Is Russia at War With Ukraine, or With the West?

A guest post by

Matt Taibbi and Racket Staff

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock this week, on entering a “new era of nefariousness”:

I say clearly and across the Atlantic, what is right and what is wrong shall never be irrelevant to us. No one wants and no one needs peace more than the Ukrainians and Ukraine. The diplomatic efforts of the U.S. are of course important here. But such a peace must be just and lasting and not just a pause until the next attack… We will never accept a perpetrator-victim reversal. A perpetrator-victim reversal would be… the end of security for the vast majority of countries. And it would be fatal for the future of the United States.

Baerbock’s declaration that a “perpetrator-victim reversal” (a Täteropferumkehr, I’m reliably informed) would be “fatal” to the U.S. was historic. It was accompanied by a promise that “as transatlantacists,” Europeans must “stand up for our own interests, our own values, and our own security.” Although new leaders are ready to take the reins in Germany, she said, there can be no waiting for the transfer of power. Immediately, “Germany must take the lead at this historic milestone.”

A few years ago Baerbock pleaded for patience with a British conservative who demanded to know why Germany wasn’t providing Leopard tanks to Ukraine.

Now, with Donald Trump cutting off weapons deliveries and shutting down access to ATACMS missiles, Baerbock’s speech is an expression of more enthusiastic European support for continued fighting.

The war in Ukraine is often called a proxy conflict between Russia and the West or Russia and the U.S., but it increasingly looks more like a fight between Baerbock’s “transatlanticists” and those who believe in “spheres of influence.” In preparing Racket’s accompanying “Timeline: The War in Ukraine,” I found both sides articulated this idea repeatedly.

In January, 2017, as he was preparing to relinquish his seat to Mike Pence, Joe Biden alluded to the recent election of Donald Trump in a speech at Davos. Describing the “dangerous willingness to revert to political small-mindedness” of “popular movements on both the left and right,” Biden explained:

We hear these voices in the West—but the greatest threats on this front spring from the distinct illiberalism of external actors who equate their success with a fracturing of the liberal international order. We see this in Asia and the Middle East… But I will not mince words. This movement is principally led by Russia.

Biden even then lumped Trump and Putin together, as enemies of the “liberal international order.” Russian counterparts like Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, spoke of a “post-West world order” where diplomatic relations would be based on “sovereignty” and the “national interests of partners.” These are two fundamentally irreconcilable worldviews. Was conflict inevitable, or could peace have held if Russia didn’t strike in 2022?

There’s no question who invaded whom. Hostilities began in February, 2022 with an angry speech by Vladimir Putin and bombs that landed minutes later in Ukraine. Little discussion of the “why” of the war took place in the West, however.

Phrases like “unprovoked aggression” became almost mandatory in Western coverage. Politico interviewed a range of experts and concluded that what Putin wanted was “a revanchist imperialist remaking of the globe to take control of the entire former Soviet space.” This diagnosis of Putin’s invasion as part of a Hitlerian quest for Lebensraum and a broader return to national glory might have merit, but it was also conspicuously uncontested. A differing article by University of Chicago professor John Mearshimer declaring the crisis “the West’s fault” made him, as The New Statesman just put it, “the world’s most hated thinker.” Few went there after.

Russians and Ukrainians don’t have the typical profiles of ancient warring tribes. They have a deeply intertwined history, with citizens of both countries retaining many of the same customs, jokes, and home remedies, while living in the same crumbling Soviet buildings, with fondness for the same cabbage soup and moonshine. There are huge numbers of mixed/bilingual families and many famous cultural figures (including my hero Nikolai Gogol) are claimed by both countries. They’ve fought before, but what jumped out reviewing this “Timeline” is how much it seemed that these old Slavic neighbors mostly fall out now over attitudes toward the West.

It’s hard looking back not to be struck by the superior tone of bodies like the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), whose “reviews” of Ukrainian and Russian elections often read like zoological descriptions of inferior species. Same with a tsk-tsking report by a mission of visiting IMF economists in 2013, who were appalled by Ukrainian energy subsidies that were among of the few popular remnants of Soviet life.

