The seeds of the current war in Ukraine go back well before the invasion by Vladimir Putin’s Russian troops on February 24th, 2022, and is far more complex and nuanced than the “black hat, white hat” portrayal of the conflict, shamelessly advocated for in both the Western and in the pro-Russian media.
In the first major invasion at this scale in Europe since WW2, the first casualty of war is undoubtedly the truth. As the rhetoric ramps up on each side of the divide, and the brinkmanship escalates to a possible point of no return, there is a story to be told in the details behind the conflict that reflects poorly on both sides of the aisle, with no one in power coming out entirely unscathed by criticism for their part in the wholesale carnage, death and destruction that has since followed.
History of Ukraine:
Ukraine, as the fully independent nation we see today, has only come into existence in its current form since 1991, after long periods of domination by the Polish-Lithuanian confederation, then by Tsarist Russia and finally the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). When the Soviet Union began to unravel in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Ukraine S.S.R. first declared sovereignty in July 1990, subsequently declaring its independence in August 1991, a declaration which was then ratified after a popular plebiscite in December 1991.
Vladimir Putin has claimed, conveniently, that Ukraine is a fabricated country, and that Ukrainians, Belorussians and Russians share a common ethnicity and heritage that dates back to the Kyivan Rus (862 to 1242 CE). Whilst there is a small kernel of truth in there being some common cultural ancestral roots between these three Slavic ethnic groups that are currently separate nations, the history is subject to significant controversy depending upon which nationality is interpreting it.
The Rus was established under Varangian (Viking) rule in the 9th Century, and incorporated a loose affiliation of Eastern Slavic, Norse and Finnic peoples, which over the next 150 years integrated into a loose Slavic confederation. By contrast, the city of Moscow was not even founded until 1147 CE.
During this period, Kyiv was dominant, and the Kyivan Rus colonised Russian territory, not the other way around. The Mongol-Tatar expansion westward into these regions culminated in the sacking and destruction of Kyiv in 1240 CE. The Mongols helped Vladimir-Suzdal (later to become the Grand Duchy of Moscow) become dominant, to eventually form the core from which developed the future Russian state.
From Brittanica:
“By the middle of the 14th century, Ukrainian territories were under the rule of three external powers—the Golden Horde, the grand duchy of Lithuania, and the kingdom of Poland.
The steppe and Crimea, whose coastal towns and maritime trade were now in the hands of the Venetians and Genoese, formed part of the direct domains of the Tatar Golden Horde. This was the westernmost successor of Genghis Khan’s Mongol empire, whose Khan resided at Sarai on the Volga River. By the mid-15th century the Golden Horde was in a process of disintegration. One of its successor states was the Crimean Khanate, which after 1475 accepted the suzerainty of the sultans of the Ottoman Empire. Both the Crimean Peninsula and large areas of the adjoining steppe continued under the Khanate’s rule until its annexation* to the Russian Empire in 1783.”
*annexation, is a formal act whereby a state proclaims its sovereignty over territory hitherto outside its domain. Unlike cession, whereby territory is given or sold through treaty, annexation is a unilateral act made effective by actual possession and legitimized by general recognition.
Once again, from Brittanica:
“In 1569, by the Union of Lublin, the dynastic link between Poland and Lithuania was transformed into a constitutional union of the two states as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. At the same time, the greater part of the Ukrainian territories was detached from Lithuania and annexed directly to Poland. This act hastened the differentiation of Ukrainians and Belarusians (the latter of whom remained within the Lithuanian grand duchy) and, by eliminating the political frontier between them, promoted the closer integration of Galicia and the eastern Ukrainian lands. For the next century, virtually all ethnically Ukrainian lands experienced in common the direct impact of Polish political and cultural predominance.”
The gradual near complete “Polonisation” of the Ruthenian nobility, and the progressive enserfment of the peasantry, alongside the suppression of the Orthodox faith in favour of Catholicism alienated the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who had various social and ethnic origins but were a group of fiercely combative people, predominantly made up of escaped serfs who preferred the dangerous freedom of the wild steppes, rather than life under the rule of Polish aristocrats.
In 1648, Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky led the largest of the Cossack uprisings against the Commonwealth and the Polish King, founding the “Cossack Hetmanate“, which existed until 1764 (some sources claim until 1782). After Khmelnytsky suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Berestechko in 1651, he turned to the Russian Tsar for help. In 1654, Khmelnytsky was subject to the Pereiaslav Agreement, forming a military and political alliance with Russia that acknowledged loyalty to the Russian monarch.
After his death, the Hetmanate went through a devastating 30-year war amongst Russia, Poland, the Crimean Khanate, the Ottoman Empire, and Cossacks, known as “The Ruin” (1657-1686), for control of the Cossack Hetmanate. The Treaty of Perpetual Peace between Russia and Poland in 1686 divided the lands of the Cossack Hetmanate between them, reducing the portion over which Poland had claimed sovereignty to Ukraine west of the Dnieper river. In 1686, the Metropolitanate of Kyiv was annexed by the Moscow Patriarchate, placing Kyiv under the authority of Moscow.
In the years 1764–1781, Catherine the Great incorporated much of Central Ukraine into the Russian Empire, abolishing the Cossack Hetmanate and the Zaporozhian Sich, and suppressing the last main Cossack uprising. After the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 1783, the newly acquired lands, now called Novorossiya, were opened up to settlement by Russians. The Tsarist autocracy established a policy of Russification, suppressing the use of the Ukrainian language and curtailing the Ukrainian national identity. The western part of present-day Ukraine was subsequently split between Russia and Habsburg-ruled Austria after the fall of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795. (source: Wikipedia)
Ukraine emerged as the concept of a nation, and the Ukrainians as a nationality, with the Ukrainian National Revival which began in the late 18th and early 19th century. During the Spring of Nations, in 1848 in what is now the city of Lviv, the Supreme Ruthenian Council was created which declared that Galician Ruthenians were part of the bigger Ukrainian nation, and they then adopted the current yellow and blue Ukrainian flag.
Ukraine first declared its independence with the invasion of Bolsheviks in late 1917. Following the conclusion of World War I and with the Peace of Riga, Ukraine was partitioned once again between Poland and the Bolshevik Russia. The Bolshevik-occupied portion of the territory became the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which soon after became one of the founding member states of the Soviet Union. Whilst the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin initially encouraged a national renaissance in Ukrainian culture and language, as a part of a policy to promote the advancement of native peoples, their language and culture into the governance of their respective republics, this took a diametrically opposite course once Joseph Stalin assumed leadership.
It is at this time that the Ukrainian story takes a particularly horrific, and genocidal turn, with the Holodomor (or Terror Famine) of 1932-1933. This was an entirely man-made famine, induced and perpetuated under the direction of Joseph Stalin and facilitated by the pseudo-scientific theories of the U.S.S.R.’s chief scientist, Trofim Lysenko. The motivation for this despicable act perpetrated by Stalin on “his own people” was in order to crush every last semblance of the Ukrainian independence movement. The death toll is estimated to be between 7.5 and 10 million souls, with men, women and children sacrificed on the altar of political bastardry by a ruthless Communist regime.
