Ukraine Through the Looking Glass

Before adding an image of the Ukrainian flag to your online profile, you may want to dig a little deeper.

Unit of Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in Ukraine

War rarely ends happily for both opposing armies. In real life, urging the end of a war means rooting for the defeat of one side or the other. A sensible starting point is to identify the aggressor, the belligerent, the instigator. But in the case of Ukraine, a great many have skipped over this step. All too many “leftists” and “antiwar activists” have sized up the war in Ukraine and quickly concluded that, with Russia on one side and the US, NATO and Ukrainian Nazis on the other, the progressive position is to root for the defeat of the former and the victory of the latter.

Decades of Provocation

Aaron Maté clearly summarized the years-long provocation against Russia carried out by the US and NATO:

Absent from virtually all news coverage is the background that helps explain how we got here: the post-Cold War drive to expand NATO at the behest of DC neoconservatives and their arms industry funders; the 2014 US-backed Maidan coup that ousted a Ukrainian president who resisted Western efforts to cut off ties to Russia and impose crippling neoliberal austerity; the critical role of neo-Nazis and fascists in that coup and their increased influence inside Ukraine in the years since; the US refusal to actively support – if not direct orders to thwart  – Kiev's implementation of the 2015 Minsk II accords, which would grant the rebel Donbas region autonomy in return for its demilitarization, thereby ending the fighting but also -- to the dismay of Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and their DC backers -- the prospects of Ukraine's NATO membership; the very fact that the supposed threat of a Russian invasion is a manufactured crisis following a now eight-year old playbook, perhaps designed to justify crippling, bipartisan US sanctions on Russia or even provoke the Ukraine-Russia war that the US claims that it wants to avoid.

Russia Reacts

But on February 24, Russia did send its military into Ukraine, citing as reasons:

• NATO’s expansion right up to Russia’s borders.

• NATO military presence and activities within Ukraine making the country a virtual extension of NATO.

• Evidence of an imminent offensive against the Donbas.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s stated desire to acquire nuclear weapons.

• The strength and penetration of neo-Nazi forces throughout the Ukrainian army and government.

Russian President Vladimir Putin described the goals of the military operation:

The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.

It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force…

Jacques Baud is a former member of the Swiss strategic intelligence service and specialist on Eastern countries, trained by the American and British intelligence services. He published an excellent overview of the events that led up to the crisis (well worth reading in full):

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

• on the strategic level, the expansion of NATO (which we have not dealt with here);

• on the political level, the Western refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements;

• and operationally, the continuous and repeated attacks on the civilian population of the Donbass over the past years and the dramatic increase in late February 2022.

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

In a follow-up article, Baud concludes,

1. Western Intelligence, Ignored by Policymakers

Military documents found in Ukrainian headquarters in the south of the country confirm that the Ukraine was preparing to attack the Donbass; and that the firing observed by OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] observers as early as February 16 heralded an imminent outbreak in days or weeks.

Here, some introspection is necessary for the West—either its intelligence services did not see what was happening and they are thus very bad, or the political decision-makers chose not to listen to them. We know that Russian intelligence services have far superior analytical capabilities than their Western counterparts. We also know that the American and German intelligence services had very well understood the situation, since the end of 2021, and knew that the Ukraine was preparing to attack the Donbass.

This allows us to deduce that the American and European political leaders deliberately pushed the Ukraine into a conflict that they knew was lost in advance—for the sole purpose of dealing a political blow to Russia.

The reason Zelensky did not deploy his forces to the Russian border, and repeatedly stated that his large neighbor would not attack him, was presumably because he thought he was relying on Western deterrence. This is what he told CNN on March 20th—he was clearly told that the Ukraine would not be part of NATO, but that publicly they would say the opposite. The Ukraine was thus instrumentalized to affect Russia. The objective was the closure of the North Stream 2 gas pipeline, announced on February 8th, by Joe Biden, during the visit of Olaf Scholz; and which was followed by a barrage of sanctions.

2. Broken Diplomacy

Clearly, since the end of 2021, no effort has been made by the West to reactivate the Minsk agreements, as evidenced by the reports of visits and telephone conversations, notably between Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin. However, France, as guarantor of the Minsk Agreements, and as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, has not respected its commitments, which has led to the situation that the Ukraine is experiencing today. There is even a feeling that the West has sought to add fuel to the fire since 2014.

