Posted on 04/15/2022 4:27:56 PM PDT by kabar
For years, from Mali to Afghanistan, I have worked for peace and risked my life for it. It is therefore not a question of justifying war, but of understanding what led us to it.
Let's try to examine the roots of the Ukrainian conflict. It starts with those who for the last eight years have been talking about "separatists" or "independentists" from Donbass. This is a misnomer. The referendums conducted by the two self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in May 2014, were not referendums of "independence" (независимость), as some unscrupulous journalists have claimed, but referendums of "self-determination" or "autonomy" (самостоятельность). The qualifier "pro-Russian" suggests that Russia was a party to the conflict, which was not the case, and the term "Russian speakers" would have been more honest. Moreover, these referendums were conducted against the advice of Vladimir Putin.
(Excerpt) Read more at sott.net ...
Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight, at NATO, against the proliferation of small arms. He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR.
Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les fake news, L'affaire Navalny. His latest book is Poutine, maître du jeu? published by Max Milo.
It must be possible since so many here know exactly what is happening… daily.
Plus they know exactly what is in Putin’s mind.
So there’s that…
Thank you for posting this, which the rabid Ukraine supporters on FR would do well to read. It’s obvious they know next to nothing about the history of the area, especially in the 21st century when nefarious players started to take over the country, including Nuland and the entire state dept., the Biden Family of Grifters, and “intellectuals” like Semenyaka. It’s not David against Goliath like the media portrays.
Read the article. You may learn something you didn’t know.
wish this would get widely read
Thank you for posting this.
There are precious few independent voices. Telegram is one of them. Forget Twitter, all of the msm, obviously the State dept. and anything controlled by big tech. The Ukronazis pushing WW3 on the world is an even bigger scam than what Pfeizer pulled off.
Thanks, the title looks good—I assume whatever the answer is, according to the author, it is not an unqualified yes. That is a really good start. A headline—and likely an article—worth reading. But I wouldn’t want to break FR rules. So I’ll post first. THANKS AGAIN (Caps stuck, but it works)
In February 2022, events came to a head. On February 7, during his visit to Moscow, Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed to Vladimir Putin his commitment to the Minsk Agreements, a commitment he would repeat after his meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky the next day. But on February 11, in Berlin, after nine hours of work, the meeting of political advisors to the leaders of the "Normandy format" ended without any concrete result: the Ukrainians still refused to apply the Minsk Agreements, apparently under pressure from the United States. Vladimir Putin noted that Macron had made empty promises and that the West was not ready to enforce the agreements, the same opposition to a settlement it had exhibited for eight years.
Ukrainian preparations in the contact zone continued. The Russian Parliament became alarmed; and on February 15 it asked Vladimir Putin to recognize the independence of the Republics, which he initially refused to do.
On 17 February, President Joe Biden announced that Russia would attack Ukraine in the next few days. How did he know this? It is a mystery. But since the 16th, the artillery shelling of the population of Donbass had increased dramatically, as the daily reports of the OSCE observers show. Naturally, neither the media, nor the European Union, nor NATO, nor any Western government reacted or intervened. It would be said later that this was Russian disinformation. In fact, it seems that the European Union and some countries have deliberately kept silent about the massacre of the Donbass population, knowing that this would provoke a Russian intervention.
At the same time, there were reports of sabotage in the Donbass. On 18 January, Donbass fighters intercepted saboteurs, who spoke Polish and were equipped with Western equipment and who were seeking to create chemical incidents in Gorlivka. They could have been CIA mercenaries, led or "advised" by Americans and composed of Ukrainian or European fighters, to carry out sabotage actions in the Donbass Republics.
In fact, as early as February 16, Joe Biden knew that the Ukrainians had begun intense shelling the civilian population of Donbass, forcing Vladimir Putin to make a difficult choice: to help Donbass militarily and create an international problem, or to stand by and watch the Russian-speaking people of Donbass being crushed.
If he decided to intervene, Putin could invoke the international obligation of "Responsibility To Protect" (R2P). But he knew that whatever its nature or scale, the intervention would trigger a storm of sanctions. Therefore, whether Russian intervention were limited to the Donbass or went further to put pressure on the West over the status of the Ukraine, the price to pay would be the same. This is what he explained in his speech on February 21. On that day, he agreed to the request of the Duma and recognized the independence of the two Donbass Republics and, at the same time, he signed friendship and assistance treaties with them.
The Ukrainian artillery bombardment of the Donbass population continued, and, on 23 February, the two Republics asked for military assistance from Russia. On 24 February, Vladimir Putin invoked Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which provides for mutual military assistance in the framework of a defensive alliance.
In order to make the Russian intervention seem totally illegal in the eyes of the public, Western powers deliberately hid the fact that the war actually started on February 16. The Ukrainian army was preparing to attack the Donbass as early as 2021, as some Russian and European intelligence services were well aware.
In his speech of February 24, Vladimir Putin stated the two objectives of his operation: "demilitarize" and "denazify" the Ukraine. So, it was not a question of taking over Ukraine, nor even, presumably, of occupying it; and certainly not of destroying it.
Thanks and Semper Fi. This is along with I have been getting from our people who are credible.
Very superficially, I have to ask , why isn’t the Russian invasion/ annexation / whatever of Crimea a larger part of the author’s providing “context?”
Enjoy the read. It is stunning. And the author has the credentials and links to support his assertions.
Russia’s involvement in the separatist republics:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/25/russia-ukraine-soldier
The ideas that Russia only invaded Ukraine because Ukraine initiated the attack, and that Putin never intended to replace Zelensky seem implausible.
FR’s GloboHomoNazi Russophobe contingent ain’t gonna like this.
Rooskies crossed the border uninvited into Ukraine and got their butt kicked. Pretty simple
In the media based narrative. This account is in line with what I have heard with our people who are on the level.
Wait, so the original publication is Unz Review?
That’s the go-to if you want to read about how the Holocaust never happened.
He Blogs as "The Saker".
Did and thought it was a solid article.
It is essential to recall here that Minsk 1 (September 2014) and Minsk 2 (February 2015) Agreements did not provide for the separation or independence of the Republics, but their autonomy within the framework of Ukraine. Those who have read the Agreements (there are very few who actually have) will note that it is written that the status of the Republics was to be negotiated between Kiev and the representatives of the Republics, for an internal solution within Ukraine.
The author does mention Crimea in this context:
We have to go back to March 24, 2021. On that day, Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree for the recapture of the Crimea, and began to deploy his forces to the south of the country. At the same time, several NATO exercises were conducted between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, accompanied by a significant increase in reconnaissance flights along the Russian border. Russia then conducted several exercises to test the operational readiness of its troops and to show that it was following the evolution of the situation.
Things calmed down until October-November with the end of the ZAPAD 21 exercises, whose troop movements were interpreted as a reinforcement for an offensive against Ukraine. However, even the Ukrainian authorities refuted the idea of Russian preparations for a war, and Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukrainian Minister of Defense, states that there had been no change on its border since the spring.
The Russian buildup of forces on the Ukrainian border began in April 2021. Coincidence?
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