War is in the air folks, and the air is heavy with propaganda. I’ve given up my DT subscription for good because of the lunacy being peddled by its warmongering morons. I just can’t stand it anymore. The level of analysis is abysmal, wholly unbalanced and demonstrably untrue half the time. It has to be an orchestrated campaign to inculcate fear.
And then there’s Iran, but that’s a doomsday story for another day. This attempt at setting the record straight is a continuation of the piece I did on the ideology behind the western Establishment’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. In this part I’ll be looking at the broken promises and provocation that led directly to Russia’s attack.
Since the end of the Cold War the West, in the form of the United States and NATO, has engaged in a series of actions and policies that have encroached greatly on Russian national security, crossed several red lines culminating in the provocation that started the 2022 war in Ukraine. These include broken diplomatic assurances regarding NATO expansion, military activity near Russia’s borders, the arming of Ukraine and covert operations aimed at influencing the political orientation of post-Soviet states.
The Cold War formally ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, but its psychological and strategic legacies endured in the West, and Russia’s riches were eyed by the Big Corporations, mainly in the US. During the crucial years of 1989 to 1991 the Soviet Union, led by Mikhail Gorbachev, engaged in negotiations with the West concerning the reunification of Germany and the future of European security. A key topic was the future orientation of NATO. Although there was no formal written treaty, several Western leaders gave assurances that NATO would not expand eastward if the USSR allowed German reunification. Notable examples include James Baker, U.S. Secretary of State under President George H. W. Bush, who famously told Gorbachev in February 1990 that NATO would move “not one inch eastward” if the Soviets accepted German reunification under NATO. Hans Dietrich Genscher, West German Foreign Minister, echoed these sentiments, assuring Russia that NATO would not expand its territory eastward and Manfred Wörner, NATO Secretary General, unambiguously stated in a 1990 speech that “the very fact that we are prepared not to deploy NATO troops beyond the territory of the Federal Republic gives the Soviet Union firm security guarantees.” Declassified documents released since then confirm that these discussions occurred, but the West insists that these were not binding commitments. Just lies then.
Despite the commitments of the early 1990s, NATO underwent five major rounds of enlargement. In 1999 Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined, followed in 2004 by seven more, including the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which share borders with Russia. In 2009 Albania and Croatia joined, Montenegro in 2017 and in 2020 North Macedonia became NATO’s 30th member. Unsurprisingly this expansion was seen by Moscow both as a betrayal of the post-Cold War diplomatic agreements and as an almost, but not quite, existential threat. Each step closer to Russia's borders exacerbated its security concerns, particularly the inclusion of former Soviet republics or Warsaw Pact countries. In response, Russia undertook military reforms and strategic modernisation, including the development of advanced missile systems and increased military drills, but it was nevertheless consistently greatly outspent and out positioned by NATO.
NATO's growing military presence in Eastern Europe has often been cited by Russia as a direct threat. There have been many airspace provocations. According to largely verified Russian Ministry of Defence reports there were over 2,000 incidents in 2021 alone of NATO reconnaissance or combat aircraft approaching Russian airspace, particularly over the Baltic and Black Seas. These mostly involved U.S. or British aircraft flying within 20 miles of Russian territory.
The west also carried out annual ‘Defender-Europe, U.S. led exercises involving tens of thousands of troops very near Russian borders. Sea Breeze, a naval exercise held annually in the Black Sea often involved Ukraine and other NATO members sailing right to the edge of Russian waters. ‘Anakonda, a Polish led NATO exercise, frequently included exercises simulating conflict with Russian forces. Can anyone imagine the US tolerating Russian or Chinese military exercises on its land, sea or air borders? But tolerate it Russia did, but with a growing sense of alarm.
Permanent NATO/US military facilities have been established in Poland, Romania, and the Baltic States. Aegis Ashore ballistic missile systems, which Russia claims could be converted to launch offensive cruise missiles, are operational in Romania and Poland. Understandably, Russia views these deployments as part of a larger strategy of containment and intimidation and ultimately military threat.
The post-Soviet space has been a key battleground for influence between Russia and the West. The U.S. and its allies have supported pro-Western movements across the region, some of which Moscow sees as orchestrated regime change operations. In the Georgia 2003 Rose Revolution the U.S. provided funding and ‘NGO’ support to ensure that the pro-Russian President Shevardnadze was ousted and replaced with the pro-NATO Mikheil Saakashvili, who pursued NATO membership and fought a war with Russia in 2008.
In 2004, the Orange Revolution overturned a democratic Moscow backed presidential election result and in 2014, the Euro-Maidan coup, organised and strongly supported by U.S. officials and ‘NGOs’ resulted in the ousting of democratically elected pro-Russian President Yanukovych after he rejected an EU association agreement. Declassified phone calls (e.g. Victoria Nuland's infamous “Fuck the EU” call) revealed direct Western involvement in shaping post Yanukovych governance. Russia, reasonably, interpreted these movements as coups backed by foreign intelligence services, particularly the CIA, and aimed directly at it and President Putin. The Russians had been happy to let Ukraine hold Crimea, home of the Black Sea fleet, but the thought of a NATO controlled Ukraine was too much. Inevitably therefore, Moscow annexed the Crimean Peninsula, where the majority of the population are ethnic Russians.
