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 ...
“And assurances from the US that NATO would not expand one inch toward Russia. You seem to miss that point all the time. If you want sources, start with James Baker.”
Baker could only commit the Bush I administration, which left office in January, 1993. Baker did not and could not commit the Clinton administration, or any subsequent administration. If the intent was to commit the US government for periods of time into the future, beyond a specific administration, a formal bill or treaty would have had to be passed and signed.
“They are so desperate to dig up dirt on NATO and the Ukrainian government that they are now trawling in the very sewers of public discourse for any village idiot to come forward and confirm their bigoted views – and who fits the bill better than a repentant ‘defector’ from the ruling class?””
Their Russian handlers recognized them for the useful idiots they are.
There is another Ex Swiss Government Insider on Eastern European Affairs (Blog):
Hw ignored the Malaysian aircraft that was shot down by a Russian Buk missile battery that soon returned to Russian soil.
Those were not in Ukraine’s inventory.
Short for dorcs
Gorbachev himself clarified this. There was no such commitment sought by the USSR, and the American assurances pertained to East Germany specifically.
Reasons:
1. Assurances were given under the assumption that West and East East Germany might reunify but the Iron Curtain would remain intact. Russia’s orbit would still include the Baltics, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belarus and Ukraine.
2. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Iron Curtain collapsed and Russia’s border moved east, to the Belorussian and Ukrainian eastern borders. Yeltsin’s presidency ended the relevance of the American pledge.
Putin is open about how he feels the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe in his lifetime and he wants to roll the clock back. Once you accept that, all other things make sense.
Why does he think the East Germany agreement is relevant to anything? Simple. He thinks the Iron Curtain should never have fallen, therefore it offended him the very first time NATO was approached by a Warsaw Pact country.
There’s nothing you can do to mollify Putin on that score. He’s totally irrational. He’s living in an alternative reality where the West stole all his Warsaw Pact toys and the UN made a horrible mistake recognising those countries as independent.
This is how irrational he us: all the Soviet Socialist Republics (including Russia and Ukraine) were granted equal recognition at the UN as independent nation states. But the same applies to the Commonwealth of Independent States. If you temind Putin of this inconvenient fact, you will be responsible for breaking the nearest seventh storey window.
Putin was rational in many respects but his outrage at the loss of influence over the Warsaw Pact region is compounded by him being KGB to the core. He’s never let it go. And now he’s gone “full Tonto” with his mortality exposed, he’s desperate to get into the history books by undoing a 30 year old mistake... Gorbachev and Yeltsin allowing the release of Eastern Europe from the tyranny of the USSR.
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.
***I recently saw a report from a Ukrainian soldier who was posting from the site. He said the whole reason was to set it up as a safe haven command post for a Russian general. I’m afraid I can’t find the video clip.
The SAKER???
You are using the Saker as your source?
It is one of the most discredited blogs or newsletters, or whatever the hell those things are called, there is!
https://euvsdisinfo.eu/the-saker-blind-loyalty-disguised-as-defiance/
Oh sure, most rational thinkers would be swayed by a rant from an obscure “romantic individualist, free thinker, and aspiring singer and writer.” I think it’s the Zelenskyy fan boys who are desperate here.
Plus, it is quite biased, unlike your characterization of it.
I couldn't disagree with you more. I thought it was not only lacking propaganda, but was quite insightful. It presented quite a few facts that I was unaware of. These facts have only cemented my resolve against our involvement in this conflict.
For example:
In fact, these Republics were not seeking to separate from Ukraine, but to have a status of autonomy, guaranteeing them the use of the Russian language as an official language–because the first legislative act of the new government resulting from the American-sponsored overthrow of [the democratically-elected] President Yanukovych, was the abolition, on February 23, 2014, of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law of 2012 that made Russian an official language in Ukraine.
I really did not understand what the autonomy was in detail. I mistakenly believed it was separation from Ukraine, but also not becoming a part of Russia. But as we see here, that is not the case at all, they were not separating from Ukraine at all. They were seeking the same arrangement as we have with American Indian Reservations.
Moreover, these referendums were conducted against the advice of Vladimir Putin.
That kind of pulls the rug out from under those who claim Putin & Russia were really only after the Azov oil fields.
The rest is pretty much what I have argued, unsuccessfully I might add, with the cheerleaders for this conflict in favor of Ukraine & Zelenskyy. This gives us a far better perspective of what really caused this war, and it wasn't Putin or Russia.
I must assume, Kevmo, that you are one of the cheerleaders, if you honestly believe this is propaganda. If that is not the case, I offer up my apologies for believing that.
Better than your Nazi sources.
Some posters, like the above, are way too interested in promoting Ukraine as the proverbial good guys. They don’t GAF about the ppl in the Donbass who were victimized for 8 years by the Ukrainian militias. It’s sickening, actually.
You need to start understanding where those of us are against our involvement in this conflict and why we are against any involvement by the U.S. in this conflict. Whether it be supplying military arms, money, and most definitely not American combatants on the ground.
Nor did we have our hands tied behind our backs. Instead we were dealing with people who refused to look beyond the fact; Russia invaded Ukraine, because there was so much that led up to Putin making that decision and people were unwilling to accept those realities.
I guess its useless to tell you that Ukraine is actually oil poor and that the whole oil thing is a western meme. Russian propaganda is that there is lots of oil in the region.
see April 26, 2022 War in Ukraine.
As far as all the other natural resources go, the Russian have them in abundance - including oil. So that whole thing is just a misdirection for the things that are important for Russia:
1) securing the fresh water supply to the Crimea,
2) more warm water ports on the Black Sea,
3) blocking the invasion route that goes through southern Ukraine and up to the Urals.
Everything else is just either made up, a misdirection or political BS. IMHO
Can't have any western sources, they might be authored by FREEDOM NAZI's.
You need more explosive than any drone could carry - concrete bridges are difficult to destroy. UA would need heavy bombers to drop 2000 lb bombs repeatedly to have any success.
No, you just refuse to accept facts that don’t fit your narrative.
Weasel!
Weaselly!
“Weasel!”
How, pray, is my comment in post #61 “weasely?” Come on, Sparky, explain how.
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