No Public Debate as U.S. & U.K. Push NATO into Direct War with Russia

Understanding how the Ukraine war got started and countering context-free narratives

Half an hour. That’s about the amount of time you would have left on this Earth when a nuclear weapon is fired at you. Though with the speed of modern missiles, flying at three, five, ten times the speed of sound, it is much more likely that we’re talking minutes. One would think that, with such imminent death only minutes away at all times, our leaders would not rest until such a direct threat to the survival of themselves and their citizens, not to mention their species, was permanently gone. But that would be based on the false assumption that they care more about our survival than about preserving their own power. Because having nuclear weapons is the one way to ensure you can always get your way. Except when the other side also has them, in which case you get, well, the situation in Ukraine.

Last week, U.S. president Biden gave permission to Ukraine to fire U.S.-supplied missiles deeper inside Russia, which up until then he had not done because of warnings from the U.S. intelligence community that that could lead to strikes on Western military bases. In September, Russia made clear that allowing Ukraine to use longer-range Western missiles to strike deeper into Russian territory would mean “the United States and European countries are at war with Russia.” Yet the Biden administration did it anyway, pushing the world yet another step closer to World War Three.

In response, Russia fired an advanced intermediate-range (up to 5,500 km) missile at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, with Putin making clear to NATO that these could be equipped with nuclear warheads and that these missiles are so fast (10 times the speed of sound) that they would not be able to intercept them. Russia has made clear that it believes it has the right to use its weapons “against military facilities of the countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities,” clearly referring to the military infrastructure of NATO countries. Yet is there any serious public discussion about any of these decisions? Does it even matter that most of us want this war to end?

Since most Western media only reports on the actions of designated enemies without context that helps you understand why they act the way that they do, I thought it would be useful to dive a bit further into the events that created the conditions for war, why it is still ongoing, and use that context so that we can understand the motivations of those that are deemed enemies.

Overcoming Our Differences Is The Only Way Forward

A summary of how the Ukraine war got started
One could write whole books on the complicated history of Eastern Europe, parts of which I alluded to when I talked about my own family history in my last post on this topic, so to avoid getting lost in the weeds I am going to stick to the past ten years. If you would like to learn more details, check out some of the many sources I link to in this section and throughout this post, or check out my other posts on the current (at time of publication) state of the war, on Western leaders’ way of thinking before and during the war, and on the role of NATO in bringing this conflict about. I can also recommend reading the journalist Kit Klarenberg’s article on the British role in Ukraine’s Kursk invasion and journalist Aaron Maté’s article on U.S. political machinations. I’m sure there’s also thorough books out there that go further back in time, so if you know of any be sure to let me know.

Before his (second) ousting, then Ukrainian president Yanukovych was working towards European integration and to that end pursued a free trade agreement with the European Union (EU) as well as a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In case you are not familiar with the demands attached to IMF loans, these tend to come with strict rules requiring a country to cut public spending and implement policies that tend to favour businesses over workers. Russian president Putin did not want to see Ukraine get too close to the West and therefore offered Yanukovych a loan with much more favourable conditions and simultaneously threatened that going with the West was going to have detrimental impact on trade between their two countries. Yanukovych, describing the IMF loan terms as humiliating, then changed his mind at the last moment and went with the Russian offer. This led to large protests in the capital Kiev, where a majority of people favoured closer integration with the West. Fascist militias then hijacked these protests, and violence ensued. In an effort to restore order, Yanukovych signed an agreement that was to lead to reforms as well as new elections, but one day later the deputies of Ukraine’s parliament, working with or at the very least pressured by the U.S., decided to ignore the agreement as well as the constitution and deposed Yanukovych. The resulting ‘transitional government’ was ultra-nationalist and willing to enact the aborted economic reforms that favoured Western financial institutions and corporations. It also sought to get rid of any Russian influence in the country, even though half the population spoke Russian, for instance by trying to mandate the use of the Ukrainian language, glorifying Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera, and turning a blind eye to the murders of police officers as well as other acts of violence that had occurred during the protests.