Under Stalin’s collectivism policy farmers were not only deprived of their properties, but a large swath of these were also exiled in Siberia with no means of survival. Those who were left behind and attempted to escape the zones of famine were ordered to be shot. These and other special and particularly lethal policies were adopted in, and largely limited to Soviet Ukraine at the end of 1932 and 1933, and were indicative of Stalin’s intent to eliminate the Ukrainians as a distinct people. Several repressive policies were implemented in Ukraine immediately preceding, during, and proceeding the famine, including but not limited to cultural-religious persecution, the “Law of Spikelets”, blacklisting, an internal passport system, and harsh grain requisitions.
Areas depopulated by the famine were resettled by Russians in the Zaporizhzhya, Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, although not as much so in central Ukraine. In some areas where depopulation was due to migration rather than mortality, Ukrainians returned to their places of residence to find their homes occupied by Russians, leading to widespread fights between Ukrainian farmers and Russian settlers. Such clashes caused around one million Russian settlers to eventually be returned home.
Following the death of Stalin in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev became the new leader of the USSR, and began the policies of De-Stalinisation, and the “Khrushchev Thaw”. During his term as head of the Soviet Union, Crimea was transferred from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR, formally as a “friendship gift” to Ukraine (in tacit acknowledgement of past grievances), and for possible economic reasons. This represented the final extension of Ukrainian territory and formed the basis for the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine ever since.
The scars from the attempted genocide of the Holodomor by the Russian Soviets, along with the millions who died in the Russian Civil War and Stalin’s Great Purge, runs deeply in the consciousness of the modern Ukrainian people, and is a source of intense ongoing resentment, distrust and hatred that is still prevalent today, even preceding the current Russian invasion under Vladimir Putin. For Putin to claim, as justication for his recent invasion, an intrinsic commonality between the peoples of these three nominated nations ignores the centuries of conflict, annexation and dispossession, the religious and ethnic differences, and the diverse cultural history and influences (external and internal) that make the Ukrainians distinct from the Belorussians and the Russian people.
Modern Ukraine- Independence After the Dissolution of the U.S.S.R:
The democratisation of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev fuelled nationalist sentiment in Ukraine, and on 16 July 1990, the newly elected Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine. Outright independence was proclaimed on 24 August 1991, and this was approved by 92% of the Ukrainian electorate in a referendum on 1 December 1991.
Ukraine’s economy in general has been through several periods of turmoil, and otherwise underperformed since the time of independence, due to pervasive levels of corruption and mismanagement, which, particularly in the 1990s, led to widespread protests and organised strikes. Like much of the rest of the post-Soviet Union states, Ukraine fell into significant control of business oligarchs in the immediate aftermath of independence, as the economy transitioned to a market economy with the rapid privatisation of state assets.
“In 2008, the combined wealth of Ukraine’s 50 richest oligarchs was equal to 85% of Ukraine’s GDP. In November 2013, this number was 45% (of GDP). By 2015, due to the Russo-Ukrainian War, the total net worth of the five richest and most influential Ukrainians at that time (Rinat Akhmetov, Viktor Pinchuk, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Henadiy Boholyubov and Yuriy Kosiuk) had dropped from $21.6 billion in 2014 to $11.85 billion in June 2015.” (Source: Wikipedia)
The influence of Ukrainian oligarchs on domestic and regional politics has been the source of criticism from pro-Western sources critical of Ukraine’s lack of political reform or action against corruption, but interestingly (and tellingly) only in so far as it relates to any links they may have had to Russia. Among the most corrupt of Ukrainian oligarchs was Mykola Zlochevsky, who co-founded the largest independent oil and natural gas company Burisma Holdings, and who is currently (nominally at least) the sole owner of the Ukrainian gas and oil producers Aldea, Pari, Esko-Pivnich, and the First Ukrainian Petroleum Company and the investment group Brociti Investments. But more on him later.
Again via Wikipedia:
“During the 1990s, the oligarchs emerged as politically-connected entrepreneurs who started from nearly nothing and got rich through participation in the market via connections to the corrupt — but democratically elected — government of Ukraine during the state’s transition to a market-based economy. Later, numerous Ukrainian business-people have “taken over control” of political parties (examples of this are Party of Greens of Ukraine, Labour Ukraine and Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united)) or started new ones to gain seats and influence in the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament).“
On 5 December, 1994, a monumental flagstone on the path to the current conflict was installed when the Budapest Memorandum was signed, in which Russia, the US and the UK confirmed their recognition of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine becoming parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and effectively the Ukraine abandoned their nuclear arsenal to Russia (the world’s 3rd largest stockpile at the time), and in return the signatories would respect each of the signatory’s independence and sovereignty in the existing borders, refrain from the threat or the use of force against any other signatory, agree not to use economic force or coercion to gain advantage against any signatory’s interests, and to refrain from the use of nuclear weapons against any other signatory.
Even though it is questionable to what extent it might have been capable of utilising these weapons (Ukraine did not posses the nuclear codes), having given up the entirety of their nuclear arsenal through this agreement, Ukraine removed an effective potential deterrent against any future Russian aggression. This was given up in return for assurances that, as events since readily attest, weren’t worth the paper they were printed upon.
Since the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration re-oriented the geopolitical hegemonic ambitions of the U.S., encouraging EU and NATO expansion eastward to weaken Russian influence in the region, and ultimately to isolate and weaken Russia itself. Russian leaders have, not surprisingly, been adamantly opposed to this NATO enlargement and encroachment, and made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion.
From well-respected American political scientist and international relations scholar, John Mearsheimer:
“I think all the trouble in this case really started in April 2008, at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, where afterward NATO issued a statement that said Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO. The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand. Nevertheless, what has happened with the passage of time is that we have moved forward to include Ukraine in the West to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border… NATO expansion is the heart of the strategy, but it includes E.U. expansion as well, and it includes turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy, and, from a Russian perspective, this is an existential threat.“
To underline this point further, 4 months after this announcement by NATO, Russia invaded its southern neighbour Georgia on 7 August 2008 on the pretext of defending the Russian-backed self-proclaimed, separatist republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, with the result of the 5 day land, sea and air invasion leading to the expulsion of 192,000 ethnic Georgians from South Ossetia and from the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia, and the establishment of Russian military bases in these areas. It is clear that Putin’s invasion was in response to the threat of NATO expansion into Georgia, and to establish a military buffer zone should Georgia’s overtures toward admission to NATO come to fruition.
For Vladimir Putin, the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014—which he viewed as “illegal” and labeled as a “coup”—was the final straw. He responded to pro-Russian and anti-revolution protests in the Donbas (Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts) by taking Crimea within the next month, a peninsula he feared could potentially become a NATO base.
Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in March 2014, in the aftermath of the Euromaidan protests and the “Revolution of Dignity”, was particularly fuelled by concerns that it would lose access to its own Black Sea Fleet naval base at Sevastopol if Ukraine continued to move towards NATO and European integration. Mearsheimer concluded that US policy should shift to recognize Ukraine as a buffer state between NATO and Russia, rather than attempt to absorb Ukraine into NATO.
(Source: John Mearsheimer lecture 25 September 2015 “Why Is Ukraine the West’s Fault?”)
