Thanks for providing the great article by Rick Sterling regarding Ukraine. What he failed to mention goes back to 1944-5, when the USA took Nazis from Germany and "planted them in eastern Europe and western USSR to oppose, stop the spread, and bring down communism. Yes, Russia invaded but not before trying to bring the parties to the table to prevent NATO membership for Ukraine, de-Nazify Ukraine, and protect the sovereignty of Russia. Trump has the narrative wrong, but I applaud his efforts to stop the war via negotiation.
"Yes, Russia invaded but not before trying to bring the parties to the table to prevent NATO membership for Ukraine, de-Nazify Ukraine, and protect the sovereignty of Russia" is the actual truth of the matter.
I like how they twist and distort the meaning behind the Minsk agreement. The Azov Battalion was continually attacking sections of Ukraine to rid those areas of the Russian blooded inhabitants. After the agreement was broken, Russia decided to move in to protect those areas from the aggression that the Nazis where using against the victims. So many sources turn it the other way around claiming that those areas were occupied by Russian supplied separatists so that they can justify the whole mess claiming it was Russia's fault.
Does he have the narrative wrong? The U.S. provoked Russia by supporting the coup overseen by neo-con Victoria Nuland in support of the literal Nazis in the Azov battalion. If Russia funded Nazis to overthrow the government of Canada or Mexico and was building bioweapons research facilities there, suppressing the rights of English speakers there, and running spook ops there, do you not think the U.S. government would see that as a just cassis belli to respond to an attack that threatens the U.S.? Does Russia not have the same right to respond to attacks that threaten their existence?
The wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth by the the pundits the last few days has been laughably disgusting. They're so afraid that the war might actually end!
Trump says the real amount sent to Ukraine is closer to 350 billion. Not sure where he got that figure, but I bet it's closer than than 111 billion figure in the graph.
The Western Hegemony NATO+ bloc, led by the Biden and UK regimes (in that order), certainly promoted and instigated the Ukrainian government coup and bitter anti-Russian belligerence. But the Ukraine regime is equally culpable; I don't see them as unwilling warmongers and ethnic cleansers reluctantly submitting to their Western (pay)masters. To paraphrase a book title, the Ukrainians have been The West's (Biden's) "willing executioners".
The Western governments and their collective mass-media propaganda network have effectively denied or suppressed the salient fact that as soon as the Banderite coup assumed power in 2014, it forcefully proclaimed an agenda or program of "restoring" a true nationalist ethos by aggressively purging all traces of Russian culture and influence from public life.
They immediately passed laws restricting or forbidding use of the Russian language, still spoken throughout Ukraine, and more or less exclusively in the eastern provinces adjoining Russia. They were not shy about proclaiming their intentions and goals; they proposed to cut the cancerous growth of "Russian" out of their culture.
They were definitely assisted by the CIA and MI6, and EU nations' state-security apparatus. But surely Zelensky & Co. welcomed their support.
This culture war was accompanied by a sociopolitical construction that demonized the Russophilic eastern residents as effectively "existential threats" to Ukraine proper-- untermenschen trespassers and parasites. Accordingly, Banderite golpistas began an eight-year campaign of terroristic bombing of the Donbass. There is considerable evidence that non-military targets (schools, hospitals, etc., just like in Gaza) were ruthlessly targeted, frequently with cluster munitions stockpiled long before the more recent US deliveries.
During the early weeks of the SMO, I saw an interview with a young Ukrainian soldier-- a callow chap without apparent ideological zeal. He candidly and credibly related that when he was inducted, his superiors explained to the inductees that the eastern provinces had been occupied by barbaric invaders who had cruelly killed, subjugated, or driven off bona-fide Ukrainian residents and appropriated their land.
Their task was, in turn, to exterminate the invader population root and branch, by any means necessary. This was the "facts on the ground" policy related to the overall coup mandate to comprehensively "purify" the nation by extirpating all Russian culture and influence.