The Ukrainian province of Crimea has a large ethnic Russian community and holds great strategic importance to Moscow, because it helps secure its navy’s access to the Black Sea. Because of the preceding events and Russian distrust of reaching a solution through diplomacy with the West, president Putin decided to take control of Crimea through a referendum in which most of the population voted to join Russia, convinced that “a vote for Russia is a vote for a better life.” Russia also began supporting separatist forces in Ukraine’s eastern provinces, which also have a large population of ethnic Russians. After years of violence on both sides, the civil war seemed to have come to an end with the signing of the Minsk agreements (the first one was violated by both sides, leading to a more comprehensive second agreement). Yet those accords were unfortunately not implemented, and actively violated, which together with NATO’s refusal to resolve Russian concerns about the arms and possible membership it was giving to Ukraine ultimately set the stage for Russia’s 2022 invasion.

💡Who violated the Minsk accords?
As far as I can see based on the ceasefire violations recorded by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) there have been many violations on both sides, with more observations of violations inside the territories controlled by the Ukrainian government. I find it tough to say how much influence both parties of the conflict actually had in containing the fighting on the ground, but I do know that both the West and Ukraine had little interest in sticking to the Minsk agreements, as both then German chancellor Merkel and Ukrainian president Zelensky have admitted this, but instead wanted to use the ceasefire to build up Ukraine’s military capabilities. I do not know what the recorded ceasefire violations say about how much Putin intended to stick to the agreements, as in the Tucker Carlson interview he genuinely seemed sour about being deceived by Western leaders, but the bottom line is that both the ultra-nationalist government forces and the Russia-backed separatists were violating the ceasefire.

Peace, but only on Western terms
In early 2022, after about three months of fighting, there were serious efforts to reach a peace deal which could have ended the war, with Ukraine promising neutrality and giving autonomy to its Russian-speaking eastern provinces and in exchange receiving security guarantees by major powers. That is, until then UK prime minister Johnson told Ukrainian president Zelensky that no such guarantees would be forthcoming, and that NATO would be backing Ukraine in its fight against Russia. This is well-documented and corroborated by many different sources.

As mentioned in the previous section, the 2014 political coup empowered groups of well-armed fascists. One example of this is the Azov batallion, which wants to “defend the white race” and whose founder wants to “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade [...] against the Semite-led Untermenschen.” This batallion has since been incorporated into the Ukrainian army, and is now being funded and trained by the U.S. These openly fascist fighters do not slink back from attacking minorities and threatening politicians who in their eyes are being too accommodating to the Russians. For instance, the founder of the fascist militia group active during the 2014 protests, part of which became the Azov batallion, threatened that Ukrainian president Zelensky “will hang on some tree” if he makes peace with Russia. When I first wrote about the war in 2022, I stated that Ukraine was not run by Nazis committing genocide against native Russians, which was part of Russia’s justification for its invasion. While these groups are indeed a minority inside the country, I did not realize at the time how much influence these Nazi groups were having (and still have) on Ukrainian policy, particularly as it pertained to Russia.

As this conflict drags on and Western leaders dig in their heels further and further, I am beginning to wonder whether they ever had any serious intention of preventing war in the first place. I still struggle to fully comprehend how my so-called representatives are still involved in actively escalating this conflict, actions which I would oppose even if their aim was actually to protect Ukraine or Europe. That is why in order to understand the Western view, by which I mean the view of Western politicians and mainstream media, it is important to realize that the world is viewed through a certain lens. In the previous post about this topic, I nicknamed this their ‘imperial goggles’. When looking at the world through these goggles, you see other countries following your will as the default, as ‘the way things are supposed to be’, and countries going against that will as ‘aggressive’ or ‘destabilizing the region’. I encourage you to read my post on this way of thinking and where it leads. It also contains research into current state of the Ukraine-Russia conflict on the ground, including estimated casualty numbers of both sides.

A pair of imperialist goggles, as shown during its product launch.