The Orange Colour Revolution and Euromaidan- Regime Change by Proxy:
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created in the 1980’s by CIA head Bill Casey as a covert CIA tool to overthrow specific regimes around the world, under the guise of being a “human rights” Non-government Organisation (NGO). In spite of their NGO status, they received their funding from U.S. Congress and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the latter being an allegedly “independent” agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for “administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance”. USAID’s work, according to its own website, “advances U.S. national security and economic prosperity, demonstrates American generosity, and promotes a path to recipient self-reliance and resilience”.
In the year 2000, the US State Department, aided by its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and select CIA operatives, began secretly training a group of Belgrade university students led by a student group that was called Otpor! (“Resistance!”) to promote regime change to remove then Serbian President Slobodan Milošević. Using the template of Gene Sharp’s “From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation”, as the Washington Post wrote, “US-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the anti-drive, running tracking polls, training thousands of opposition activists and helping to organize a vitally important parallel vote count. US taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint used by student activists to scrawl anti-Milošević graffiti on walls across Serbia.”
Trained squads of activists were deployed in protests to take over city blocks with the aid of ‘intelligence helmet’ video screens that give them an instantaneous overview of their environment. Bands of youth converging on targeted intersections in constant dialogue on cell phones, would then overwhelm police. The US government spent some $41 million on the operation. Student groups were secretly trained in the Sharp handbook techniques of staging protests that mocked the authority of the ruling police, showing them to be clumsy and impotent against the youthful protesters. Professionals from the CIA and US State Department guided them behind the scenes. (Source: Covert Geopolitics)
Milošević resigned from the Yugoslav presidency amid demonstrations after the disputed presidential election of 24 September 2000, and was arrested by Yugoslav federal authorities on 31 March 2001 on suspicion of corruption, abuse of power, and embezzlement.
The Colour Revolution Otpor! model was refined, and the deployed again in 2004 as the Ukraine Orange Revolution with logo and color theme scarves, and also in 2003 in Georgia as the Rose Revolution. Later Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the template to launch the Arab Spring. In all cases, the NED was involved along with other NGOs, including the George Soros Open Society Foundations.
Whether it is the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia in 2003, the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine in 2004, the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan in 2005, or the “Arab Spring” in Asia and Africa in 2011, the past decades have seen the US plan and implement “colour revolutions” in many places around the world, under the pretext of exporting “American values.”
Instead of launching military operations directly in the name of “democracy,” the US prefers to use colour revolutions as a tool to intervene in other countries’ internal affairs to subvert governments in order to reinforce its global control, a playbook for regime change, for good or ill, which the US has found more efficient and economical.
At the end of 2003, the US forced Eduard Shevardnadze, then president of Georgia, to resign on grounds of allegations of electoral fraud in vote counting in parliamentary elections, and supported opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili to be president. Consisting of twenty days of protests from 3 to 23 November 2003, the Rose Revolution triggered new presidential and parliamentary elections in Georgia, which brought the National Movement–Democrats coalition to the power.
In Ukraine, from late November 2004 to January 2005, in the immediate aftermath of the run-off vote of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election between leading candidates Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych, it was claimed that the vote hd been marred by massive corruption, voter intimidation and electoral fraud in favour of the latter. Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, was the focal point of the movement’s campaign of civil resistance, with thousands of protesters demonstrating daily. Nationwide, the revolution was highlighted by a series of acts of civil disobedience, sit-ins, and general strikes organised by the opposition movement, including activism by the civic youth group “Pora!” (“It’s time!”) who directly modelled themselves on the Serbian Otpor! group.
The “colour revolution” was ultimately successful, when results of the original run-off were annulled, and a re-vote was ordered by Ukraine’s Supreme Court for 26 December 2004. Under intense scrutiny by domestic and international observers, the second run-off was declared to be “free and fair”. The final results showed a clear victory for Yushchenko, who received about 52% of the vote, compared to Yanukovych’s 45%. It should be noted that Yanukovych was pro-Russian, and expressed a desire for careful arms length engagement with the EU, conscious of Russia being Ukraine’s major trading partner, and of potential future conflict from actively embracing full NATO membership, whilst Yushchenko was notably much more Eurocentric and open to Western values.
Once again, in March 2005, the US drove Kyrgyzstan’s opposition to protest against the results of the parliamentary elections, with those protests eventually turning into riots. The “Tulip Revolution” ended with the President of Kyrgyzstan, Askar Akayev, abandoning power and fleeing the country. The similarities between these “spontaneous” colour revolutions, one year after the other in former Soviet republics, requires straining one’s credulity to breaking point to conceive of these events as being somehow “organic” or coincidental.
It seems clear that, whatever the merits (or likely otherwise) of Shevardnadze, Yanukovych, or Akayev (or Milošević for that matter), the US through its various NGO operatives, with likely CIA assistance “on the ground”, helped foment opposition to unfavoured regimes (and certain politically inconvenient individuals) to promote its geopolitical aims, with little or no regard for the autonomy of those nations, or the likely consequences, both in the short and long term, for the target population.
In the case of Ukraine, the success of the Orange Revolution was short-lived, as Yushchenko’s presidency was marred by disunity and allegations of election financing impropriety and, more troublingly, of his attempting to circumvent the Ukrainian constitution. The first 100 days of Yushchenko’s term were marked by numerous dismissals and appointments at all levels of the executive branch. In spite of campaigning on a platform of social partnership, European integration and fighting corruption, Yushchenko appointed his onetime opponent in the presidential race, Viktor Yanukovych, to be the new Prime Minister in August 2006. This was generally regarded as indicating an attempt at rapprochement with Russia.
Over the course of Yushchenko’s presidency, his support collapsed progressively through parliamentary elections in 2006 and 2008, until the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election which was won by his nemesis Yanukovych, where Yushchenko gained only 5.5% of the vote, the lowest ever result for a sitting president.
Viktor Yanukovych was therefore elected president in 2010, defeating Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Importantly, in spite of Western antipathy to Yanukovych, this election was judged to be free and fair by international observers.
In April 2010, President Yanukovych signed an agreement with Russia, the Kharkiv Pact, a treaty between Ukraine and Russia whereby the Russian lease on Black Sea Fleet naval facilities at Sevastopol in Crimea was extended beyond 2017 until 2042, with an additional five-year renewal option in exchange for a multiyear discounted contract to provide Ukraine with Russian natural gas. The treaty was effectively a continuation of the lease provisions that were part of the 1997 Black Sea Fleet Partition Treaty between the two states.
According to Yanukovych the main priority of his foreign policy was to integrate Ukraine “into the European mainstream”, while simultaneously improving relations with Russia by remaining a “European, non-aligned state”, referring to his inclination to avoiding full NATO membership.
During his first foreign visit, to Brussels, President Yanukovych stated that there would be no change to Ukraine’s status as a member of the NATO outreach program. On 3 June 2010, the Ukrainian parliament excluded, in a bill written by Yanukovych, Ukrainian membership of any military bloc, but allowed for co-operation with military alliances such as NATO.
It is clear that President Yanukovych was hugely corrupt (in alignment with previous Ukrainian presidents), enriching himself to the tune of $12 billion, along with his “family” of robber baron cronies. It is also apparent that he attempted to centralise power by the politically motivated jailing (Yulia Tymoshenko), and with targeted criminal investigations (former President Leonid Kuchma, etc.) of his political adversaries, alongside sustainable allegations of press interference and censorship.
