47 Comments

Once again, a clear and concise explanation of a complex situation. Well done and thank you!

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Thanks Loofly!

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An even clearer one.

God Favours Russia . . .

https://les7eb.substack.com/p/ukraine-long-proxy-war-vi-god-favours

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An excellent article. I particularly appreciated your description of the abandoned 2013 political / trade agreement. It filled a gap of understanding for me. I have been watching some JImmy Dore interviews with Aaron Mate and Max Blumenthal on YouTube. Max mentioned a study by Ivan Katchanovski on the Maidan snipers. I am about halfway through but you might want to look at it for a future article. Congratulations on some great work:

https://newcoldwar.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Katchanovski-Snipers-Massacre-Maidan-Sept-2015.pdf?f15239

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Thanks for the link! I am somewhat aware of the theories around US involvement in the massacre, but I figured I would not be able to find sources that could convince the average NYT reader lol...

I have been planning to read into that myself after writing this, so I'll definitely check that link. Here is a good piece that touches on that stuff and the State Department's potential use of social media to influence the coup as early as March 2013, using the US Embassy & National Endowment for Democracy (created by Ronald Reagan):

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/06/03/how-why-us-government-perpetrated-2014-coup-ukraine/

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Thanks, Warren. A very important share.

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Thanks for the analysis of yet another “democracy building” effort by such wise and noble humanitarians. As expected the court jesters serving as the “media” dish up the Disney version so the bewildered herd can stampede appropriately. So few causing so many so much pain.

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“So few causing so much pain”

I have this thought a lot too… so upsetting.

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I've followed the Ukraine contretemps since 2014 closely-enough; I think your synopsis is stellar in presentation. Good work!

I understand there is a much more in-depth Twitter version of the Ukrainian Nazi press conference that Jimmy Dore presents here w/ Max Blumenthal, but nonetheless this goes far:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfaAyiP8Wuc

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Good to see you up at zerohedge.

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A gentleman there was nice enough to make me a contributor :)

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Obama / Biden / Nuland used Ukraine and the new guy they installed to do their money laundering. Biden on camera: "If you do not fire the prosecutor investigating Hunters crimes, (he committed), I will not send you the next BILLION dollars. Naturally they did and he did.

Any bets on what the commission was back to Obama / Biden / Hunter?? My guess without knowing is at least 10%! Obviously in some off shore bank away from prying eyes.

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@ The Space Worm 🎯💡😊

& @ David Otness for adding the Jimmy Dore/Max Blumenthal clip✔

What a fantastic and informed capsulation of this situation, truly a perfect example of reality being more dramatic than the best fiction.

I completely agree with your conclusion:

"I think it’s safe to say, after 8 years, which direction the ‘jelly-side’ landed."

As Usual,

EA☠

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Thanks Ethan!

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Your more than welcomed.🐍

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I am Brazilian and would like to translate this excellent article to Portuguese, in sort of expanding the scope of its readers, given the importance of its content. Would I be authorized to do so and how should I proceed?

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Of course! Please do

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Excellent and clear presentation, thank you!

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The only thing I would add is that Yanukovych "lost support from his allies" and fled largely as a result of the sniper killing on the Maidan. These were blamed on Yanukovych at the time, but since then significant evidence of a right-wing false flag attack has emerged, including the remote testimony of Georgian gunmen and airline documents showing they flew to Ukraine in that time frame. George Friedman, the Founder and CEO of Stratfor, the 'Shadow CIA' firm said, "It really was the most blatant coup in history."

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I stayed away from this given I truly don’t know which side instigated the shootings (and it would certainly be dismissed by Western Liberals).

However, my inclination is that Yanukovych was not behind it.

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I came across this commentary a while back in relation to a previous righteous and noble effort by the security/intel apparatchiks of our beloved govt. It was written by R.Lesnoix ..a concerned citizen who grew up during the Cold War under the constant fear of nuclear weapons.

"Many in the western world identify as Christians for example and the Christian creed and morality is beyond doubt for them. So it becomes easy to say to one self ‘as Christians we have the moral high ground so obviously we (our institutions/governments) are the good guys’. In the west we also consider ourselves to be democracies and we elevate this onto the highest of pedestals ‘we are democracies, the most righteous form of government and therefor we hold the moral high ground so obviously we (our institutions/governments) are the good guys’. Even more abstract is the notion that we, in the west, are ‘free’ and therefor have the moral authority over those countries where ‘the people’ are ‘not free’. We believe that gives us the moral high ground so obviously we (our institutions/governments) are the good guys. We have become moral Pavlov-dogs. Dangle a so-called noble cause in front of us and any action, any action, undertaken by us (our institutions/governments) instantly becomes justified no matter what the morality of that action itself actually is. We have killed, directly or indirectly, children not by the hundreds, not by the thousands, not by the tens of thousands but by the hundreds of thousands over the last few decades in order to make the world ‘free’ and ‘safe for democracy’. Somehow that’s okay with us. But when our own government tells us Assad killed some children with chemical weapons (cue Pavlov-reaction) no proof is required and we accept ‘something’ must be done. Why? Because we (our institutions/governments) are the good guys and we’ve been conditioned to think that the good guys don’t lie. Despite all the lies we’ve witnessed we still think of them as incidents, not as the rule. It’s always individuals that lied or did wrong. ‘Tony Blair lied the UK into the Iraq war’. No, everyone did. The whole system is corrupted, not just individuals in it. The system rules and changes the individuals, not the other way around. We justify our belief in our authorities by saying that if it wasn’t true ‘someone’ would speak up. Lies that big can’t hold up. But when people do speak up we ignore or ridicule them, calling them conspiracy nuts. The scale of our self-delusion is mind-boggling.