These imperious Western assessments of childlike Slavs, and the panic and shame of some local officials before such foreign judgments, recall familiar satires in Russian literature (The Government Inspector comes to mind). Nationalists in both countries balked at this “advice,” and by the late nineties some came to the conclusion that the cost of cooperation with the West was greater than the benefit. These dynamics accelerated after the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Maidan events of 2013-2014, which Russians still see as a West-backed coup and the beginning of the current war. Russians will say “first blood” was drawn in military operations against Donbass protesters around the same time. Those in the West will point at the 2014 annexation of Crimea as the beginning of territorial war.

The idea of Germany “taking the lead” in a war to secure the primacy of “transatlanticists” worries me more than trying to pronounce Täteropferumkehr. However, whether or not you think Baerbock is right, and a peace deal now would be a worthless “pause,” depends a lot on how you read this history. What do you think, and why?

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Related Topics:#MattTaibbi #RussiaUkraineWar AnnalenaBaerbock GermanyForiegnMinister RacketNews RussiaWestWar?Transatlantacists

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Is Russia at War With Ukraine, or With the West?

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No enthusiasm, no movement—just media spin trying to sell a Liberal comeback that doesn’t exist

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Business

Report: $128 million in federal grants spent on gender ideology

Published on March 9, 2025

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Bethany Blankley

More than $128 million of federal taxpayer money was spent on at least 341 grants to fund gender ideology initiatives under the Biden administration, according to an analysis of federal data by the American Principles Project.

In, “Funding Insanity: Federal Spending on Gender Ideology under Biden-Harris,” APP says it “found how the federal government has been spending hundreds of millions of YOUR MONEY on the Gender Industrial Complex!”

APP says it identified the grants by searching the USA Spending database. The data, which is available for free, is categorized by federal agency; notable grants are highlighted.

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department awarded the greatest amount of funding totaling nearly $84 million through 60 grants.

The Department of State awarded the greatest number of grants, 209, totaling more than $14 million, according to the data.

Other agencies awarding taxpayer-funded gender ideology grants include:

U.S. Agency for International Development, nearly $18 million through 8 grants;
National Endowment for the Humanities, more than $2.6 million through 20 grants;
Department of Justice, $1.9 million through three grants;
Institute of Museum and Library Services, $1.87 million through 13 grants;
Department of Education, $1.67 million through two grants;
Department of Agriculture, $1.6 million through five grants;
Department of the Interior, more than 1,000,000 awarded through two grants;
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, more than $548,000 through 4 grants;
Inter-American Foundation, more than $490,000 through two grants;
National Endowment for the Arts, $262,000 through 13 grants.

APP also identified 63 federal agency contracts totaling more than $46 million that promote gender ideology. They include total obligated amounts and the number of contracts per agency.

The majority, $31 million, was awarded through USAID. The next greatest amount of $4.4 million was awarded through the Department of Defense.

The Trump administration has taken several approaches to gut USAID, which has been met with litigation. The Department of Defense and other agencies are also under pressure to cut funding and reduce redundancies.

Notable grants include:

$3.9 million to Key Populations Consortium Uganda for promoting “the safety, agency, well-being and the livelihoods of LGBTQI+ in Uganda;”
$3.5 million to Outright International for “the Alliance for Global Equality and its mission to promote LGBTQI+ people in priority countries around the world;”
$2.4 million to the International Rescue Committee for “inclusive consideration of sexual orientation, gender identity, and sexual characteristics in humanitarian assistance;”
$1.9 million to the American Bar Association to “shield the LGBTQI+ population in the Western Balkans;”
$1.4 million for “economic empowerment of and opportunity for LGBTQI+ people in Serbia;”
$1.49 million to Equality for All Foundation, Jamaica to “Strengthen community support structures to upscale LGBT rights advocacy;”
More than $1 million to Bandhu Social Welfare Society to support gender diverse people in Bangladesh.

One of the grants identified by APP, which has since been cancelled, was $600,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to Southern University Agricultural & Mechanical College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to study menstruation and menopause, including in biological men.

According to a description of the grant summary, funding would support research, extension, and teaching to address “growing concerns and issues surrounding menstruation, including the potential health risks posed to users of synthetic feminine hygiene products (FHP);” advancing research in the development of FHP that use natural materials and providing menstrual hygiene management; producing sustainable feminine hygiene sanitary products using natural fibers; providing a local fiber processing center for fiber growers in Louisiana, among others.

It states that menstruation begins in girls at roughly age 12 and ends with menopause at roughly age 51. “A woman will have a monthly menstrual cycle for about 40 years of her life averaging to about 450 periods over the course of her lifetime,” but adds: “It is also important to recognize that transgender men and people with masculine gender identities, intersex and non-binary persons may also menstruate.”