However, recent events would suggest that his attempts to remain open to Europe, and yet neutral and non-aligned, were the wisest course of action he could have taken in a difficult situation fraught with potential pitfalls, and that attempting to integrate economically with both Europe and Russia, whilst remaining a buffer between the latter and NATO was sensible policy. The pressure from both the US and the EU for Ukraine to be integrated fully into Europe and then to become a fully-fledged member of NATO was foolhardy and naive in the extreme, and was always going to be a grave mistake paid for with the blood of the Ukrainian people.
In November 2013, a series of events began that led to his ousting as president. Amid pressure applied from Russia, President Yanukovych changed his mind and rejected the pending association agreement with the EU, instead choosing to pursue closer ties with Russia, including a Russian loan bailout. This sparked large protests by supporters of European integration, who occupied Kyiv’s Independence Square and held rallies throughout Ukraine, in a wave of civil unrest dubbed the “Euromaidan“.
The scope of the protests widened, with calls for the resignation of Yanukovych and the Azarov government. Protesters opposed what they saw as widespread government corruption, abuse of power, human rights violations, and the influence of oligarchs. The violent dispersal of protesters on 30 November caused further anger. The Euromaidan unrest led to the 2014 Revolution of Dignity.
The uprising climaxed on 18–20 February 2014, when fierce fighting in Kyiv between Maidan activists and police resulted in the deaths of almost 100 protesters, and 13 police officers. Police abandoned central Kyiv on 21 February, then Yanukovych and other government ministers fled the city that evening in fear of their lives, eventually with Russia’s help making his way out of Ukraine to Moscow. The next day, parliament removed Yanukovych from office and installed an interim government. After Yanukovych’s removal, the contentious EU association agreement was eventually ratified and signed on 29 May 2014.
The role of the Obama Administration, the US State Department and the newly appointed Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, in the Euromaidan protests and the regime change overthrowing the Yanukovych government, is a matter of some contention. Some facts (albeit contentious) are worthy of consideration including:
a) The uprising in the central plaza known as the Maidan began soon after Victoria Nuland’s arrival.
b) To underscore the US support for the protests, both Nuland and Senator John McCain passed out bread and cookies to the crowd (captured on film). Senator McCain even dined with opposition leaders, including the extreme far-right Svoboda party. During his trip the former US presidential candidate met with government and opposition figures, but gave his endorsement to the pro-Europe protesters. Senator McCain later waved to protesters from the stage in Independence Square during a mass rally in Kiev, standing with Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of the anti-Semitic Svoboda party.
c) In early February 2014, an audio recording of Victoria Nuland talking the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, was leaked to the public. The recording showed that Nuland was meddling in domestic Ukraine affairs, had direct contacts with key opposition leaders, and was managing the protests to the extent she was deciding who would and would not be in the post-coup government (she nominated Arseniy Yatsenyuk as the preferred Prime Minister)
d) “On February 18-20, snipers massacred about 100 people [both protesters and police] on the Maidan …. Although the US Ambassador and the opposition blamed the Yanukovych Administration, the evidence points to the shots coming from a hotel controlled by the ultranationalists, and the ballistics revealed that the protesters and the police were all shot with the same weapons.” (President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kiev, Bernard Casey)
e) Casey continued: “On February 20, 2014 an EU delegation moderated negotiations between President Yanukovych and the protesters, agreeing to early elections – in May 2014 instead of February 2015…. Despite the signing of an agreement … the ultranationalist protesters, and their American sponsors, rejected it, and stepped up their campaign of violence.”
f) The coup was finalized over the coming days. Yanukovych fled to for his life and Arseniy Yatsenyuk was designated as the new Prime Minister of the Yatsenyuk Government in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, exactly as the US had planned.
In May, 2014, Petro Poroshenko, a pro-West oligarch, won an outright majority in the first round of Ukraine’s presidential election, surprising many. Poroshenko promises to fix the economy by aligning Ukraine with Europe and to root out corruption that has trailed Ukraine since its independence. U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration signals interest in helping Poroshenko “battle corruption”, and assigns Vice President Joe Biden as its chief envoy for Ukraine.
Annexation of Crimea by Russia:
In February and March 2014, Russia invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula, taking it from Ukraine. This event took place in the aftermath of the “Revolution of Dignity” and is part of the ongoing wider Russo-Ukrainian War.
The events in Kyiv that ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych on 22 February 2014 sparked pro-Russian demonstrations as of 23 February against the incoming new Ukrainian government. On 27 February, Russian troops captured strategic sites across Crimea, followed by the installation of the pro-Russian Aksyonov government in Crimea, the Crimean status referendum, and the declaration of Crimea’s “independence” on 16 March 2014. Russia then formally incorporated Crimea on 18 March 2014, and following the annexation (or accession as Vladimir Putin would prefer to characterise it) Russia escalated its military presence on the peninsula.
Ukraine and many other countries condemned the annexation and consider it to be a violation of international law, and of Russian agreements (the Budapest Memorandum ) safeguarding the territorial integrity of Ukraine. The annexation led to the other members of the then-G8 suspending Russia from the group and introducing sanctions. The United Nations General Assembly also rejected the referendum and annexation, adopting a resolution affirming the “territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders”, and referring to the Russian action as a “temporary occupation”. (Source: Wikipedia)
War in Donbas:
Following the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution, anti-revolution and pro-Russian protests began in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, known collectively as ‘the Donbas’. Armed Russian-backed separatists seized Ukrainian government buildings in the Donbas and declared the Donetsk and Luhansk (DPR and LPR) as independent states, leading to conflict with Ukrainian government forces.
After a year of fighting, the conflict developed into trench warfare. There were 29 failed ceasefires. About 14,000 people were killed in the war: 6,500 pro-Russian separatist and Russian forces, 4,400 Ukrainian forces, and 3,400 civilians on both sides of the frontline, more than half during the relatively static combat taking place from February 2015.
Ukraine, Russia, the DPR and LPR signed a ceasefire agreement, the Minsk Protocol, in September 2014. Ceasefire breaches became rife, and heavy fighting resumed in January 2015, during which the separatists captured Donetsk Airport. A new ceasefire, Minsk II, was agreed on 12 February 2015. Immediately after, separatists renewed their offensive on Debaltseve and forced Ukraine’s military to withdraw. Fighting and shelling along the line of contact still flared up from time to time thereafter. Both sides of the conflict continued to trade accusations on violations of the deal, although international observers (predictably) placed more of the blame on Russian and Russian proxy forces.
After the fall of Debaltseve, skirmishes continued but the front line did not change. Both sides fortified their position by building networks of trenches, bunkers and tunnels, resulting in static trench warfare. Stalemate led to the war being called a “frozen conflict“, but Donbas remained a war zone, with dozens killed monthly. The war meandered on, waxing and waning incrementally until 24 February 2022, when Russia began a full invasion of Ukraine, when the Donbas war became subsumed into it. (Source; Wikipedia)
Burisma and the Bidens:
Going back to the Yanukovych years, some of the details that have since emerged via the Hunter Biden Laptop saga, and the investigative journalism of the New York Post, among others, which portray some of these behind the scenes machinations in a different light.
First we must digress to the story of Hunter Biden, the son of current U.S president (and former Vice President in the Obama Administration) Joe Biden.