Thus, Vladimir Putin’s placing of nuclear forces on alert on February 27 was presented by our media and politicians as an irrational act or blackmail. What is forgotten is that it followed the thinly veiled threat made by Jean-Yves Le Drian, three days earlier, that NATO could use nuclear weapons. It is very likely that Putin did not take this “threat” seriously, but wanted to push Western countries—and France in particular—to abandon the use of excessive language.

3. The Vulnerability of Europeans to Manipulation is Increasing

Today, the perception propagated by our media is that the Russian offensive has broken down; that Vladimir Putin is crazy, irrational and therefore ready to do anything to break the deadlock in which he supposedly finds himself. In this totally emotional context, the question asked by Republican Senator Marco Rubio during Victoria Nuland’s hearing before Congress was strange, to say the least: “If there is a biological or chemical weapon incident or attack inside the Ukraine, is there any doubt in your mind that 100% it would be the Russians behind it?” Naturally, she answered that there is no doubt. Yet there is absolutely no indication that the Russians are using such weapons. Besides, the Russians finished destroying their stockpiles in 2017, while the Americans have not yet destroyed theirs.

Perhaps this means nothing. But in the current atmosphere, all the conditions are now met for an incident to happen that would push the West to become more involved, in some form, in the Ukrainian conflict (a “false-flag” incident).

Aaron Maté @aaronjmate

This week, John Mearsheimer, speaking to @KatrinaNation, noted the continued alliance between DC and Ukraine's far-right: "The Americans will side with the Ukrainian right... Both do not want Zelensky cutting a deal with the Russians that makes it look like the Russians won."

A Justified Response?

In a different article, Maté zeroed in on the pressure being mounted by the US and its NATO allies to prolong the war in Ukraine:

"I think Zelensky found out very quickly that because of the Ukrainian right, it was impossible to implement Minsk II," John Mearsheimer, the University of Chicago professor who has warned for years that US policies were pushing Ukraine into a conflict with Russia, said in a public event the same day. "…Zelensky understands that he cannot take the Ukrainian right on by himself. So basically we have a situation where Zelensky is stymied."

Echoing his late friend and colleague Stephen F. Cohen, Mearsheimer stressed the centrality of the US role.

"The Americans will side with the Ukrainian right," Mearsheimer said. "Because the Americans, and the Ukrainian right, both do not want Zelensky cutting a deal with the Russians that makes it look like the Russians won. So this is the principal reason I'm very pessimistic about Ukraine's ability to help shut this one down."

So, the evidence that the US wanted this war, went out of its way to provoke it, and has been doing all it can to prolong it is voluminous.

Yet many who acknowledge and denounce the US/NATO provocations that led up to the current war condemn Russia’s military response. Maté, for example, despite a fine summation of the sequence of events that led up to the conflict, declared, “Russia's invasion is an illegal and catastrophic response,” arguing that Russia “illegally, murderously, and catastrophically… invaded Ukraine.” The implication is that, instead, Russia should have turned the other cheek or pursued further diplomacy.

But it makes no sense, after convincingly outlining the years-long provocation perpetrated by the US and its plenipotentiaries, to insist that the target of that aggression and threats of violence can only respond with peaceful pleas and beseeching diplomacy. Clearly, those nonviolent means were tried and failed. Repeatedly. Over more than 8 years!

If a dangerous criminal gang invades your neighborhood, occupies your street, and takes over your neighbor’s house, must you wait peacefully until they break down your door and attack you in your sleep before you’re allowed to act? Russia’s stated goal is to disarm and “de-nazify” Ukraine, not to conquer or permanently occupy the country. Thus, Russia’s move is better understood as a defensive police action than an offensive imperial invasion.

The Failure of Diplomacy

In his article, Ukraine Negotiation Kabuki, Jim Kavanagh brilliantly dismantles the argument that Russia could have employed more diplomacy rather than defensive military action:

There is no possibility of such “negotiations” or “compromise” because that already happened.

Negotiations and compromise were made when the United States promised not to move NATO one inch to the east in exchange for absorbing East Germany. Negotiations were made, successfully, with the Minsk agreement, which—at Putin’s insistence, against the independence urgings of Donbass and its Russian supporters—would have granted the Donbass regions limited autonomy within the framework of a unified Ukrainian state. That was the compromise. And again, with Minsk 2, negotiated after Kiev broke the agreement, attacked Donbass, and almost had its army wiped out, but for Putin holding LDPR back. And again, with the “Normandy Format,” after Kiev spent seven years continuing to attack Donbass and repeatedly and explicitly stating its refusal to abide by the former negotiated compromises.

