What You Should Really Know About Ukraine

 T Russia started a ‘special operation’ in Ukraine in the early hours on Thursday 24 February 2022, Moscow Time.Let us recap the events that led up to this event.

 The US and NATO created this crisis because they tossed aside the reasonable demands of the Russian Federation in two draft treaties submitted on December 21, 2021. One of the key demands was for a neutral Ukraine and a binding pledge that it would never join NATO.

For his part, Ukrainian President Zelensky dismissed the Minsk Protocols, which was the only formula to solve the impasse over the breakaway republics in Donetsk and Luhansk. The Minsk Protocols required the Ukrainian government to negotiate with the breakaway region concerning the restoration of its previous autonomy as well as language and cultural rights, prior to the Maidan coup in 2014.

In February 2014, a coup overthrew the Ukrainian government which came to power in an election certified by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation). The president, Viktor Yanukovich, was forced to flee for his life. This situation was presciently analyzed at the time by Seumas Milne who wrote, “The attempt to lever Kiev into the western camp by ousting an elected leader made conflict certain. It could be a threat to us all.”

The coup was promoted by United States officials. Neo-conservatives such as Victoria Nuland and John McCain actively supported the protests. As confirmed in a secretly recorded phone call, Nuland determined the post-coup composition weeks in advance. Later, Nuland bragged they spent $5 billion in this campaign over two decades. Before the coup was “midwifed”, Nuland forcefully rejected a likely European compromise agreement which would have led to a compromise government. “F*** the EU!”, she said. Nuland managed the coup but Vice President Biden was overall in charge. As Nuland says in the phone call, Biden would give the ultimate “atta boy” to the coup leaders. Subsequently, Joe Biden’s son personally benefited from the coup. Victoria Nuland has even more power now as the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Secret US forces such as the Central Intelligence Agency must also be involved.

The secession of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk are a direct result of the 2014 coup. In Crimea, a referendum vote was rapidly organized. With 83% turnout and 97% voting in favor, Crimeans decided to secede from Ukraine and re-unify with Russia.

In the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk on the border with Russia, the majority of the population speaks Russian and had no hostility to Russia. The Kiev coup regime was hostile and enacting policies they vehemently disagreed with.  In spring 2014, the Luhansk and Donetsk Peoples Republics declared their independence from the Kiev regime.

The Minsk Agreements of 2014 and 2015 were signed by Ukraine, Ukrainian rebels, Russia and other European authorities.  They were designed to stop the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine and retain the territorial integrity of Ukraine while granting a measure of autonomy to Luhansk and Donetsk. These agreements were later rebuffed by the Kiev government and Washington. This left the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass alone to suffer the increasing military onslaught of a Ukrainian government, riddled with neo-Nazi parties, egged on by Western arms and money. This led to the decision by Russia on 21 February 2022 to recognize the Peoples Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR).

All of the above are the festering sores of three decades of betrayal by the US and NATO of their pledges in the early 1990’s to Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, that NATO wouldn’t expand “one inch eastward” of a reunited Germany.

However, in the past thirty years, rather than dissolving itself (because it was set up to protect North Atlantic countries from the alleged danger of communism), NATO expanded 800 km. to the east, and admitted fourteen states which had been broken away from the former Soviet Union or were former members of the Warsaw Pact. Western military and naval forces were stationed in these new NATO member countries and NATO installed missile systems and held massive drills close to Russia’s diminished borders. Clearly, the US plan was for its aggressive military alliance, NATO, to expand right up to all of Russia’s border with a view to further dismembering Russia and consolidating US hegemony over the entire European continent.

 Russia, in its desire to protect the people of the Donbass Region, decided to recognize their governments and to create a demilitarized zone in the rest of Ukraine.

The Russian ‘military operation’ in Ukraine ensued…

Source: An article by Bryce Greene published in FAIR