I am a citizen of one of the western countries that thinks of itself as free, democratic and based on Judaeo-Christian moral authority. My fellow countrymen and women consider themselves to be the good guys. It’s so ingrained into the national consciousness it’s like a super-dogma. By implication they consider what their government does, especially internationally, morally good. ‘They are us and since we are good so too must they be’ the thinking, if any, goes. And yet domestically they denounce individual politicians and political parties in large numbers as corrupt, self-serving and elitist. The traditional political parties in most western countries are taking a beating in the polls as they are seen to represent not the people but their own pockets and supranational interests. Voters flock en masse to the so-called populist parties on both the left and right of the political spectrum. We denounce the European Union as completely undemocratic and ruled by technocrats who are at the beck-and-call of big business. Fewer and fewer of us consider ourselves to be Christians and even if we do it’s a vague sort of watered down version without much substance or clear morality. The popular narrative in fact is to be inclusive of ‘the other’ and their convictions. All creeds and convictions are supposedly equal. Tell that to the Kali-worshippers. And although we question and discard the very foundations of our own freedoms, our own democracy and our own Christian-based morality domestically, we still believe that our national and supranational governments and their attached institutions somehow represent freedom, democracy and moral authority. We still think we, both individually and collectively, are the good guys. We seem to be unable to separate the moral self-image of the individual from the morality of the state. And yet it stares us in the face.

The number of people that died in Iraq since the western aggression against that country started in 1990 has been estimated at several million. The economic sanctions imposed by the west between the first and second gulf war have cost an estimated 1.5 million Iraqi lives of which about 500.000 were children. When confronted with these numbers former US representative at the UN Madeline Albright stated that ‘it was worth it’. Hillary Clinton had a similar comment. I know of no western leader who back then condemned or denounced this and who acknowledged our actions as immoral and wrong. I could go on with numerous examples of how our western policies have resulted in mass casualties of civilians, including children, over the last few decades. If this one by itself does not start you to question morality nothing will. So if you’re not questioning now, maybe you should wonder why and take some time to contemplate the matter.

I do consider myself to be of high moral character. I have thought about this long and hard. I know right from wrong or at least I think I do. It is always tricky to confront ones own assumptions. I consider that what our western governments are doing is very, very wrong. I sense this clash between me as an individual and me as a member of a happy society that does, according to my individual sense of morality, evil. When I look around myself in my day to day life I don’t see it. Most people are like me. I feel like I fit in. Life looks nice and shiny. Bread and games for all. But when I widen the scope and see what those we let represent us do I shudder. And I feel sick to my stomach. For me there’s no doubt. The future historians will look at us and wonder in amazement. They’ll ask why we buried our head in the sand so deep, why we didn’t acknowledge the signs we were seeing. Why we didn’t call out our leaders on their immoral actions and attitudes. They’ll ask “how could they not have known they were the bad guys?”. Because we are. As long as we look away and do nothing we too are guilty. We enable the system and it fills me with shame. As long as we maintain our illusion and refuse to acknowledge that we are in fact not the free and democratic societies we pretend to be and do something about it we are as much to blame as our governments are."

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@ patcan 💡🎯

Your "bewildered herd" metaphor earlier got my attention, but sharing this wise and prescient observation compelled me to more formally agree. As a ninth generation matriarchal descendant of Ethan Allen, and a currently disgusted U.S. citizen and veteran, your posting of the commentary by R. Lesnoix struck a particularly strong chord with my personal experience of the past six decades+, and a fairly comprehensive understanding of the actual history of my country's sordid treatment of "others" since since it was a mere collection of disparate colonies of various European pseudo empires.

As Usual,

Thom Williams (aka Ethan Allen)😎

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My entire life (DOB 1957) has seen one form of battle or another waged by the moral compass on the hill. I have dual citizenship..both in the empire and Ireland. Any basic reading of Irish history will indicate the hardships of suffering under the boots of tyrants.

The current situation in the Ukraine is a classic example of western meddling and its blow-back. One thing that you can always guarantee from the political class in this country...unified support of the war machine. Participatory politics is a ruse in the current system. Many of our institutions have been captured by the corporate world. Our media is now state owned..a paid liar class at best. I share your total disgust of the obscene waste of resources and lives allocated to the defense of economic hitmen (aka national interest).