From the New York Post:
“In 2001, fresh off a plum job in the Clinton administration, Hunter Biden was named founding partner at Oldaker, Biden & Belair LLP. The lobbying firm—on whose website [Hunter] Biden touted his status “a presidential appointee” of Bill Clinton—quickly took on a scattershot of clients ranging from hospitals to universities and, according to Delaware’s News Journal, was known for “specialising in the sort of earmarks doled out by (then) Senator [Joe] Biden”.”
Just one month after Hunter Biden registered to lobby for Napster on the issue of “compulsory licensing,” the service’s chief executive officer appeared before the judiciary committee, of which Joe Biden was a member, and called on members “to provide a compulsory license for the transmission of music over the Internet.”
But after the election, as ‘Senator’ became ‘Vice President,’ Biden, Inc., opened back up for business, and Hunter Biden pivoted from congressional lobbying to international consulting, violating the spirit of his pledge as soon as Election Day passed.
That violation would continue for years.
In December 2013, Hunter Biden accompanied the Vice President (his father Joe Biden) on an Air Force Two flight to Beijing and, upon arrival, arranged for him to shake hands with businessman Jonathan Li. Bohai Capital, Li’s firm, would go on to partner with Rosemont Seneca Partners—co-founded by Hunter Biden six months after his father took office—to form a foreign investment fund called BHR Partners. Corporate records for BHR Partners were completed 12 days after the Bidens’ trip to Beijing.
Even a former senior aide in the Obama White House later said that the younger Biden appeared to be “leveraging access for his benefit.”
Clearly being a prominent senator’s (and then Vice President’s) son opens a few doors and greases a few gears. From there Ukrainian energy company Burisma enters the frame:
“Burisma is an independent Ukrainian producer that does business in Crimea, which is the region that has been invaded and annexed by Russia. What makes it especially interesting is that the enterprise is partly the brainchild of Victor Yanukovych, who was the one overthrown by the Ukrainian people during the 2014 revolution there — a man considered to be massively corrupt and a puppet of Vladimir Putin. Now he lives in Russia, exiled there along with his family.
A new president was then elected named Petro Poroshenko, who served as President from 2014 to 2019. He too was allegedly corrupt, getting rich at Ukrainians’ expense. So in May 2019, a new election occurred — one that swept Volodymyr Zelensky into the country’s highest office. Before that he had been a comedian. He ran as the ultra-reformer and the person who would rid Ukraine of the cronyism and corruption that has long been a part of that nation’s fabric.
In May 2014, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy firm, one month after his father traveled to Kiev to urge parliament to “fight the cancer of corruption”, which led to VP Biden announcing a new “U.S. support package”. In fact, Burisma was at that time being investigated for corruption by Ukraine’s prosecutor general, who was subsequently fired at the insistence of Vice President Biden under the threat of withholding U.S. loan guarantees.
Burisma paid Hunter Biden USD $80,000 per month, the purpose of which, as the Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer said, was “clearly to be selling influence, because otherwise no one would ever pay him that kind of money.” He would retain the board seat until April 2019, the same month his father announced his candidacy for President.
It is clear that, at the very least Hunter Biden should have registered as a foreign agent under U.S. FARA requirements#. The Foreign Agents Registration Act (or FARA) (22 U.S.C. § 611 et seq.) is a United States law that imposes public disclosure obligations on persons representing foreign interests. It requires “foreign agents“—defined as individuals or entities engaged in domestic lobbying or advocacy for foreign governments, organizations, or persons (“foreign principals”)—to register with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and disclose their relationship, activities, and related financial compensation.
#This involvement in influence peddling by Hunter Biden in exploiting his father’s position as Vice President in the Obama Administration was merely part, as his laptop email trail attests, of a broader money making scheme by “Biden Inc”. Hunter Biden, along with “business associates” like Devon Archer (since convicted of defrauding $60 million from the Oglala Sioux Nation), cultivated influence and high level political and oligarch contacts in places as far flung as Kazakhstan, Romania, Serbia, Mexico, Libya and China. (Source: Marco Polo: Report on the Hunter Biden Laptop)
Burisma Holdings and its owner, Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, have been the subjects of fraud and money laundering investigations in the United Kingdom and Ukraine dating back to 2012. Zlochevsky has been accused of using his businesses to launder millions of dollars in stolen funds from the Ukrainian treasury. Zlochevsky was front man for another Ukrainian oligarch, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, a shadowy figure in the background who bankrolled Burisma through Cypriot shell companies, and came to prominence later as a financial backer of current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Burisma mounted a massive public relations and lobbying campaign to fight these charges and bolster its reputation in Washington. In 2014, the company appointed then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to a lucrative board position. Burisma also retained Atlantic Council board member Sally Painter, the chief operating officer of Blue Star Strategies, a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm. Painter had served for years alongside Hunter Biden on the board of the liberal Truman National Security Project.
Burisma Holdings tellingly donated $100,000 per year for three years to the Atlantic Council starting in 2016, clearly to foster influence in this high profile, Democrat aligned U.S think tank. “It is perceived by Ukrainian and other Eastern European politicians and oligarchs as a way to buy influence in D.C. and launder their reputations,” Christina Pushaw, an Eastern Europe political consultant and policy specialist, said of the Atlantic Council.
The Strange Case of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin:
As mentioned above, in 2014 in the aftermath of the Yanukovych coup, Burisma Holdings was at the time being investigated for corruption by Ukraine’s prosecutor general, a role assumed by Viktor Shokin on 10 February 2015 (replacing Vitaly Yarema), and who was subsequently fired at the insistence of Vice President Biden under the threat (in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations) of withholding $1 billion of U.S. loan guarantees.
These investigations dated back to 2012, and involved millions of dollars misappropriated from Ukraine’s treasury, and then laundered through overseas banks.
From Wiki, the sequence of events :
In early November 2013 Deutsche Bank reported that $24 million of funds from Zlochevsky‘s companies were wired from Cyprus to the Latvia branch of PrivatBank, a Ukrainian bank co-founded by Ihor Kolomoyskyi.
In April 2014, the Serious Fraud Office froze approximately $23 million belonging to companies controlled by Zlochevsky. At the end of 2014, Zlochevsky fled Ukraine amid allegations of unlawful self enrichment and legalization of funds (Article 368-2, Criminal Code of Ukraine) during his tenure in public office.
In January 2015, then Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema announced that Zlochevsky had been put on the wanted list for alleged financial corruption.
At the end of January 2015, the Central Criminal Court in London released the $23 million that were blocked on accounts of Zlochevsky due to inadequate evidence.
In June 2018, the Serious Fraud Office stated that the case was closed.
Zlochevsky returned to Ukraine in February 2018 after investigations into his Burisma Holdings had been completed in December 2017 with no charges filed against him.
Viktor Shokin was only in the job a little more than a year, when on 2 Feb 2016 Shokin’s allegedly “slow walked” investigation had led, according to Interfax, to a court petition on that date seizing all movable and immovable holdings of Zlochevsky.
This is in spite of allegations in Bloomberg and other left aligned MSM outfits that the investigation was “dormant”, when clearly court proceedings show it was far from dormant. It is indeed strange to note how all those various news outlets used that exact term, over and over, almost as if reading from the same pre-prepared script.
So, to summarise, Viktor Shokin’s “dormant” investigation led them to petition the court to freeze Zlochevsky’s assets 6 weeks before he was forced to resign and, after he left office and was replaced, the case was then vacated due to “inadequate evidence” and two years later, Zlochevsky returned to the Ukraine with no charges laid.
