A Few Final Questions
Yesterday, the final article in my series about the war in Ukraine was published “Putin’s War in Ukraine is Headed Toward a Conclusion, While Biden’s War in Ukraine is Just Beginning to Heat Up“. In the hours that followed its publication, I received a couple of questions from readers that I feel are deserving of a response. This article addresses those questions in a simple Q and A format.
Q and A
Q: In your article, you don’t go into what the people of Ukraine want. Instead, you focus almost entirely on how the US and NATO have been “escalating” the war. What about Ukrainians!? What do you think they want!? Isn’t that just as, if not more important?
A: The Ukrainian people made very clear what they want in April of 2019 when Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president with 73 percent of the popular vote. Zelensky ran on a platform centered around creating peace in Ukraine. He promised to sit down with Vladimir Putin and end the hugely unpopular conflict in eastern Ukraine.
This opportunity was stripped from Zelensky when, in the middle of 2021 and then again in December of 2021, Joe Biden categorically announced that Ukraine would become part of NATO. It was well known that this was an absolute red line in the sand for Russia for well over a decade. Russia, which already has five NATO countries on its border (Norway, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and Lithuania) have been very clear about the fact that they consider Ukraine’s entering NATO a serious existential threat and that they would not stand for it. Biden’s answer to Russia, “I don’t do red lines.”
This is precisely the kind of activity that former American president Barack Obama warned against in what has come to be known as “The Obama Doctrine”.(1) Many other experts and analysts were emphatic about the fact that Ukraine should be a neutral buffer state. They felt it should absolutely not be part of NATO, as this would certainly generate a real threat of nuclear conflict. (2)Add to this the fact that the US and NATO, since late 2019, have been pumping billions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine. NATO has also been training Ukraine’s military since 2015.
In short, Biden and the neocons in the White House created a powder keg situation that not only blocked the possibility of peace but also jeopardized the lives of 40 million Ukrainians by setting them up as cannon fodder to be used to fight a proxy war, the purpose of which was to weaken Russia. Of course, after the invasion began the majority of Ukrainians who were able to wanted to stand and fight. But this is absolutely not what Ukraine wanted before the US put them in a position where they had no choice but to fight. The mainstream Western media has neglected to mention any of this to the Western public. This war was forced upon Ukraine by the United States and NATO.
It’s certain that Putin and Russia are responsible for the damage and the killing they have done in Ukraine over the last fifteen months. None of what I have said above denies this fact. The point is, this war was entirely avoidable. It was the neocons in the White House who pushed for it and who have generated a false narrative about what has been taking place on the ground in Ukraine, on the battlefield.
The truth is, Ukraine is being wrecked, its infrastructure has been destroyed, almost half of its population has fled the country and its army is being slaughtered. This is what is happening in Ukraine. The US is responsible for generating conditions that made this tragedy almost inevitable.
Q: In your series of articles you haven’t said anything about the corruptness of Zelensky and his top officials and how they’ve been skimming hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly billions from the money that the US gave Ukraine! Both the leaked CIA report and Seymour Hersch’s substack article from April 12th, 2023 mention this. (3) How come you never have?
A: My feeling is that the most important thing to recognize about Zelensky, by far, is that he has been put in an impossible position by the US and NATO. On one hand, a not insignificant portion of the Ukrainian military is made up of neofascists who would very likely kill Zelensky if he doesn’t fully follow through with his mission, which is to take back all the land Russia has taken from Ukraine. On the other hand, he’s had the US and Britain pushing him to continue with the war, to not partake in negotiations, and threatening to discontinue the funding and arming of Ukraine if he doesn’t follow orders.
My feeling is that Zelensky and the higher-ups in the Pentagon and in the US government know now that a Ukrainian victory of any kind is all but impossible. I wouldn’t be surprised if Zelensky isn’t approaching something like a nervous breakdown at this point. There actually have been some reports of this possibility. I haven’t looked into it enough to comment, frankly.
As for the supposed corruption he and his colleagues have been partaking in. This isn’t something I’ve done any real research on either, so I’m going to abstain from commenting on it right now.
CITATIONS:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2016/03/18/the-obama-doctrine-and-ukraine/
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/george-kennan-warning-on-ukraine
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/trading-with-the-enemy