Thus, any eastern resident expressing sympathy for, or undue affinity with, Russia-- including non-combatants , e.g. women and children-- was a legitimate target. According to the soldier, this pep talk also promised the troops that when they were victorious, and had purged the east of the invasive Russian peoples, the soldiers would be rewarded with "reclaimed" conquered land and properties in order to repopulate the east with true Ukrainians.
This original stark challenge to Russia and the Russian peoples of eastern Ukraine is omitted from the Western Russophobic and Putinphobic propaganda script; it's utterly incompatible with the West's cast-iron image of Putin-- the super-villain pro tem of the geopolitical melodrama-- as a predatory, sociopathically ruthless, megalomaniacal aggressor.
Ironically, besides initiating the SMO for national self-defense, the Russian government actually acted out of a genuine "responsibility to protect" endangered civilian populations in Donbass.
______________________________________
BTW, although I still hope for the best, in a way I may be infected with late-onset TDS. I'm already sick of Trump's habit of making wild and woolly assertions, demagogic trash-talk, and grandiose half-assed promises and pronouncements. He is a truly Amerikan creature, a hustler extraordinaire: rhetorically, a combination of a used-car salesman and a WEF pro-wrestling star.
That's all bad enough, but I'm equally exasperated with uncritical MAGA fans, both soft and hardline, superciliously arguing that Trump's seeming Crazy Talk is all "Art of the Deal" genius. You know-- Trump is ten steps ahead or miles above all of the idiots who take him at face value, and are too Trump-averse or thick to see (mixed metaphor alert!) that he's dazzling everyone with bullshit. Bah! Humbug! 😡
Thanks for providing the great article by Rick Sterling regarding Ukraine. What he failed to mention goes back to 1944-5, when the USA took Nazis from Germany and "planted them in eastern Europe and western USSR to oppose, stop the spread, and bring down communism. Yes, Russia invaded but not before trying to bring the parties to the table to prevent NATO membership for Ukraine, de-Nazify Ukraine, and protect the sovereignty of Russia. Trump has the narrative wrong, but I applaud his efforts to stop the war via negotiation.
So, true!
"Yes, Russia invaded but not before trying to bring the parties to the table to prevent NATO membership for Ukraine, de-Nazify Ukraine, and protect the sovereignty of Russia" is the actual truth of the matter.
I like how they twist and distort the meaning behind the Minsk agreement. The Azov Battalion was continually attacking sections of Ukraine to rid those areas of the Russian blooded inhabitants. After the agreement was broken, Russia decided to move in to protect those areas from the aggression that the Nazis where using against the victims. So many sources turn it the other way around claiming that those areas were occupied by Russian supplied separatists so that they can justify the whole mess claiming it was Russia's fault.
Does he have the narrative wrong? The U.S. provoked Russia by supporting the coup overseen by neo-con Victoria Nuland in support of the literal Nazis in the Azov battalion. If Russia funded Nazis to overthrow the government of Canada or Mexico and was building bioweapons research facilities there, suppressing the rights of English speakers there, and running spook ops there, do you not think the U.S. government would see that as a just cassis belli to respond to an attack that threatens the U.S.? Does Russia not have the same right to respond to attacks that threaten their existence?
The wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth by the the pundits the last few days has been laughably disgusting. They're so afraid that the war might actually end!
So tragic, eh?
Bernie Sanders, unsurprisingly, and disgustingly, is one of the worst. what a tool.
Sheepdog Sanders
The Ukraine war has many skeletons in the closet.
https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-ukraine-war-did-not-take-place
Robert Parry and Rick Sterling stated everything clearly and correctly.
Which has prompted me for many years to support the DISBAND NATO movement as a cure-all.
Why is NATO still a thing, anyway?
Yes I may go on a binge party for a whole week in celebration if Trump pulls us out of NATO.
Don't leave me out of the party!