That sequence of events does not remotely tally with Shokin running dead on the Burisma case. Quite the opposite, in fact.
A far more plausible scenario for Prosecutor Shokin’s removal is that Shokin’s investigations were potentially uncomfortable for the Obama administration, particularly coming hot on the heels of its role in the 2014 Maidan revolution to remove former President Yanukovych, which in turn came after Yanukovych’s decision in late 2013 to avoid signing an association agreement with the European Union (triggering mass protests across Ukraine and culminating in the February coup), and that some of the administration’s most high profile members and associates had their fingers in many Ukrainian pies.
From independent researcher and writer Timothy Alexander Guzman
“In his interview with CNN, Obama admitted that the United States “had brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine.”
“Obama’s statement is reiterating something that the world public opinion already knew — the US was involved in the coup of [ex-Ukrainian President] Viktor Yanukovych from the start. History shows us that the US has overthrown numerous governments in Latin America, Asia and Africa and replaced them with leaders that ruled with a fascist ideology that proved useful for Washington’s geopolitical interests.”
It seems clear that Viktor Shokin was initially warned to back off, culminating in an assassination attempt##, did so (at least for appearance’s sake) and then was rewarded by being removed to be replaced by someone more willing to look in the “right” directions.
##On 2 November 2015, there was an assassination attempt against then Ukrainian prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, when an unidentified sniper fired three shots into his office, but was foiled by the bulletproof glass window.
The contention that the Vice President, and point man for Ukraine in the Obama Administration, Joe Biden, was wanting to facilitate an investigation into fraudulent activity and money laundering being committed by the company (Burisma) that his son (Hunter Biden) was working for, rather than impeding it, is a contention that makes sense only to the rusted on Left wing ideologue.
To reinforce this logical conclusion, after Viktor Shokin was fired from the position of Ukraine’s prosecutor general under pressure from the United States###, and a permanent replacement initially was not been named.
###For added context, Hunter Biden was also directly and indirectly involved, through his association with Romanian oligarch Gabriel Popoviciu, in the brazen attempt to apply U.S. mediated pressure to fire the former chief prosecutor of Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate, Laura Kövesi, who was zealously pursuing criminal charges against the well connected oligarch. This case therefore clearly has eerie similarities to the Shokin situation, trying to apply pressure to impede the prosecution of a favoured oligarch on the one hand, while campaigning to stamp out “the scourge of corruption” on the other. (Source: Marco Polo: Report on the Hunter Biden Laptop)
However, a few months later, Yuri Lutsenko, widely regarded as a hero in the West for spending two years in prison after fighting Russian aggression in his country, was named prosecutor general, and among his first duties he was invited to meet new U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
“Lutsenko told me he was stunned when the ambassador “gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute.” The list included a founder of the AntAC group#* and two members of Parliament who vocally supported the group’s anti-corruption reform agenda, according to a source directly familiar with the meeting.”
#* the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC) is a Ukrainian NGO that allegedly aims to reduce corruption, however it is worth noting that it received much of its funding in the past from the Obama Administration and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
A spokesperson from the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC) was utilised as evidence that Prosecutor Shokin was NOT investigating Burisma for corruption.
The following quote from The Hill debunks the objectivity of this supposed anti-corruption NGO:
“Bankrolled by the Obama administration and Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC) was under investigation as part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into the misallocation of $4.4 million in US funds to fight corruption in the eastern European country.”
How could that evidence even remotely be considered objective or unbiased, when there is a clear financial link to the very Obama administration that some have alleged have a case to answer for in the actions by a very prominent member of that administration (VP Joe Biden through his own actions, and by extension through his son Hunter) with the investigation into Burisma Holdings, especially when they are themselves the subject of allegations of misappropriation of their own funding, being investigated by that same prosecutor?
The Trump Years:
Under President Donald J. Trump, the United States approved lethal arms sales to Ukraine in December 2017, moving beyond the non-lethal military assistance that the Obama administration had allowed. In the summer or 2018, Trump named Kurt Volker as his special envoy for Ukraine negotiations. Prior to that, the U.S. Congress created the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which authorised hundreds of millions of dollars in additional military aid for Ukraine.
In April 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a television comedian and political novice, won a presidential runoff with more than 70 percent of the vote, defeating Petro Poroshenko. Two months later, Zelenskyy’s party also won a majority of parliamentary seats, marking the first time since independence that Ukraine’s president had a majority party in the parliament. Zelenskyy had campaigned against corruption and poverty, and pledged to end the war in the east; many saw the vote as a rejection of Poroshenko and his failure to root out corruption.
On 25th July 2019, President Trump and President Zelenskyy had a phone conversation that later became the focus of an impeachment inquiry by the U.S. Congress into allegations of “abuse of power” and “obstruction of justice“. A U.S. government whistleblower, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman#**, expressed concern about President Trump’s alleged effort during the call to enlist Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden, the former Vice President, who was potentially to become a leading Democratic candidate in the 2020 presidential election. This was in spite of the fact that Vindman was only privy to one half of the dialogue in the call.
#**“Documents recently obtained by Human Events show that Alexander Vindman had been pitching the government of Ukraine to obtain lucrative defense contracts. In August 2022, Vindman, operating as CEO of Trident Support, pitched a deck on a Ukraine Weapons Systems Sustainment Center to address problems with Ukraine’s weapons management, namely readiness, repair, and maintenance. Vindman proposed that for $12 million in initial funding, his company, Trident Support, would bring support closer to the front lines by providing a logistical midpoint from which equipment could be distributed. The idea behind the proposal is that Trident Support would be a middle-man between NATO weapons and Ukrainian forces, teaching the latter how to operate and repair the equipment, while taking an exorbitant fee from Ukraine to do it.” (Source: humanevents.com)
In November 2019, several former and current U.S. officials testified that the Trump administration postponed a Trump-Zelenskyy meeting and then held up congressionally approved military assistance, allegedly in order to get Kyiv to investigate the Biden issue. White House officials dismissed these complaints as politically motivated, which no doubt they were, and in January 2020 President Trump was acquitted in a Senate vote that was mostly along party lines.
In June 2020, Ukraine was named a NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partner, joining Australia, Georgia, Finland, Jordan, and Sweden as countries with deeper cooperation on NATO-led missions and exercises. The alliance stated that the new status “does not prejudge any decisions on NATO membership.” In September 2020, Zelenskyy approved Ukraine’s new National Security Strategy, which provided for the development of a distinctive partnership with NATO with the aim of gaining membership. The previous year, Zelenskyy’s predecessor signed a constitutional amendment committing Ukraine to become a member of NATO and the EU.
The Biden Presidency: A New “Hope” for Ukraine:
From the aforementioned Atlantic Council comes an article 14 November, 2020 containing these gems:
Entitled: What can Ukraine expect from a Biden presidency?
“Most Ukrainians were understandably relieved to see the end of the 2020 US presidential election campaign. Thanks to a combination of President Trump’s impeachment and ongoing Ukraine-related corruption allegations leveled at Joe Biden, Ukraine had found itself thrust into the presidential race at a time when Kyiv counts more than ever on continued bipartisan US support as it seeks to fend off ongoing Russian aggression.
