Did Putin Have ‘Other Options’ on Ukraine?
By Ray McGovern, May 22, 2023
The attempt at balance – however transparent – is welcome. But are readers not owed some attempt to spell out those “other options”? This is not a marginal quibble; we are talking war. When one glibly asserts, glibly, that that a country that launched hostilities had other options, well, what were they? A statement as lengthy as that published in the NYT might have made room for an attempt to cite one or two of those options
John Mearsheimer Ukraine Salon May 23, 2023
The Biden Administration is engulfed in a staggeringly expensive folly in Ukraine with no forseeable good outcomes. The Committee hosted University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer the week after the Russian invasion fourteen months ago. That zoom salon had 1,136,000 views. The Committee has invited John to return — this time in person.
How the West Brought War to Ukraine: Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe Paperback – August 5, 2022
by Benjamin Abelow (Author)
Ukraine: Questions for the US Anti-War Movement w/ Abby Martin & Brian Becker
February 26, 2022
Featuring live audience Q&A, Abby Martin and Brian Becker discuss the Ukraine war and what it means for the anti-war movement.
Rejecting NATO expansion, Putin recognizes forgotten Donbas civilians
February 26, 2022
After weeks of US claims that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent, Vladimir Putin instead recognized the breakaway republics of Luhansk and Donetsk. The decision has triggered a new round of US-led sanctions while bringing attention to rebel-held areas, where, according to UN figures on the Donbas war, 80% of civilian casualties have occurred since 2018.
Professor Richard Sakwa analyzes the factors behind Putin’s move and its likely consequences. Putin’s decision, he says, comes after Kiev refused to implement the 2015 Minsk accords, which could have ended the conflict, and a longstanding US-driven project to expand NATO to Russia’s borders.
Also Read:
Putin’s Nuclear Threat
By Scott Ritter, Consortium News – February 27, 2022
Vladimir Putin is a madman. He’s lost it. At least that is what the leaders of the West would like you to believe. According to their narrative, Putin — isolated, alone, confused, and angry at the unfolding military disaster Russia was undergoing in Ukraine — lashed out, ostensibly threatening the entire world with nuclear annihilation.
Lesson From Ukraine: Breaking Promises to Small Countries Means They’ll Never Give Up Nukes
By Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept – February 27, 2022
In the 1990s, world powers promised Ukraine that if it disarmed, they would not violate its security. That promise was broken.
Russian forces remove Ukrainian dam built to cut off water from Crimea
By Al Mayadeen Net, February 26, 2022
After an eight-year hiatus, water is restored to Crimea via the North Crimean Canal, after Russian forces destroyed a dam constructed by the Ukrainian authorities in the Kherson region.
The Mess That Nuland Made
By Robert Parry, Consortium News – February 26, 2022
Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s “regime change” in early 2014 without weighing the likely chaos and consequences, wrote Robert Parry on July 13, 2015.
US official: Russian invasion of Ukraine risks release of dangerous pathogens
By Matt Field, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – February 25, 2022
The pathogens in Ukrainian labs vary by facility, Pope said, but some can be characterized as presenting a concern in the Ukrainian environment. As an example, he cited African swine fever virus, which is highly contagious in pigs and has caused hundreds of outbreaks in Ukraine since 2012. Some labs, he said, may hold pathogen strains left over from the Soviet bioweapons program, preserved in freezers for research purposes.
Russia, Ukraine and the Chronicle of a War Foretold
By Chris Hedges, February 25, 2022
After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a near-universal understanding among political leaders that NATO expansion would be a foolish provocation against Russia. How naive we were to think the military-industrial complex would allow such sanity to prevail.
Roaming Charges: Insane in the Ukraine
By Jeffrey St. Clair, February 25, 2022
Neo-Nazis in Ukraine, neo-Romanovs in Moscow, NATO expansionists in the western capitals, shale oil companies and natural gas conglomerates, if this devolves into a war it’s going to make World War I seem like a battle of clean hands.
Why the Russian Federation Recognized the Independence Movements in the Donbas
By Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report – February 23, 2022
I will not add to that mountain of ink because, for me, the story is relatively simple. I have argued since 2015 that it was greed informed by miscalculations that drove the U.S. — with the support of European capital salivating from prospect of profits generated by gaining full control of the Ukrainian economy through the European Association agreement — to decide to overthrow the government of Viktor Yanukovych when he turned to Russia instead of surrendering Ukrainian sovereignty to U.S. and European capital.