Trump says the real amount sent to Ukraine is closer to 350 billion. Not sure where he got that figure, but I bet it's closer than than 111 billion figure in the graph.
probably
The Western Hegemony NATO+ bloc, led by the Biden and UK regimes (in that order), certainly promoted and instigated the Ukrainian government coup and bitter anti-Russian belligerence. But the Ukraine regime is equally culpable; I don't see them as unwilling warmongers and ethnic cleansers reluctantly submitting to their Western (pay)masters. To paraphrase a book title, the Ukrainians have been The West's (Biden's) "willing executioners".
The Western governments and their collective mass-media propaganda network have effectively denied or suppressed the salient fact that as soon as the Banderite coup assumed power in 2014, it forcefully proclaimed an agenda or program of "restoring" a true nationalist ethos by aggressively purging all traces of Russian culture and influence from public life.
They immediately passed laws restricting or forbidding use of the Russian language, still spoken throughout Ukraine, and more or less exclusively in the eastern provinces adjoining Russia. They were not shy about proclaiming their intentions and goals; they proposed to cut the cancerous growth of "Russian" out of their culture.
They were definitely assisted by the CIA and MI6, and EU nations' state-security apparatus. But surely Zelensky & Co. welcomed their support.
This culture war was accompanied by a sociopolitical construction that demonized the Russophilic eastern residents as effectively "existential threats" to Ukraine proper-- untermenschen trespassers and parasites. Accordingly, Banderite golpistas began an eight-year campaign of terroristic bombing of the Donbass. There is considerable evidence that non-military targets (schools, hospitals, etc., just like in Gaza) were ruthlessly targeted, frequently with cluster munitions stockpiled long before the more recent US deliveries.
During the early weeks of the SMO, I saw an interview with a young Ukrainian soldier-- a callow chap without apparent ideological zeal. He candidly and credibly related that when he was inducted, his superiors explained to the inductees that the eastern provinces had been occupied by barbaric invaders who had cruelly killed, subjugated, or driven off bona-fide Ukrainian residents and appropriated their land.
Their task was, in turn, to exterminate the invader population root and branch, by any means necessary. This was the "facts on the ground" policy related to the overall coup mandate to comprehensively "purify" the nation by extirpating all Russian culture and influence.
Thus, any eastern resident expressing sympathy for, or undue affinity with, Russia-- including non-combatants , e.g. women and children-- was a legitimate target. According to the soldier, this pep talk also promised the troops that when they were victorious, and had purged the east of the invasive Russian peoples, the soldiers would be rewarded with "reclaimed" conquered land and properties in order to repopulate the east with true Ukrainians.
This original stark challenge to Russia and the Russian peoples of eastern Ukraine is omitted from the Western Russophobic and Putinphobic propaganda script; it's utterly incompatible with the West's cast-iron image of Putin-- the super-villain pro tem of the geopolitical melodrama-- as a predatory, sociopathically ruthless, megalomaniacal aggressor.
Ironically, besides initiating the SMO for national self-defense, the Russian government actually acted out of a genuine "responsibility to protect" endangered civilian populations in Donbass.
______________________________________
BTW, although I still hope for the best, in a way I may be infected with late-onset TDS. I'm already sick of Trump's habit of making wild and woolly assertions, demagogic trash-talk, and grandiose half-assed promises and pronouncements. He is a truly Amerikan creature, a hustler extraordinaire: rhetorically, a combination of a used-car salesman and a WEF pro-wrestling star.
That's all bad enough, but I'm equally exasperated with uncritical MAGA fans, both soft and hardline, superciliously arguing that Trump's seeming Crazy Talk is all "Art of the Deal" genius. You know-- Trump is ten steps ahead or miles above all of the idiots who take him at face value, and are too Trump-averse or thick to see (mixed metaphor alert!) that he's dazzling everyone with bullshit. Bah! Humbug! 😡