The situation in eastern Ukraine following the 2014 Maidan coup rapidly worsened, especially the treatment of ethnic Russians in the Donbas region. Tensions, possibly stirred up by US funded ‘NGOs’, escalated between aggressively nationalistic Ukrainian authorities and militias and pro-Russian communities. In Donetsk and Luhansk, regions with significant ethnic Russian populations, many residents felt marginalised by the new government in Kiev. Russia and independent sources claim that the Ukrainian government engaged in violent repression of ethnic Russians, citing artillery shelling of civilian areas and military operations against separatist forces. One of the most controversial elements in this conflict was the role of the Azov Brigade, a volunteer militia later incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard.
Formed in 2014 to fight against pro-Russian separatists, Azov gained international attention because of its neo-Nazi affiliations. Azov has been accused of war crimes and systematic violence against ethnic Russians. The broader claims that the Ukrainian government conducted violent ethnic cleansing campaigns has been challenged by the western MSM, which often mirrors narratives promoted by Ukrainian state propaganda. No doubt atrocities have been committed by both sides, but the presence of extremist factions like Azov has negated Ukraine’s efforts to present itself as a liberal democracy, and there is little doubt that the basic cause of violence following 2014 in Eastern Ukraine was the western led coup and the installation of a western puppet regime in Kiev.
Following the 2014 conflict in Donbas and the Russian annexation of Crimea, a series of ceasefire agreements were signed between Ukraine, the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, Russia, and the OSCE. Minsk I (2014) and Minsk II (2015) outlined steps for de-escalation, including withdrawal of heavy weapons, the decentralisation of Ukraine, and reintegration of Donbas with local autonomy. But Ukraine did not implement the major political reforms promised under the accords, including special status for Donbas. Western powers expressed support for the agreements in words, but according to later statements by Angela Merkel and François Hollande in 2022, the Minsk framework was used to “buy time” to arm Ukraine and prepare it for war. This, of course, confirmed Russian fears that the agreements were a stalling tactic rather than a sincere peace effort.
Russia has also alleged the presence of U.S. sponsored biological laboratories, like the one it funded in Wuhan China, near its borders. The U.S. Department of Defence admitted the existence of such labs in Georgia and Ukraine, after previously dismissing the charges as Russian propaganda. Those who had raised concerns over the presence of the biolabs were dismissed as conspiracy theorists and accused of regurgitating Russian disinformation, but comments made by Victoria Nuland prompted further suspicions when she appeared to confirm the biological program, saying she feared the labs would “fall into Russian hands.” China called on the US to explain its activities and to stop “single handedly opposing the establishment of a verification mechanism for the Biological Weapons Convention”. Needless to say, in the atmosphere of deepening mistrust caused by repeated western broken promises and aggression, such installations are seen by Moscow as yet another form of strategic encroachment and possibly a means of the mass murder of its citizens.
From 2015 onward, the U.S. and NATO countries began supplying Ukraine with increasing amounts of military aid, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, advanced radar and communication systems and training programs involving NATO personnel. By early 2022, the Ukrainian armed forces were more integrated into Western military structures than at any time in the post-Soviet period, although Ukraine remained officially outside of NATO. A very worried Russia, which had repeatedly asserted that it could never accept Ukrainian membership of NATO (any more than the US would accept Cuban membership of the Warsaw Pact) and that should the West cross this reddest of red lines, the consequences would be very serious. Russia demanded legally binding guarantees that Ukraine would never join NATO. The West refused, citing the principle of sovereign choice – a choice never given to the Cubans or the many other nations invaded by the West since 1945.
The cumulative effect of these developments, broken assurances, NATO expansion, Western involvement in domestic politics, strategic military deployments, and a steady erosion of trust, created an environment in which Russia felt cornered. While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is widely condemned as illegal under international law (as were some of the US led invasions), a purely legalistic view obscures the broader strategic context.
The conflict did not emerge from a vacuum, or because Putin was having a midlife crisis, but from decades of rising tensions, mostly initiated by the West. The West, particularly the U.S., pursued an aggressive post-Cold War strategy of expansion and influence in Eastern Europe, disregarding repeated Russian warnings. The war in Ukraine, tragic and devastating, was not an act of unilateral aggression but the culmination of systemic provocations and failures of diplomacy.
Or maybe the war in Ukraine wasn’t a failure of diplomacy, but instead a planned step in the West’s ideological war against Russia, with the strategic goal of bringing Russia within the Globalist movement and opening it up for exploitation by western corporations and oligarchs.