The Russian-Ukraine War
The Russian-Ukraine War: Facts That The Mainstream Media Will Not Discuss!
By FRISKY LARR
The Russian-Ukraine War did not begin on February 24, 2022, when Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine and launched the so-called “Special Operations”. The war began precisely on Wednesday, September 30, 2015. That was the day the Russian Air Force launched its first range of air strikes in Syria that saved President Bashir Al-Assad his leadership of the relatively small Middle Eastern country and stopped the US from achieving its sworn goals. We will get back to this as the discourse progresses.
When the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed in the year 1991, western countries led by the United States, were worried about the potentially uncontrolled spread of nuclear weapons of all shapes and sizes given the multiple smaller states that emerged from the collapse. The West then struck a deal to recognize Russia, being by far, the largest of all the constituent states of the former Soviet Union, as the successor state of the USSR. The vast nuclear arsenal of the fallen empire including those stationed and developed in Ukraine, were to be surrendered to Russia under, whose custodial responsibility the nukes can be monitored with international agreements. This greatly reduced the risk of nuclear weapons landing in the hands of unwanted state and non-state entities such as terrorist organizations.
This first step, nonetheless, marked the cometic rise of the hitherto superpower United States, into the realms of a hyperpower state. It became the only and undisputed ruler of the world and arbitrary arbiter of truth and justice in international affairs, while Russia struggled to stay on its feet economically and politically. Many individuals within Russia grasped the opportunity that the collapse of the empire offered them economically and became overnight millionaire oligarchs with the new taste of western glamor actively encouraged by western institutions. One good example being the popular Roman Abramovic. This was one good way of keeping the Russian economy under crucial western remote check. After all, the West was the unsolicited advisor and strategic guide in Russia’s newfound path to the capitalist market economy.
The prevalent world order that was defined under the banner “Balance of Power” prior to the demise of the USSR, became history. There was no more Soviet Union with its own sphere of influence to deter any careless and arbitrary American incursion anywhere it wanted. The three strategic blocks that characterized the era, namely the Warsaw Pact (with East European military allies of the Soviet Union), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO – with America’s western allies) and the Non-Aligned Movement, to which countries like Nigeria, South Africa, etc. belonged, became history, and left the space only for NATO.
There were early declarations of “No Victor, No Vanquished” with the Americans making widely publicized statements that NATO will not seek to absorb former Warsaw Pact members into its fold. It had no ambitions to spread eastward. The coast was, nonetheless, clear for a unipolar American dictatorship in world affairs.
A drunkard and alcoholic as Head-of-State of the Russian Federation in these early days, played perfectly into the hands of western countries, who now schemed to keep the rest of the world under its unchallenged majestical grip. Following several ousting of leaders and reshaping of political geographies in the Balkan on the pretext of self-determination and other frivolous claims, the first openly known victim of America’s wanton and self-imposed ‘Exceptionalism’, was President Saddam Husseyn of Iraq, who the Americans could take out unchallenged with accusations that later turned out to be unfounded and simply cooked up. In fact, the only opposition came from within NATO itself, with Germany and France vehemently opposing the unprovoked invasion of Iraq.
This would have been unthinkable under the Balance of Power regime when Iraq would, most likely, have called upon the Soviet Union to help it out. Indeed, the proclamation of the “Axis of Evil” by former President George W. Bush in the wake of Iraq’s invasion, made no secret of the real intention behind the planned invasion of three countries that he named: Iraq, Syria, and North Korea: The spread of democracy. In fact, Syria and North Korea were under the sphere of influence of the former Soviet Union and such a threat would have been unthinkable at the time. George W. Bush, thus, became the poster boy of a new, more belligerent foreign policy drive pivoted by a group of American ideologs called “The Neo-Conservatives”.
Following the successful overthrow of Saddam Husseyn, the train moved to Libya. Whoever was not for the Americans, was deemed against them and was, boastfully, dealt with to satisfy the sole global emperor. In this respect, the West stirred unrest in Libya and supervised the killing of its leader and plunged it into the chaos that the country, has, till the moment, never recovered from. In the boastful words of the then American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, while talking about Muammar Ghaddafi on October 20, 2011, she, gleefully, said “We came, we saw, he died”.
That been done, the train moved to Syria, where the pattern was repeated in a campaign to oust President Bashir Al-Assad.
