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The question of who is responsible for causing the Ukraine war has been a deeply contentious issue since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
The answer to this question matters enormously because the war has been a disaster for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is that Ukraine has effectively been wrecked. It has lost a substantial amount of its territory and is likely to lose more, its economy is in tatters, huge numbers of Ukrainians are internally displaced or have fled the country, and it has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties. Of course, Russia has paid a significant blood price as well. On the strategic level, relations between Russia and Europe, not to mention Russia and Ukraine, have been poisoned for the foreseeable future, which means that the threat of a major war in Europe will be with us well after the Ukraine war turns into a frozen conflict. Who bears responsibility for this disaster is a question that will not go away anytime soon and if anything is likely to become more prominent as the extent of the disaster becomes more apparent to more people.
The conventional wisdom in the West is that Vladimir Putin is responsible for causing the Ukraine war. The invasion aimed at conquering all of Ukraine and making it part of a greater Russia, so the argument goes. Once that goal was achieved, the Russians would move to create an empire in eastern Europe, much like the Soviet Union did after World War II. Thus, Putin is ultimately a threat to the West and must be dealt with forcefully. In short, Putin is an imperialist with a master plan who fits neatly into a rich Russian tradition.
The alternative argument, which I identify with, and which is clearly the minority view in the West, is that the United States and its allies provoked the war. This is not to deny, of course, that Russia invaded Ukraine and started the war. But the principal cause of the conflict is the NATO decision to bring Ukraine into the alliance, which virtually all Russian leaders see as an existential threat that must be eliminated. NATO expansion, however, is part of a broader strategy that is designed to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. Bringing Kyiv into the European Union (EU) and promoting a color revolution in Ukraine – turning it into pro-Western liberal democracy – are the other two prongs of the policy. Russia leaders fear all three prongs, but they fear NATO expansion the most. To deal with this threat, Russia launched a preventive war on 24 February 2022.
The debate about who caused the Ukraine war recently heated up when two prominent Western leaders – former President Donald Trump and prominent British MP Nigel Farage – made the argument that NATO expansion was the driving force behind the conflict. Unsurprisingly, their comments were met with a ferocious counterattack from defenders of the conventional wisdom. It is also worth noting that the outgoing Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said twice over the past year that “President Putin started this war because he wanted to close NATO’s door and deny Ukraine the right to choose its own path.†Hardly anyone in the West challenged this remarkable admission by NATO’s head and he did not retract it.
My aim here is to provide a primer, which lays out the key points that support the view that Putin invaded Ukraine not because he was an imperialist bent on making Ukraine part of a greater Russia, but mainly because of NATO expansion and the West’s efforts to make Ukraine a Western stronghold on Russia’s border.
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Let me start with the SEVEN MAIN REASONS to reject the conventional wisdom.
FIRST, there is simply no evidence from before 24 February 2022 that Putin wanted to conquer Ukraine and incorporate it into Russia. Proponents of the conventional wisdom cannot point to anything Putin wrote or said that indicates he was bent on conquering Ukraine.
When challenged on this point, purveyors of the conventional wisdom provide evidence that has little if any bearing on Putin’s motives for invading Ukraine. For example, some emphasize that he said Ukraine is an “artificial state“ or not a “real state.†Such opaque comments, however, say nothing about his reason for going to war. The same is true of Putin’s statement that he views Russians and Ukrainians as “one people“ with a common history. Others point out that he called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.†But Putin also said, “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.†Still, others point to a speech in which he declared that “Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia.†But that hardly constitutes evidence that he was interested in conquering Ukraine. Moreover, he said in that same speech: “Of course, we cannot change past events, but we must at least admit them openly and honestly.â€
To make the case that Putin was bent on conquering all of Ukraine and incorporating it into Russia, it is necessary to provide evidence that 1) he thought it was a desirable goal, 2) he thought it was a feasible goal, and 3) he intended to pursue that goal. There is no evidence in the public record that Putin was contemplating, much less intending to put an end to Ukraine as an independent state and make it part of greater Russia when he sent his troops into Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
In fact, there is significant evidence that Putin recognized Ukraine as an independent country. In his well-known 12 July 2021 article dealing with Russian-Ukrainian relations, which proponents of the conventional wisdom often point to as evidence of his imperial ambitions, he tells the Ukrainian people, “You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome!†Regarding how Russia should treat Ukraine, he writes, “There is only one answer: with respect.†He concludes that lengthy article with the following words: “And what Ukraine will be—it is up to its citizens to decide.†These statements are directly at odds with the claim that Putin wanted to incorporate Ukraine within a greater Russia.
In that same 12 July 2021 article and again in an important speech he gave on 21 February 2022, Putin emphasized that Russia accepts “the new geopolitical reality that took shape after the dissolution of the USSR.†He reiterated that same point for a third time on 24 February 2022, when he announced that Russia would invade Ukraine. In particular, he declared that “It is not our plan to occupy Ukrainian territory†and made it clear that he respected Ukrainian sovereignty, although only up to a point: “Russia cannot feel safe, develop, and exist while facing a permanent threat from the territory of today’s Ukraine.†In essence, Putin was not interested in making Ukraine a part of Russia; he was interested in making sure it did not become a “springboard“ for Western aggression against Russia.
SECOND, there is no evidence that Putin was preparing a puppet government for Ukraine, cultivating pro-Russian leaders in Kyiv, or pursuing any political measures that would make it possible to occupy the entire country and eventually integrate it into Russia.
Those facts fly in the face of the claim that Putin was interested in erasing Ukraine from the map.
THIRD, Putin did not have anywhere near enough troops to conquer Ukraine.
Let’s start with the overall numbers. I have long estimated that the Russians invaded Ukraine with at most 190,000 troops. General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the present commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, recently said in an interview with The Guardian that Russia’s invasion force was only 100,000 strong. Indeed, The Guardian used that same number before the war started. There is no way that a force of either 100,000 or 190,000 could conquer, occupy, and absorb all of Ukraine into a greater Russia.
Consider that when Germany invaded the western half of Poland in September 1939, the Wehrmacht numbered about 1.5 million men. Ukraine is geographically more than 3 times larger than the western half of Poland was in 1939 and Ukraine in 2022 had almost twice as many people as Poland did when the German invaded. If we accept General Syrskyi’s estimate that 100,000 Russian troops invaded Ukraine in 2022, that means Russia had an invasion force that was 1/15th the size of the German force that went into Poland. And that small Russian army was invading a country that was much larger than Poland in terms of both territorial size and population.
Numbers aside, there is the matter of the quality of the Russian army. For starters, it was a military force largely designed to defend Russia from invasion. It was not an army primed to launch a major offensive that would end up conquering all of Ukraine, much less threatening the rest of Europe. Furthermore, the quality of the fighting forces left much to be desired, as the Russians were not expecting a war when the crisis began to heat up in the spring of 2021. Thus, they had little opportunity to train-up a skilled invasion force. In terms of both quality and quantity, the Russian invasion force was not close to being the equivalent of the Wehrmacht in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
One might argue that Russians leaders thought that the Ukrainian military was so small and so outgunned that their army could easily defeat Ukraine’s forces and conquer the entire country. In fact, Putin and his lieutenants were well-aware that the United States and its European allies had been arming and training the Ukrainian military since the crisis first broke out on 22 February 2014. Moscow’s great fear was that Ukraine was becoming a defacto member of NATO. Moreover, Russian leaders observed the Ukrainian army, which was larger than their invasion force, fighting effectively in the Donbass between 2014 and 2022. They surely understood that the Ukrainian military was not a paper tiger that could be defeated quickly and decisively, especially since it had powerful backing from the West.
Finally, over the course of 2022, the Russians were forced to withdraw their army from the Kharkiv oblast and from the western part of the Kherson oblast. In effect, Moscow surrendered territory that its army had conquered in the opening days of the war. There is no question that pressure from the Ukrainian army played a role in forcing the Russian withdrawal. But more importantly, Putin and his generals realized that they did not have sufficient forces to hold all the territory their army had conquered in Kharkiv and Kherson. So, they retreated and created more manageable defensive positions. This is hardly the behavior one would expect from an army that was built and trained to conquer and occupy all of Ukraine. Of course, it was not designed for that purpose and thus could not achieve that Herculean task.
FOURTH, in the months before the war started, Putin tried to find a diplomatic solution to the brewing crisis.
On 17 December 2021, Putin sent a letter to both President Joe Biden and NATO chief Stoltenberg proposing a solution to the crisis based on a written guarantee that: 1) Ukraine would not join NATO, 2) no offensive weapons would be stationed near Russia’s borders, and 3) NATO troops and equipment moved into eastern Europe since 1997 would be moved back to western Europe. Whatever one thinks of the feasibility of reaching a bargain based on Putin’s opening demands, which the United States refused to negotiate over, it shows that he was trying to avoid war.
FIFTH, immediately after the war began, Russia reached out to Ukraine to start negotiations to end the war and work out a modus vivendi between the two countries.
Negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow began in Belarus just four days after Russian troops entered Ukraine. That Belarus track was eventually replaced by an Israeli as well as an Istanbul track. All the available evidence indicates that the Russia was negotiating seriously and was not interested in absorbing Ukrainian territory, save for Crimea, which they had annexed in 2014, and possibly the Donbass. The negotiations ended when the Ukrainians, with prodding from Britain and the United States, walked away from the negotiations, which were making good progress when they ended.
Furthermore, Putin reports that when the negotiations were taking place and making progress, he was asked to remove Russian troops from the area around Kyiv as a good will gesture, which he did on 29 March 2022 . No government in the West or former policymaker has challenged Putin’s claim, which is directly at odds with the claim that he was bent on conquering all of Ukraine.
SIXTH, putting Ukraine aside, there is not a scintilla of evidence that Putin was contemplating conquering any other countries in eastern Europe.
Moreover, the Russian army is not even large enough to overrun all of Ukraine, much less try to conquer the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania. Plus, all those countries are NATO members, which would almost certainly mean war with the United States and its allies.
SEVENTH, hardly anyone in the West argued that Putin had imperial ambitions from the time he took the reins of power in 2000 until the Ukraine crisis started on 22 February 2014. At that point, he suddenly became an imperial aggressor. Why? Because Western leaders needed a reason to blame him for causing the crisis.
Probably the best evidence that Putin was not seen as a serious threat during his first fourteen years in office is that he was an invited guest at the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, which is where the alliance announced that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members. Putin, of course, was enraged by that decision and made his anger known. But his opposition to that announcement had hardly any effect on Washington because Russia’s military was judged to be too weak to stop further NATO enlargement, just as it had been too weak to stop the 1999 and 2004 waves of expansion. The West thought it could once again shove NATO expansion down Russia’s throat.
Relatedly, NATO enlargement before 22 February 2014 was not aimed at containing Russia. Given the sad state of Russian military power, Moscow was in no position to conquer Ukraine, much less pursue revanchist policies in eastern Europe. Tellingly, former US ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, who is a staunch defender of Ukraine and scathing critic of Putin, notes that Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 was not planned before the crisis broke out; it was an impulsive move in response to the coup that overthrew Ukraine’s pro-Russian leader. In short, NATO expansion was not intended to contain a Russian threat, because the West did not think there was one.
It was only when the Ukraine crisis erupted in February 2014 that the United States and its allies suddenly began describing Putin as a dangerous leader with imperial ambitions and Russia as a serious military threat that NATO had to contain. This abrupt shift in rhetoric was designed to serve one essential purpose: to enable the West to blame Putin for the crisis and absolve the West of responsibility. Unsurprisingly, that portrayal of Putin gained much greater traction after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
There is one twist on the conventional wisdom that bears mentioning. Some argue that Moscow’s decision to invade Ukraine has little to do with Putin himself and instead is part of an expansionist tradition that long predates Putin and is deeply wired into Russian society. This penchant for aggression, which is said to be driven by internal forces, not Russia’s external threat environment, has driven virtually all Russian leaders over time to behave violently toward their neighbors. There is no denying that Putin is in charge in this story or that he led Russia to war, but he is said to have little agency. Almost any other Russian leader would have acted the same way.
There are two problems with this argument. For starters, it is non-falsifiable, as the longstanding trait in Russian society that produces this aggressive impulse is never identified. Russians are said to have always been aggressive – no matter who is in charge – and always will be. It is almost as if it were in their DNA. This same claim was once made about Germans, who were often portrayed during the twentieth century as congenital aggressors. Arguments of this sort are not taken seriously in the academic world for good reason.
Furthermore, hardly anyone in the United States or Western Europe characterized Russia as innately aggressive between 1991 and 2014, when the Ukraine crisis broke out. Outside of Poland and the Baltic states, fear of Russian aggression was not a concern frequently voiced during those twenty-four years, which one would expect if the Russians were wired for aggression. It seems clear that the sudden appearance of this line of argument was a convenient excuse to blame Russia for causing the Ukraine war.
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Let me shift gears and lay out the THREE MAIN REASONS to think that NATO expansion was the principal cause of the Ukraine war.
FIRST, Russian leaders across the board said repeatedly before the war started that they considered NATO expansion into Ukraine to be an existential threat that had to be eliminated.
Putin made numerous public statements laying out this line of argument before 24 February 2022. Speaking to the Defense Ministry Board on 21 December 2021, he stated: “what they are doing, or trying or planning to do in Ukraine, is not happening thousands of kilometers away from our national border. It is on the doorstep of our house. They must understand that we simply have nowhere further to retreat to. Do they really think we do not see these threats? Or do they think that we will just stand idly watching threats to Russia emerge?†Two months later at a press conference on 22 February 2022, just days before the war started, Putin said: “We are categorically opposed to Ukraine joining NATO because this poses a threat to us, and we have arguments to support this. I have repeatedly spoken about it in this hall.†He then made it clear that he recognized that Ukraine was becoming a defacto member of NATO. The United States and its allies, he said, “continue to pump the current Kiev authorities full of modern types of weapons.†He went on to say that if this was not stopped, Moscow “would be left with an ‘anti- Russia’ armed to the teeth. This is totally unacceptable.â€
Other Russian leaders – including the defense minister, the foreign minister, the deputy foreign minister, and the Russian ambassador to Washington – also stressed the centrality of NATO expansion for causing the Ukraine crisis. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made this point succinctly at a press conference on 14 January 2022: “The key to everything is the guarantee that NATO will not expand eastward.â€
One often hears the argument that Russian fears were unfounded because there was no chance that Ukraine would join the alliance in the foreseeable future, if ever. Indeed, it is said that the United States and its European allies paid little attention to bringing Ukraine into NATO before the war. But even if Ukraine joined the alliance, that would not be an existential threat to Russia because NATO is a defensive alliance. Thus, NATO expansion could not have been a cause of the original crisis, which broke out in February 2014 or the war that began in February 2022.
This line of argument is false. In fact, the Western response to the events of 2014 was to double down on the existing strategy and draw Ukraine even closer to NATO. The alliance began training the Ukrainian military in 2014, averaging 10,000 trained troops annually over the next eight years. In December 2017, the Trump administration decided to provide Kyiv with “defensive weapons.†Other NATO countries soon got into the act, shipping even more weapons to Ukraine. Furthermore, Ukraine’s army, navy, and air force began participating in joint military exercises with NATO forces. The West’s effort to arm and train Ukraine’s military explains in good part why it fared so well against the Russian army in the first year of the war. As a headline in The Wall Street Journal from April 2022 put it, “The Secret of Ukraine’s Military Success: Years of NATO Training.â€
Putting aside the alliance’s ongoing efforts to make the Ukrainian military a more formidable fighting force that could operate alongside NATO troops, there was renewed enthusiasm in the West during 2021 for bringing Ukraine into NATO. At the same time, President Zelensky, who had never shown much enthusiasm for bringing Ukraine into the alliance and who was elected in March 2019 on a platform that called for working with Russia to settle the ongoing crisis, reversed course in early 2021 and not only embraced NATO membership for Ukraine, but also adopted a hardline approach toward Moscow.