WWII Redux: The Endpoint of U.S. Policy, from Ukraine to Taiwan
By John V. Walsh, CounterPunch – February 23, 2022
The United States is stoking tensions in both Europe and East Asia, with Ukraine and Taiwan as the current flashpoints on the doorsteps of Russia and China which are the targeted nations. Let us be clear at the outset. As we shall see, the endpoint of this process is not for the U.S. to do battle with Russia or China but to watch China and Russia fight it out with the neighbors to the ruin of both sides. The US is to “lead from behind’ – as safely and remotely as can be arranged.
What a US Trap for Russia in Ukraine Might Look Like
By Joe Lauria, Consortium News – February 04, 2022
There are precedents for this. One is the clear signal given to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein by April Glaspie, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, in 1990 that the U.S. would do nothing to stop him from invading Kuwait. She told Saddam that the U.S. had no “opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.” But it wasn’t just Glaspie that left the door open to Kuwait. The Washington Post reported on Sept. 17, 1990: “In the same week that Ambassador April Glaspie met a menacing tirade from Saddam with respectful and sympathetic responses, Secretary of State James Baker’s top public affairs aide, Margaret Tutwiler, and his chief assistant for the Middle East, John Kelly, both publicly said that the United States was not obligated to come to Kuwait’s aid if the emirate were attacked. They also failed to voice clear support for Kuwait’s territorial integrity in the face of Saddam’s threats.”
Russophobia Leads Us to Assume the Worst of Russians – and Assuming They’re Demonic Could be Dangerous
by Patrick Cockburn, CounterPunch – February 25, 2022
Anti-Russian feeling has a long history and it is easy to foment Russophobia, whereby all Russian actions are prejudged as evil and any pretence to a balanced approach to a crisis in which they are involved is abandoned.
Canada and Ukraine
By Yves Engler, CounterPunch – February 25, 2022
Ottawa has long sought to destabilize the relationship between Russia and Ukraine. In 2014 Ottawa actively assisted the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych who was oscillating between the European Union and Russia.
Protecting the Nazis: The Extraordinary Vote of Ukraine and the USA
By Craig Murray, February 24, 2022
In Ukraine, support for the Ukrainian nationalist divisions who fought alongside the Nazis has become, over the last eight years, the founding ideology of the modern post 2013 Ukrainian state (which is very different from the diverse Ukrainian state which briefly existed 1991-2013).
A US-Backed, Far Right—Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War
By Branko Marcetic, Jacobin – February 07, 2022
In 2014 Ukraine, great power gamesmanship, righteous anger at a corrupt status quo, and opportunistic far-right extremists toppled the government in the Maidan Revolution. Today’s crisis in Ukraine can’t be understood without understanding Maidan.
What You Should Really Know About Ukraine
By Bryce Greene, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) – January 28, 2022
…the crucial role the US has played in escalating tensions in the region. In nearly every case we looked at, the reports omitted the US’s extensive role in the 2014 coup that preceded Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Focusing on the latter part only serves to manufacture consent for US intervention abroad.
Far-right extremists in Ukrainian military bragged about Canadian training, report says
By Christy Somos, October 20, 2021
A report exploring the far-right in Ukraine’s military found that neo-Nazis and supporters of far-right groups in the ranks bragged online about receiving training from Canada and other NATO nations, prompting promises of a thorough review from the Department of National Defence
Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine
By Lev Golinkin, The Nation, February 22, 2019
Five years after the Maidan uprising, anti-Semitism and fascist-inflected ultranationalism are rampant.
America’s Collusion With Neo-Nazis
By Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation – May 02, 2018
Fascist or neo-Nazi revivalism is underway today in many countries, from Europe to the United States, but the Ukrainian version is of special importance and a particular danger.
How and Why the US Government Perpetrated the 2014 Coup in Ukraine
By Eric Zuesse, Strategic Culture – June 03, 2018
This will document that the ‘new Cold War’ between the US and Russia did not start, as the Western myth has it, with Russia’s involvement in the breakaway of Crimea and Donbass from Ukraine, after Ukraine — next door to Russia — had suddenly turned rabidly hostile toward Russia in February 2014. Ukraine’s replacing its democratically elected neutralist Government in February 2014, by a rabidly anti-Russian Government, was a violent event, which produced many corpses.