While the West was happily extolling and enjoying its new and now, consolidated dominance in global affairs, it seemed to have lost track of the change of guards in Moscow or failed to take serious cognizance of same. The alcoholic former leader before his death, had handed the reins over to a former Secret Service leader of the Soviet days, who understood the politics of strategic interests much more than many of his peers. Basking in its glory, western intelligence seems to have paid very little attention to the actions of the new man in Moscow. After all, as the one-time Foreign Minister of Germany, Klaus Kinkel, put it in those days, “Russia is no longer a world power”. The snobbish disregard for the supposedly conquered Soviet Union (now Russia as the successor state), came back to haunt the West right inside Syria.
Unnoticed by western intelligence, the new kid on the block, Vladimir Putin, had quietly focused on rebuilding his country’s economy and ruthlessly eliminating internal opposition from his path. He focused on rebuilding his military with very new and modern weapons systems that even the West did not have. In fact, western intelligence seems to have woken up to this reality only when it became too late.
In prosecuting the war to oust Bashir Al-Assad from the throne in Syria, the West chose foot-soldiers to assist them in the battle, since they were to have no “boots on the ground”. They trained and armed Kurdish separatist fighters and other so-called ‘moderate Islamists’ to help them bring the battle to Assad. In the meantime, a new, much more formidable group backed by the former military leaders of Saddam Husseyn emerged in the name of Islamic State. These brutal, bloodthirsty fundamentalists adopted a most savage and barbaric method of retribution and war prosecution. Even though the West openly vowed to fight and defeat this group, they could not help but observe that the weapons they supplied their allies in the battlefront often ended up in the hands of these fundamentalist fighters.
In the end, it became clear that only this group was realistically in a competent and tactical position to march on Damascus and overthrow President Assad. The Americans seemed to have taken note of this fact and seemed to have tacitly given it its blessings as long as it would lead to the overthrow of President Assad. Intervening Russian forces later claimed to have uncovered evidence of American secret cooperation with elements of the fundamentalists. They all waited for the D-day that this group would march into Damascus for the ultimate dirty job.
According to the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, Damascus was two to three weeks from falling to the rapidly advancing opposition forces. Indeed, the day Russia directly intervened in the war with aerial bombardment at the request of the legitimate President of that country, is the day it provoked the ire of the American leadership. A visibly infuriated President Barack Obama at the time, referred to Russia as a regional power attempting to flex its muscles as a world power that it is not.
Yet, the post-Soviet-Russia, in spite of all the economic weaknesses it had, still retained the nuclear capability that makes it the only country in the world today, that can fully destroy the United States in the so-called concept of Mutually-Assured-Destruction (MAD). The West then looked on in astonishment as Russia unveiled one modern weapon after the other that were put into practical use in Syria. An example being a long-range missile that was fired from ships in the Caspian Sea to strike a target at the Syrian coast about 1,500 kilometers away.
This was the moment the Americans resolved to trim Russia’s wings before they grow too large. Russia had simply been too bold to challenge America’s authority and the USA has been hellbent on stopping it from regaining the influence of the USSR and establishing spheres of influence. It is also worthy of mention at this juncture, that a suspected western ploy to break up the vast Russian Federation has always been pointed out in Moscow to explain the sudden violent independence agitation of Chechnya several years prior. This was shown as one of several options designed by the West to contain Russia and even cause a regime change. The sponsorship of domestic dissidents within Russia such as the popular Navalny, was one of such options.
The ensuing American-sponsored Maidan uprising in Kiev in 2014 followed a pattern that is already known in Libya and Syria. It, hardly, came as a surprise to diligent observers. Of course, none of the architects of the Ukrainian coup that ousted the pro-Russian President, Yanukovich, reckoned with the length Russia would go to defend its strategic military interest in Crimea, where it has always kept its Black Sea fleet (naval base with about 300 to 650 high-grade warships) and other air force and ground force bases since the Soviet days. Russia shocked the West by moving to annex the ethnic Russian-dominated island, thus shielding its Black Sea fleet from western access while the West succeeded in installing a pro-western government in Kiev at the expense of a democratically elected Yanukovich. It was the first in a chain of western miscalculations that visibly underrated Russia’s propensity for action when necessary.
Unfortunately, the tenure of America’s President Barack Obama came to an end, and he could not deal with Russia the way he would have wanted. Plans to have him succeeded by a much more aggressive and bellicose Hillary Clinton failed when Donald Trump pulled an upset to become the new President. A roller-coaster 4-year period of relative emotion-laden calm ensued in Russo-American relations.
The turbulent replacement of Donald Trump by aging Joe Biden – former Vice President under Barack Obama – however, quickly brought back the struggle to contain Russia picking up the gauntlet from where Barack Obama left it.