President Biden, who moved into the White House in January 2021, had long been committed to bringing Ukraine into NATO and was a super-hawk toward Russia. Unsurprisingly, on 14 June 2021, NATO issued a communiqueÌ at its annual summit in Brussels, which said: “We reiterate the decision made at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance.†On 1 September 2021, Zelensky visited the White House, where Biden made it clear that the United States was “firmly committed†to “Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations.†Then on 10 November 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, signed an important document – the “US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership.†The aim of both parties, the document stated, is to “underscore … a commitment to Ukraine’s implementation of the deep and comprehensive reforms necessary for full integration into European and Euro-Atlantic institutions.†It also explicitly reaffirms the U.S. commitment to the “2008 Bucharest Summit Declaration.â€
There appears to be little doubt that Ukraine was well on its way to becoming a member of NATO by the end of 2021. Even so, some supporters of this policy argue that Moscow should not have been concerned about that outcome, because “NATO is a defensive alliance and poses no threat to Russia.†But that is not how Putin and other Russian leaders think about NATO, and it is what they think that matters. In short, there is no question that Moscow saw Ukraine joining NATO as an existential threat that could not be allowed to stand.
SECOND, a substantial number of influential and highly regarded individuals in the West recognized before the war that NATO expansion – especially into Ukraine – would be seen by Russian leaders as a mortal threat and eventually lead to disaster.
William Burns, who now heads the CIA, but was the US ambassador to Moscow at the time of the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, wrote a memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that succinctly describes Russian thinking about bringing Ukraine into the alliance. “Ukrainian entry into NATO,†he wrote, “is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.†NATO, he said, “would be seen … as throwing down the strategic gauntlet. Today’s Russia will respond. Russian-Ukrainian relations will go into a deep freeze…It will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.â€
Burns was not the only Western policymaker in 2008 who understood that bringing Ukraine into NATO was fraught with danger. Indeed, at the Bucharest summit, both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy opposed moving forward on NATO membership for Ukraine because they understood it would alarm and infuriate Russia. Merkel recently explained her opposition: “I was very sure … that Putin is not going to just let that happen. From his perspective, that would be a declaration of war.”
To take this a step further, numerous American policymakers and strategists opposed President Clinton’s decision to expand NATO during the 1990s, when the decision was being debated. Those opponents understood from the start that Russian leaders would see it as a threat to their vital interests, and that the policy would eventually lead to disaster. The list of opponents includes prominent establishment figures like George Kennan, both President Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William Perry, and his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, Paul Nitze, Robert Gates, Robert McNamara, Richard Pipes, and Jack Matlock, just to name a few.
The logic of Putin’s position should make perfect sense to Americans, who have long been committed to the Monroe Doctrine, which stipulates that no distant great power is allowed to form an alliance with a country in the Western Hemisphere and locate its military forces there. The United States would interpret a move of that sort as an existential threat and go to great lengths to eliminate the danger. Of course, this is what happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when President Kennedy made it clear to the Soviets that their nuclear-tipped missiles would have to be removed from Cuba. Putin is deeply influenced by the same logic. After all, great powers do not want distant great powers moving into their backyard.
THIRD, the centrality of Russia’s profound fear of Ukraine joining NATO is illustrated by two developments that have occurred since the war began.
During the Istanbul negotiations that took place immediately after the invasion began, the Russians made it manifestly clear that Ukraine had to accept “permanent neutrality†and could not join NATO. The Ukrainians accepted Russia’s demand without any serious resistance, surely because they knew that it was otherwise impossible to end the war. More recently, on 14 June 2024, Putin laid out two demands that Ukraine would have to meet before he would agree to a ceasefire and the start of negotiations to end the war. One of those demands was that Kyiv “officially†state “that it abandons its plans to join NATO.â€
None of this is surprising, as Russia has always seen Ukraine in NATO as an existential threat that must be prevented at all costs. That logic is the driving force behind the Ukraine war.
Finally, it is obvious from Russia’s negotiating position at Istanbul as well as Putin’s comments on ending the war in his 14 June 2024 address that he is not interested in conquering all of Ukraine and making it part of a greater Russia.
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this war started because putin went into syria in 2012, to stop the zioneocon empire’s terrorist invasion, which threw a wrench into the greater israel project. the maidan coup, was timed to destroy the sochi winter olympics and to take advantage of the russians focusing on the security security on the games. the revenge of the zioneocon empire, or nudelman’s war.
Angela “Welcome Rape-ugees” Merkel is clearly the main instigator of the fight. She single handedly tanked the Minsk deal that would have prevented the SMO.
Germany doubled down on provocation when Scholz (with the assistance of BoJo) destroyed the Istanbul arrangement which was the last hope of stopping European Empire aggression.
Macron happily jumped in with his support of Azov neo-Nazis.
____
Ask the right question and you will find the linchpin…
Why do certain European Globalist countries push Ukraine into a war they cannot win? It cannot be “victory”, everyone sees that is hopeless. What does Europe gain from a stalemate?
This is the EU’s Migration War!
Or, at least another phase of it. Genuine Ukrainians flowing west suppress wages. They also damage both social cohesiveness & national institutions. What more could elite corporatists want?
Fake Ukrainians are an even bigger issue. Conservative estimates are that 1/3+ of “Ukrainian” migrants are actual MENA and sub-Saharan Muslims on forged identity documents. It is a blow directly at Judeo-Christian values. Davos elites want more IslamoGloboHomo, which divides genuine Europeans and keeps them poorer.
To further damage workers, the German dominated EU revised agriculture rules to intentionally brutalize farmers in Eastern Europe. Trucking companies in EE are also being savagely undercut.
Knowing that it all started with Angela “Welcome Rape-ugees” Merkel, does anyone serious doubt that the foul miasma of Islam is afoot? If you want to solve almost any problem… Step #1 is easy:
Name the Muslim (or Islamophile)!
Once you see who is targeting Christians, Jews, and ultimately God — Forming a response is straightforward. Alas, other than in Hungary, Christian European workers appear to be unaware or content in their submission.
PEACE 😇
This is one of many causes, and certainly accelerated the long-term plan to destroy Russia.
Video Link
Professor Mearsheimer appears in this short video twice making the points he wrote about here. It includes nice graphics showing that Russian troops rushed to the Ukraine border and attacked a larger Ukrainian army to prove Russia was serious. The Russian force was far too small to take Kiev or all of Ukraine, but that was not its goal. Putin sought to pressure Ukraine to enforce previously signed peace accords:
Video Link
Professor Mearsheimer is being very generous calling CIA wartime propaganda “conventional wisdom.”
Some of the arguments don’t seem to be relevant to the question Who Caused the Ukraine War? if you’re arguing that the principal cause of the conflict is the NATO decision to bring Ukraine into the alliance.
For example:
Even if there was such evidence, it can be used to support Professor’s argument about the principal cause of the conflict. Putin conquering all of Ukraine would be one way to prevent Ukraine joining NATO. Conquering Ukraine could be an instrumental goal to achieve the terminal goal of preventing Ukraine joining NATO.
Same here. Putin installing a puppet government for Ukraine would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, and so would occupying the entire country and eventually integrating it into Russia. Those are not contradictory. One can only argue whether conquering Ukraine was the terminal goal all along (conquering it for the sake of conquering it) or whether conquering Ukraine was just a method of preventing Ukraine from joining NATO.
The question is whether he thought he had enough troops to install a puppet government. Once you have a puppet government installed, you can do occupation or integration or whatever else you want, or none of it and just limit yourself to have that puppet government commit to not joining NATO ever.
Yes, that’s what you would do if your ultimate goal was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, but your plan to have a quick special military operation to install a puppet government didn’t work out. What you would do is you would try to find a negotiated solution while continuing to apply military pressure on your counterpart.
Well, it isn’t obvious that conquering all of Ukraine via installing a puppet government wasn’t the initial plan that didn’t exactly work out as planned. Not for the sake of conquest, but for the sake of once and for all putting an end to the plans to have Ukraine join NATO.
There is also the precedent of how WW2 was started. Poland 1939 was the template for Ukraine 2022. Again, use an aggressive nationalist regime rejecting negotiation, ignoring diplomatic agreements, and committing gross attacks on civilian ethnics living on land formerly their own home territory, in order to provoke the real target to a regime change war. The media hate campaign and atrocity fables are virtually identical. That time the objective was a nearly landlocked Central European nation of only 75 million, but today Russia stands with China, India, and the Global South, all determined to free the world of the American imperium.
The war will not end when Kiev surrenders. The US will continue to foment color revolutions and arm Russia’s neighbors against her. Russia’s vast treasury of natural resources is too great a prize for an American economy in deep distress to ever stop trying to commandeer.
I strongly suspect perfidious Albion had done the same thing in America in 1860, covertly promised the southern malcontents military support London had no intention of providing, in order to sabotage the United States before its growing power could challenge Britain’s global empire. This must remain the deepest of state secrets for obvious reasons.
Tho Russia was supplying arms to Syria in 2012 and earlier, Russia’s direct intervention in Syria seems more correctly dated as starting in 2015, after the 2014 Odessa massacre of Russians finally pushed modern Russia to a point of really somewhat opposing the West, instead of passively riding along with Western aggressions, as Russia did in Serbia, In Iraq, in Libya, plus approving Iran sanctions etc
There seems to be a fog here about what really made it necessary for Russia to go into Ukraine. It was the ongoing killing of Russians by the Kiev governments after 2014 Maidan, with 13,000+ Russians killed in Donbass by Kiev 2014-2022. Ukraine continually violated the Minsk peace agreements, and under international law:
– Donbass Russians had a right to rebel, per the 2010 Kosovo case at the Hague international court on self-determination by oppressed regions
– and Russia, invited by Donbass, had full legal right to come and protect Russians, just like NATO had a ‘right’ to attack Serbia to protect rebels in Kosovo.
Ukraine even arrested some of Putin’s Jewish oligarch friends, pushing and pushing till USA-NATO-Zelensky had the war they sought
EU chief Ursula Von der Leyen – tied to war profiteering since she became German Defence Minister in 2013 – is reported as having EU media censored to try to stop EU citizens from understanding the Feb 2022 Russian invasion was generally legal, insofar as necessary to protect Donbass & its citizens
all true, this dark plan extends back at least as far, as ww2, if not farther. it’s hard to pick a starting point, perhaps the pale of settlement. the ukraine is the borderlands of russia, as well as the breadbasket of the world, but it’s also a wedge, to begin the splitting of the former ussr and russian empire.
zato’s bombing of yugoslavia, kicked off the duplicitous eastern advance and assault on russia. dick lugar and his ward, the young sen. obamba going in, to see to the “safe closure” of ukrainian bioweapon labs, gave a dark foreshadowing, of what was to come, under his administration.
A great article.
For the sake of simplicity he does not mention the very aggressive moves the USA made against Russia in the area of nuclear weapons treaties. These mistakes as well as the earlier expansion of NATO were very alarming to Russia. The Russia-NATO relationship was already tense before Maidan in 2014.
Not gainsaying anything said by Prof. M. but Ukraine is a fake country as to origin in the USSR and thereby incorporates demography that is completely unworkable. One villain is Stalin, who stole Silesia from Germany (1946-47) and gave it to Poland.
But the proximate cause of this disaster is Rothschild’s backing of Khodorkovsky, as he himself admitted very recently in an interview online with a Russian journalist (in Russian), published with English subtitles. We have given the URL earlier at Unz.Com.
Ultimately, the cause of the Ukraine disaster is the same as the decades-long disaster of Western Asia—the Talmudic Monster that slowly destroyed very workable traditional hereditary monarchies in Prussia and Russia (1917-1918), seized Palestine (1948), and brought us to this dangerous pass:
https://www.academia.edu/76372363/To_Sevastopol_With_Love
Note that to view the article, simply SCROLL DOWN; no sign-in is necessary. Thanks.
If Putin really wanted to re-create the USSR, wouldn’t he have started with easier countries?
Khazakstan, for example was the last country to leave the USSR. It has no NATO ties and is landlocked. It also has mineral resources worth taking. Wouldn’t it be an easier nation to assimilate?
“…Albion had done the same thing in America in 1860, covertly promised the southern malcontents military support London had no intention of providing, in order to sabotage the United States before its growing power could challenge Britain’s global empire.”
In the context of all things thought of as obvious about modern history, this one seems the most obvious to me.
“The US will continue to foment color revolutions and arm Russia’s neighbors against her.”
Certainly, that would have been the modus operandi of old, but the times they are a changing.
“…today Russia stands with China, India, and the Global South, all determined to free the world of the American imperium.”
And this is the how and why they are a changing.
I’m sure the Americans continue to believe, and they will TRY, to act as if nothing has changed since they forced Russia to war, but their success in these endeavours will wane and eventually peter out. The Chinese, Indians, etc. are all aware of this. It’s just a question of patience — water on stone.
It’s hard to take any of this seriously. Mearsheimer argues that Putin did not want to invade Ukraine. He only wanted to neutralize Ukraine; what’s more, he wanted to neutralize Ukraine only.
But if that’s true, what was the point? As Mearsheimer himself acknowledges, there are plenty of NATO members with commons borders with Russia. So, what about them? What is the point of neutralizing Ukraine when all those other menaces remain?
The only possible answer is that Putin was not really worried about a NATO threat. And so he could only be interested in conquering Ukraine. This talk about him not having enough troops is really irrelevant. All the pro-Russia writers insist that Russia will win this war. And if it wins this war, it will logically conquer Ukraine.
Mearsheimer’s other point is that Putin was not seen as imperialist before 2014. Then suddenly the West started viewing him differently. Well, this argument is incredibly ridiculous. There are numerous possible reasons for this. Putin might be arming Russia and playing the good guy while he did it. The West might have been excessively naïve. Etc, etc.
But there’s more. Mearsheimer’s own famous ‘offensive realism’ thesis fatalistically sustains that any country must conquer if it can and if it does not want to be conquered. But here in this article he dismisses the notion that Russia’s aggressiveness goes way back and is independent of Putin by stating:
This is no more no less than a perfect refutation of ‘offensive realism’.
You make a good point about Stalin having turned the Ukraine into the breadbasket it is (except you miss the part about Stalin) to become the basis of the world’s food supply chain. A lot of people miss that one.
“…hard to pick a starting point…”
Try 1855: I think the British gradually realised, over the course of the preceding 50-80 years, that the French strategy of supporting the American Colonies’ insurrection had actually worked rather well, so they hoped to take a leaf out of the French book and repeat such success in the Crimea.
Operation ‘Paperclip’ — disseminating ex-Nazi agents and supporters of various ranks and colours, e.g. Yaroslav Hunka (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaroslav_Hunka_scandal) to Canada — would seem to be a logical point to consider the strategy transfer (or maturation) from Britain to the US.
Something else significant happened in 2008, as reported by Wikileaks. The US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan reported some highly incendiary comments by Prince Andrew in a meeting with Kyrgyzstan leaders and a bunch of British trained seals clapping at his every syllable. TL;DR–he boasted that Britain was back in the Great Game and would drag the U.S. into its machinations.
Just a reminder–the Great Game was specifically designed to break up Russia and turn it into a crippled regional power controlled by London.
This doesn’t sound like the rhetoric of a poodle. This sounds like a demonic monster who’s plotting a nuclear war and knows he can use America.
The Brits have been planning this global conflict for 16 years, some might say, 300 years.
