Posted on 05/22/2022 12:59:48 PM PDT by Cathi
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Part One: The Road To War – 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. ---------------------- (Cathi: This is the best, most thorough, least biased explanation from an expert on the current Ukrainian, Russian conflict that I have read.)
(Excerpt) Read more at riotimesonline.com ...
Shortly after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine built a concrete dam cutting off 85 percent of the peninsula’s water supply. So one of Moscow’s first strategic moves after invading the country was to blow it up.
2012 discovery of oil/gas reserves
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Oil and gas reserves were drilled in the Donbas region - proved quality was poor and was not economical to frack. Western Ukraine has one of the largest known deposits of NG in Europe, however.
See War in Ukraine, I don’t know the date.
Orcs?
The Russian offensive was carried out in a very “classic” manner. Initially—as the Israelis had done in 1967—with the destruction on the ground of the air force in the very first hours.
***The Ukes should buy up every single Harrier on the market. They’re being phased out but they’re far cheaper than F35s. Less bureaucratic blocking paperwork as well.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3937861/posts?page=62#62
There are sources everywhere. If you are saying the that the US did not guarantee Russia that NATO would not expand one inch toward the Russian boarder. You prove what I thought all along, you are a lying POS and not worth my time.
Western leaders never pledged not to enlarge NATO, a point that several analysts have demonstrated. Mark Kramer explored the question in detail in a 2009 article in The Washington Quarterly. He drew on declassified American, German and Soviet records to make his case and noted that, in discussions on German reunification in the two-plus-four format (the two Germanys plus the United States, Soviet Union, Britain and France), the Soviets never raised the question of NATO enlargement other than how it might apply in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR).
Gorbachev continued that “The agreement on a final settlement with Germany said that no new military structures would be created in the eastern part of the country; no additional troops would be deployed; no weapons of mass destruction would be placed there. It has been obeyed all these years.” To be sure, the former Soviet president criticized NATO enlargement and called it a violation of the spirit of the assurances given Moscow in 1990, but he made clear there was no promise regarding broader enlargement.
Do you have any more lies to spew?
It provides credible answers to previously head-scratching questions.
It is consistent with views from other objective observers whom I respect (AB Vigano)
This guy conveniently ignores the Crimea annexation by Russia as it never happened and never influenced events that followed said annexation. Here is WIKI quote: “ In late February 2014, following the Revolution of Dignity that ousted the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, Russian troops were deployed to Crimea, occupying government buildings.[7][8] The Republic of Crimea declared its independence from Ukraine following a disputed referendum on 16 March, deemed illegal by Ukraine and most countries,[9][10][11] which was held on the issue of reunification with Russia; its official results showed over 90% support for reunification, but the vote was boycotted by many loyal to Ukraine.”
He might’ve been trained by intelligence services, but his bias is obvious. Militarization of this internal Ukranian political conflict is totally on Putin and his minions.
A simple search shows you to be ignorant, lazy, dishonest or more then likely all three.
Quote: As an inducement for agreeing to German unification, Mr. Baker offered what he called “ironclad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward,” according to a declassified memorandum recording the discussion.
It’s nyt, so I know you war mongering freaks will appreciate it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/09/us/politics/russia-ukraine-james-baker.html
These assertions were sharply challenged at the time by other observers, including former U.S. policymakers who played a direct role in the German reunification process. George H. W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft, and James A. Baker, who served as president, national security adviser, and secretary of state in 1990 respectively, all firmly denied that the topic of extending NATO membership to former Warsaw Pact countries (other than East Germany) even came up during the negotiations with Moscow on German reunification, much less that the United States made a ‘‘pledge’’ not to pursue it. In 1997, Philip Zelikow, who in 1990 was a senior official on the National Security Council (NSC) staff responsible for German reunification issues, maintained that the United States made no commitment at all about the future shape of NATO, apart from some specific points about eastern Germany that were codified in the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany signed in September 1990. ‘‘The option of adding new members to NATO,’’ Zelikow wrote, was ‘‘not foreclosed by the deal actually made in 1990.’’
And yet, even Gorbachev and all other players in the discussions make mention that NO assurances were made.
Go back to whatever 'Poo-tin it in' discussion group you have where you talk your Russian lies and propaganda to sleep at night, and remember to lick your shirtless Putin poster you have hanging on your wall.
“As an inducement for agreeing to German unification, Mr. Baker offered what he called “ironclad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward,” according to a declassified memorandum recording the discussion.”