The Neocons plan this time, was a highly sophisticated one that sought to usher in once and for all, the ultimate destruction of Russia’s economy, its conventional military capability, and the reduction of Russia to a meaningless military power to pave the way for a head-on confrontation with China, whose military and economic influence had steadily grown through the years threatening to displace the American hegemony. The desperate battle to salvage America’s global dominance and self-styled “Exceptionalism” with crude and savage means, began in earnest. The scene once again, is Ukraine.
Now flashback to the post-2014 political order in Ukraine. The overthrow of President Yanukovich, who comes from East Ukraine triggered a reaction in East Ukraine. This region that is overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Russians and shares a border with Russia, declared its independence from Ukraine. Thinking that the region would be no match to subdue and whipped back in line, the new pro-American government in Kiev launched a military assault and soon found out that Russia had secretly intervened militarily, and the region could not be subdued. Another development that the planners of the coup did not expect. Major miscalculation No. 2. But it wouldn’t stop at that.
To defuse tension or so it seems, the Chancellor of Germany and President of France both brought the new leadership in Kiev and the leadership in Moscow to the negotiating table to seal the Minsk Accord in Belarus. This accord spelt out conditions of autonomy and minority rights for the separatist region under Ukrainian rule. As was to be revealed several years later by both the German Chancellor and the French President of the time, however, this accord was meant from the very beginning, to bring in a period of peace, in which the West could quietly arm Ukraine and train its soldiers unknown to Moscow, to prepare Ukraine for a planned military showdown with Russia.
Unsurprisingly, Russia got increasingly frustrated with Kiev’s continuous breach of the terms of the Minsk Accord through its continuous shelling of Eastern Ukraine (Donbass etc.) with mortar fires and other deadly weapons as if the battle to whip the region in line was still on course and the Minsk Accord never existed. Worse still, the brokers of the Accord were not even calling Ukraine to order in the name of protecting democracy. The minority rights of the East Ukrainians were trampled upon, and the Russian language was banned in the media and all forms of public communications. A policy of total assimilation was launched. Neither Germany nor France spoke up against the oppressive trend.
The trap set for Russia by the USA and its allies in this grand design to eliminate Russia’s military relevance to the United States to enable the USA focus more on challenging China, became manifest in late 2021. The drive to admit Ukraine into NATO suddenly gained momentum in public discourse. Ukraine had applied to be integrated into the NATO Membership Action Plan in 2008. It was left at that all through the years.
Having swallowed the bitter pills of NATO admitting former member-nations of the Warsaw Pact into its fold over the years, and some of these countries even becoming overtly hyperaggressive towards Russia under the NATO canopy, Russia was now in a much stronger position to call on Washington and NATO to hold talks with it on security guarantees for itself stressing that the admission of Ukraine into NATO was a dark red line that must not be crossed. It advanced the reasons that the implication of having NATO bases in Ukraine would neutralize its own nuclear deterrence since it would hardly have time to react to any nuclear missile fired from Kiev that may take less than thirty minutes to wreak havoc in Moscow.
Russia submitted a framework proposal to negotiate upon that would guarantee that Ukraine will remain neutral and never be admitted into NATO and that NATO’s eastward expansion would cease. Many experts drew Washington’s attention to the Cuba Crisis of the 1960s, in which the late President Kennedy faced the risk of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union by taking actions to block the deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, which the USA considered its backyard. The USA was reminded by several sources that it would, also, NEVER tolerate the deployment of Russian weapons in Canada, Mexico, or any border region for that matter.
Washington rebuffed and outrightly dismissed all Russian demands in this regard. Loudly applauded by the media, President Joe Biden ruled out any form of negotiation in this respect claiming that Russia can never have a say on who gets admitted into NATO and that Ukraine is a sovereign country that should decide for itself. It was a highly populist argument that was meant for the consumption of the ordinary and not-well informed minds in the running of international affairs. It didn’t matter that the same USA – barely a few weeks later – sounded a serious warning of retribution to the Solomon Islands in the Pacific, for seemingly making overtures to China to have it establish a military base in its territory. Yet, the Solomon Islands were a sovereign nation that ought to be able to decide for itself.
The trap prepared for Russia by the West since the signing of the Minsk Accord that offered the West sufficient time to arm and train the Ukrainian military, was a lose-lose situation for Russia, at least, in the reckoning of the West.