All WARS are bankers wars.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/i-know-which-country-the-u-s-will-invade-next/
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/making-the-world-safe-for-banksters-syria-in-the-cross-hairs/
Listen to Mearsheimer promoting the holohoax …. some Goldberg accused him of being a holohoax denier …
The west has nothing but controlled opposition.
Criminal, sick and very old mafia of american, british and some elite jews. History has been largely repeated for thousands of years now and we are talking about very sick and very parasitic american and british, who are tightly squeezing everybodys throats around the world. Its finally time to completely destroy american and british scum and leave nothing left of their existence with legal means and get this animal scum out of our countries with their sick offspring. This scum should have been eradicated hundreds of years ago, but these parasites were left to reproduce uncontrollably on comfortable Islands.
Putin was trying to do it on the “cheap” and the Ukies were about to capitulate until the Brits decided to make it costly. And, boy, has it ever “cost” the Ukies a lot. Far more than I assume they ever thought they’d have to pay in blood and treasure. The Russians must have had their Plan B in place and retreated and retrenched with enough time calculated to get fully up to speed. They didn’t spontaneously do anything.
This goes back prior to the 2014 Coup.
No Mention of Minsk Accords? Seriously?
Mr. Unz and we Subscribers read and discussed far more of this in detail.
Half-Assed Summary. A “C ” Grade.
Tiptoeing around the issue w/o naming the Usual Suspects ?
Let’s hear the Truth straight from the horse’s mouth – Messiah Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
“Slav, Russian, can be destroyed, but never conquered. That is why this seed is subject to liquidation, and, at first, a sharp reduction in their numbers.”
Ukraine War — Chabad’s Strategy for Slavic Genocide
https://henrymakow.com/2023/02/russia-khazaria-ukraine.html
Ukraine War is Slavic Genocide
https://henrymakow.com/2023/09/russia-khazaria-ukraine.html
All Russian politicians including Vlad would not make a pimple on a steely butt of rank-and-file Taliban warrior.
Last Jew leaves Afghanistan
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/the-last-jew-in-afghanistan-is-en-route-to-the-united-states-678882
Try 1855. The British Siege of Sevastopol, in Crimea.
Americans do not know that Ukraine openly violated its 1991 Belovezha agreement with former Soviet states to protect the rights of ethnic minorities in their newly independent nations. This alone justified Russian intervention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belovezha_Accords
The new CIA installed government after their 2014 coup was led by dormant Nazis who immediately banned use of the Russian language, which half of Ukrainians spoke on a daily basis. The 90% ethnic Russian area of the Donbas took up arms against enforcement of this law since most didn’t even speak Ukrainian. The Ukrainian Nazis attacked and bombed their cities, as CNN reported in 2014, before it was told such news is now forbidden, as shown in this short video, which includes a recent clip of Mearsheimer stating it doesn’t matter if the war in Ukraine is lost because it’s not important to American national security:
Video Link
“Who caused the Ukraine war?”
The Jews.
Any further questions?
“Ukraine” is an artificial “country.” It really never existed as a sovereign state – ever! There is a “Ukrainian” ethnic for sure. Has been for a long time. But that ethnic is part of this country or that country – sorta like NW Spain – those are Galitians; they are not Spaniards. Same thing, and not to be thought of otherwise. In fact, dialects across the Ukraiine vary. In the west they speak Polish but might use cyrillic characters; in the east (e,g., Donbass) those are Russians who speak Russian. Some Ukes are “Ukrainian Catholics” (they recognize Rome); there are Orthodox Ukrainians, and there are, in the west many “Old Slavonic” Catholics which are neither Rome or Orthodox – oriented, they are “dark” complected, and are more Slovak than either Polish or Ukrainian.
I was there – east of Przemysl, Poland where the people talked about how suddenly, one day, a line was drawn gates were set up, and the folks 6 blocks away were in the Soviet Union (and now, a big hassle for Poles to even visit them, etc.) Result? Poles trapped in Soviet Union, now called “Ukes.”
Ukraine, far as the USSR was concerned was just a province. The border was arbitrary (no plebiscite) just a border for administrative purposes.Going from Russia to Ukraine was like going from Ohio to Indiana. Period. When the USSR broke up, they never addressed that border – nobody seemed to care.
I buy the argument that Putin finally woke up one day and realized that ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine were being treated like shit and ethnic Russians was his main concern. Why? Well…ask Victoria Nuland & all. I’m sure they know. All I can say is if you think you’ll want some of Russia’s oodles of natural resources – buy it from them. If you act civil I’m pretty sure they could cut a deal. But, No! the screwballs instead, decided to blow up Gasprom.
My read? Someone is planning on getting dirt rich over WW III. And they want it. But no matter how much money you grab, all I gotta say is who wants to live in the radioactive contaminated aftermath? Bunker or no bunker.And, babe, this time it ain’t gonna go off “over there.” No matter how you engineer it. Nope!
Ukraine has been a long-term fascist (Zionist, National Socialist and American Neo-Cohen) project – they are to blame and it’s just that simple.
You’ve got your Zionist in Igor Kolomoisky, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Hennadii Korban, etc.
You’ve got your Banderite in Walter Zaryckyj, Oleh Tyahnybok, Andrii Biletsky, Natan Khazin, etc.
You’ve got your Neo-Cohen in John McCain, Victoria Nuland, Joe Biden, Anthony Blinken, etc.
One can’t forget the techno-surveillance state being tested in Ukraine as well. Not just through Diia, but the likes of Palantir. It’s “funny” when you see Louis Mosley, Oswald Mosley’s grandson and head of Palantir’s UK/Ireland division, in Ukraine singing praises for the collaboration.
I’m just thankful that the sun rises in The East.
Yet another presentation on behalf of Unit 8200 for the “hate Muslims” Talmudist cause. This poster is a well-trained psywar propagandist.
“Ultimately God”…Who the hell are you trying to kid…maybe some terminally deluded “Christian” Zionist will send some more cash to one of their little “help poor Israel” welfare scheme.
“Peace” indeed. The Big Lie. Talmudist agitators detest the very idea of peace.
I think it was largely motivated by the eight-years of killing, brutalizing, and subjugating of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
The Kremlin and Putin knew this was a terror campaign orchestrated by and run from Washington starting with the Orange Revolution through to Maidan and up to the point of the CIA training neo-nazi fighters to attack Donbas.
I think the decision was made by the Kremlin to make a move once they realized they had been totally played by the Minsk agreements. Russia was left with no option.
The only mistake Russia made was not firing 500 hypersonic missiles in the first hour. Striking every Ukraine military installation, every major government building, and liquidating as many Ukrainian military and government personnel as possible.
Russia mistakenly played it fair. Huge mistake. The U.S. would never play it fair in war.
Basically, Mearsheimer is a trimmer…a classical liberal who believes in “progress” and that we can all make nice and have perfect attendance. In early 19th Century such cultural and political liberals were called “Mugwumps”. Meaning of the term was that their mug was on one side of the equation while their “wump” was on the other.
Liberality, on the other hand is a blessing. Both the receiver of the liberality and the giver are doubly blessed. LiberalISM is a social disease.
BULL$HIT. Ukraine may be a state but it is NOT a nation. There is a difference and it is profound. A state is a political entity, which perfectly fits the puppet coup d’ etat regime in Kiev. A nation is made up of a PEOPLE who are relatively homogeneous ethnically and racially. They hold ideals and principles pretty much in common. Generally, most actual nations have histories going back for centuries.
Ukraine was not even a standing political entity until Ukraine SSR was created by the Bolsheviks in1921. They combined several disparate regions into one single Frankenstein Monster. But what the hell, the Bolshevies thought. The USSR is one big happy proletarian family, obedient to the Communist Party and willing workers for the Marxist dream.
Excluding some of Stalin’s territorial additions during and after WWII, the Ukraine entity was at that time mostly Russian speaking, with a tight area in its north central vector speaking the Ukrainian dialect of Russian. To the east were ethnic Russians, magically welded onto the structure to give it an economic base. Far to the southwest were the renegade Galicians who had been under Polish and latterly Habsburg domination and became quite westernized, even altering their religious affiliation from Russian Orthodox to Uniate Catholic…thus keeping their masters in Vienna happy…ditto “Holy” Mother Church.
No doubt about it. Ukraine is NOT a nation. As the Russians seem to have their wits about them; they will hold referendums as they did a couple years ago in Donbas, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts…where the voters massively supported the idea of becoming part of the R.U. Most of that “country” east of the Dnieper river are Russian speaking people. So are those in Odessa to the south-southwest, currently the fake nation’s major seaport on the Black Sea. Those areas will likely revert to Russia.
That relative handful of Oblasts surrounding Kiev may be encouraged to become NovoUkrainia, a land where the Ukrainian dialect of Russian is primary. Galicia and portions of nearby oblasts where there is a Uniate majority will become an isolated, pariah nation. It will become a home for Pale of Settlement descended Khazarian refugees from what is now the Zionist Entity…as well as those Banderites who get along so well with the Piano Dick-Tater and the fellow Talmudists who are in his camp.
So 534, you have placed matters precisely bass-ackwards. The current regime is Kiev is the puppet regime. It is illegitimate. It was created by the U$$A Department of $tate along with the CIA; with a huge assist from Little Georgie of Our $orrow$. Those evil entities organized and funded the Maidan coup.
Putin did not invade Ukraine; Putin invaded a U.S. territory in all but name. Before the 2014 Maidon coup 90% of what Ukraine manufactured, Russia bought. Just a few months after the coup all that ended, and now the Ukrainian government is fully dependent on western funding meaning Ukraine is no longer a sovereign nation. Once the U.S. leaves it will be up for grabs.
Childish Chicken-vs-Egg Buffoonery.
I think you are planning to kill me, so I kill you.
Defense or Offense?
The only issue is: Who are YOU; who are YOUR friends and allies?
You, your friends, your allies: they only DEFEND.
Your enemies: they only OFFEND.
The ignorance of Hobbes and his virtuoso performance in paradiastole is staggering.
But as for Mearsheimer doing anything to help Putin, I approve.
For when I hear Biden denouncing him, I know Putin is my FRIEND, who only DEFENDS.
Putin has never once said anything positive about Niggers. That’s a sufficient contrast with George-Floyd-cock-sucking Biden.
This is another typical limited hangout style explanation for the war by the shabboz goyim John Mearsheimer.
Not once does Mearsheimer name the Jew, despite the fact that so many Jews were involved starting in this war, from Blinken to Zelensky to Kolomoisky to “I am a Zionist” Joe Biden, whose entire brood is married to Jews.
The destruction of Europe, AKA Rome or Edom, has also been the subject of a Talmudic Jewish vendetta. Europe is Amalek just as much as Gaza.
The most glaring omission by Mearsheimer is that Nato has involved itself in an entire series of wars for Israel as exposed by Wesley Clarke in his famous 7 nations diatribe. Nato participated in the destruction of Libya, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan on behalf of the Judean empire and Israel. Nato is little more that the Rothschild Army, and the Rothschilds are the kings of Israel.
After the spectacle of Netanyahu’s recent visit to congress and the 56 standing ovations, it is clear that congress is occupied Jewish territory. To paraphrase Gutle Schnapper Rothschild, there would be no war in Ukraine if Jewish power did not want it. Jews wanted this war. period.
Then there is the entire “Heavenly Jerusalem” project that many Jews brag about.
It is also interesting to note that many young military aged Jews left Ukraine right at the start of the war in 2022. Just as with 9/11 they seem to have inside information on what was going to happen. It also worthy of note that there is complete absence of Jewish protests about the kidnapping of military aged young men, which is evidence that Jews are either exempt or somehow managed to get out of Ukraine while the getting was good. Once again, this is evidence of inside information or of special treatment.
Mearsheimer also fails to mention that most of US industry, especially defence and oil, are under the control of Jewish managed hedge funds. ((Larry Fink)), who runs the $10T Rothschilds controlled hedge fund called Blackrock, has hoovered up most of the prime Ukrainian farmland as well as other resources.
It was Judea that caused the Ukraine war, just as they have cause virtually every war across the west since before Napoleon. The blowhard knowitall Mearsheimer has his head up his A**.
Most people in Western Europe have come to conclude that the U.S. and its vassal-state allies provoked the war in Ukraine. However, while President Putin made concerted efforts to avoid war, Russia must bear responsibility for leaving it too late. President Putin should have acted decisively in 2014. In addition, President Putin failed to stop Ukraine rearming heavily. Remember, the Russian SMO meant to last a few weeks, not a few years. Russia’s lacks of Intel about the EU sincerity in negotiation made it worse. It followed, Russia was deceived by the Minsk Agreement which was as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the then-French President François Hollande revealed that, the “Minsk agreement served to buy Ukraine time to rearm and built its armed forces against Russia”.
The author shouldn’t give in to Western language changes. “Kyiv†is Kiev (otherwise it would have to be spelled Keev) just like Moscow is not Moskva. Otherwise when you look at “Kyiv†you almost think “Ky-ifâ€.
Those who speak English should not be expected to have to learn foreign languages in order to identify and/or understand non-English countries and cultures.
https://www.pressenza.com/2022/04/the-policy-of-the-usa-has-always-been-to-prevent-germany-and-russia-from-cooperating-more-closely/
Jacques Baud was a Colonel in the Swiss Army. He worked for the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service.
“On 24 March 2021, Ukrainian President Zelensky issued a Presidential decree to recapture Crimea. He then began to move the Ukrainian army south and southeast, towards the Donbas. So, for a year now, we have had a permanent build-up of the army on Ukraine’s southern border. This explains why there were no Ukrainian troops on the Russian-Ukrainian border at the end of February. Zelensky has always claimed that the Russians will not attack Ukraine. The Ukrainian defence minister has also repeatedly confirmed this. Similarly, the head of the Ukrainian Security Council confirmed in December and in January that there were no signs of a Russian attack on Ukraine.
Was this a trick?
No, they said that several times, and I am sure that Putin, who also said that repeatedly, by the way, did not want to attack. Obviously, there was pressure from the US.
The US has little interest in Ukraine itself. At this point, they wanted to increase pressure on Germany to shut down Nord Stream II. They wanted Ukraine to provoke Russia and, if Russia reacted, Nord Stream II would be put on ice. Such a scenario was alluded to when Olaf Scholz visited Washington, and Scholz clearly did not want to go along with it. That is not just my opinion, there was also Americans who understood it that way: The target was Nord Stream II, and one must not forget that Nord Stream II was built at the request of the Germans. It is fundamentally a German project. Because Germany needs more gas to achieve its energy and climate goals.
“In a nuclear war, Europe will be the battlefieldâ€
Why did the USA push for this?
Since the Second World War, it has always been US policy to prevent Germany and Russia or the USSR from working more closely together. This is despite the fact that the Germans have a historical fear of the Russians. But these are the two biggest powers in Europe. Historically, there have always been economic relations between Germany and Russia. The USA has always tried to prevent that. One must not forget that in a nuclear war, Europe would be the battlefield. That means that in such a case the interests of Europe and the United States would not necessarily be the same. This explains why in the 1980s the Soviet Union supported pacifist movements in Germany. A closer relationship between Germany and Russia would render the American nuclear strategy useless.”
All good and well, and I mostly agree with the article, but there are a couple thing I want to point out:
First of all, everyone is entitled to his opinion, right? Well, it is my opinion that *”the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”* is not the collapse of the Soviet Union but its existence and the destruction and suffering it brought to so many Central Europe peoples, which among other nasty consequences left an anti-West-Europe armed to the teeth, comprising half of former Germany. But somehow, that had to be acceptable.
And Russia keeps bitching about the prospect of missiles too close to the border, well, what is former Koenigsberg rebranded Kaliningrad then? But somehow, that has to be acceptable, even as they boast they can nuke London in five minutes (and my hometown in less than three) from there.
