February 2014, Maidan Square, John McCain filming the protests, standing alongside Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Ukraine, with Victoria Nuland standing behind him.

X ^ | Richard

[hardspunned]

All enjoying their role in overthrowing the democratically elected Ukrainian President Yanukovych.....

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

---"+It was well known if you wanted to know where the next conflict was going to be just watch where John McCain is sent. BTW....the video is authentic."

The multiple questions were rhetorical. Your comment made me curious to look a little more, though.

Here from media in that time:

"The tumult in Ukraine goes to the heart of its future ties with Russia and the rest of Europe.

"Protests have unfolded in Ukraine since November 21 after President Viktor Yanukovych changed his stance on a trade pact with the European Union that had been years in the making.

"He refused to sign the agreement, which would have strengthened cooperation with the European Union. Instead, he opted for closer ties with neighboring Russia."

Ukrainian protesters get visit from Sen. John McCain CNN, 15 December 2013

"A decent respect for democratic institutions and procedures meant that he ought to be able to serve out his lawful term as president, which would end in 2016.

"Neither the domestic opposition nor Washington and its European Union allies behaved in that fashion. Instead, Western leaders made it clear that they supported the efforts of demonstrators to force Yanukovych to reverse course and approve the EU agreement or, if he would not do so, to remove the president before his term expired. Sen. John McCain (R‑AZ), the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, went to Kiev to show solidarity with the Euromaidan activists. McCain dined with opposition leaders, including members of the ultra right-wing Svoboda Party, and later appeared on stage in Maidan Square during a mass rally. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Svoboda leader Oleg Tyagnibok.

"The extent of the Obama administration's meddling in Ukraine's politics was breathtaking. Russian intelligence intercepted and leaked to the international media a Nuland telephone call in which she and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffey Pyatt discussed in detail their preferences for specific personnel in a post-Yanukovych government."

America's Ukraine Hypocrisy 6 August 2017

One recalls those other photos of McCain with Islamists in a crowd of other Muslims, in other circumstances. All in all, it seems McCain was very busy with regime change as was Obama and the now-fired Samantha Power.

As to Svoboda, they were not the nicest of folks. Yet McCain managed to "dine" with them. Graham seems intent to carry on that "mantle," and is comical in doing so.

[kiryandil]

I see what you did there... :)

[kiryandil]

2014

https://www.legistorm.com/stormfeed/view_rss/1918955/member/38/title/durbin-travels-to-ukraine.html

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

Thanks for the link. :)

[Wuli]

“McCain and Nuland along with CIA through USAID money orchestrated the coup.”

Words straight out of the Kremlin.

[Kazan]

So, I sure a buffoon like you will make the same claim about General Michael Flynn?

President Trump's Final Break With Neocon Ideology

Who started the war? The neocons want you to believe the war started three years ago on February 24, 2022, when Russia sent troops into Ukraine. The neocons are hoping that the American People have a short memory of world events. But if you look back a decade or two, you will come to a very different conclusion about who started the war, and when. The part of the world not saturated by the USAID-funded “independent” journalists realize that the hands of Ukraine and the West are anything but clean.

###

The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, and the Iron Curtain began to dissolve. Numerous U.S. and western leaders promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990 that if the Soviet officials would allow the USSR to break apart, NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.”

###

Coup d’etat. In February 2010, Ukrainians elected Viktor Yanukovych as President. The United States foreign policy apparatus thought he was “too neutral,” particularly for not wanting to be tied to the European Union. That initiated the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv in November 2013, destabilizing the duly-elected Ukrainian government through rioting and violence, and culminating in the February 18-23, 2014 “Revolution of Dignity,” which led to Yanukovych being removed as President on February 22, 2014. U.S. involvement could not be denied after the leak of the February 2014 conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt where Nuland was heard dictating the composition of the new government. Thus it came as no surprise that Russia annexed Crimea, warm-water-port home of much of the Soviet fleet, which had long been Russian, later in 2014.

###

Is Russia’s desire for a neutral Ukraine really that remarkable? In October 1962, the world suffered through the Cuban Missile Crisis when Russia was caught placing offensive missiles in Cuba. We were willing to risk World War III to prevent Russian missiles from being placed 90 miles off the Florida coastline. Is it unreasonable to consider the perspective of Russia not wanting NATO missiles being installed in neighboring Ukraine? Under President Biden, the United States provided missiles used for attacks deep into Russian Territory, and President-elect Trump criticized that action.

Almost one-fifth of Ukrainians are ethnic Russians. Two large oblasts (or provinces) of Ukraine, Luhansk and Donetsk, are primarily Russian. Yet, despite the millions of Russian-speaking persons in much of Eastern Ukraine, in 2019 Poroshenko signed a law that mandated use of the Ukranian language for civil servants, soldiers, doctors, and teachers. In September 2022, Russia conducted referendums in the Luhansk, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts, where the vote supporting annexation by Russia was in the high 90 percentiles. Such numbers appear to be shockingly high, but one must consider that Ukrainian forces had shelled and assaulted these Russian-majority oblasts for years, and citizens had appealed to President Putin to protect them. Finally he did.