Absent a congressional bill, Baker could only commit the Bush I administration; he had no authority to commit the US government beyond that. Thus, the Baker commitment ended when Bill Clinton was sworn in as president in January, 1993.
So... the Daily Mail is unbiased until it’s biased. Basically that means it is trustwothy as long as it agrees with the poster.
This war is about oil/gas/ports/grain/water/resources. The last time we had an oppressive regime invade their neighbor over oil & gas, an international coalition kicked his ass back to Iraq.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4050958/posts
also:
Why Russia wants to invade Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE
You sound so sure of yourself... 🤡
Use drones to attack the Crimean Bridge.
“Russia is helping them plenty now, but not much help was available when they were being shelled by nazis.”
Not true. Russia had assets in eastern Ukraine from at least 2014 (though not in the numbers it amassed in 2022). Russia supplied the separatists with the Buk SAM platform, one of which shot down the civilian airliner Malaysian Air Light MH17 in July, 2014 above eastern Ukraine, some 30 miles from the Russian border, in area occupied and controlled by the pro-Russia separatists. There is suspicion that the missile was actually fired by a Russian crew. In any event, that battery was pulled out and brought back to Russian territory either later that day, or the next.
Excellent replies, well done.
In essence, these were bureaucratic mumblings. Even Gorbachev acknowledges this.
This article nearly had me convinced... But there are four clear giveaways that it’s overly sympathetic to Rusdian narratives.
1. Contradictions in adjacent paragraphs (yeah but no but) are typical in Russian puff pieces, and here’s a great example. There were no Russian troops in Donbas, but there were 50-odd Russians from Russia spotted.
Good old Russian doublespeak. ‘Yeah but no but yeah but we weren’t there at all, but we had people in there unofficially but they was in holiday except for the paid Wagner blokes and that includes the guy with the Waffen SS tats who got a medal off of Putin for doing such a good job in Ukraine even though he wasn’t there, though he says he was there...’ Where’s Vicky Pollard?
2. “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 Russian intervention.”
Bluntly, there was no silence about the Donbass atrocities here in the UK WHILE THEY WERE ONGOING ... But even the DPR concedes that the genocide took place between 2014 and 2016, with the conflict de-escalating rapidly between 2018 and 2022. By Christmas 2020 it was pretty much only the occasional skirmish between azov militants and separatist militants with civilians very rarely caught in the middle.
So where does the claim come from? Russia? Was it a false flag, or based on intel 5 years past its use by date, like the rations sent with their troops? Can’t be up-to-date information because even the DPR’s figures indicated were saying the genocide had ended years earlier.
3. On Mariupol: “... the sequence of events tends to confirm that Russian forces struck a position of the Azov regiment and that the maternity ward was then free of civilians.”
This is totally untrue! The preceding sentence, “we don’t know”, is more accurate.
He’s citing an assertion made by Ambassador Lavrov on Ria Novosti which he repeated in Antalya, Turkey.
Ambassador Lavrov claimed that the separatists told Russia that the hospital had been cleared of staff and patients by Azov, and was no longer operating as a hospital, and was being used as an Azov base of operations.
However, a live stream from inside the hospital a few days before the bombing, clearly showed it was still operating as a hospital.
The most likely explanation is, Russia simply decided not to seek any confirmation of the DPR report, and okayed the strike, and then realised they’d bombed an operational maternity hospital.
Lavrov’s words:
“On March 7 or 6, I don’t remember exactly now, but at a meeting of the UN Security Council, facts were presented by our delegation about that this maternity hospital was seized long ago by the Azov Battalion and other radicals,.. All the women in labor, all the nurses, and all the attendants were expelled... We’re not planning to attack other countries. We didn’t even attack Ukraine!”
4. Chernobyl: “In the north, the Chernobyl power plant was occupied immediately to prevent acts of sabotage. The images of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers guarding the plant together are of course not shown.”
Russia shot the hell out of the administrative buildings, held a shift hostage in the plant, compromised the power to the safety monitoring systems, and dug trenches in a heavily irradiated area. The soldiers either didn’t know dhat they were shooting up,or were stupid enough to compromise the safety of the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident.
They did all of that sabotage to prevent sabotage?! You’d have to have rocks in your head to believe that. The presence of Ukrainian soldiers can just as easily be explained as, they knew better than to screw around with a firefight at Chernobyl than the Russians who seemed to be oblivious to the risks.
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