Speaking of *”we cannot change past events, but we must at least admit them openly and honestly”*, there’s way more they have admit openly and honestly, besides Ukraine and Katyn, before I take them seriously. I’m not holding my breath though… all we’ll hear from that side is more hypocrisy and outright lies about WWII.
Soviet Union, who misses it has no brains, and who wants it back has neither brains nor heart.
The only good thing about it, is that it provided a counterweight to the NATO block.
But let’s not forget, how quick they ganged together against a third contender, and would do so again, as soon as Europe will come to its senses and rise again from its current Weimar level corruption and subservience.
All it takes, is the usual suspects crying Amalek/Nazi.
Three words:
Cuban missile crisis.
Yeah, right.
And that. boys and girls, is why all those Nimitz class US aircraft carriers, plus the G.R. Ford, possibly carrying nuclear weapons, have to be stationed so far from the US. So they can “defensively” bomb the shit out of other countries.
As an English man I must say it is very flattering to learn how clever we are to be able to manipulate so many people and nations into doing our nefarious bidding. Of course, Prince Andrew, that well known genius, is the chief architect.
It’s an important article. It’s quite systematic in the way it deals with this question (the objections by Bras Cubas above are quite simplistic, naive). But there is one adicional point that could have been made: who begun the war?
I think some authors have shown that the Ukraine actually wanted a war in order to recover the lost territories (Crim, Donbass). The US/Ukraine not only provoked the war, they also begun the war. There is a book by a German professor, Georg Auernheimer, who argues that this is the case: “Die Strategische Falle”. On page 89 he mentions the fact that a law intrtoduced by Selensky 24 Mar 2021 sets the recovery of the lost territories as a state aim. More troops were transfered to the South/East of Ukraine. He also mentions Ruslan Chomtschak (chief of staff of the army) who said in an interview: “Of course we are preparing ourselves for an attack.”
An article which appeared in the news of Microsoft (originally AP) said that the chef of the security council of the Ukraine said that their biggest fear was that Europe might force the Ukraine to comply with the agreements of Minsk. There is also an article (I believe in politico.com, but might be wrong) which said that nobody in Ukraine cared about Minsk before the war begun. All this seems to suggest that the Ukraine wanted a war and startet the war. I think there is also a report (OCDE) which says that the Ukraine started shooting.
Webster Tarpley forecast before Obama was nominated that an Obama Presidency would lead to war against Russia. Tarpley undersstood that Obama was a color revolution backed and groomed by the Brzezinski CFR psychopaths…more dangerous than the neocons…
Brezinski wanted to carve Russia into little pieces as Putin is really aware.
This is found in Obama: The Post Modern Coup-The Making of a Manchurian Candidate
Great summary of arguments by Mearsheimer. Two points:
(1) It should be taken into account that in February 2022 the Ukrainian president asserted not just that Ukraine would join NATO but also that Ukraine will have again nuclear weapons.
(2) Clearly Russia was not planning to annex all of Ukraine in 2022 but developments after the invasion make it necessary, obligatory in fact, that Russia annexes all of Ukraine. Any remaining piece of Ukraine after peace breaks out which is functional enough to have a State will quickly join NATO and re-arm to attack the Russian pieces of Ukraine and all of Russia.
I agree. President Putin waited too long to start the Russian SMO.
OK, what do you call Israel? Is it a Fascistic Jewish entity or a nation?
No, there aren’t plenty of Nato members with common land borders with Russia. Before the war, this was the case only with the Baltic states and Norway. But the Baltic states are relatively small countries, which have only a very small land corridor which links them with Poland between White Russia and Kaliningrad. Probably Russia could deal with concentration of troops there. Besides, I think there is a treaty which says that other Nato countries are not allowed to have soldiers permanently there. Because of that, soldiers there rotate every few months. If the Ukraine were also added to Nato, this would increase very much the threat to Russia. The border with Norway is unimportant. I don’t believe that Norway has more than 73 soldiers there.
There is still another point. Maybe Bras Cubas doesn’t know that there was a war going on in Ukraine since 2014. Russia had reacted to the American conquest of the Ukraine in 2014 but tried to cool down the situation afterwards to no avail. The Ukraine armed itself, disregarded the attempt to solve the dispute peacefully through the treaty of Minsk, and ultimately started a war. For the West, Russia’s reaction in 2014 had been a challenge to its power and should be dealt with. Russia should be pushed back. Was there any attempt by the West to save the agreement of Minsk? No. Was the West ready for negotiations? No. Under these circunstances, the Ukrainian wish to become a member of Nato represented a threat to Russia. Putin said that if the war goes on and the Ukraine becomes a member of Nato, there would be a war between Russia and Nato, (which would mean the end of the world). The problem was already serious as the Ukraine was made a de facto member of Nato.
Besides, a lot of experts knew that the question of Nato and the Ukraine was the big issue for Russia. If not, why was there a promise not to extend Nato after the colapse of the Soviet Union? Because it was important or decisive for Russia. But Cubas says nothing about that.
Yes, the jewish Cousinhood completely controlled the British elites by the Victorian era.
https://www.algora.com/Algora_blog/2022/01/29/free-to-cheat-jewish-emancipation-and-the-anglo-jewish-cousinhood
The same group of Zionist Satanists and slavers was responsible for the American Civil War. Lincoln should have holocausted the lot if them when he had the chance. They started the World Wars and have destroyed the U.S.; they’re in the process of destroying Europe and the U.K.
Instead of going on about “better angels”, Lincoln should have recognized what Jesus Christ knew first hand: the Synagogue of Satan is irredeemable and must be destroyed once and for all, along with all its soulless zoglodyte lickspittle. Their Golden Calf voodoo is going to destroy the world unless it’s choked out entirely.
As the author of the Israel Lobby which identified the Judeofascists as the “decisive” force behind the Iraq war, Mearshiemer knows this, but he’s become a handwringer who has lately been going on about “Crusaders” — to try to shill for the Judeofascists? He’s become a nervous nelly who doesn’t practice Christian Logos or have faith in Jesus Christ. He’s an intellectual academic navel gazer.
Given what these monsters have planned, he’s also a coward who maybe wants a quiet retirement in the nursing home, perhaps attended to by some cheap labor orderlies?
People, these Zionists aren’t to be trifled with. Take off your blinders and get out your instrument of justice. Why is it up to me — a nobody — to try to bring some common sense to high powered thinkers? I sometimes feel like I’m shouting at the ocean, or trying to converse with the dead. Or maybe its the undead. It’s a very odd existence, like living on the moon.
I don’t know how to make it any clearer.
There’s a movie out right now about these insane jew brainwashers and their zoglodytes called Longlegs. It features a song by T Rex, who says of the Anglos, “You’ve got the teeth of the hydra upon you.”
I also liked the Robert Palmer version:
Video Link
Ukraine is not Rumanian or Lithuania or Finland. Ukraine has the biggest Russian-speaking population outside Russia. Mr Putin does not want to see NATO rule over Russians in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. The people wanted to reunite with the Motherland. Unfortunately, Russia left it too late to liberate these Russian regions. Even after starting the Russian SMO, Russia was fighting with one hand. Mr Putin should have attacked decisively (i.e., “Shock and Awe”), obliterating all Ukrainian army units. Mr Putin must be aware that, for the U.S-Britain to occupy Iraq – a small and defenseless nation under genocidal sanctions – in 2003, they deployed nearly a million soldiers (Marines), using thousands of modern U.S.-Britain jets, and supported by mercenaries from countries as far as Australia, Poland, South Korea, Japans, among others. In addition, hundreds of thousands of armed Arab and Iranian militias were crossing the Iraqi border at will to support the barbaric invasion. It is most likely that the Russian leadership was unaware of the strength of the Ukrainian armed forces. It must have been a surprise.
Gorbachov, Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Sushkevich. Those are responsible for all conflicts and wars across former USSR. It was just a matter of time.
Imho – God started it when human beings were created!
There is something hardly mentioned and something I have never been able to get to the bottom of, and that is the story or the rumor that immediately before the Russian invasion, Western Ukraine was mobilizing weapons and men to commence a major attack on the eastern Ukrainians, which was cited as one of the additional reasons why Russia invaded Ukraine when it did in 2022.
At the time I thought that if it were true, it was all the more reason for the invasion, but even if it were not true, and only a story fed to the Russians and everyone else, it was clearly another provocation to lure Russia into invading Ukraine. Putin cited it as one of the reasons for the invasion.
It is becoming clearer by the day, that even though Ukraine is losing the war and being wrecked, that the west is accomplishing their goal. The west wants to drag this war out as long as it can because the longer it goes on, it will inevitably weaken Russia, and that is the main objective – not for Ukraine to win the war and join Nato, but for Russia to be weakened leaving it vulnerable to a later attack by others.
That is the long range objective – to weaken Russia and break it apart into several countries, a goal to make it far easier to maintain US hegemonic status.
Prof. Mearshimer has to be polite, living and teaching in Chicago. We all know the West doggedly provoked Russia into war. Next…
The plans for WASP Empire, Anglo-Zionist Empire, to conquer Russia (and also China) as necessary to ruling the entire globe developed in the 19th century. See Makinder’s Heartlad Thesis and get to know its history. Brit WASP amateur think tanks were planning that a half century before Makinder ‘s final paper was published.
That’s a great point. The most obvious truths are the hardest to see.
Transparent. And pathetic.
You waste your own time and ours.
Everybody here knows exactly who is responsible for the flood of immigrants in to Europe.
Go and haunt somewhere else you ghoul.
The West is not accomplishing its main goal: to annex Ukraine into NATO and the EU.
The West is not accomplishing its fallback goal after failure of its main goal: to weaken Russia. Russia is now stronger militarily, economically, and socially. That’s why the West is trying to re-arm, not because Russia has been weakened of course, but because Russia has been strengthened.
The most salient feature of current Western leadership is incompetence and mediocrity, so many of its projects fail, especially those with military subprojects. There are so many recent examples of those failures. But Western leadership still sits on top of a legacy of over a billion people, many of them very productive, with good infrastructure and a well developed financial system, so Western leadership may play games more or less far from its shores that it loses with no serious consequences so far.
One word answer… 100% correct…
JEWS
Cuban-missle crisis: This looks a lot like the central argument – or: Analogy.
Anyone watch the NBC Yiddish produced Olympics? No Russia, predetermined politically, of course. But black on black hosts and interviewees mostly focusing on black athletes. Yes, the very political Olympics.
I agree that the U.S. provoked the war in Ukraine by its illegal interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs, i.e., the Maidan coup, threat of NATO expansion, etc., and that Russia’s intervention in Syria was and remains justified as defense-of-others as the Assad regime consented and is the legitimate government of Syria. The defense-of-others rationale you cite, however, does not work so well regarding the Donbas, as I believe you implicitly recognize by putting scare quotes around the supposed ‘right’ of NATO to attack Serbia in defense of Kosovo in comparison. (The ICJ, BTW, merely recognized the right of Kosovo to declare independence. It did not recognize the legitimacy of that state or confer upon it the right to invite others to defend it.)
There is no limit to the number of minority regions of countries that can declare “independence” and then invite foreign powers that recognize them to defend them. That way chaos lies, as does the dubious notion of “Responsibility-to-Protect” that I would hope died in ignominy after the Libyan regime change operation. (There is also no limit to what any would-be aggressor can deem a “human rights violation” worthy of intervention.)
The best rationale under international law, if it matters, for Russia’s SMO would be something like extended, preemptive self-defense against NATO expansion, with the U.S. threat to go to war with the USSR in the Cuban Missile Crisis as the most notable precedent. An attack by NATO on Russia may not have been imminent but, since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, NATO had clearly become an offensive alliance and the prospect of nuclear weapons on the Ukraine-Russia border was an intolerable threat (immanent, if not imminent, if you will).
Russia did not start the war via the special op.
It joined the war being waged against them.
The globalists and NATO want Russia and its resources. They are willing to risk a nuclear war to accomplish that. They also want to eliminate sovereign countries which is why they have destroyed America with immigration. Until we rid ourselves of the evil monsters who rule over us this will continue. And yes, this is largely a Jew operation.
Why is NATO still alive? It should have been disbanded when the USSR fell. Now it is a zombi.
The long and dull article doesn’t begin where it ought to begin…
The Genesis of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine had its seeds in the Anglo-Judaic rape of Russia in the 90s under Yeltsin, which has commenced in earnest to strip the behemoth of its wealth in its dark days, but the appearance of Putin, who in his real zeal to protect the motherland, had put a sudden stop to the fast gravytrain, which had left the monster unsated and the rest is history with Victoria Nuland, cookies and the Maidan coup.
Agreed.
However, it was the 9th September 2013 that Putin / Lavrov first proposed international control over Syria’s chemical weapons.
This followed the staged “sarin chemical weapon attack” at Ghouta on 20th August 2013 – on the first anniversary of Obama’s “red line” warning about same on 20th August 2012 …
As per – played like fiddles …
Agreed there. I have noticed this with Mearsheimer, whom I like and can agree with on many things.
Imagine a global mafia historian whose repetoire of knowledge includes everyone else except for Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz, Ben Seigel and the entire Murder Inc squad.
That’s what Mearsheimer does.
I presume he and Walt took enough heat for when they published “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” to know when to shut up.
You seem to recognize that Russia is not the Soviet Union. I would go further and suggest that the US-Zio Globohomo empire and its Weimar level, corrupt and subservient European satraps, are more the Evil Empire today than was the USSR (at least post-Stalin)–and a lot more threatening to world peace and global stability.
Modern Russia is explicitly neither an ethnostate nor a theocracy. Nevertheless, I can think of no “Western” country in which European peoples, genuine western culture, and Christianity have a more secure home. (But then, hell, even Iran has more respect for Christianity than does France, and China respects heterosexual marriage more than the entire “West”!)
Russia has acknowledged a lot more about the Soviet past than Katyn and the famine. Putin has even cited the predominantly non-Russian leadership of the Bolshevik Revolution. Neither Russian nor the “West,” however, has abandoned the foundation myth or Manichean victimization/victory cult of WWII. If it’s that important, I suggest we go first.
God is everywhere. (pantheism) God is nowhere. (atheism)
Any difference?
Other commenters already pointed out what makes Ukraine different, but I’d like to add another factor: The Black Sea. Russia has only two viable ways to access the oceans, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. The Baltic Sea is already controlled by NATO through the Denmark choke point. Turkey is in NATO and controls the Black Sea choke point, but Turkey is more of a neutral country than a US vassal like the northern European countries.
Having Crimea gives Russia a dominant position in the Black Sea, that’s why it’s such a concern for Putin. Ukraine entering NATO would be a huge threat to Russia’s control of Crimea, since Russia didn’t have a land connection and had to rely on the tenuous Crimean bridge before this war.
Russia would basically lose its sovereignty if the US controlled both the Baltic and the Black Sea.
For a Jewish guy who has a long history of criticizing the lying Jews of Israel/AIPAC, he must be suffering from long Covid to fail to mention ALL the JEWS involved with bankrupting and taking over Russian resources AGAIN!! First we heard from lying Jew Jeffrey Sachs rushing to tell us he had nothing to do with fucking Russia when he absolutely did along with the handful of JEWS that ended up controlling (“privatizingâ€) over 40% of Russia natural resources thanks to Jeff’s “shock therapyâ€.
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/27/magazine/dr-jeffrey-sachs-shock-therapist.html
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/22/1087654279/how-shock-therapy-created-russian-oligarchs-and-paved-the-path-for-putin
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1097135961
Good ole Jeff, delivering white countries to JEWS in a silver platter. Oops! I mean Saint Jeff made a few “mistakesâ€! Pathetic lying Jew swindler!
