Wars do not start when the attacked fight back. The Ukraine invasion started with the western attacks of the Orange and Maidan revolutions. Today we see western media images of bombed buildings and sheltering children in Ukraine but such images could have been shown over the last 8 years of Russians suffering in the Donbass. The first casualty of war is truth.
Ignorant of the nature of extreme Ukrainian politics, of Russia’s genuine security fears after their reneging on missile treaties, unapologetic for the anti democratic western interventions in 2004 and 2014, of the persecution of Russians in Ukraine (like the Odessa massacre see below**) and even ignorant of basic geography (the British Foreign Minister) western politicians have turned the post communist, Christian, embryo capitalist, western friendly, imperially retreating, cooperating Putin of 2000 into the counter attacking, militarily forceful, resentful and angry Russian leader of today.
“I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and the so-called civilized world, so it’s hard for me to view NATO as an enemy,” Vladimir Putin said in 2000,
Indeed, Putin also said that ‘anyone who doesn’t regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.’
NATO’S EXPANSION LIES
Just like a liar and cheat who is exposed so NATO when confronted with proof of their commitment to non expansion Eastwards says “but nothing was put in a treaty”. And like a murderer arrested NATO says “prove it” – when an innocent man would say “This why I did not do it”
In early February 1990, Genscher and Baker presented the idea of non expansion of NATO in Moscow independently of one another. The German foreign minister assured the Kremlin that: “For us, it is a certainty that NATO will not expand to the east. And that applies generally,” clearly meaning beyond just East Germany. Baker offered “ironclad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward.” When Gorbachev said that NATO expansion was “unacceptable,” Baker responded: “We agree with that.”
U.S. President George H. W. Bush, for example, said: “We have no intention, even in our thoughts, to harm the Soviet Union in any fashion.” French President François Mitterrand told Gorbachev that he was “personally in favour of gradually dismantling the military blocs.”
NATO Secretary General Manfred Wörner later expressed his clear opposition to the expansion of the Western alliance. In Brussels on 17 May 1990 he said: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.” In other words if the West did do that it would be a guarantee of Russian insecurity! Well they did and so we have the predicted crisis.
THE MINSK ACCORDS
It was Vladimir Putin who drove the Minsk accords, agreeing to disarmament and persuading Donetsk and Luhansk regions to sign up to devolution (when they had demanded independence because they did not trust Kiev.) But the accords have been long dead because of Kiev’s intransigence, despite the pressure from the co sponsors Germany and France to fulfil their obligations under those accords.
“In fact, yesterday’s event – the recognition of these republics – was dictated precisely by the fact that the Ukrainian leadership had publicly declared that they were not going to abide by these agreements” said Putin http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67838
Incidentally one of the Russian Ukrainian leaders Alexander Zakharchenko, the first president of the Donetsk People’s Republic who was a signatory to Minsk was assassinated in August 2018 almost certainly by Kiev special forces. You did not know that? Now you know how reliable the western media are!
It has been a western, geopolitical disaster of the first order, turning a potential ally (who once even thought a peaceful NATO could be joined by Russia) into an enemy with a powerful army, navy and airforce forced (by the West supporting extreme nationalism, fascist recidivism and anti Russian racism in Ukraine) to come to the aid of fellow Russians bombed and sniped at for years in the Donbass. Over 10,000 deaths have occurred since the western supported putsch in Kiev in 2014 among those who wanted even less than Nicola Sturgeon demands for Scotland. Would we bomb Edinburgh?
The West could have forced Kiev to live up to the terms of the western (and Vladimir Putin brokered) Minsk agreements and granted a large measure of devolved power to Donetsk and Luhansk but having failed to do so those regions have now gone much further and declared independence with Russia being the military guarantor of that independence.
THE WEST’S “ILLEGAL” RECOGNITIONS
Accusations of the “illegality” of such independence by NATO and the West emit the greatest stench of hypocrisy for it follows of course the exact equivalent “illegal” recognition of Croatia by Germany which started the Yugoslav war and the illegal recognition of the fanatics and ethnic cleansers in Kosovo by most western countries.
Russia warned about such recognitions at the time and the precedent that would be set. It was so set and the West is now hoist on its own petard.