[Wuli]

“The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, and the Iron Curtain began to dissolve. Numerous U.S. and western leaders promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990 that if the Soviet officials would allow the USSR to break apart, NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.”

Gorbechev has said that idea is false. The promise was in the context of a finally unifying Germany, which was more that western Germany absorbed East Germany, and in the context of Poland still being a soviet-serf state in the Warsaw pact. The promise had to to with NATO forces in western Europe not moving into East Germany; which would have put them on the border with soviet-serf Poland.

The promise had nothing to with the future as the Soviet Union fell about, eastern Europe broke away from the Soviet Union and left the Soviet’s Warsaw pact. The promise could not hold anything against the democratic wishes of the former Soviet and Warsaw Pact states, freed from the Soviet Union. No promises could have been made that would hold them against a future they could choose.

[Kazan]

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early

Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University

[Kazan]

Tell us why you think you know more about the subject matter than General Michael Flynn:

President Trump's Final Break With Neocon Ideology

The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, and the Iron Curtain began to dissolve. Numerous U.S. and western leaders promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990 that if the Soviet officials would allow the USSR to break apart, NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.”

[Wuli]

It is Gorbechev that knows more about the discussions than Flynn.

[Wuli]

All in the context of a Soviet Union that no longer exists.

[Kazan]

Gorbechev has said that idea is false. The promise was in the context of a finally unifying Germany, which was more that western Germany absorbed East Germany, and in the context of Poland still being a soviet-serf state in the Warsaw pact. The promise had to to with NATO forces in western Europe not moving into East Germany; which would have put them on the border with soviet-serf Poland.

So, rather than trust declassified documents on what was said, you want me to trust propaganda that doesn't even quote Gorbechev?

Only a numbskull would Russia would or tolerate want a NATO expansion and build up on its border.

Yet, a war pig like you thinks that's acceptable, proving it's those with your mentality that are truly greatest national security threat to the nation and peace in the free world.

[Kazan]

Time for you to come clean.

1) Your source on this is left-wing Brookings Institute.

2) It's source for Gorbachev's alleged comments is something called Russia behind the Headlines. But, there is no active link to the interview. So, we don't even know if the interview actually took place, let alone if it was translated unbiasedly from Russian to English.

3) Even the Brookings Institute concedes this: "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."

So, we can believe this dubious source or declassified intelligence documents that say we promised Russia no eastward expansion of NATO.

The bottom line is that you believe we and NATO had the right to aggressively and ruthlessly threaten the Russians without consequence all so politicians could make $$$, George Soros could make $$$ by setting up NGOs in countries like Ukraine and so Russian hatred could keep money flowing to the defense industry.

[Kazan]

This what the Deep State you trust was doing under Biden:

Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ @realchrisrufo EXCLUSIVE: @GrossmanHannah and I have obtained logs from the NSA’s secret transgender sex chatroom, in which NSA, CIA, and DIA employees discuss genital castration, artificial vaginas, piss fetishes, sex polycules, and gangbangs—all on government time.

This is insane. 🧵

[Wuli]

“This what the Deep State you trust”

Your slander gets you nowhere.

[Repealthe17thAmendment]

One Million Dead Slavs and Counting. These ghouls knew exactly what they were doing. They just hoped and prayed for more dead innocent Slavs and the destruction of both nations.

This needs to be emphasized again and again. What these people did resulted in the deaths of a generation of Ukrainian men, and hundreds of thousands of Russians. It resulted in billions of dollars grifted from the US treasury, and caused world energy costs to soar for hundreds of millions of consumers, particularly in Europe.

THese were not events that just resulted from miscommunications or misunderstandings. This was a deliberate attempt to manipulate the political structure of Ukraine in an effort to antagonize Russia-with complete disregard for the outcome.

These people are truly war criminals. If there is justice after this life, McCain is paying for it now.

[Wuli]

“So, we can believe this dubious source or declassified intelligence documents that say we promised Russia no eastward expansion of NATO”\

1. We “promised” RUSSIA nothing. All the DISCUSSIONS you refer to were (a) in a cold war context, (b) with western leaders and THE SOVIET UNION, not “Russia”, and (b) relative to relationships with that still existent SOVIET UNION and a still existent Warsaw Pact.

2. As the Soviet Union collapsed is was hoped by western leaders that Russia would liberalize, no longer be a dictatorship and no longer take a cold war view of the west. That the west would be able to relax more vis-a-vis Russia. THAT DID NOT HAAPPEN.

[Kazan]

We “promised” RUSSIA nothing.

Even your own left-wing and only source denies that.

And, declassified documents prove it.

[Wuli]

Gorbechev represented the Soviet Union, not “Russia”. The Soviet Union is no more (except in the mind of Putin).