The sudden push for the Ukrainian membership of NATO and the plain refusal to consider Russia’s objections to say the least of even discussing or compromising on it, and expressing this with very spiteful attitudes and words, smacked of a desperate imperialistic mind that is fighting to retain its dominance, even if takes “walking over corpses” as the Germans would say. It also echoed Obama’s thoughts that Russia is a regional power pretending to be a world power and must not be taken seriously. Potential solutions like granting a long moratorium on any possible Ukraine’s membership of NATO to calm tensions, were not even advanced. When suggested by several more rational, unbiased and neutral pundits, they were not heeded. Russia was, basically, told to go to hell and that Ukraine’s membership of NATO will be decided by NATO alone.
The calculation was simple. A humiliated Russia was either to withdraw its objections in shame and Ukraine would be quickly admitted into the bloc and the stationing of NATO’s nuclear bases in Ukraine would ultimately serve to neutralize Russia’s nuclear deterrence and its status in the “Mutually Assured Destruction” doctrine, or Russia would be forced to march into Ukraine to deter its membership of NATO and the Americans could unleash a long pre-planned, unprecedented severe sanctions that they firmly believed, would, ultimately, cripple Russia’s economy with all attendant domino impacts. At the same time, the West would be able to sell the cheap propaganda message to poorly informed minds that Russia had aggressively marched into a smaller, weaker country, unprovoked, for the purpose of seizing its territories unjustly. It was expected that the domino impacts of the brutal economic sanctions would include the fact of the, then, severely damaged economy breeding mass dissatisfaction and civil unrest in Russia and eventually lead to the toppling of the Putin government. It was expected to result in a slow but steady depletion of military resources with western-backed Ukraine eventually prevailing on Russia, militarily, thus leading to the final elimination of any dream Russia may have had, of regaining a world power status. Every action was then taken not to treat Russia as an equal partner on a level playing field.
Developments since the start of armed confrontation, have, however, shown that this was the mother of all miscalculations that has now bogged down the American Neocons’ fantasy of quickly taking care of Russia and moving on to the China conundrum.
Since February 24, 2022, however, it has also become clear that the war did not break out for the smokescreen reason of Ukraine’s interest in NATO membership. On the contrary, Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky seems to have secretly agreed in a long-drawn plan, to offer his country for the dirty job to weaken Russia to the military advantage of the West. The sacrifice of Ukrainian lives for this purpose, clearly informs the strongly arrogant attitude Ukraine has, so far, adopted towards western countries when asking for their weapons. They never beg. They command and even use derogatory languages. They seem to say, “We are doing this for you, and you better bring those damn weapons fast”. Russia never posed or voiced any threat to its neighbors to warrant any urgent NATO membership for protection.
On its own, Russia miscalculated gravely by not having proper intelligence knowledge of the depth of western involvement in Ukraine, well in advance of February 24, 2022 and not foreseeing the weapons available to Ukraine to better preplan the march into Kiev for the complete seizure of Ukraine.
The war of attrition that now threatens to ensue clearly indicates how the fear of a nuclear catastrophe has suddenly disappeared from the psyche of the American Neocons and their European backers, in their desperation to retain global dominance. They are unable to see and feel the dangers ahead for the whole wild world. The new mentality of seeking to humiliate and destroy Russia to protect western hegemony seems to be giving very little to no consideration at all, to the potential course of action of a nuclear-armed power that is pushed to the wall.
Since no side will be able to score a decisive victory on the short-term, peace will remain elusive for as long as the Neocons remain in power in Washington. It doesn’t matter how much illusion is fed that Ukraine, with the help of western weapons, intelligence support, mercenaries, and even, official special forces, will be able to defeat Russia on the battlefield. As long as no external force overthrows the government of Vladimir Putin in Russia, any successor to him in such a highly nationalistic society, will be unlikely to change course from protecting Russia’s strategic interest. In the end, only a change of course in Washington will be able to decide this war in a manner that will be face-saving to all parties concerned only on the condition that Russia is not forced to deploy nuclear weapons before a reasonable settlement is reached.
Aside the countless innocent and brainwashed Ukrainian citizens driven to their death in this needless war, one major casualty, so far, has been the influence of the West in global affairs. Many western-friendly countries are not only having a rethink after seeing the tabooed weaponization of certain economic instruments for sanctions against Russia, but there is also, now, an open move away from the West in pursuit of a calmer tie with the Russo-Chinese-led economic movement called BRICS. In addition to several African countries, Saudi Arabia, one of the staunchest Middle Eastern allies of the USA is now top in the list of Middle Eastern countries pushing this drift away from the USA.
End
Frisky Larr is the author of “Nigeria’s Journalistic Militantism”, “Africa’s Diabolical Entrapment”, “Lost in Democracy” and “A Journey Through Times” (www.FriskyLarr-The-Books.com)