Suffice to say right now, when Western leaders talk about ‘security’ and ‘stability’, ‘defending the rule-based order’, or ‘safeguarding democracy’, what they actually mean is the perpetuation of a world in which they can call the shots and make all the rules. Any country that wants to chart its own independent path is automatically seen as a threat. If you’re a smaller country that means they will try to depose your government, as was done to Ukraine in 2014 and as they have been trying in countries like Venezuela and Georgia (also right on the Russian border) by funding opposition leaders and media, or even training soldiers. If you’re a bigger country, though, like Russia or Iran, this is more difficult to pull off, although they will constantly fantasize about it. Then the strategy becomes containment, for instance by encircling you with military bases and hostile alliances, and trying to weaken you without direct confrontation, like through a proxy war. If they actually wanted peace, or actually believed that Ukraine ceding territory to Russia would send “a very dangerous signal globally that powerful countries can change borders unilaterally”, they would have made sure this war never broke out in the first place or ended it in the first few months with the all but signed accord reached in Istanbul. Instead, Western leaders resort to talk about bringing back the military draft and, I kid you not, developing apps to help you find the nearest bunker when the Bomb drops.

And why was the war allowed to continue? Because, as former U.K. prime minister Johnson, who played such a pivotal role in sabotaging that peace deal and ensuring the continuation of this conflict, stated in April of this year: if Ukraine loses the conflict, it would mean “the end of Western hegemony.” In other words, it would mean an end to the West always getting its way. So no peace and damn the risks.

Understanding why ‘they hate us’
Ever since this conflict started, countries like United States have kept pretending that they have little to do with how Ukraine decides to use its weapons. Secretary of State Blinken has kept insisting that Ukraine “has to make its own decisions about the best way to effectively defend itself,” thereby denying any responsibility for what the country does with the weapons the U.S. is actively supplying it with. However, any closer examination of U.S. actions demonstrates that this stance, which is the exact same stance it is taking in its support for Israel, cannot be taken seriously in any way.

First of all, as the examples mentioned so far demonstrate, the U.S. has for years been telling Ukraine exactly what it can and cannot do, for instance by pressuring Ukraine not to make peace with Russia, lower its conscription age, and telling it how and where it can use its weapons. Only now that Biden has given his permission is Ukraine firing its missiles deeper into Russia.

Secondly, the U.S. and other Western countries are not merely sending Ukraine billions of dollars worth of arms, they are:
➫sending advisers and special forces to help with conducting the war;
➫using Western satellites and C.I.A. bases inside Ukraine to “provide intelligence for targeted missile strikes, track Russian troop movements, and help support spy networks,” in a partnership that started a decade ago, and that also includes training elite Ukrainian forces;
➫training them to use Western-supplied tanks, weapons systems, and fighter jets;
➫servicing and repairing U.S. weapons on Ukrainian soil;
➫and since this week, together with the U.K., supplying them with advanced longer-range (up to ~300 km) missiles (ATACMS & Storm Shadow missiles) so that Ukraine can strike deeper into Russian territory.

And thirdly, the U.S. has been actively undermining Ukrainian decision-making by first helping to change its government and then determining who could be in the new one, and by supporting and funding violent fascists groups that threaten to murder politicians if they attempt to make peace.

In other words, it is pretty clear that the U.S. is continually instructing Ukraine “about the best way to effectively defend itself,” and could therefore quite easily place limits on what it does or when it makes peace, if it wanted to. Moreover, all of these actions make it pretty hard to credibly claim that the U.S. and other Western countries are not active parties to this conflict. That is the context that is so under-reported in the West, that explains Putin’s ‘escalations’, which tend to be calculated responses to Western escalations, and that is probably also why lawmakers and the media are doing everything they can to prevent you from hearing the other side of the story, by banning Russian news and branding any perspectives conflicting with the government narrative as ‘misinformation’ or even ‘terrorism’.

Because, far from being ‘madmen’, the motivations tend to be fairly clear and understandable when viewed in context, regardless of whether you agree with them or not. For example, the Kremlin stated that “the reckless decisions and actions of Western countries that produce missiles, supply them to Ukraine and subsequently participate in strikes on Russian territory cannot remain without a reaction from the Russian side.” Similarly, North Korea has stated that it would join a nuclear war if it comes to that, stating that “We have already gone as far as possible with the United States with negotiations, and what we ended up confirming was not a superpower's will for coexistence, but a thorough position based on force and an unchangeable invasive and hostile policy.” You do not have to agree with or support these country’s positions or the methods they employ to get what they want, you can even view them as opposed to your own values or way of looking at the world. But it would be a mistake to assume that they simply “hate us for our freedoms” and do not have their own complicated motivations and reasons for their actions and reactions, and we ignore them at our own peril.

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