Now Mearsheimer, another “expert†seems to conveniently omit the 6 million pound JEW in the room!
First, JEWS were PISSED when Putin wouldn’t allow them to take over everything and have HATED him ever since and want him OUT! Like Hitler, ANY white goyim not bowing to the tiny Jew population whose only REAL power is their FAKE money, must be make into the devil himself by lying Jew media as Jews cannot win a REAL war!
Second, Mearsheimer fail to elaborate on Putin’s statement about Ukraine being “created†by “Bolsheviksâ€
As slithering kike opportunist and crypto Jew Jeremy Carl(Jew claiming to be Christian) touches on in his book (read: White exploitation to get rich while hiding the Jews responsible like Shapiro, Prager, Breitbart, Gutfeld etc. do)
“The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apartâ€, Jew Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide†explained that “Bolsheviks†(read: JEWS) intentionally starved 10 million Ukrainians to death on purpose changing the Ukrainian demographic from 85% Ukrainian to 65% Ukrainian (just like SPLC Jew Mark Potok celebrates Jews doing in America) so Ukrainians could not unite against their USSR Jewish tyrants!!
Third, Mearsheimer makes no mention of neo-con Jew Nuland leading the illegal overthrow of “DEMOCRACY†in Ukraine and tyrannically installing a JEW billionaire president (who won’t admit he is Jewish), killing off and scapegoating the supposed “neo-Nazis†as the leaders of the illegal coup, then slaughtering the actual Russians in the Eastern half of the country who weren’t playing Jew ball! They did this with the intention of pulling Putin into war with the intention of bankrupting Russia via war and hoping to have him removed from power as openly stated at the time in a TV interview by some US Jew “expertâ€. Basically making Russia SAFE for Jews to take over and further wipe out the white gentiles and put them in debt to world banking Jews.
Third, as Tucker Carlson’s interview exposed, Putin and little lying rat Jew Zelensky negotiated to end the war in a meeting in Istanbul but Jew Boris Johnson (Bo JEW) called after getting his orders from world Jewry and told him not to accept the deal! Jews wanted to see hundreds of thousand more Ukrainians DIE as their lives are mere pawns for Jew globalists whose main focus was “weakening†(read: destroying) white Russia.
Fourth, Communist sucker of Jew cock Angela Merkel, Ms. Let’s Bring Tens of Millions of angry niggers and Muslims from Jew wars here to RAPE and kill Europe, admitted that the supposed “Minsk Agreement†was never intended to be honored (read: by way of deception Jews destroy trust and good will and fuck everyone with backstabbing) and only used to buy Jew globalists time to build up the Ukrainian army to fight the inevitable war they intended to create.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/12/22/ffci-d22.html
Let us NEVER FORGET how the Jews frothed at the mouth preemptively making Trump EVIL for daring to make good relations with Russia as evil lying kike Bill Maher let the kosher globalist, white goy HATING cat out of the bag claiming “whites have a fantasy of a United white world with Russia†(not an exact quote for the “intellectuals†who go to pieces when I don’t have all the free time necessary to dig up every single line that Jew intellectuals intentionally omit!
So there you have it Johnny boy! JEWS wanting to remove Putin by both tying Russia up in war and bankrupting them to cause his people to demand his removal is what started the war in Ukriane. In the bigger picture JeWS want to destroy whites and prevent their UNION at all costs except for the “costs†that Jews don’t approve of. ( https://m.jpost.com/diaspora/article-696337). The evil Jews attacked Russia first a century ago to begin dividing and conquering the white world with communism and they continue on.
Totally correct. Excellent summation. Russia is superior to the entire West in every aspect and category, materially, spiritually, and mental health.
Kazakhstan actually has, or at least used to have, a substantial ethnic population, especially around the northwestern areas of Kazakhstan not far from the Volga river. In addition to minerals, and oil, Kazakhstan also produces a lot of wheat and has lots of steppes suitable for raising cattle. And it has a relatively small population.
I would not rule out Russia annexing a good chunk of Kazakhstan in the future. If you look at ancient DNA remains, the area today known as Kazakhstan was populated with northern Iranian[-speaking] people (aka Scythians / Aryans) — not to be confused with modern day Iranians who share the linguistic heritage but much less of the genetic heritage — whose closest genetic relatives today would be Baltic Russians. The Turks and Mongols took over this land and came in as invaders from the east. It would make sense for Russians to take back their ancestral lands.
I would support Russia annexing all of Kazakhstan and sending their Turkic people back to Western China and Mongolia where they came from.
Peace will never come to Ukraine if Russia allows the capitalists to own the land they have acquired inside Ukraine.
To insure its safety Russia needs to defeat all of Ukraine and never let it be taken over by Russia’s enemies.
JEWS started the war. Mel Gibson is right
“Conquering Ukraine” is not llike ordering room service. NATO/CIAJUSA decided after WWII to make Ukraine an outpost and potential launching pad for the bellicose West and a nascent investment of Rothchild and the International Kosher Nosetra. It’s there money that controlled and has controlled the American Grubmint for a loooong time.
In the 1990s and into 2000s, Russia had started to recover from widespread CIA infiltration, Jews oligarchs, and laying prostrate at the feet of the West, while they plundered and humiliated Russia, and its people starved. Yeltsin’s elections were all CIA funded and directed. A fifth column has existed in Russia for decades. The SMO was a gift-via sanctions-that allowed Putin to reduce the powers of oligarchs tremendously, as their assets abroad were confiscated along with all their toys. The the liberal West loving flakes and pan everything perverted hit the road. Their fleeing allowed Putin to brand them as cowards, unpatriotic, and treasonous.
The SMO cleared the room of “We need the West”, “Look to the West” for inspiration and direction” slobs in and out of government. Russian culture is now-in the minds of the entire population-authentic, superior, and genuine. Not a derivative. This country has reinvented itself into an industrial powerhouse, unleashing the talents and drive of its people.
Yes, that is all true, but that is beside the point. Mearsheimer argues there’s no evidence Russia was planning to remove this illegitimate puppet regime in Kiev. I argue that Russia might have been planning to do exactly that, but not just for the sake of conquering some territory for imperial expansion, but for neutralizing the threat of NATO expansion into Ukraine, because installing a pro-Russian government in Kiev for prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. I agree with his main point that possible NATO expansion into Ukraine caused the war, but I disagree with Mearsheimer’s conclusions on how Russia was planning to prevent that expansion.
. It is a different culture than Russian Orthodox Christian with a people of different identity and origins-generally. It is already part of the Russian Federation, which a functions fully well to encompass all relations, as it so happens with the over 180 ethnic groups and even more languages. Centralized control is a proven problem generator, whereas local government that is indigenous to the population is superior. The German duchies and smaller states should have remained so. The same with Italy.
The word ‘Ukraine’ means ‘borderland’ or frontier.’ Thus it always should be preceded a definite article: the Ukraine.
You seem to start from the premise that this ‘Ukraine’ is. real country with a real national history of its own. But the fact is that there was nation known as the Ukraine in 1900 or 1800 or 1700 or 1600 or 1500 or 1400 or 1300 or 1200 or 1100. Nor was there ever anything like a unified culture in those lands – hence they were borderlands.
Any actual ‘Ukrainian’ people are a minority of the peoples living in the Ukraine that the
West’ declared must be its own independent nation when the USSR fell. The Ukrainian language is best labelled an archaic, provincial, large rural dialect of Russian, with substantial flourishes of Polish from centuries of Polish-Lithuanian rule over parts of the geography. Snd that geography, that Ukraine that the West declared must be its own independent nation, was created by the USSR. The Ukraine that you see as having inviolable borders was created by the USSR. To the area that Russians labelled the Ukraine, to which had been affixed the city-state of Kiev, Lenin and then Stalin and then Krushchev all added territories. All those USSR moves were made precisely to try to make certain that Russian culture could never arise as a force from which to oppose Bolshevism.
If you wished to do what is best for all the peoples living in hat Ukraine, you would first have major trips formal the meanders of the fake country who acted, with Western backing, to slaughter many thousands of Russians forced top live under such rule. All of Novorassiya and the Crimea would be assigned to Russia. Kiev and environs would be allowed to vote on whether to join Russia or Belarus. Poland would be granted a section of old Galicia, and small parts would be added to Hungary, Slovakia,and Romania. Then remaining lands, which would compromise the true Ukraine, would then also be allowed to vote whether to be an independent country that could never join any military alliance or to join Russia, which has ruled it since before the USA was a country.
But the fact is that the Anglo-Zionist Empire is damned determined to make itself the ruler of the entire globe.
Contemporary leaders of Kazakhstan have shown that they possess sound common sense, knowing that any fervent Islam would bring ruin as would any sell out to the West which means sell out to Anglo-Zionists and thus international Jewry. They also are fully appreciative of the Russian and other Indo-European peoples who live there. It would be stupid, even plain evil, for Russia to disrupt any of that.
It would make sense to start with Georgia. It is small and weak, and there’s lots of US meddling in Georgia while the government is not an American puppet regime. Starting with Ukraine in rebuilding the USSR makes no sense, especially waiting 8 years from 2014 to 2022 and letting Ukraine build up its forces before you invade.
White Russians are not the enemy of white Americans.
The international bankers are the enemy of all white people on the planet.
The Zionists are behind the war in Ukraine.
They have scores to settle with Russia.
http://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/the-truth-about-the-conflict-with-russia/
June 27, 2024 Kosovo – Where the West took the US hegemonic path – and kept going  
Back in 1999 few people seemed to notice what had happened to NATO. Under the leadership of President Clinton and Tony Blair, it converted itself from a very successful defensive alliance into an organisation with the self-awarded power of pro active interventions around the world on behalf of an undefined “international communityâ€. 
 http://freenations.net/kosovo-where-the-west-took-the-us-hegemonic-path-and-kept-going-by-edward-spalton/
George HW Bush promised Russia that NATO would not go one inch farther with NATO and then broke every promise and moved NATO closer and closer and then with the V. Nuland 5 Billion taxpayer funded coup in the Ukraine, set the Ukraine up for a civil war in the breakaway regions and the Ukraine killed some 16,000 civilians in the ensuing 10 years and this is what brought Russia in to stop the carnage, this is what caused the war.
The war in the Ukraine is another zionist war, just like all the wars the zionists have pushed America into starting with WWI , right down to the war in the Ukraine and zionist Israels genocide in Palestine, zionists are destroyers of nations and humanity.
Anybody able to think & know the players understands & knows it was a CIA Coup period end of story. Over complicating the facts & obfuscating/prevaricating anything other than facts is disingenuous & pseudo-intellectual doublespeak. Color revolution was CIA proxy op. CIA already knew Putin is/was not gong to give up his only Naval Fleet Mediterranean access port to defending Syria/Iran & “other†geopolitical interests. It’s getting beat to death & over analyzed at this point. Zewkraine is an obvious pre-staged conflict (a la Brzezinski/Kissinger/Bush Neo con mindset) using 4/6 GW testing ground.
Zionist’s & puppet Naziziolensky are cleaning out Ukrainian nationalist’s while BlackRock/State Street/Vanguard & it’s
Coterie cabal stand by for the re-development after the destruction. Out of the Ashes rises the Phoenix only to be reborn again & again. Zewkraine (Israhell 2.0) is the birthplace origin of Ashkenazi YIDDISH Tribe
aka Kharazarian Empire & Mafia. REFT & REAVE in the hundreds of Billion$ USD for the re-development. It’s a no-brainer.
This Mearsheimer does not pursue truth, he pursues a partisan agenda. He loves the Holocaust Tale and he loves Putin. In Mearsheimer’s mind Putin is flawless in every respect, completely without sin.
Most Russian Telegram channels consider Putin as the destroyer of Russia, either a crypto, or at least a tool of his Chabad Rabbi handler.
Since Mearsheimer will not mention the Jews ( for fear of the Jews) he cannot come to accurate conclusions. But what is Putin up to?
He is obviously executing the very long Jewish desire to conquer the Slavlands that previously were called Beyond the Pale of Settlement. It has nothing to do with old Khazaria, which was just one more nation that the Jews wrecked.
They were exiled Beyond The Pale, now with Putin’s help they begin the process of seizing it for a Jewish Homeland.
Putin and Zelensky are following exactly the same agenda. Wreck the place, depopulate it, fill it up with Muslims and Jews, under Jewish control. Then increase Jewish immigration. Make it the second Jewish Homeland.
But isn’t it interesting how Christian Ukrainians fight and die for “New Israel”, concede control over their country by International Kosher Nosetra, tolerate corruption and plunder, and use them as doormats, toilet paper and battering rams at a brother Slav nation? What are they fighting for? I don’t thin they even know, but mouth slogans, bumper sticker blurbs, and fevered imagination and chimeras of thoughts implanted by Isreali Jews, acting as agents of Rothchild, Bloomberg, Fink, and the rest of the Gefilthy Fish.
They are the stupidest, sheep-like “White People” in the World.
The USA is basically responsible. Or rather, the Jews who run its government.
Hopefully, after the US presidential election, it will come out that US financial (and otherwise) involvement in Ukraine is essentially blackmail (by Zelensky) on President Biden for all the money he received through his son, Hunter, and Burisma, the Ukrainian Company that Hunter was on the Board of Directors for, for three years while Biden was vice president. That has been ignored.
https://youtube.com/shorts/fiRg0VrkkvA
Another american war criminal: “We have heart. We have moral.”.
Its sickening how sick fucks american and british have always been, lacking even simple traits of human specie.
Agree, however they are comparable to the stupid sheep in the ZUS who went into the middle east to fight and die for zionist Israel and the zionist controlled ZUS regime and still are fighting and dying for the international zionist genociders of not only Palestine but our turn will come, the zionists want to genocide the goyim and they openly admit it in the Talmud.
Speaking of dumb people, most Americans do not realize that Israel and traitors in the ZUS did the attack on the WTC on 911 and blamed it on the muslims to give the ZUS the excuse to destroy the middle east for Israel and this destruction has been ongoing for decades, the Ukrainians are just like the American goyim, they are sent into the zionist meat grinder over and over and over again. there is no cure for stupid.
An alien cyclops with glaucoma, familiar with the antics of the US, need not read the good professors essay to know who is responsible.
Lets see:
-Vietnam ? Wrecked and the war lost.
-Iraq ? Wrecked and the war lost.
-Afghanistan ? Wrecked and the war lost.
Ukraine is on the burner and Iran coming up. China and Russia loom on the horizon.
The Harvard and Yale boys escape one disaster in time for the next. The Amercans have elected the biggest bunch of fuckups to run the lemonade stand.
The conventional wisdom here at TUR is that The Jews are responsible for causing the Ukraine war. The Jews provoked an invasion aimed at conquering all of Ukraine and making it part of a Greater Israel. Once this goal is achieved, the Jews will continue to expand their empire — The Empire of the Jews. Thus, Putin is ultimately a threat to the Jews and must be dealt with forcefully. In short, The Jews are imperialists with a master plan to rule the world, a plan which fits neatly into a grotesque Jewish messianic tradition.
FIRST, there is plenty of evidence from before 24 February 2022 that The Jews wanted to conquer Ukraine and incorporate it into Greater Israel. Jews such as the grotesque Kaganites, especially Nuland-the-Hutt, have been plotting for generations and are still hell-bent on conquering all of Ukraine — for the Jews.
SECOND, there is also plenty of evidence that The Jews installed a puppet government in Ukraine, all of them pro-Jew or outright-Jews, like Zelensky, in Kyiv. These Jew leaders then proceeded to attempt to kill the entire ethnic Russian population in the Ukraine and are now working on killing all the Ukranian goys as well.