America’s Collusion With Neo-Nazis
By Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation – May 02, 2018
Neo-fascists play an important official or tolerated role in US-backed Ukraine.
That the snipers who killed scores of protestors and policemen on Kiev’s Maidan Square in February 2014, thereby triggering a “democratic revolution” that overthrew the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, and brought to power a virulent anti-Russian, pro-American regime—it was neither democratic nor a revolution, but a violent coup unfolding in the streets with high-level support—were sent not by Yanukovych, as is still widely reported, but instead almost certainly by the neofascist organization Right Sector and its co-conspirators.
Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem
By Josh Cohen, Reuters, March 19, 2018
As Ukraine’s struggle against Russia and its proxies continues, Kiev must also contend with a growing problem behind the front lines: far-right vigilantes who are willing to use intimidation and even violence to advance their agendas, and who often do so with the tacit approval of law enforcement agencies.
Council of Europe issues report on far-right massacre in Odessa
By David Levine, World Socialist Web Site, January 19, 2016
In November of last year, the International Advisory Panel (IAP) of the Council of Europe (CoE) concluded that the Ukrainian government had failed to properly investigate and prosecute those responsible for violent clashes in Odessa in May 2014 between supporters of the far-right, US-backed coup in Kiev and its opponents. At least 48 people were killed in the conflict.
Congress Has Removed a Ban on Funding Neo-Nazis From Its Year-End Spending Bill
By James Carden, The Nation – January 14, 2016
Under pressure from the Pentagon, Congress has stripped the spending bill of an amendment that prevented funds from falling into the hands of Ukrainian neo-fascist groups.
The US Government always knew Ukraine in NATO was an absolute redline.
February 01, 2008
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html
NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard
National Security Archive at George Washington University
U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.
US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev
Ian Traynor, The Guardian – November 26, 2004
With their websites and stickers, their pranks and slogans aimed at banishing widespread fear of a corrupt regime, the democracy guerrillas of the Ukrainian Pora youth movement have already notched up a famous victory – whatever the outcome of the dangerous stand-off in Kiev.
Videos
Bio-Labs in Ukraine, with Dan Cohen and Scott Ritter
Mint Press News – March 04, 2022
Join Dan Cohen and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter for a live discussion on the Ukraine/Russia war, Pentagon-funded Bio-Labs in Ukraine and European Union censorship.
Ukraine on Fire: The Real Story – Full Documentary by Oliver Stone
Initial release: June 16, 2016
Ukraine. Across its eastern border is Russia and to its west-Europe. For centuries, it has been at the center of a tug-of-war between powers seeking to control its rich lands and access to the Black Sea. 2014’s Maidan Massacre triggered a bloody uprising that ousted president Viktor Yanukovych
YouTube has removed the video, “Ukraine On Fire”. Please check it out from the link below.
Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer
September 25, 2015
John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science and Co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, assesses the causes of the present Ukraine crisis, the best way to end it, and its consequences for all of the main actors. A key assumption is that in order to come up with the optimum plan for ending the crisis, it is essential to know what caused the crisis. Regarding the all-important question of causes, the key issue is whether Russia or the West bears primary responsibility.
Stephen Cohen on Russia Ukraine Crisis “We are Well Into a Cold War”
April 17, 2014
As negotiations over the crisis in Ukraine begin in Geneva, tension is rising in the Ukrainian east after security forces killed three pro-Russian protesters, wounded 13 and took 63 captive in the city of Mariupol. Ukrainian officials said the pro-Russian separatists had attempted to storm a military base. The killings came just after the unraveling of a Ukrainian operation to retake government buildings from pro-Russian separatists. Earlier today, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the authorities in Kiev of plunging the country into an “abyss” and refused to rule out sending forces into Ukraine. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has announced a series of steps to reinforce its presence in eastern Europe. “We will have more planes in the air, more ships on the water and more readiness on the land,” Rasmussen said.
Diplomacy in Ukraine
February 10, 2022
Senator Bernie Sanders: We must vigorously support diplomatic efforts to deescalate this crisis and reaffirm Ukrainian independence and sovereignty. I’m on the Senate floor explaining why.
