‘you don’t invade a country on completely phony pretexts’
The American press portrays Putin as being the bad guy and the aggressor in the Ukraine crisis.Western media describes the situation in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea as if a full-scale Russian invasion were under way, with headlines like: “Ukraine says Russia sent 16,000 troops to Crimea” and “Ukraine crisis deepens as Russia sends more troops into Crimea,” as well as “What can Obama do about Russia’s invasion of Crimea?”
It seems the media have chosen to simply ignore the fact that those Russian troops have been stationed in Crimea for over a decade.
Putin is certainly no saint. A former KGB agent, Putin’s net worth is estimated at some $40 billion dollars … as he has squeezed money out of the Russian economy by treating the country as his own personal fiefdom. And all sides appear to have dirt on their hands in the Russia-Ukraine crisis.
But we can only see the bigger picture if we take a step back and gain a little understanding of the history underlying the current tensions.
Indeed, the fact that the U.S. has allegedly paid billions of dollars to anti-Russian forces in Ukraine – and even purportedly picked the Ukrainian president – has to be seen in context.
Veteran New York Times reporter Steven Kinzer notes at the Boston Globe:
From the moment the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States has relentlessly pursued a strategy of encircling Russia, just as it has with other perceived enemies like China and Iran. [Background here, here and here.] It has brought 12 countries in central Europe, all of them formerly allied with Moscow, into the NATO alliance. US military power is now directly on Russia’s borders. “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” warned George Kennan, the renowned diplomat and Russia-watcher, as NATO began expanding eastward. “I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely, and it will affect their policies.”
Stephen Cohen – professor emeritus at New York University and Princeton University who has long focused on Russia – explained this weekend on CNN:
We are witnessing as we talk the making possibly of the worst history of our lifetime. We are watching the descending of a new cold war divide between west and east, only this time, it is not in far away Berlin, it’s right on Russia’s borders through the historical civilization in Ukraine. It’s a crisis of historic magnitude. If you ask how we got in it, how we got into the crisis, and how therefore do we get out, it is time to stop asking why Putin – why Putin is doing this or that, but ask about the American policy, and the European Union policy that led to this moment. ***
I don’t know if you your listeners or views remember George Kennan. He was considered [a] great strategic thinker about Russia among American diplomats but he warned when we expanded NATO [under Bill Clinton], that this was the most fateful mistake of American foreign policy and that it would lead to a new Cold War. George lived to his hundreds, died a few years ago, but his truth goes marching on. The decision to move NATO beginning in the 90’s continuing under Bush and continuing under Obama, is right now on Russia’s borders. And if you want to know for sure, and I have spent a lot of time in Moscow, if you want to know what the Russian power elite thinks Ukraine is about, it is about bringing it into NATO. One last point, that so-called economic partnership that Yanukovych, the elected president of Ukraine did not sign, and that set off the streets – the protests in the streets in November, which led to this violence in and confrontation today, that so-called economic agreement included military clauses which said that Ukraine by signing this so called civilization agreement had to abide by NATO military policy. This is what this is about from the Russian point of view, the ongoing western march towards post Soviet Russia.
Jonathan Steele writes at the Guardian
Both John Kerry’s threats to expel Russia from the G8 and the Ukrainian government’s plea for Nato aid mark a dangerous escalation of a crisis that can easily be contained if cool heads prevail. Hysteria seems to be the mood in Washington and Kiev, with the new Ukrainian prime minister claiming, “We are on the brink of disaster” as he calls up army reserves in response to Russian military movements in Crimea. Were he talking about the country’s economic plight he would have a point. Instead, along with much of the US and European media, he was over-dramatising developments in the east, where Russian speakers are understandably alarmed after the new Kiev authorities scrapped a law allowing Russian as an official language in their areas. They see it as proof that the anti-Russian ultra-nationalists from western Ukraine who were the dominant force in last month’s insurrection still control it. Eastern Ukrainians fear similar tactics of storming public buildings could be used against their elected officials. Kerry’s rush to punish Russia and Nato’s decision to respond to Kiev’s call by holding a meeting of member states’ ambassadors in Brussels today were mistakes. Ukraine is not part of the alliance, so none of the obligations of common defense come into play. Nato should refrain from interfering in Ukraine by word or deed. The fact that it insists on getting engaged reveals the elephant in the room: underlying the crisis in Crimea and Russia’s fierce resistance to potential changes is Nato’s undisguised ambition to continue two decades of expansion into what used to be called “post-Soviet space”, led by Bill Clinton and taken up by successive administrations in Washington. At the back of Pentagon minds, no doubt, is the dream that a US navy will one day replace the Russian Black Sea fleet in the Crimean ports of Sevastopol and Balaclava.
We are in the privileged position to had the outcome announced a few weeks before. Just six weeks before a senior US politician (John Kerry – a kettle who calls another kettle black) arrived in Ukraine today in an effort to quell its crisis, a leaked tape seems to shows two senior US diplomats in a loose, profanity-laced strategy session aimed at confounding Russia and empowering a favored opposition figure. The audio clip, an apparent conversation between US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoff Pyatt that the Kremlin tweeted out, coincides with new accusations from Moscow that the US is paying and arming Ukraine’s right wing forces within the opposition (which is clear today), as Victoria Nuland admitted that “US Has Invested $5 Billion In The Development of Ukrainian, ‘Democratic Institutions'”.
In any case, the US State Department has not commented on the tape’s authenticity, but it appears to be genuine. It seems to have been recorded around Jan. 25, when Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych offered the prime minister’s job to opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk and a deputy prime minister’s slot to former boxer Vitali Klitschko.Yatsenyuk is “Yats,” and “the guy with the economic experience, the governing experience” to be prime minister. A kind of guy the IWF likes to push through austerity. She suggests that he should accept Yanukovych’s offer, but that Klitschko (“Klitch”) should stay “on the outside” along with the other member of the opposition leadership, Oleh Tyahnybok, head of the far-right Svoboda party. Combined, she calls them “the big three.
”The UN role “would be great to help glue this thing, and the UN help glue it. And fuck the EU,” she says. My thoughts exactly as a European.
The scape goat is ready too, the foreign minister Steinmeier and Mr. Merkel work to get in the Ukraine an approval for Germany rating like in Greece after the IWF will call.
***
Vladimir Putin’s troop movements in Crimea, which are supported by most Russians, are of questionable legality under the terms of the peace and friendship treaty that Russia signed with Ukraine in 1997. But their illegality is considerably less clear-cut than that of the US-led invasion of Iraq, or of Afghanistan, where the UN security council only authorised the intervention several weeks after it had happened. [Indeed, top American leaders admit that the Iraq war was for reasons different than publicly stated. And the U.S. military sticks its nose in other countries’ business all over the world. And see this.] And Russia’s troop movements can be reversed if the crisis abates. That would require the restoration of the language law in eastern Ukraine and firm action to prevent armed groups of anti-Russian nationalists threatening public buildings there.
Again, we don’t believe that there are angels on any side. But we do believe that everyone has to take a step back, look at the bigger picture, calm down and reach a negotiated diplomatic resolution.
And see this, this, this and this (interview with a 27-year CIA veteran, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates and personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and the Joint Chiefs of Staff).
Source ZeroHedge – for the benefit of the EU critical voices in Germany: Ich kann der AfD nur raten die LFA’s (hier Sicherheits- und Aussenpolitik) zu Rate zu ziehen.