RUSSIA’S POWERFUL ECONOMIC POSITION
An external debt one third (as a % of GDP) of that of the USA, a provider of 40% of Europe’s gas imports, the power to block German industrial exports and gas imports, a healthy balance of payments surplus and the control of strategic minerals for the West: As Bloomberg reported last year, Russia provides more oil to the United States than any other country, except Canada. Around 20 million barrels per month. Ambrose Evans Pritchard writes in a brilliant assessment of the integration of the Russian economy into western supply chains:
Putin has the means to cut off critical minerals and gases needed to sustain the West’s supply chain for semiconductor chips, upping the ante in the middle of a worldwide chip crunch. Furthermore, he could hobble the aerospace and armaments industry in the US and Europe by restricting supply of titanium, palladium, and other metals.
This potential sanctions “counter strike” by Russia explains the hesitant nature of western sanctions announced!
Evans Pritchard refers to the study by Technet which revealed the extent of US dependency on Russian supply of C4F6 gas, neon, palladium, scandium.
Some 90pc of the world supply of neon, used as laser gas for chip lithography, comes from Russia and Ukraine and the world’s biggest producer of titanium is VSMPO-AVISMA, located in the ‘Titanium Valley’ of Western Siberia.
Evans Pritchard goes on:
Russia and Ukraine together account for 30pc of the global supply of titanium, but this understates their hegemony over the production chain. VSMPO-AVISMA supplies 35pc of Boeing’s titanium, mostly for 737, 767, 777, and 787 jets. It is used in engines, fans, disks and frames, prized for its resistance to heat and corrosion, and for its ratio of weight to strength.
RUSSIAN FRIENDSHIP SPURNED
There was a time, 20 years ago when, despite the break up of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia by the EU and NATO, Moscow and the West were prepared to cooperate, increase mutual trade and industrial and financial links. Vladimir Putin was in the vanguard of this new rapprochement. He even helped the UK out in a gas shortage. He did his best but consistently and aggressively over many years his good will was spurned, missile treaties were abandoned by the West, USA neocons and Democrat Russophobes grew ever more provocative, grotesque Ukraine Nazism (in both nationalist troop formations, in the words of leading politicians and in domestic parades) was tolerated without censure and the statues of the Nazi collaborator and genocidal maniac Stepan Bandera remain in the Ukrainian public space. No wonder Putin now says he looks forward to a “denazification process”.
We now see the result. The US Democrats (with the disgraceful support of a joke British Foreign Office) have provoked and poked the Russian bear and are back in their familiar position of warmongers (Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, now Ukraine).
LABOUR MPS AND “YOUNG LABOUR” CONDEMN NATO AGGRESSION
As I have frequently pointed out on this website and in my youtube video “Corporatism, the end of democracy truth and prosperity” the corporatist fascists of left and right are confronted by the anti corporatist fascists of left and right. An example today is the condemnation of NATO’s expansion by 15 Labour MPs and Lords and by the party’s “Young Labour” movement:
Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbot,John McDonnell, Richard Burgon, Ian Lavery, Beth Winter, Zarah Sultana, Bell Ribiero-Addy, Apsana Begum, Mick Whitley, Tahir Ali, Claudia Webbe, Ian Mearns, Pauline Bryan (Lords) Christine Blower (Lords)
@YoungLabourUK
NATOs acts of aggression both historical and present are a threat to all of our safety. Young Labours delegates from across our membership and affiliates voted that we should withdraw from NATO and pursue an international policy based on peace, adopting this as official policy.
On the right the disenchantment with NATO (rejecting its own defensive charter in favour of aggression against Yugoslavia and now Russia) could regretfully turn to the radical solution propose by the Left.
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Video of Odessa murder by fire.
Translation of Russian subtitles BY DONALD HANK.
The translated subtitles in the same order as in the video.
Six years have passed since the greatest atrocity in Ukrainian history on 2 May 2014 [the Maidan coup, led by Obama-Biden state department officials and NGOs.)
Partisans of the Anti-Maidan [pro-Russian] faction were burned alive.
During the daytime, mass disturbances broke out in the center of the city. Proponents of the Euromaidanand their opponents clashed.
Anti-Maidan activists smashed a tent encampment. Ukrainian nationalists held a march for Ukrainian unity
A fist fight broke out on Greek Square. It spread to Kyliko Pole and led to the destruction of the encampment.
The confrontation continued on to the Trade Union Building.
The nationalists (anti Russians) set fire to the building.
People jumped out of the windows.
Those who broke free went out onto the street.
42 people died in the fire, and 6 succumbed later.
There were many random casualties, with over 250 people suffering injuries.
No one was punished. Many perpetrators are still at large.
The UN repeatedly criticised the course of the investigation into this matter.