This unwelcome involvement in the US election was the climax to an awkward period in US-Ukrainian relations that began during the previous campaign in 2016 amid speculation regarding then-candidate Donald Trump’s commitment to opposing the Russian attack on Ukraine. Lingering questions over Trump’s attitude towards Russia would go on to cast a shadow over his entire Presidency, with Ukraine ties also suffering as a consequence.
News of Joe Biden’s election win was greeted with cautious optimism by many Ukrainians, who viewed it as an opportunity to return to the kind of unambiguous US backing that helped consolidate international opposition to the Russian invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014. Biden’s personal ties to Ukraine also inspired a degree of confidence. As US Vice President in the Obama administration, Biden oversaw Ukraine policy and visited the country on six occasions. No previous US President has ever been so intimately familiar with Ukrainian affairs.“
Intimate indeed. They do go on to say, in a rare moment of clarity:
“Not everyone in Ukraine shared this enthusiasm. Skeptics pointed to the failure of the Obama administration to prevent Russia’s seizure of Crimea and subsequent reluctance to provide Ukraine with lethal military assistance. In contrast, the Trump administration sent anti-tank Javelin missiles to Ukraine along with other military aid.”
They conclude:
“Regardless of changes at the White House, the foundations of the relationship between the United States and Ukraine are solid. Bipartisan US support for Ukraine has been a consistent feature since the country first gained independence in 1991. This has remained the case despite the turbulence of recent years.
Nevertheless, Joe Biden’s election win paves the way for a new chapter in the strategic partnership between the two countries.“
As evidenced by subsequent events, a new chapter was indeed very shortly to unfold, but perhaps not in quite the optimistic way it was initially imagined.
In February 2021 President Zelenskyy ordered a series of measures against pro-Moscow oligarchs, notably Viktor Medvedchuk, a businessman, chairman of Ukraine’s largest pro-Russia political party, and close friend of Vladimir Putin. The government froze his financial assets for three years and shut down three pro-Russia TV channels that Medvedchuk controlled, alleging that they broadcast “misinformation.” In May 2021, authorities lodged treason charges against Medvedchuk, claiming that he transferred oil and gas production licenses in Crimea to Russian authorities. Zelenskyy said the moves were necessary to defend the country, while Putin blasted them as motivated by anti-Russia bias.
Meanwhile, in April 2021, officials from Ukraine and EU member states warned about Russian deployments near Ukrainian border areas and in Crimea. Adding up to more than a hundred thousand troops, along with tanks, rocket launchers and other weaponry, analysts called it the largest troop buildup since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. President Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin then agreed to a June summit to discuss a range of contentious issues, including Ukraine, and to launch dialogues on strategic stability and cybersecurity.
In September 2021, the Russian energy firm Gazprom finished construction of the Nord Stream 2, a pipeline that is set to deliver natural gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany and that would cut off a major source of income for Ukraine, a current transit country. Leaders in Kyiv protested that Moscow would use the pipeline, which could double gas deliveries to the rest of Europe, as a geopolitical weapon. The Biden administration opposed the pipeline, but agreed to hold off on sanctions and reached a deal with Germany to fund alternative energy projects for Ukraine. Amid the Russian military buildup near Ukraine, Germany stated that a German-based firm involved in the project must take administrative steps before any gas can flow, a process that “could take until mid-2022“.
In December 2021 to January 2022, as Russia continued to mobilise tens of thousands of troops along the border with Ukraine, the Putin government demanded a set of security guarantees from the United States and NATO. This included a draft treaty calling for tight restrictions on U.S. and NATO political and military activities, notably a ban on NATO expansion. The Biden administration delivered written responses in January; few details were made public, but it rejected Russia’s insistence that Ukraine never be accepted into NATO and instead proposed new parameters for security in the region.
In February 2022, Putin deployed Russian forces to Ukraine’s separatist regions of Luhansk and Donetsk after the Kremlin recognised them as independent. The military action raised concerns that Russia would then try to assert full control over the regions, which were partially governed by Ukraine, and then use the move as a pretext for a broader invasion of the country. In an address to Russia, Vladimir Putin said that the government in Kyiv is a “puppet regime” run by foreign powers, and that NATO ignored Moscow’s security demands. In response to Russia’s moves, Germany announced the suspension of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, while the United States, EU, and UK pledged additional financial sanctions against Russian entities.
The Russian Invasion of Ukraine:
On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded and occupied parts of Ukraine in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has since resulted in tens, if not hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides and instigated Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.
The invasion began the morning of 24 February 2022 upon Russian president Vladimir Putin’s announcement of a “special military operation” seeking the “demilitarisation” and “de-Nazification” of Ukraine. Russian air strikes and a ground invasion were launched along a northern front from Belarus towards Kyiv, a north-eastern front towards Kharkiv, a southern front from Crimea, and a south-eastern front from Donetsk and Luhansk. In response, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy enacted martial law and a general mobilisation.
Russian troops retreated from the northern front by April. On the southern and south-eastern fronts, Russia captured Kherson in March and then Mariupol in May after a siege. On 18 April, Russia launched a renewed battle of Donbas. Russian forces continued to bomb both military and civilian targets far from the front line, including electrical and water systems.
By 11 December 2022, Ukraine President Zelenskyy stated that Russian forces have turned the city of Bakhmut into a “burned ruins”.
In late 2022, Ukraine launched counteroffensives in the south and in the east. Soon after, Russia announced the illegal annexation of four partly occupied oblasts. Elsewhere, by November 2022, Ukraine had retaken Kherson. On 16 December, Russia concentrated on launching missile attacks on Kyiv, Kharkiv, Poltava, and Kremenchuk, destroying infrastructure. Of 76 missiles that were fired at 9 power plants; Ukraine claimed 60 were intercepted. The next day, another missile bombardment targeted infrastructure on Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kryvyi Rih and Zaporhizhzhia.
As of March 2023, the number of civilian and military deaths is impossible to determine precisely in the fog of war.
On 12 October 2022, the independent Russian media project iStories reported that more than 90,000 Russian soldiers had been killed, been seriously wounded, or gone missing in Ukraine, citing sources close to the Kremlin. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) estimates the number of civilian casualties to be considerably higher than the figure the United Nations has been able to certify.
On 16 June, the Ukrainian Minister of Defense told CNN that he believed that tens of thousands of Ukrainians had died, adding that he “hoped” that the true death toll was below 100,000. In the destroyed city of Mariupol alone, Ukrainian officials believe at least 25,000 have been killed; but investigations of morgue records indicate many more, and some bodies remain uncollected.
Independent sources suggest that Ukraine forces have suffered far greater casualties than they have been willing to acknowledge, but one recent estimate wagers between 150,000-200,000 Ukrainians have been killed in action since the war began, while some others estimate upwards of 250,000. The average lifespan on the frontline of the fierce fighting in the city of Bakhmut is estimated as being a mere “four hours,” according to an American mercenaries fighting side by side with the Ukrainian army against Russian forces in the Donbas.
Vladimir Putin’s current strategy of Russian economy-of-force operations in southern Ukraine appear to have successfully ground down attacking Ukrainian forces with the minimal expenditure of Russian lives and resources, an implementation of attrition warfare that appears to be gaining the upper hand in the conflict, with an April/May offensive in the offing.