Thanks Trinicenter…
https://youtu.be/hxUfwyLdwZg
What Putin is doing is what the U.S. has been doing since the 1950s. In the 1950s they propped up corrupt regimes in the Caribbean and south/Central America.
The name papa doc and baby doc Duvalier were puppets created by the U.S. Here are some examples “ Guatemala’s long civil war can in turn be traced back to a 1954 coup against a democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, which was backed by the US. Washington backed the Guatemalan military, which was responsible for genocide against the native population. An estimated 200,000 people were killed between 1960 and 1996”
El Salvador is atrapped in a cycle of violence that can be traced back to a civil conflict in which the US was a protagonist, training and funding rightwing death squads in the name of fighting communism.
“The civil war really destroyed the economic base of the country and any sense of a functioning democracy,” said Thornton. “It left a massively militarised society.”
When Manuel Zelaya, Honduras’s reformist president, was seized by the country’s military in 2009, and flown out of the country to Costa Rica, still in his pyjamas, the Obama administration refused to call it a coup.
Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state at the time, argued that to do so would have meant cutting aid at the expense of the Honduran poor. In the first edition of her memoir, Hard Choices, she admitted working with other Latin American governments to ensure Zelaya would not return to power.
The US policy towards the Caribbean, Central and South America was stated by 1960s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger “ we must ensure that the nations surroundings the US do not become powerful enough to threaten the US but they must remain subservient to us.” This would explain why Venezuela once the fifth richest country in the world has been pauperized, because the “mother ship” prefers it to be so.
Putin wants the nations close to the Russian Federation to be subservient and never a threat to mother Russia. Ukraine is no different from Cuba, hundreds of death attempt on Castro, same as the former Ukraine President who was poisoned. Would the U.S. have allowed ballistic missile on Cuban soil? We all know the answer to that. Would Putin allow missiles on Ukraine soil? Certainly not.
The global power play has been raise up several notches. World War I &II started in Europe. If WWIII starts the result will be catastrophic for NATO nations and Russia. In the mean time the world biggest hypocrite the U.S. continue to spread war and create more enemies. Why was the world silent on this? https://theintercept.com/2020/06/08/the-nyt-admits-key-falsehoods-that-drove-last-years-coup-in-bolivia-falsehoods-peddled-by-the-u-s-its-media-and-the-nyt/
Putin and nukes.
The Russians have perfected the missile delivery system for nuclear war. Putin has been “gloating” for many years as he spoke about nuclear missile developed by Russia. The hypersonic missiles guarantee certain wipe out of NATO cities and military installations within 30 minutes. Nations such as Caribbean and Latin American nations Africa, India, Middle East, east Asia will be spared. Nukes could be launch off Russian submarines lurking off the coast of Venezuela. It will not mean the end of the world it will mean the end of NATO and possibly Russia because Putin will hit first. https://www.vox.com/22951004/nuclear-weapons-russia-ukraine-war-putin
Putin is a KGB trained operative who trust no one, he loves Russia and the Russian people. He is a forward thinking man, what he is doing now he thinks is necessary to protect Russia 10 years down the road. He unlike Clinton who was a female connoisseur appears to exhibit signs of sexual repression which means he gets frustrated easily. Being in power and getting sexually frustrated can be detrimental to the world. (You are probably laughing but it is serious psychologically).
If this war goes past a week and the bodies of Europeans strewn the streets, unlike Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria it will stir the pot to possible nuclear. No one in Europe will be able to stomach this….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ankBuoUQgHo
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/introducing-the-avangard-hypersonic-missile-a-look-inside-putins-new-high-tech-arsenal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPvB_vL4bAo
There are Russian billionaires all over the world and very well cushioned from far and near reaching tentacles. This brings into question the meaning of the word communism. USSR was fragmented into separate states but individuals like Roman Ambromovich owner of Chelsea club and others, where the heck did they come from overnight? Let’s look at Cuba and figure out how is it we can witness so much impoverishment with the population practicing communism but subservient to the oligarchs – owners of the tourist industry whose purses are bursting at the seams.
https://time.com/6151695/vladimir-putin-wealth-assets-freeze-ukraine/