Japan breaks ranks with US, EU to start buying Russian crude oil

The EU (Euro players) and US (we are the big force behind NATO) wanted this: EU and NATO membership for Ukraine.

Any obstacles to NATO admission would have been cleared away quickly since the EU players would have policed things internally on their side (all the big players were 100% on board: Germany, France, UK). Once Russia invaded everything changed.

Now Ukraine is a liability and even though we want to make the Russians bleed/pay as much as possible, they have already achieved their political goals: no NATO for Ukraine and most of their military objectives (seize those areas of Ukraine that are ethnic Russian in the East - to include a major port city and industrial area).

We gambled. We had been (in violation of the Minsk agreement) arming Ukraine, training them, and allowing for a large mercenary force to be built there, which we also indirectly paid for.

***This raised the stakes for a Russian invasion and we had hoped that they simply acquiesce.***

An argument can be made for what we did, i.e. arming and training Ukraine, since this would advert any sort of Russian aggression, even though this too was us breaking an agreement.

***However, when we offered NATO membership to Ukraine, we flipped the situation to where it now became a national security matter for Russia.***

At that point, Russia is looking at US and other Euro nation’s troops being stationed in Ukraine long term, missile defense being based there, potentially even missile systems which could reach Moscow in 6 minutes and most of the Black Sea being under NATO control.

All this argument of where we portray the Russians as the aggressor are BS. “WE” are the ones going into a former Soviet republic which borders Russia (fact), offering them NATO membership (fact), and basically putting Russia in a position where they are threatened (if you look at it with military eyes, this is a fact as well).

Ukraine shares 1,400 miles of border with Russia, some of that is terrain where you could push a large mechanized force through. Ukraine has the infrastructure to support the long term basing of foreign forces. Ukraine has large airfields that can support strategic airlift and bombers, ports which can support naval ships. There are many major roads that connect Russia and Ukraine and both use the same rail gauge. A large country with diverse terrain and forests, it is easy to hide things in Ukraine, and/or constantly move them around. Ukraine extends far East along what already in the Cold War was referred to as their “soft underbelly” (when we put nukes in Turkey), but now we are within 6 minutes range of Moscow and can both reduce Russia’s nuclear capabilities to retaliate while also have a first strike capability to where they have practicality no reaction time. ***For the Russians this is an untenable security situation.***

IMHO, the position we put the Russians in was so ridiculous and unacceptable, that there is a part of me that believes we wanted this. We cannot be that stupid. We would never accept this situation, and we have not in the past, i.e. Cuban Missile Crisis (62) and invasion of Grenada (83). If the PRC were to offer a security agreement to Mexico today and potentially base troops along our border, do you really think we would accept that? Not even remotely.

Why would we want this? 1) If the Russians acquiesce, we win a lot for nothing, our influence in Europe grows through NATO. 2) If Russia invades as they have, we deplete them using a proxy (only an economic cost and with a huge ROI) and our position in the global chess game against Russia improves since their intel service, military, war industrial output, is all focused on Ukraine which makes them weak in their frontier where we have been trying hard to tear some of their areas under our control (all the oil producing nations), specifically Syria, Libya and Venezuela. *** (Morality aside- lying, cheating, and the loss of life for pure economic gain) If this is actually the calculus involved, I’m impressed, since it shows a level of strategic thinking more far reaching than I thought us capable of.***

But nonetheless yes, this most definitely was the impetus for war: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-president-zelenskiy-holding-talks-with-biden-adviser-says-2021-12-09/

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