THIRD, the Jews have plenty of goy cannon-fodder troops to die for them — the Jew objective is for as many Ukrainian and Russians to get killed as possible.
FOURTH, the Jews will shit on any diplomatic solution because, for the Jews, the crisis and the war and the killing IS the solution.
FIFTH, the Jews will never accept any negotiation on a modus vivendi between the alien Jews and the human race — the Jews only understand mors omni humano generi (“death to all of the human race”).
SIXTH, there is overwhelming evidence that The Jews are still contemplating conquering ALL countries in the world — and causing as much death and destruction as possible along the way.
SEVENTH, everyone knows The Jews have imperial ambitions from the unholy day they spawned onto the face of the earth right until the present moment. At that point did the Jews suddenly become an imperial aggressor? Since the dawn of history. Why? Because the Jews are an alien species hell-bent on conquering and destroying all of humanity.
Clearly the destruction of Nordstream 2 was an attack on Germany. Germany was booming with the cheap source of gas and raw materials from Russia. There were many business and cultural exchanges. The US stopped that with one blow.
English is our language, and we can call foreign cities and countries any name we want. We may or may not respect your wish to change the English name of a place. It’s our prerogative, not the foreigner’s.
This essay is, of course, not exactly news at Unz. The facts presented will not convince the naysayers – they’re not interested. So, let’s look a little deeper, by asking the question: Why is this war between brother nations even possible? As a parallel – how was the American Civil War possible? And then let’s add World Wars 1 and 2 – are you getting the drift?
This is not exactly news either, but both secularists and churchians dismiss it as not believable or spiritual nonsense – DaSynagogue of Satan and its servants LOVE WAR! Who dey?
Let’s see the evidence, again by asking questions:
1- Who are the primary warmongers in America – in congress, business, religion, culture etc?
2- Who owns them all – literally bought and paid for? Do we need to go further?
What say we start here – https://crushlimbraw.blogspot.com/2022/12/satans-wars-christians-killing.html?m=0 – that’s just a beginning, but it’ll do for now. Who are these bastahds that serve Satan?
They control and own us lock stock and smoking barrel.
A123, Germany is an occupied country and has been under Washington’s and Jewish control since 1945. Thousands of American troops are still stationed there. Nothing has changed since, except for millions of Black and Muslim invaders fleeing from countries to the South, who are taking over this once proud nation. It’s now weaker than it’s ever been. Witness, cucked Chancellor Scholz just standing there, mute, as the senile old man occupying the White House told the press that the US could blow up the Nordstream pipeline, which was theoretically under German control.
My point is that Merkel had no power to “single handedly tank the Minsk deal,” nor did Scholz “destroy the Istanbul arrangement.” The Ukraine War was an American, British, and Jewish operation from start to finish and the rest of decadent Western Euro countries are merely cheerleaders.
Who caused it?
The Rothschild crime syndicate, of course… but don’t you dare actually name them.
Trillionaires who daily play God, and have the morality of a Jewish land-thief in Palestine, that’s who run the Western world.
It’s not SoroÅ¡, it’s not Buffett, and it’s not bloody Elon Musk.
Whom do you think finances them? Their money had a point of origin.
Jewish Supremacists
It was fairly clear to me at the time that Putin had no intention of conquering the Ukraine, even for the limited purpose of installing a puppet government.
The initial Russian army of 150,000 was far, far too small to take Kiev, let alone the rest of the Ukraine.
Even if the Russians had overrun Kiev by sheer luck, they would have had to face the counterattack of the rest of the Ukrainian army, which at that time was nearly a million strong. No, the Russian forces were far, far too small to conquer all of the Ukraine.
To me, the movement towards Kiev was a diversion merely. Putin’s real goals were what we are seeing now, to liberate Donetsk and Luhansk, to protect Crimea, and to prevent the NATOization of Ukraine.
YEP!!! ONE of the BIG Reasons. Assad had to go! America and the Neocons were Pissed that Russia stepped in to prevent the Color Revolution in Syria!
This is exactly “Ms Nuland’s” War!
Gonzalo Lira — The Ukraine Thing is Jewish 3rd Rev.
https://www.academia.edu/74138569/
I’m replying to you because I think yours is the best reply I got; but all were good replies.
My position would be a ‘soft’ agree with all the objections you and the others make. By this I mean that I will probably have to think some more before having a solid opinion, but at the moment my tendency is to review my position.
A final note, however, would be that no one raised any objection against the last part of my comment. This is something I’ve been repeating for some time, and it seems I’m right, because no one seems to agree with Mearsheimer’s ‘offensive realism’ doctrine, and many people besides myself have pointed out the blatant contradictions between that doctrine and his positions regarding actual events of late.
That would make him a sharp geopolitical observer, and a courageous man, but a poor academic, even a fraud perhaps.
US European foreign policy (jewcentric) is rather simple– keep Russia out, keep Germany down, keep bureaucratic Brussels in control, and member states weak. Once you fundamentally understand this policy you’ll grasp the proxy war in Ukraine. You’ll also see how US disdain for Hungary and Slovakia fit neatly into this equation as they are not acting meek.
The answer is hateful ZIONISM!
I do not know why – but most of the time, when I hear negative violent remarks pointed at “Putin/Russia†they come from Jews or those who are politically controlled by same.
Facts are facts — it is obvious that Zionists have a great tribal hate for Russia.
Strange that commenter HA who spams virtually every comment thread on Sailer’s page regardless of topic with pro-Ukraine war commentary made 0 comments to this article so far. Or perhaps he submitted 0 that made it past the moderators?
Slightly OT, are you aware the FBI is conducting a raid on Scott Ritter at his home?
Who started it? Take your pick: Barack Obama manipulated by Victoria Nuland or Victoria Nuland manipulated by Barack Obama? Who invaded Syria? Yet Biden somehow inherited this from Trump.
It bears noting that Obama invented the concept of blaming the predecessor with the term “inherit”. You got the job you applied for, Buck-O, you didn’t inherit anything.
Apr 4, 2019 NATO EXIT: Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
NATO is a criminal entity, an instrument of the Pentagon. There is no “Allianceâ€. There is military Occupation.
“That would make him a sharp geopolitical observer, and a courageous man, but a poor academic, even a fraud perhaps.”
I don’t see any contradiction here. I recently read The Tragedy of Great Power Politics and learned a lot despite not wanting to accept the concept of “offensive realism”. What Mearsheimer is doing is fighting the escalation that could easily lead to WWIII. It’s a moral and very wise choice on his part. What you’re observing isn’t a contradiction as much as the modern reality of nuclear weapons. Most leaders of countries with nukes are sane but with enough escalation, someone may well resort to the use of nuclear weapons. There are some other issues to consider such as the industry of war (which was probably addressed in at least one chapter) but there was enough to digest about great power politics without additional complications. The point is that the theory offers an elegant explanation of how great powers behave.
https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/how-jewish-is-the-war-against-russia/
Do you know the original source for the claim about BlackRock?
Does anyone here know which Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs are most strongly connected to BlackRock?
The point of this article is to give unaware people a few tidbits to help them start to build a better understanding of the Ukraine-NATO-Russia conflict. At the moment, the number of Americans willing and able to sort this story out is small. There are plenty of people who might make a political difference here if they were only swayed a bit to becoming skeptical of the mainstream narrative. Mearsheimer is trying to do this without getting into falsifiable sound bites or more complex background questions.
Most Westerners cannot even imagine that Russia is not 110% at fault in this conflict, full stop. Therefore they are impregnable to the facts and a more realistic argument. One can hope that a modest article like this will open up a few cracks in the ideological encrustation of some people.
Shouldn’t the title just read “(((Who))) Caused the Ukraine War?”, as it’s obviously a purely rhetorical question?
I date the start of British intervention in Russia back to 1551 and the incorporation in London of the Muscovy Company, designed to loot Russia. 100 plus years before the East India Company was incorporated to loot India, with more success.
The Ukraine will revert to its roots, a farm stand in the Polish Suburbs.
You state that NATO is a defensive alliance and poses no threat to Russia. That is incorrect because NATO is an offensive alliance (Yugoslavia, Libya and Afghanistan)
Who cares by now? Most seem to support one side being victorious and they won’t have their minds changed. Fuck the causes or who is right, it should end. Best way is for Russian Federation and Ukropians to finish the fight. Stop forced conscription, let those who wish to live their lives desert. The West can stop sending weapons, but they likely won’t, let Azov and Kraken and volunteers fight in stead of conscripts. Some people won’t want to stop fighting, let them have their valhalla, but end it soon. I think next year.
Stinky Vickie and the troglodyte Neocon hoard of course. Anyone who thinks otherwise either can’t read or doesn’t know what to read. As usual it was all about American money and how to steal it from the Government, a simple but effective plan that will in the end send murica to it’s grave and none too soon.
Vladimir Zelensky and his wife Elena behave like “drunk millionaires”. As if their country is not in the middle of a war. It was revealed that she had bought an Italian winery from English singer Gordon Sumner, known by the stage name Sting.
The total amount of the transaction is EUR 75 million. The buyer company is directly related to Zelenski, and the beneficiary is Elena. The winery was founded in 1997 and was called Tenuta Del Palagio Wines. It is located in picturesque Tuscany.
Its vineyards cover 25 hectares. It produces fifteen different types of wine. About 130,000 bottles per year. The purchase and sale took place at a time when the Ukrainian leader was begging for money to support Ukraine at the G7 summit.
FBI searched the home of former US intelligence officer and former UN inspector Scott Ritter, who lives in Delmar, New York. Unofficially: they rummaged through everything “from the basement to the attic”. FBI spokeswoman Sarah Ruane confirmed that a search had taken place, but did not disclose details.
She marked the reason for the search as a “federal investigation”, also without any details or clarifications. On June 6, Ritter stated that Washington did not want his participation in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, and that is why the FBI did not allow him to board the plane even though he had already purchased a ticket.
Two days earlier, he said he was scheduled to speak on two panels at SPIEF. At the same time, he assessed that the forum in St. Petersburg is a more significant event than the World Economic Forum, which is held in Davos, Switzerland.
Ritter is one of the sharpest and most perceptive critics of the US policy towards Ukraine and Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov then assessed that not allowing Ritter to visit Russia “once again proves that the US has become a police state.” Despite the fact that Washington calls itself the leader of democracy.
Imho – our neo-con nitwits went into Ukraine to ” weaken Russia ” but as usual they only brought weakness to the U.S. and NATO.
The Europeans that hate Russia will keep hating Russia, others will realize that it is the United States that is screwing them and not Russia.
The EU and NATO are going to fall apart as the common folk going broke and freezing look for new political leadership.
If Orban plays his cards right he and Hungary will be leading Europe out of the cage of NATO.
Satanyahoo and Israel are dragging the U.S. and the U.K. into the quagmire against the Muslims which is going to go bad for everyone involved.
Israel is running out of troops! Israel’s economy is falling apart! Israel’s reputation is already gone! Israel needs war to survive.
Ukraine needs war to survive but the gravy train is drying up.
Are you willing to pay $20.00 to $50.00 a gallon for gasoline?
Our neo-cons do not care about us; they are insane!
I think ensuring the Confederacy’s independence would have been more efficacious than the subversive plot you suggest.
The motive behind setting up Germany was a lot more genocidal than mere regime change, although these are not mutually exclusive concepts.
The people who now rule over America and Ukraine certainly want Russia under their thumb, and to some extent they have it. They scheme for control of the world and hijacking America has gone a long way towards that achievement. But, they’ve hijacked other places other times and inevitably failed.
Ukraine is being prepped to become israel 2.0 It is no secret that most European jews HATE the middle east climate and culture, which despite European jewish incursion still has a distinct middle eastern flavor, something that European jews loath.
The climate and topography of Ukraine is more amenable to jews than present-day israel. Not only that, their criminal base of operations will be much closer to their “marketsâ€. From international prostitution, pedophilia and child abduction to organ harvesting and sales, to reams of criminal financial schemes and scams, Ukraine is ideally located to keep the jewish criminal rackets going.
Jews are using their European and American lackeys to support the war in Ukraine against Russia.
The seeds of WW3 have been planted…
I think you can also add that Putin did not annex Georgia after going in and spanking them in 2008 (including a speed run to the capitol).
It’s sort of low hanging fruit to disagree with the most silly “Putin wants to conquer Eastern Europe” from the neocons. I would say the nexus of disagreement is around if Putin should have invaded Ukraine, nonetheless…yes with the NATO provocation. Also there is Crimea and the DPR and the now claimed four oblasts.
OF course you could also ask if JFK had started a nuclear war over the missiles in Cuba, if it was the USSR’s fault or his fault for how he (would have) reacted. Fortunately in that case, the Russians folded (and so did JFK with the Turkey missiles, later).
Biden and the Chickenhawks definitely pushed a line of thinking they could provoke Russia and it would not react. In some cases, they are sort of right (Russia is very careful about engaging US assets…imagine what we would do to ISR drones over the GOM helping an opponent of ours). But they probably pushed it a bit too far.
Then again the Donks don’t care. This is how lefty types like the Clintons who didn’t want to serve in VN can act tough. Typical chickenhawks. At lleast Russia and Ukraine are still heroic societies and will fight and die in trenches. Donks just watch their Marvel movies and have no clue about what it’s like to really serve. And no, Pete B. getting a momentary merit badge, along with his McKinsey stint does not count. That’s what they thing service actually is…a resume bullet. Love to have one of them as a plebe. I would haze the shit out of them. Cry, cry, cry. Oh…and a lot of the Pukes aren’t much better. Look at Lindsey girl. Or the grifters on Fox News.
Sometimes I think the ending to Stover at Yale was correct.
The Ukraine War Explained (Infographic)
https://www.jewworldorder.org/the-ukraine-war-explained-infographic/
PUTIN and ZELENSKY are JEWS and both couldn’t care less about the hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian Slav soldiers killed so far.
Putin plays his part in Klaus Schwab’s WEF with the introduction of the digital ID and CBDC in Russia to enslave the Russian people.
World War III and the break-up of Russia was planned by Chabad leader Rebbi Schneerson and explained in his 1994 speech.
Schneerson: “First of all, we will divide the Slavic nations (of 300 million, half of them Russians) into the small countries with weak and severed connections. For this, we will use our old method: Divide and conquer. We will try to pit these countries against each other, and suck them into civil wars for the sake of mutual destruction.â€
That speech was simply the application of the TORAH to Ukraine, Russia and the world. TORAH: Jews should murder and enslave Goyim worldwide.
The Jewish Plot to Enslave Humanity
https://www.unz.com/article/the-jewish-plot-to-enslave-humanity/
This is why this “War†in Ukraine is going so badly for Russia: It seems that Chabad are directing THEIR War in Ukraine.
What has Putin’s Special Military Operation (SMO) started more than 2 years ago achieved so far? Nothing but hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded Slavs, Russian and Ukrainian soldiers and over 6 million refugees fleeing Ukraine are recorded across Europe.
Chabad are also ruling the US. Putin, Trump and Biden are all surrounded by Chabad.
Putin’s Rabbi, Berel Lazar, is Chabad.
Ukraine War — Chabad’s Strategy for Slavic Genocide
https://www.henrymakow.com/2022/08/russia-khazaria-ukraine.html
Jews weaponizing the FBI
Apparently it is based on claims by a Bulgarian politician:
Bulgarian politician Paskov: Corporations from the United States demand not to bury the fighters of the Armed Forces on black soils
Which links to this article:
https://vz.ru/news/2024/8/2/1280323.html
translated:
I found this well footnoted report from Feb. 2023 (18 month old)
War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land
from this article:
War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land
Zerohedge in April 2024 described the details about a Andrzej Duda interview on Luthuanian TV that appears to be memory holed, but the Substack essay is still available:
The Polish President Revealed That Foreign Companies Own Most Of Ukraine’s Industrial Agriculture
A very good essay
Surprised he did not bolster it with Merkel’s and Hollande’s boasting as to their
deception concerning Minsk I and II preparing Ukraine for war not peace
He apportioned responsibility to Biden and Trump appropriately but makes the error
of taking Trump at his word rather than inspecting his actions more closely. Why did Trump very recently help Speaker Johnson send 61 USD to Ukraine if one wishes to take his rhetoric seriously.?