From Douglas MacGregor:
“The fact that the West’s economic sanctions (against Russia) damaged the U.S. and European economies while turning the Russian ruble into one of the international system’s strongest currencies has hardly enhanced Washington’s global standing.
Biden’s policy of forcibly pushing NATO to Russia’s borders forged a strong commonality of security and trade interests between Moscow and Beijing that is attracting strategic partners in South Asia like India, and partners like Brazil in Latin America. The global economic implications for the emerging Russo-Chinese axis and their planned industrial revolution for some 3.9 billion people in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are profound.”
The Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage:
On 26 September 2022, a series of bombings and subsequent underwater gas leaks occurred on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipelines. Both pipelines were built to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea, and are majority owned by the Russian majority state-owned gas company, Gazprom. The perpetrators’ identities and the motives behind the sabotage remain debated, but explosion caused massive damage to the Nord Stream pipelines.
After the explosions, investigators from Sweden and Denmark both determined the act to be one of sabotage. The U.S. agreed that the attacks were deliberate, but didn’t take responsibility. Western sources were quick to blame Russia for sabotaging its own pipeline, a source of significant income for them in a time of war, when there was little to justify such an action on Russia’s part.
U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report on his Substack blog in February, 2023 asserting that U.S. Navy divers set bombs that massively damaged the Nord Stream. He reported that U.S. Navy divers planted the explosives under the cover of BALTOPS naval exercises, as part of a Central Intelligence Agency operation under President Biden’s direction.
At the press briefing that followed President Biden’s meeting at the White House with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on 7 February 2022, President Joe Biden defiantly said, “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”
Twenty days earlier, Undersecretary Victoria Nuland had delivered essentially the same message at a State Department briefing, with little press coverage. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a question. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
Clearly, from a motive, means and opportunity point of view, the U.S. remains the prime suspect in the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, although pro-Ukrainian actors still remain a possibility, for economic reasons and to undermine Russia financially, though it is quite difficult to see them having the logistical capability to pull off such an operation without detection.
Whatever the ultimate truth of the matter, the U.S. and the E.U nations clearly have no genuine desire for the truth to come out, and with the help of their mainstream media enablers will continue with the plausible deniability that the fog of war allows.
Conclusion:
None of the above should in any way excuses Russian President Vladimir Putin for his actions in invading Ukraine, and the blame for the death and destruction that has since followed rests in substantial proportion on his shoulders. Putin has also completely miscalculated the likely costs of the invasion, and has since pivoted in his plans to a war of attrition, a strategy that seems at this stage to have far greater prospects of success.
In many ways, however, the recent historical actions of the US in provoking, or at the very least rushing blindly headlong into this current Ukraine situation have also been utterly deplorable, and they remain similarly culpable, along with the European Union for their part in precipitating an existential crisis for Ukraine, with a price paid with bucket loads of Ukrainian blood.
The Colour revolution, encouraged by the Obama administration, as I demonstrated above, to install a new Ukrainian President favourable to Europe in 2014 was obviously perceived as a significant threat to its existence by Russia, potentially opening the door to NATO troops being deployed near to or at its border, and thereby threatening their unfettered access to the Black Sea.
Ukraine is strategically much more important to Russia than the Baltic States ever were. Ukraine shares a 1,576km long border with Russia and borders on the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova. The coastal city of Sevastopol, located in the Crimean peninsula, serves as the major southern naval base for the Russian navy, being where the headquarters where Russia’s Black Sea fleet is located. The strategic need for continuous use of this base by the Russian navy resulted in a deal in April 2010 being done in which Russia agreed to lower the prices of the gas and oil it sells to Ukraine in return for continuing their unfettered access.
The sabre rattlers in the U.S. and NATO are now playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship, when all they needed to do initially to ensure peaceful co-existence was to assure Russia that Ukraine can remain independent, and therefore a buffer between NATO aligned nations and the Russian border.
Additionally, making a pariah of Russia (a project years in the making in the name of “regime change”) and forcing them into an unholy alliance with China was a massive geopolitical mistake. No matter what one thought of the merits or otherwise of Vladimir Putin, it would have been far more sensible for the West to keep him “in the tent” and at least to engage him in non-combative dialogue, handling the Russians sensibly and with diplomacy without necessarily pandering to them.
We in the democratic West (irony notwithstanding) are not entirely the “good guys” in this melodrama at least partly, if not wholly of our own making. The forced alliance between strange bedfellows in China and Russia against a common enemy in the West now makes WW3 far more likely than I am comfortable with. This represents an absolute failure of diplomacy by the Americans in particular, and of their alphabet soup of Deep State agencies.
The current Ukrainian situation, and subsequent sanctions on Russia directly after the COVID 19 response, will ultimately crush global energy and food security even if full blown European War does not eventuate, whilst supply chains threaten to grind to a halt as all the interconnected pieces are only as strong as the weakest link.
This provides somewhat convenient cover for the systemic bureaucratic, economic and political incompetence that has characterised Western governance over that period.
As a final word of caution, in my view President Vladimir Putin believes (like all megalomaniacs) that he and Russia are indivisible, and that anything which threatens his safety and future as supreme leader of Russia is, in his mind at least, an existential attack on Russia itself. Therefore, if he is cornered to the point where his existence is to be potentially compromised, he will no doubt hold the view that Russia should launch all its military (and likely nuclear) capability to defend him, since the two entities are indivisible in his mind. The potential consequences of that should be obvious to anyone paying the remotest attention.
Epilogue:
As of on cue, the Colour Revolution bandwagon must roll on:
From Last Refuge:
Hungary has been in the crosshairs of the Biden/Obama administration ever since Prime Minister Viktor Orban refused to align with the WEF Western Democracies in their quest for regime change in Russia. As the NATO led western alliance assembled to use Ukraine as a proxy war against Russia, Hungarian Prime Minister Orban would not join.
In early April 2022, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was overwhelmingly reelected, despite the massive efforts against him by the European Union, western and euro-centric multinational globalists. As a result of the victory, Brussels was furious at the Hungarian people. Associated Press – […] “Orban — a fierce critic of immigration, LGBTQ rights and “EU bureaucrats” — has garnered the admiration of right-wing nationalists across Europe and North America.”
Within the statements reported from his 2022 victory speech, Prime Minister Orban warned citizens of the NATO and western allied countries about the manipulation of Ukraine and how he views the Zelenskyy regime: – “while speaking to supporters on Sunday, Orban singled out Zelenskyy as part of the “overwhelming force” that he said his party had struggled against in the election — “the left at home, the international left, the Brussels bureaucrats, the Soros empire with all its money, the international mainstream media, and in the end, even the Ukrainian president.”
This put Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the crosshairs of the western alliance, specifically the EU and U.S. bureaucrats who use their power, position and intelligence apparatus to manipulate foreign nations. A year later and now we see USAID Administrator Samantha Power in Hungary openly discussing her seeding of the NGO’s and political activist systems in order to generate yet another colour revolution.”
And further proof of the concerted effort at “regime change”, now in Hungary:
“The EU, which includes 21 NATO countries, has frozen billions in funds to Budapest and accused populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban of cracking down on media freedom and LGBTQ rights. Orban’s administration has also been accused of tolerating an entrenched culture of corruption and co-opting state institutions to serve the governing Fidesz party.”
1984redux 