATO would bring more NATO to Russia’s border, a development that the Kremlin has declared as unacceptable. By piling on more provocations, Washington and NATO are intentionally widening a conflict that was deliberately provoked.
Clearly, it is irresponsible for Finland and Sweden to further destabilize the situation by joining NATO. Dmitry Medvedev has made it clear that NATO membership would mean the end of the nuclear-free Baltic. More NATO on Russia’s border creates an imbalance that Russia would have to correct with deployment of hypersonic nuclear missiles. How can it be possible for the governments of Finland and Sweden to regard NATO membership as an increase in security when the result is to have their countries targeted with nuclear weapons? Finland and Sweden are in no danger of being attacked by Russia unless they join NATO. No one in their right mind would see NATO membership for Finland and Sweden as anything but a reckless act of destabilization. Like Switzerland, Finland and Sweden have benefitted from their neutrality. It is nonsensical for them to turn themselves into nuclear targets.
Everyone needs to understand that the neoconservatives’ ideology of hegemony is an expansionist ideology like original 20th century International Communism. It is the American Empire that is expanding toward Russia, not Russia expanding into the West. It is truly amazing how opposite from the truth the anti-Russian propaganda is. Sooner or later the Kremlin will comprehend that Russia’s enemies are the American neoconservatives and that the pressure point on the neoconservatives is Israel.
As my audience knows, I have been concerned for years that Russia’s low-key response to provocations brings about more and more dangerous provocations that eventually will bring Armageddon upon us. I saw recently that the Chinese government thinks similarly when a Chinese spokesman said that China can accept no provocation from Washington as the result would be more and worse provocations.
The Kremlin’s policy of relying on reason, negotiations, and good will has not been reciprocated by the West. The Kremlin’s limited military operation in Ukraine was not of sufficient ferocity to convince the West to abandon its policy of provocation. It seems Washington will continue its provocations until the fatal line is crossed.
Source: The Neoconservatives Are Setting Up the World for Nuclear War |
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Yes, the Azov Battalion. I've posted about them before as well. The extent to which American media called them out was impressive (at least until the war started.)
Once the war started, The Times blamed Russia for "exploiting" the issue with the headline: "Azov Battalion drops neo-Nazi symbol exploited by Russian propagandists."
Proxy wars make for some strange bedfellows.
Yes. I was surprised to hear that Zelensky originally ran as a peace candidate.
The REAL REASON Zelensky Is Prolonging The War Will Surprise You!
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The UK never did that though because it's not something the Prime Minister could have done unilaterally so there would have had to have been a debate in the UK Parliament to authorise it and no such debate ever took place regardless of what the conspiracy theorists claim. Also, there is no record in Hansard (the official record of Parliament) that the Prime Minister was ever asked a question about this imaginary deal. In fact, there doesn't appear to be any official record anywhere to support your claim.
Robert Zoellick, the U.S. diplomat who helped negotiate the end of the Cold War, denied there was any such promise. “I was in those meetings, and Gorbachev has [also] said there was no promise not to enlarge NATO” he said. Repeating the same Russian lie over and over again doesn't make it true no matter how many times you say. Zoellick was in the room when the unification of Germany was being negotiated so I think he is a more reliable source than your unverified comments from The Salon.
Peace and surrender are not the same thing.
The REAL REASON why Zelensky is prolonging the war is his commitment to defending Ukraine's sovereign borders, a stance widely supported by the Ukrainian population. This approach would be the same for the USA if anyone invaded your country, so it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Whatever conspiracy theorist Jimmy Dore says in that video, it's likely to be nonsense, unverified and with no factual basis whatsoever because that's his usual schtick.
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It's not "my claim." Per the report in Salon, "As is detailed in declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents released in 2017, Bush and the leaders of West Germany, the U.K. and France gave similar assurances." Are former US Secretary of State James Baker and former CIA Director Robert Gates not credible enough sources?
The so-called "unverified comments" from Salon are based on declassified documents they linked to. Here's an excerpt from them:
Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).
The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.
The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.” The key phrase, buttressed by the documents, is “led to believe.”
Source: NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard | National Security Archive
A Wikipedia article states that "The controversy regarding the legitimacy of eastward NATO expansion relates to the aftermath of the Revolutions of 1989, when the fall of Soviet-allied communist states to opposition parties brought European spheres of influence into question. Russian authorities claim that agreement on non-expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe took place orally and the alliance violated it with its expansion, while the leaders of the alliance claim that no such promise was made and that such a decision could only be made in writing. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who participated in the 1990 negotiations, subsequently spoke out about the existence of a "guarantee of non-expansion of NATO to the east" inconsistently, confirming its existence in some interviews and denying it in others. Among academic researchers, opinions on the existence or absence of a non-extension agreement also differ.
On February 9, 1990, at a meeting with Shevardnadze, US Secretary of State Baker said that, assuming Germany would reunite, the US favored the united Germany remaining "firmly anchored" in NATO, with which there would have to be "iron-clad guarantees that NATO's jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward." Later that day, at a meeting with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, he acknowledged that "not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction", and he asked Gorbachev whether he would prefer a united Germany "outside of NATO that is independent and has no US forces or [...] a united Germany with ties to NATO and assurances that there would be no extension of NATO's current jurisdiction eastward." When Gorbachev replied that "a broadening of the NATO zone is not acceptable," Baker agreed. In response, the head of the Soviet state told Baker that what he had said was "very realistic" and suggested that they "think about" it. Baker, at a press conference in Moscow on the same day, made public the resulting exchange, saying that the US proposed, in order to mitigate the concerns of those east of Germany, to prevent the expansion of NATO forces in the eastern direction and stated that the unification of Germany, according to the US position, is hardly possible without "some sort of security guarantees" with regard to the advance of NATO forces or its operation to the east. In its February 13 press release sent to embassies, the US State Department said that "the Secretary [of State] made clear that the U.S. [...] supported a unified Germany within NATO, but that we were prepared to ensure that NATO's military presence would not extend further eastward."
Source: Controversy regarding the legitimacy of eastward NATO expansion - Wikipedia
His people are being slaughtered, which is the end result of every endless war. It's easy not to surrender when you're not on the front lines, unlike those who are conscripted.
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