Friends and foes get Trump wrong still for 8 yrs because they focus on his empty words rather
than his all too often status quo actions
Disappointed but not surprised that he did not cite one of the best on this topic
for several decades-Patrick Joseph Buchanan
Yes, but diving more deeply, the “West” lost touch with the fundamentals of civilization when it embraced all the luxuries of anti-moralism, like perversions, reproductive and gerontological death choices, racial and ethnic preferences and corporate ascendance.
When traditional societies saw these tendencies becoming dominant in the hegemonic culture, they reacted, and the consequent resistance became a threat to universal acceptance of the new cultures. As in Sodom and Gomorrah, universal acceptance of perverted morality is violently demanded by the adherents, so war became inevitable.
Yes – and that was my initial reaction to the article – which shortly led to my realization that those who need to read it…..WON’T!
I’ve learned that from personal experience from both friends and family. You can’t push a rope – they’re too comfortable….for now.
Despite the sanctions, since the beginning of the escalation of the situation in Ukraine, Russia has acquired US-made chips for combat electronics for nearly four billion dollars, The NYT reported.
They also managed to purchase F.P.G.A., one of the important chips for missiles produced by the American companies Advanced Micro Devices and Intel. That chip is also used in drones for lightning-fast data processing.
T NYT notes that many of the chips were purchased through a group of shell companies in Hong Kong. Citing data from Russian customs, the paper claims that Moscow imported more than $390 million worth of these goods through them, which is just part of its “efforts to circumvent sanctions.”
It emphasizes that as early as 2020, the Kremlin tried to establish chip production in the country, but that Moscow instead “established relations with major chip manufacturers in the US.”
NYT still adds that Russia has “rapidly reoriented its supply chains”, starting with the search for friendly countries and ports willing to serve its ships. Thus, Russia gained the opportunity to buy chips through Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco. However, China has become the main supplier of chips to Russia.
Reportedly, 29% of all semiconductors to Russia are supplied through China. The chips for Russia’s Shahed and Lancet drones are manufactured in the central Chinese city of Chengdu.
> Schneerson and explained in his 1994 speech.
Another fake speech. Supposedly it was first published in Vologda in 2001. Schneerson died in Brooklyn in 1994. How the heck would anyone out in Vologda ever uncover a supposedly secret speech which Schneerson would have to have given in Brooklyn?
VERY SIMPLE, Patrick McNally.
This speech [a letter sent to the newspaper] of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Chabad Leader and Messiah (the Lubavitcher Rebbe), was published in the Vologda newspaper Slavyanin in 2001 in Russia.
Following the publication, the court was unable to prosecute its editor, V.F. Popov, under trumped up charges under Article 282, [incitement of national hatred] as he operated on the facts, and several Russian scientists stood up for him, including Academician Y. K. Begunov and Doctor of Law O.G. Korotayev.
On Point 2, if Putin intended neither to outright annex Ukraine nor even merely install a subservient regime, why did he attempt to seize Kiev? Kiev is not Crimea, nor the Donbass; it does not have an ethnic-Russian majority population to come riding into the rescue of. It’s the capital of Ukraine. There’s no reasonable explanation for trying to seize a state’s capital other than that you are attempting to impose regime change.
On Point 3, it wasn’t just a matter of numbers, or Western arms. In fact, as shown by his sending in not only combat troops but also, early on, lightly-armed internal police units armed with little more than shields and truncheons, he was not anticipating serious and prolonged resistance. He thought Ukraine lacked strong national cohesion and identity and/or that its leadership was too corrupt to fight. He missed the change in Ukraine that had resulted from the seizure of Crimea and the secession wars in the east; with the most pro-Russian areas removed, public opinion in the rest of Ukraine had hardened considerably against Russia. Speaking Russian doesn’t mean you want to be ruled by Moscow: the USA and Ireland seceded from the British Empire, and the US Southern states tried to secede from the US.
This is stupid. Compared to the West, Russia is poor. What desirable resources it has can simply be accessed via peaceful trade which is much easier, less expensive, and above all less risky than war.
Using the same logic and arguments as provided by John J. Mearsheimer one can conclude that USA has right (almost a duty) to attack and take over Cuba.
After all, USA is a superpower and Cuba is in direct sphere of her influence.
I’m going to be the contarian here and say this war has nothing to do with Minsk, Nato, Dombas, Ukrainian nationality, Nazi or historic Russia. It has to do with getting Europe off Russia oil and gas so the EU countries will buy oil and gas from Israeli. Its estimated israel has more oil in the Golan Heights than Saudi Arabia and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas off its shores in the Eastern Mediterranean.
2013 was the pivotal year for the implementation of this strategy, where a modest company called Genie Energy was given exclusive rights to drill there and an agreement was signed between Greece, Cyprus and Israel for joint developed.
A look at Genie’s strategic planning board shows you the importance of this company’s:
Dick Cheney since 2009 (former vice president of the United States), Rupert Murdoch (media oligarch), James Woolsey (former CIA director), Larry Summers (former head US Treasury), Bill Richardson (former Governor of New Mexico, ex-ambassador to the United Nations and United States Energy Secretary), Michael Steinhardt, Jacob Rothschild, and Mary Landrieu, former United States Senator from Louisiana.
Also, Greek Prime Minister Samaras on 8 August 2013 at a meeting at the White House that Israel has a special role to play in supplying Europe with energy resources and supported that it can become a key energy hub.
The following year the ukraine color revolution occurred, Crimea was occupied and dombass separated from Ukraine.
In 2017 Hugh pipeline deal signed by most major continental energy actors to bring gas from Eastern Med to Europe.
The US recognized the Golan Heights as part of Israel through a presidential proclamation signed by President Trump on March 25, 2019, guaranteeing Israeli sovreig
Following two links you may find of interesting.
1) An American Thinker analysis of the Russia and Israeli territorial claims.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/10/russia_and_israel_annexation_and_international_law.html
2) Israel’s self’declared Divine right to Golan oil and Mediterranean oil/gas
https://www.israel365news.com/353623/israel-to-supply-natural-gas-to-europe-and-its-connection-to-a-blessing-from-deuteronomy/
3) Israel’s first shipment oil to Europe.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-exports-crude-oil-for-first-time-with-shipment-heading-for-europe/
Cuba is NOT a member of a belligerent military alliance determined to attack the USA and smash it into pieces, you imbecile.
A racist troll and an idiot too, and who takes us all as idiots. Is it just thick and brainwashed, ignorant of hundreds of years of Western pillage, or simply a vulgar liar-or both?
A gamble that failed. If the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine had culminated in a peace agreement (say in April 2024) then Putin’s actions would and could be considered brilliant. As the agreement was not allowed to come to term, then all your criticisms, in retrospect, gain some validity. But that’s Monday morning quarterbacking.
USSR deployed 2.5mln troops to retake Ukraine
and 750k troops to retake Kiev in WW2
Russian ground forces of under 150k in 2022 had neither of those objectives.
And with total armed forces of 1.1mln Russia absolutely has no intention (and never had) to go beyond the current frontlines in the final settlement, and this is why the war goes on – because of the half-hearted “miserable” objectives Russia does not deploy TNW and hence NATO does not take Russia seriously.
This war ends either with partition of Russia or TNW (if the world ROW is lucky)
Rather than one of the many causes, it’s just one instance indicative of the overall cause – Russia is too big, powerful to leave alone cause it will be able to act independently. It fits with Mearssheimer’s realist doctrine.
America didn’t want Russia in NATO cause a Russian-European concord might lead to independence of that block. Success.
Even alone, Russia still has to be dismembered in order to prevent it from becoming a regional or, in the long-term, even global power.
Would be more interesting if Mearssheimer analyzed these aspects.
I believe you mentioned that before in comment here months ago and it caught my attention since you are the only person I’ve read mentions this as a catalyst of what is witnessed today, and one might say one of the root causes for the war in Ukraine. I was to start a paragraph with the ‘fact’ that you reiterated, in my reply to this article.
The US is taking revenge from Russia for stopping them with their plan in the Middle East (Third World War) in 2012.
Iran had sent delegates to Russia during the beginnings of the Syrian conflict informing them that if the US attacks Syria directly, they will attack everyone in the region (Israel and its so called Arabs allies).
In fact, the Russians had shot down a couple US jets over Syria to stop the US aggression from causing a regional war. Also, shot down a US missile that fired from Spain to target Syria. Perhaps that explains why the Turks shot down a Russian jet at that time.
The fall of Syria would be an ‘existentialist’ threat to the Islamic Republic and to the Axis of Resistance in the Middle East region. That is, Syria is the chain between Iran and the Resistances Movements including the armed resistance factions in Palestine. Hence, the US had managed to establish military bases in western Syria, eastern Iraq on the Euphrates.
Palestine is an absolute to the Muslims ideologically and psyche. The people, the natives of the Middle East are moved by an ideology, that is their religion. That must always kept on mind when gauging major changes over that region.
Of course, a so called ‘Greater Israel’ would be established then, if the Resistance Movements were not present. And this we witness today sharply and actively since October 7th of 2023, that it is the Axis are the ultimate and real threat against Israel and US (militaristic) presence in the land of the Arabs.
One of the Iranian’s generals mentioned a month or so ago in a speech that the war on Syria and the region did cost the US $7 trillions. Of course the implication here is the obvious that ISIS was an American (and Israeli by the virtue of its goals and methods) project.
The Americans and the Israelis, and the Saudis would jointly direct ISIS military from Jordan, and the Russians would eliminate these command centers in Jordan through their airstrikes.
The success of ISIS would mean that the CIA-Style terrorism will be at Moscow’s doorsteps.
You have the wars in Chechnya being a great example of the Western manufactured ‘Islamists’ terrorism that is aimed at Russia; until the Russians managed to have a pro-Russian leadership there who managed to fight against ISIS (Sufi Muslim, like the Shia’s, a nemesis to the Wahhabism and the its tentacles like ISIS and so).
The Saudis had spent more than $30 billion since the 1970’s enforcing a foreign thing to the region like Wahhabism over the world among the Muslims.
A bonus, or rather, a major aim was achieved for the Russians by establishing their military in the Middle East around 2012.
The Hashemites who ruled Western Arabia (Mecca and Medina) were overthrown by the British in the 1930’s for opening channels of communications with the Russians at that time.
It was the Hashemites who just facilitated the British to establish themselves in the Middle East by invoking an Arab tribes alliance to fight against the Muslim Turks, the Ottoman empire in World War I. The Brits promised the Hashemite Hessian that he would be the “King of the Arabs”. Which we all know, such never did actualize.
The Brits used the Saudis to accomplish the overthrow of the Hashemites. The Saudis and the Israelis are of the same thing, were established in that region by the same power, at the same time, and occupying the core Muslim sacred sites and cities: Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem.
Besides, it is accepted within the Arabs that the Saudis and the Israelis share the same lineage. Thus, Mecca and Medina were swallowed up before Jerusalem by the same force.
A reason Kurdistan as a state-nation was not created or carved out in the early twentieth century when the maps were drawn in that Middle East by the Brits and the French, that the British did fear that the Russians might gain access to the ‘warm waters’, the assumption that the Kurds were allying themselves already with the Russians back then.
It could had been Churchill who decided so (since he drew the maps of the contemporary Middle East among the Arabs).
This to say, indeed, Russian’s interference, or presence in Syria in 2012 was a major setback against the West, who tried to deprive the Russians, even in Afghanistan, from the having access to the ‘warm waters’ for more than a century. And a major setback against the US for being deprived from utterly destroying the Arabs and Muslims and their nations through ISIS. This, no doubt, in conclusion is to serve Israel who are the actual policy and decision makers regarding the Middle East in the US.
Regarding Russia’s president Putin’s view in regards NATO, and that of the Russia’s elites, who would not look at the West as not being an existential threat to every one and every nation on earth, rather, the Humanity collective itself, as very well demonstrated and witnessed today in Gaza?
Everything reveals itself.
In science, the rule is: a hypothesis is true when it explains all the facts and does not contradict any of them. For Ukraine, this hypothesis is the following: Putin is under full control of the West and follows its orders. The war was started on the orders of Putin’s Western masters. That is why Moscow supplies Ukraine with gas and uranium fuel for its nuclear power plants. These are reliable facts. I would not be surprised if Putin supplies Kiev with ammunition as well. Two months before the war started, Russia supplied Ukraine with double the amount of coal and fuel – this is a reliable fact. So the war will continue until Putin and Zelensky’s masters order it to stop.
Try again, this time addressing the substance of my point instead of personal abuse
You’re probably correct, but your legitimate or at least arguable points seem like a response to a post I didn’t make, a post that criticized Putin for recklessness or taking unnecessarily big risks, or for failure.
My actual point, instead, was to refute two of Mearsheimer’s seven points buttressing his claim that Putin had neither intended to conquer Ukraine in toto nor to impose a subservient regime on those portions of Ukraine that Russia would not openly annex.
Mearsheimer’s point 2 of 7 was that there is no evidence that Putin intended to do this. I replied by saying that from the start, Putin’s invasion had Kiev as a primary target. Which makes no sense for an invasion with sharply limited goals like “liberating” the areas Russia now claims.
Mearsheimer’s point 3 of 7 was that Putin had invaded with insufficient troops to conquer all Ukraine or impose regime change, thus proving that Putin had no such intention. I replied that while the troop numbers were insufficient had (as proved to the case) the Ukrainians put up serious and prolonged resistance, those limited Russian troop numbers WOULD have been sufficient to conquer the whole country, or impose a subservient regime, had the Ukrainians collapsed. And before the “special military operation” began, it was a widespread view, in the West and in Russia as well, that Ukrainians lacked morale, patriotism, anti-Russian sentiment, and, frankly, courage, and would collapse if invaded. Thus, invading with a smaller force than needed to crush intense all-out military resistance is NOT proof of the invasion having limited goals. Especially since Russia sent riot police among the very first echelon of men toward Kiev: clear evidence of expecting near-immediate regime collapse and a need, not for high-intensity military conflict, but merely of quelling any possible civilian protest.
Except that, as I pointed out, it is clear given the presence of riot police armed with truncheons and shields in the first echelon of forces heading for Kiev, the Russians expected Ukrainian resistance to collapse rapidly, and for the most important order of business to be the imposition of civil order rather than prolonged intense military conflict as in WW2.
In short, Putin expected his “special military operation” to be like the 1990 Persian Gulf War for the coalition, with the defending army, while large and reasonably well-equipped on paper, having no morale and no willingness to fight for its regime and which therefore collapsed completely within days of the entry of invading ground forces.
It’s five days since Ukrainian forces crossed into internationally-recognized Russian territory on August 6. They’re still in Russia and in fact have encountered no significant pushback at all.
Not a peep about it on Unz. Where are the screaming headlines? Not even outrage proclaiming this as Ukrainian “aggression”.
Clearly, this is so humiliating to the Kremlin, so devastating to the Unz crowd’s preferred narrative of inevitable Russian victory, that the “solution” is a pathetic attempt to strenuously ignore the disaster.
