by Ron Spriestersbach
The war in Ukraine is not a reaction to Russian aggression. It is the result of a US-orchestrated coup in February 2014 which threatened the security of Russia. The coup was organized by Victoria Nuland of the State Dept., the wife of Robert D. Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for a New American Century. In a major slip, she was heard saying on a phone call to the US ambassador to Ukraine, that the CIA had spent 5 billion dollars in its preparation. They discussed who they wanted for Prime Minister, and agreed that their man was ìYats.î Two weeks later, the coup occurred and Yatseniuk became Prime Minister.
The coup overthrew the elected president who had decided to go with Russia instead of with the European Union. After the coup, the Crimea, the location of the Russian Black Sea warm water naval port, which had been transferred to the Ukraine from Russia when both were part of the USSR, voted 75+% by the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking citizens to rejoin Russia. Also, in the south-east of Ukraine proper, the Russian-speaking population, facing discrimination and intimidation, sought to separate from the Ukraine, and a civil war has ensued, at a cost of at least 6,000 deaths, more than 1 million refugees, and terrible damage to the infrastructure. To this date, this situation has not been resolved.
The US and NATO have imposed sanctions on Russia, and threatened military action on their own and weapons supply to the Ukraine, or the incorporation of Ukraine into NATO. Putin has hinted that Russia may use nuclear weapons if this encroachment is excessive as in the Ukraine coup. Many writers, including Gorbachev, have warned that there is now a crisis equivalent to the Cuban missile crisis. The Germans and others in Europe have sought to back off the US-escalated military pressure on Russia, but Gen. Phillip Breedlove, the NATO Commander, continues to make bellicose statements denouncing supposed Russian aggressiveness.
John Pilger in his essay ìRise of Fascismî and Prof. Stephen Cohen in The Nation (Aug. and Sept. 2014) both portray the shock troops for the Ukraine coup as neo-Nazis, known as the Right Sector and Svoboda, whose antecedents were in collaborators with Hitler’s invasion forces. Since when do we pick Nazis for our heroes? These neo-Nazis have been involved in recent ugly atrocities, such as torching a building full of Russian-descent people and burning dozens to death.
All of this has occurred even though, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a promise had been made to Russia that NATO would not be extended east of East Germany. The eastern borders of NATO now include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Bulgaria (in 2004) and Poland and Hungary (in 1999). The Russians perceive the eastern movement of NATO as having the purpose of cutting the distance to Moscow in case of a military attack or attempt to overthrow the Russian government. Russia, having suffered destructive invasion from the West by Napoleon and Hitler, understandably sees these moves as a military threat. A recent ad on Craigs List purports to recruit Russians and Ukrainians to train Marines in southern CA in immersive preparation, presumably for a possible combat or advisory role in fighting in that region.
It is also believed by many who are well informed that the encroachment on Russia is part of Obama’s pivot to Asia, with a target on China after Russia is subdued. Many signs of this are visible, such as the Western interference in Hong Kong and with the Uighurs, from a heavily Muslim province in China, many of whom are being recruited to Muslim militias in the Middle East for training. After the aimed-for subjugation of Russia and China by NATO, the United States would then become the uncontested hegemonic world power, by using military might to overcome its steadily weakening economic position.
Readers interested in greater detail can access Information Clearing House on the internet: https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
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