Russia initiated its offensive because all the possibilities for a negotiated peace with Kiev (and its U.S. handler) under any conditions other than Russia is now demanding have been used up. Everyone must understand that, and how dangerous it makes this moment. Compromise agreements were successfully made—at least three times!—and then continually destroyed by U.S. and national fascist intransigence and aggression, with attacks on Donbass over eight years that took 14,000 lives. And no one in the U.S.’s “international community” cared a whit.

Legality

Scott Ritter, drawing on his experience as a former US Marine Intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector, has made invaluable contributions to understanding the background of the Ukraine conflict and to analyzing the current situation. See here, here, here and here. In a piece entitled Russia, Ukraine & the Law of War: Crime of Aggression, Ritter makes a strong case that Russia’s military action in Ukraine is legal under Article 51 of the UN Charter, especially in light of precedent set by the US and NATO in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq.

While one may be able to mount a legal challenge to Russia’s contention that its joint operation with Russia’s newly recognized independent nations of Lugansk and Donetsk constitutes a “regional security or self-defense organization” as regards “anticipatory collective self-defense actions” under Article 51, there can be no doubt as to the legitimacy of Russia’s contention that the Russian-speaking population of the Donbass had been subjected to a brutal eight-year-long bombardment that had killed thousands of people.

Moreover, Russia claims to have documentary proof that the Ukrainian Army was preparing for a massive military incursion into the Donbass which was pre-empted by the Russian-led “special military operation.” [OSCE figures show an increase of government shelling of the area in the days before Russia moved in.]

Finally, Russia has articulated claims about Ukraine’s intent regarding nuclear weapons, and in particular efforts to manufacture a so-called “dirty bomb”, which have yet to be proven or disproven. [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a reference to seeking a nuclear weapon in February at the Munich Security Conference.]

The bottom line is that Russia has set forth a cognizable claim under the doctrine of anticipatory collective self defense, devised originally by the U.S. and NATO, as it applies to Article 51 which is predicated on fact, not fiction.

While it might be in vogue for people, organizations, and governments in the West to embrace the knee-jerk conclusion that Russia’s military intervention constitutes a wanton violation of the United Nations Charter and, as such, constitutes an illegal war of aggression, the uncomfortable truth is that, of all the claims made regarding the legality of pre-emption under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, Russia’s justification for invading Ukraine is on solid legal ground.

Imperial Hypocrisy

If all the forgoing weren’t enough to pierce the US propaganda on Russia and Ukraine, we’re presented with the latest example of imperial hubris and hypocrisy in the form of the Solomon Islands. Over eight thousand miles from Washington, DC, the Solomon Islands, without consulting the self-declared imperial hegemon, entered into a cooperation agreement with China. While posturing as a defender of national self-determination when it comes to Ukraine, Washington’s tolerance for the independent action of the small Solomon Islands nation was conspicuously absent and the reaction was swift. ABC News reports,

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- The Biden administration on Thursday warned the Solomon Islands that the United States will take unspecified action against the South Pacific nation should its recently concluded cooperation agreement with China pose a threat to U.S. or allied interests.

Recalling how blithely US officials and US media dismissed Russian claims that eastward expansion of NATO constituted a red line for that country, it’s amazing to watch as Bloomberg reports: Chinese Naval Base in Solomons a ‘Red Line,’ Australia Says.

Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison said a Chinese military base in the Solomon Islands would be a “red line” for his government, while fellow U.S. ally Japan became the latest to dispatch an envoy to the country over the issue.

Who’s the Bully?

According to the Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases, “the United States maintains the highest number of military bases outside its territory, estimated at almost 1000 (95% of all foreign military bases in the world). Presently, there are U.S. military bases in every Persian Gulf country except Iran.” In addition, the “United States has 19 Naval air carriers (and 15 more planned), each as part of a Carrier Strike Group, composed of roughly 7,500 personnel, and a carrier air wing of 65 to 70 aircraft — each of which can be considered a floating military base.”

Russia has eight foreign military bases, chiefly in neighboring former Soviet Republics. China has three.

In the case of Ukraine, the facts show that the US and its quislings maneuvered to provoke and stoke the conflict. Yet to believe mainstream media and US government spokespersons, Russia is the habitual aggressor and chief threat to world peace.

I’m not buying it, and neither should you.