Sidorenko (and Clausewitz) are mandatory readings at all Russian military academies
https://www.usmcu.edu/Outreach/Marine-Corps-University-Press/MCU-Journal/JAMS-vol-14-no-2/Russias-War-in-Ukraine/
“Putin’s invasion plan is that it violated the Sidorenko force requirements in Russian military field manuals. At the start of 2022, the Ukrainian military had 196,600 active-duty personnel (plus 180,000 territorial army personnel), which, according to the 3:1 force ratio (Sidorenko) rule, would have required an invasion of 590,000 (or 1.2mln.) Russian personnel. Instead, the Russians planned an invasion with 190,000 personnel, actually smaller than the combined Ukrainian armed forces.
Using the standard figure of 20 military occupiers per 1,000 inhabitants, the Russians would have needed an occupation army of 880,000 to pacify the 44 million Ukrainians, about the size of the entire military of the Russian Federation. The actual invasion force of 190,000 would have given them a ratio of only 4.5 per 1,000 Ukrainians”
The very simple explanation to Russian generals ignoring their own military field manuals (automatic court martial offence) is that they never had a military objective that would have required to follow that mandatory 3:1 ratio – they never had an objective to take over Ukraine or Kiev.
@post 150 – Russia will be fully defeated in this war without deployment of TNWs
The invasion was politically imposed by the Kremlin, and specifically Putin and his innermost circle, not a military initiative. The information was so tightly held that most troops and even officers didn’t even know where they were going, what they were doing, and who (if anyone) they were supposed to fight.
Furthermore, even if this invasion was planned by the military, assuming that it was done in strict accordance with pre-existing written military doctrine is silly. As if on-paper requirements are scrupulously honored in Russia! It’s also required on paper that citizens’ free speech and right to run for office in opposition to the incumbent be honored, that laws against corruption (especially in the military) be honored, etc. And yet of course Putin’s critics are jailed and killed, the military is so riddled with corruption that troops lack basic supplies and even food, etc.
And finally, you can still reconcile the force numbers with the notion that invasion was planned in strict accordance with pre-existing military doctrine. Because those numbers would presume a hostile populace. But the Kremlin line was that Ukrainians ARE Russians and would welcome the Kremlin forces as liberators saving them from a “fascist, Nazi” regime.
It’s a hiccup, the area is under terrorist threat level martial law. The Russians responded appropriately to a threat, so becalm yourself. What disaster? It’s a resource-wasting PR stunt by Ukraine to get more money and weapons from Westerners. MSM seemed sort of hesitant about this latest miracle. The lack of merchandizing makes me think it’s Ukraine trying to milk the media cow without clearing it with NATO first.
seems that “77th” Brigade recruits are expected to have social sciences skills,
whilst Military training and Natural Sciences knowledge are a hindrance to service…
there is very little that the “77th” can really effect on unz – MSM sites would be a better target
Baghdad Bob? Is that you?
Don’t you have an exploding fireworks factory to tell people there’s nothing to see about?
LOL, are you looking for things to cry about?
Ignore the hype, the media will drop the story eventually, as the Ukrainians get rounded up. You are missing the part where the Russian army stops the whole operation in it’s tracks. It’s a war, Ukraine took an opportunity, but accept for propaganda value it’s a grim waste of lives and resources. Meanwhile the SMO continues. Someone, probably Ukraine set fire to part of Zaporozhe nuclear powerplant. Both incidents are political stunts, they probably won’t affect the war. Next, Zelensky takes the stage to beg for weapons and to play the blame game. I bet Zelensky starts asking for f-35s next.
Putin is not an adversary but a controlled opposition working towards the same common goal:
Partition of Russia and extermination of the greater part of her people
Any genuine adversary would have nuked with TNWs by now, at the very least, in no particular order:
Beskydy Tunnel
Ramstein Air Base
Fairford Air Base
RoAF 57th Air Base
Rzeszow logistics hub
and the war would have finished with that, but, unfortunately, without partition of Russia,
so the “war” “must go on” and Putin is just another compliant controlled opposition.
> This speech [a letter sent to the newspaper] of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Chabad Leader and Messiah (the Lubavitcher Rebbe), was published in the Vologda newspaper Slavyanin in 2001 in Russia.
Whereas the real Schneerson died in Brooklyn in 1994, and no one has any record of him giving a speech way out in Vologda at any time shortly before his passing in 1994.
> Following the publication, the court was unable to prosecute its editor, V.F. Popov,
Not many normal rational people will respond to this by saying that the man should be prosecuted. It should simply be recognized that this fable fits all of the classic patterns of a fake document.
facepalm
No. Putin HAS controlled opposition. He is not, himself, as is obvious to any rational person with half an ounce of common sense, “controlled opposition.” Russia is a de facto autocracy in his tight grip. Whenever anyone becomes powerful or popular enough to be a threat – he is eliminated. Generals, politicians, oligarchs. Russia has, as you note, nuclear weapons. Which means that while he can be bargained with, deterred (hence his lack of using TNWs, just as NATO has refrained from their use as well), and otherwise influenced, perhaps even defeated and overthrown, there is no way, while he is in office, for anyone to make him into a helpless puppet.
It’s one thing to dismiss Western media coverage of this incursion as mere “hype” – but it’s pathetic to ignore it as if it were not happening. Unz could, presumably, provide more measured, sober, non-“hyped” coverage, or cover it only from the perspective of criticizing other coverage. But nothing.
As of the time of this comment, I still see no mention at all of this matter in an Unz headline. Deafening silence.
If the Russians had achieved a similar breakthrough, the largest on either side in nearly two years, you think it would go unmentioned here? Oh no, it would be “neocon project collapses” – “Washington empire humiliated” .. “time for Kiev to ditch NATO and make peace while it can” etc.
Meanwhile, here is what is actually happening while Unz hilariously desperately insists “Nothing to see here folks!”
Russia Evacuates More Border Areas Amid Ukrainian Advances
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/08/12/russia-evacuates-more-border-areas-amid-ukrainian-advances-a85992
Have your fun, this will have no effect on the outcome of the war. If there is any desperation it’s from Ukropians. You seem to miss seeing the pattern. The Ukrainians do provocations and political stunts, and the mainstream media bids consumers to jump for joy. Ignore the systematic slaughter of Ukrainian soldiers and cheer for another media event. What will they get you all excited about next, F-16s?
Similar Ukrainian media stunts are happening right now, but even less successful:
An amphibious assault in The Kherson region:
https://southfront.press/in-video-18-ukrainian-nazis-suffered-heavy-losses-on-kinburn-spit-in-kherson-region/
A cross-border attack similar to Kursk, but in the Belgorod region:
https://southfront.press/russian-forces-repelled-ukrainian-border-attack-in-belgorod-region/
You say: “lack of using TNWs, just as NATO has refrained from their use as well”
Do you imply that NATO is at war with Russia?
since you are stating that “NATO is refraining from the use of TNWs”?
What weapons and weapon systems is NATO not refraining from using?
Han, Schomo is following the Talmud guidelines of: lie, lie, deny, deny, smear and slander.
FYI: his name is not Patrick McNally, they always use Irish names as a cover.
This is a proxy NATO war against Russia using Ukraine as a battle ground and Ukrainians as cannon fodder.
NATO is the USA, without the USA there would be no NATO.
The Russians were welcomed, as in Bucha. When they left, after the Ukronazis signed the Peace Agreement in Turkey, your Banderite idols returned and murdered those who had welcomed the Russians, then blamed the slaughter on Russia. You really are a shit magnet, troll.
Ukraine better start organizing independence referendums in the parts of Russia they liberated. Do you guys keep sucking off MacGregor, two and a half years past when he thought this war will end?
It’s about time Russia decolonizes and returns to her rightful borders, those of the Duchy of Muscovy.
Troll-it’s NOT ‘abuse’. It’s description.
USA has used sanctions against Cuba since 1960.
The Ukrainian troops at the contact line after Zelensky issued the degree of annexing Crimea and …
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/120000-ukrainian-troops-amassed-at-donbas-contact-line:-drp
https://pravda-en.com/world/2024/01/23/278566.html
>I think it was largely motivated by the eight-years of killing, brutalizing, and subjugating of >ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
WAR CRIMES OF THE ARMED
FORCES AND SECURITY
FORCES OF UKRAINE:
torture and inhumane treatment
Second report
https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/e/7/233896.pdf
decree of annexing , above
Since Jew-haters are paranoid and tend to accuse anyone refuting their madness of being hidden Jews anyway, there’s no point in a Jew online pretending to be a non-Jew; it would never work and plays into the hands of the Jew-haters.
By contrast, for a Jew to openly acknowledge being a Jew removes the tiresome distraction and evasion technique of “you’re a Jew pretending to not be a Jew”.
Thus, when advocating for Israel or refuting Jew-hating kookery, it would not only make sense for Jews in these exchanges to be open about being Jews, it would even make sense for non-Jews to pretend to be Jews, just to get that stupid accusation out of the way.
So you’re not just wrong, you’re OBVIOUSLY wrong.
The evidence for the possible total invasion of Ukraine is implicit in Putin’s actions.
Assuming Putin has the right to tell Ukraine what it can and cannot do regarding joining NATO and the possible installation of undesirable weapons close to Russia’s boarder (eg questionable precedent set by the Cuban missile incident), then invasion is justified.
Invasion was probably not Putin’s choice; however, it seems it was a card that he was willing to play in order to convince Ukraine not to join NATO and so not permit NATO’s expansion eastwards.
Quote-17 December 2021 Russia presents a highly contentious list of security demands in order to lower tensions in Europe and defuse the crisis over Ukraine, including a legally binding guarantee that Ukraine will never gain NATO membership and NATO will give up any military activity in eastern Europe and Ukraine.
21 February 2022 President Putin recognises the independence of the two breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine – the Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic. Treaties of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance were signed by Russia and the leaders of the LPR and DPR.
23 February 2022 Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, the respective heads of the so-called People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, request help “in repelling the aggression of the Ukrainian armed forcesâ€, according to the Interfax news agency, quoting Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Several analysts suggest these requests could be the pretext Russia uses to launch an attack on Ukraine.
24 February 2022 In an early morning address (just before 3am, UK time) on Russian state television, President Putin announces Russian forces will carry out “a special military operation†in Ukraine. (https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9476/CBP-9476.pdf)
The more important question seems to me to be-not who started the war but what were Putin’s motives and intentions in attacking Ukraine. Assistance only to Donetsk and Luhansk? Or, except in the case of a Ukraine’s absolute divorce with NATO, a “no going back†attempt to ensure there is never a NATO presence in Ukraine.
The evidence for the possible total invasion of Ukraine is implicit in Putin’s actions.
Assuming Putin has the right to tell Ukraine what it can and cannot do regarding joining NATO and the possible installation of undesirable weapons close to Russia’s boarder (eg questionable precedent set by the Cuban missile incident), then invasion is justified.
Invasion was probably not Putin’s choice; however, it seems it was a card that he was willing to play in order to convince Ukraine not to join NATO and so not permit NATO’s expansion eastwards.
Quote-17 December 2021 Russia presents a highly contentious list of security demands in order to lower tensions in Europe and defuse the crisis over Ukraine, including a legally binding guarantee that Ukraine will never gain NATO membership and NATO will give up any military activity in eastern Europe and Ukraine.
21 February 2022 President Putin recognises the independence of the two breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine – the Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic. Treaties of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance were signed by Russia and the leaders of the LPR and DPR.
23 February 2022 Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, the respective heads of the so-called People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, request help “in repelling the aggression of the Ukrainian armed forcesâ€, according to the Interfax news agency, quoting Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Several analysts suggest these requests could be the pretext Russia uses to launch an attack on Ukraine.
24 February 2022 In an early morning address (just before 3am, UK time) on Russian state television, President Putin announces Russian forces will carry out “a special military operation†in Ukraine. (https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9476/CBP-9476.pdf)
The more important question seems to me to be-not who started the war but what were Putin’s motives and intentions in attacking Ukraine. Assistance only to Donetsk and Luhansk? Or, except in the case of Ukraine’s absolute divorce with NATO, a “no going back†attempt to ensure there is never a NATO presence in Ukraine.
After reviewing The Tragedy of Great Power Politics and thinking about it for some time, I don’t think Mearsheimer has contradicted the tenets of offensive realism.
I basically agree that if Russia “winsâ€, then Ukraine will be more or less conquered, but I think the words “if it can†and “conquer†are worth considering in a figurative sense. Mearsheimer claims that Russia either lacks the ability to physically control all of Ukraine, or the costs would be too high, or it doesn’t really need to because Putin’s peace terms are sufficient for Russia’s security. Maybe all of the above. But what he considers Putin’s reasonable demands—political control over parts of eastern Ukraine, all of Crimea, plus a “friendlier†neutral regime in Western Ukraine—means that Ukraine would be significantly “controlled†if not “conquered”. That is in accordance with offensive realism. So I think he’s acting like a lawyer with his semantic argument.
What does it really mean to conquer a country anyway? One could argue that Canada is conquered because it’s totally subordinate to the U.S. in a political-economic-military sense, and has been since the 1960s. The U.S. from time to time tells Canada what to do, and never the other way around. What are Canada’s options really? Every country which hosts a semi-permanent U.S. military base might be conquered to some extent. Critics would say “No, those countries are sovereign states, and they want the U.S. military bases there because it’s in their self-interest to outsource part of their defense requirements.†To that I would say, an offer that you can’t refuse is not much of an agreement.
Here there might be a misunderstanding. Offensive realism is based on an intrinsic “security through power†logic that is allegedly expressed by all states that qualify as “Great Powersâ€. It is a theory of general or universal behavior based on the structure of world politics and each state’s desire for protection. Mearsheimer is not arguing against this, he is arguing against those who claim Russia behaves with an exceptional or pathological aggressiveness as opposed to other states. At the same time, he admits that Russia launched a “preventive war†for reasons that are in accordance with offensive realism—namely security. He would say that countries in parallel circumstances, with comparable resources and power, would likely consider the same options to guarantee their security.
I’m not claiming that Mearsheimer is correct about anything; just that he doesn’t really refute his own theory here. It might be obsolete for other reasons, but there are also people who would prefer it to be obsolete, and therefore are predisposed to interpret it as such. I’m not exactly a fan of deterministic theories that are based on historical circumstances, especially since people tend to interpret events according to whatever theory they believe in. It can become an ideology, which Mearsheimer also advocates in a sense. He himself apparently believes that the U.S. and Russia should become allies so that they can better contain China and perhaps accelerate its decline, which again is in accordance with offensive realism. From this perspective, the Ukrainians are almost a nuisance in the grand scheme of things. I’ve noticed a lot of Republicans and conservatives share this ideology.
I’ll point out, however, that Mearsheimer also conveniently included some “terms and conditions†that to an extent absolve him from liability in the event reality does not conform with his theory.
Source: Mearsheimer, J. J. (2014). The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. United Kingdom: W. W. Norton.
You comment-
The only possible answer is that Putin was not really worried about a NATO threat.
I beg to differ
Quote-17 December 2021 Russia presents a highly contentious list of security demands in order to lower tensions in Europe and defuse the crisis over Ukraine, including a legally binding guarantee that Ukraine will never gain NATO membership and NATO will give up any military activity in eastern Europe and Ukraine.
21 February 2022 President Putin recognises the independence of the two breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine – the Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic. Treaties of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance were signed by Russia and the leaders of the LPR and DPR.
23 February 2022 Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, the respective heads of the so-called People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, request help “in repelling the aggression of the Ukrainian armed forcesâ€, according to the Interfax news agency, quoting Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Several analysts suggest these requests could be the pretext Russia uses to launch an attack on Ukraine.
24 February 2022 In an early morning address (just before 3am, UK time) on Russian state television, President Putin announces Russian forces will carry out “a special military operation†in Ukraine. (https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9476/CBP-9476.pdf)