All federal funding was allocated to state agencies through the approval of Congress when it voted to pass continuing resolutions to fund the federal government and approved agency budgets.

Crime

Reporter Exposes The Left’s $20 Billion Climate Slush Fund

Published on March 9, 2025

Todayville

From from undercover news report from Project Veritas

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Michael Bastasch

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — yes, the agency that’s supposed to make sure the air and water is clean — has been caught red-handed in what, at least on the outside, looks like one of the most brazen and high-dollar left-wing political payouts of the century.

In what Trump EPA described in a letter to the agency inspector general’s office as “an unprecedented arrangement,” Biden-era bureaucrats used private Citibank bank accounts to squirrel away $20 billion in taxpayer funds — that’s right, billion with a “b” — much of which is earmarked for lefty “pass-through” organizations the agency itself determined “lacked basic financial competency.”

This $20 billion was ostensibly meant for “green banks” to finance all sorts of nice-sounding “climate justice” and green energy projects — but instead it steered billions upon billions to groups deeply tied into the Democratic Party machinery.

For instance, the current and former chairmen of one of the pass-throughs, called the Coalition for Green Capital (CGC), are both Democratic Party donors, each cutting sizable checks to Kamala Harris’ ill-fated 2024 run. CGC was on track to get $5 billion from Biden’s EPA.

In another case, a left-wing consortium tied to Stacey Abrams’s voter mobilization group was awarded $2 billion. In its letter to the IG, Trump’s EPA noted the former administration itself determined these groups “lacked basic financial competency,” but earmarked the cash anyway.

So, here we have billions in taxpayer funds being directed to Democratic insiders and donors — paging DOGE! No wonder bureaucrats shoveled this money into a seemingly untouchable Citibank account in the waning days of the Biden administration.

One former Biden EPA official was reportedly caught on tape gleefully comparing it to “tossing gold bars off the Titanic.”

Taken together, this looks like the left-wing political payout of the century. Rarely is rank political patronage so nakedly on display.

The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) and FBI are currently asking tough questions of career EPA officials about these “gold bars,” but it’s unclear if the Trump EPA will be able to claw back any of the funds.

Accountability — after four years of virtually none of it — would not only be a victory for taxpayers, but also for good journalism.

It’s important to remember we’re only talking about this Biden EPA scandal because of the tireless efforts of one journalist. Long before the EPA inspector general, DOJ, the FBI, or even the Department of Government Efficiency, were alerted to this political payout, a reporter named Nick Pope was on the case.

Back in November 2023, when the Biden EPA announced it was handing out billions to so-called “green banks” in the name of “climate justice” and other high causes, Pope thought this might be the perfect cover for the Democratic Party to enrich itself at taxpayer expense.

No slouch, Pope dug in, and soon he saw smoke. Huge, billowing clouds of smoke. His first piece, published that same month, laid out in detail how the “green banks” on the shortlist for Biden EPA funding “all feature numerous individuals on their boards who work for influential organizations aligned with the Democratic Party or previously worked for Democratic administrations.”

But this was no one-off. Pope followed up when the EPA announced it was handing billions to the very groups he had just exposed as essentially being Democratic Party pass-throughs.

Government watchdog groups were put on alert. Congress eventually got involved, demanding answers from the Biden EPA about how something like this could even happen. Pope’s colleague Adam Pack left his own mark, first reporting about the billions going to the liberal consortium affiliated with Abrams’ get-out-the-vote efforts.

Even after the FBI got involved, Pope didn’t rest, pushing out yet another hard-hitting investigation exposing how heads of the groups slated to get billions in Biden bucks “collectively made hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal political donations to Democratic candidates and organizations in recent years.”

If Trump is actually able to claw back these “gold bars,” make sure to thank Nick Pope. Heck, even if we don’t get the money back, thank him anyway. Good journalism should be rewarded even if the ultimate outcome isn’t exactly what we wanted.

Besides, they don’t give out Pulitzers for exposing Democratic corruption, now do they?

While trust in media plummets, and the legacy press continues its liberal bootlicking, it’s even more important we support good journalists, like Pope and the rest of the Daily Caller News Foundation team, who are unafraid to report the truth and hold the powerful accountable.

Mike Bastasch is editor-in-chief of the Daily Caller News Foundation.