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The article does not explain why president Volodymyr Zelensky implied that Ukraine might pursue nuclear weapon accumulation if international treaties were unsatisfactory. The reason for that statement was violation of 1994 nuclear agreement by Russia and US when Russia annexed Ukrainian territories. According to the agreement the Ukrainians agreed to eliminate world's third largest nuclear arsenal and transfer the warheads to Russia for their dismantlement in exchange for security assurances that the United States and Russia would pay attention and respect Ukraine's independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, that there would be no use of force or threat of force against Ukraine.

Russia brutally violated that agreement and annexed huge parts of Ukrainian territory in 2014. Zelensky was elected 5 years after that. So, it was not wrong to suggest that the agreement that was violated by one of its guarantors was no longer valid. Therefore, Ukraine could have pursued development of nuclear weapons in order to guarantee its territorial integrity and sovereignty, given its location next to the aggressive and expansionist Russia lead by a brutal dictator, namely Putin.

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You exclude why Russia “brutally annexed” Crimea. This was a direct consequence of the events described in my article!!!

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I don't give a damn about your explanations when Putler and his Russo fascistic clique is murdering women and children by the thousands.

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Putin is not a good person. The point of the article is to demonstrate how the US provoked him and thus is partially culpable for his actions.

He was not killing women and children in 2013 when Yanukovich was voluntarily negotiating with him. It was after the US abetted a coup that he got violent.

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What you discount in your reasoning is the desire of the Ukrainian people for freedom.

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No I don’t. I acknowledge the Western Ukrainian’s justified outrage over the failed EU negotiations.

You discount the massive political divide between West and East Ukraine. Western wants freedom from Russia (which they had until the recent invasion). Some Eastern regions want freedom from Ukraine.

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The divide existed before Russian agression, not massive though. Ukrainians are now united in their disdain for Putin and his criminal gang.

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Curious man - It was Ukraine that broke the agreement first when it began accepting military buildup supplied by the west and started targeting the Russian speaking population in Ukraine. Thousands of eastern Ukrainians were brutally murdered before Russia intervened. You make it sound as if the Ukrainians are just innocent freedom loving victims.

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Ukrainians are innocent freedom loving people, regardless what language they speak. You are spreading Putler's lies about Ukraine and that makes you a war criminal. Have you heard about Kharkov, Nikolayev, Odessa, Mariupol? Those are cities where Russian speaking patriotic Ukrainians lived in peace and security and they would rather die than become slaves of Russian Pederation.

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Ok...I get it...by by!

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"To illustrate the new regime’s stance: almost immediately, Russian was demoted from a national language to a minority language (no longer permitting its use in courtrooms and public schools), the following year Yats called on the EU to stop the Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, and Ukraine tightened immigration policy for Russian citizens entering Ukraine." according to your own link, that law came into forse in August 2012, under Yanukovich.

Why the "new" Ukrainian government opposed Nord Stream 2 to any clear thinker is clear: Russia had "stolen" Crimea in Feb/March 2014....

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The 2012 law was to ALLOW Russian in courtrooms, public schools, etc.)

The new regime repealed that law:

“Immediately after the 2014 Ukrainian

revolution, on 23 February 2014, the Ukrainian

Parliament voted to repeal the law. This

decision was vetoed by the acting President

Oleksandr Turchynov, who instead ordered

drafting of a new law to "accommodate the

interests of both eastern and western Ukraine

and of all ethnic groups and minorities."(121113)

However, in October 2014 the Constitutional

Court of Ukraine started reviewing the

constitutionality of the law, [14] and on 28

February 2018 it ruled the law unconstitutional.”

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Remember Obama's "flexibility after my last election?"

He and his cronies got billions in laundered moneys and Putin got Crimea because "the government we signed the Budapest Memorandum with no longer exists."

Not only could Russia blame the US CIA but it set a stage for the Russians becoming the American Marxist's worst enemy, despite being joined at the hip since 1932, and then proving it by helping Trump "steal" the election.

"You really can't make this $h!t up."

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Another idiotic blogger.

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What do you disagree with? If you can point out a flaw I’m happy to correct it.

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Jamie Gorelick is a Communist agent financed by Iran Proof https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/schlumberger-oilfield-holdings-ltd-agrees-plead-guilty-and-pay-over-2327-million-violating-us. Gorelick was on the SLB board 2002-2010, Gorelick runs Biden

The plan is to have the US and Russia grind each other to dust while Iran laughs and gets rich and its working.

911 was an inside job orchestrated by Gorelick and her blackmail bribery cabal designed to frame the Saudis and get the US to drop protection of Saudi Arabia.

Gorelick and Mossad set up Kashoggi and the Saudis then recorded his interrogation.

Gorelick or her proxies run Joe Biden.

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