conflict
Why the financial theft of the Ukraine war may finally be coming to an end
From LifeSiteNews
Ukraine has suffered so many losses that military conscription law has been altered to allow women to be called in to service.
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- For years, Ukraine was recognized as one of the most, if not “the” most, corrupt nation in Europe. The country is now struggling to rein in corruption as that is becoming a key hurdle to obtain more financial support.
- According to official aid trackers, the U.S. had sent $76.8 billion in military, financial, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine as of the end of July 2023. The European Union contributed another $85.1 billion in that same timeframe. In mid-October 2023, Biden proposed yet another $105 billion foreign aid package, $61 billion of which will go to Ukraine.
- According to U.S. officials, at least 70,000 of Ukraine’s 500,000 troops had been killed by mid-August 2023, and another 100,000 to 120,000 wounded. Another 9,614 Ukrainian civilians had also been killed as of September 10, 2023.
- The supply of cannon fodder is running so low that Ukraine recently updated its conscription law to include women. Women between the ages of 18 and 60 with medical backgrounds must register for military service as of October 1, 2023.
- Corruption may be a primary driver of this war. The American public being robbed and Ukraine drained of its youths while a relatively small number of corrupt individuals stuff their pockets with cash. American and European taxpayers are paying for the destruction of Ukraine and the elimination of huge numbers of its inhabitants, so that technocrat globalists and central bankers can then profit from the privatization and rebuilding of Ukraine into a “smart country” model for the rest of the world.
(Mercola) — For years, Ukraine was recognized as one of the most, if not “the” most, corrupt nation in Europe. It held on to that reputation all the way up to the day Russia invaded in late February 2022, at which point media worldwide suddenly started rewriting history.
As noted by Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, in a sober and clear-eyed article, published in April 2022:
Statements from U.S. and other Western officials, as well as pervasive accounts in the news media, have created a stunningly misleading image of Ukraine. There has been a concerted effort to portray the country… as a plucky and noble bulwark of freedom and democracy…
The notion that Ukraine was such an appealing democratic model in Eastern Europe that the country’s mere existence terrified Putin… is a myth… Even before the war erupted, there were ugly examples of authoritarianism in Ukraine’s political governance …
The neo-Nazi Azov Battalion was an integral part of President Petro Poroshenko’s military and security apparatus, and it has retained that role during Zelensky’s presidency…
The country is not a symbol of freedom and liberal democracy, and the war is not an existential struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. At best, Ukraine is a corrupt, quasi‐democratic entity with troubling repressive policies.
Given that sobering reality, calls for Americans to ‘stand with Ukraine’ are misplaced. Preserving Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity most certainly are not worth the United States risking war with a nuclear-armed Russia.
Indeed, while President Joe Biden kept sending tens of billions of American taxpayer dollars to Ukraine in the name of “defending democracy,” Zelensky banned all opposition parties in the country and blacklisted American politicians and journalists who questioned the U.S. involvement in the conflict. So much for democracy and democratic values.
Is Ukraine aid part of a money laundering scheme?
According to the Panama Papers released in 2016, which have been described as “a giant leak of more than 11.5 million financial and legal records [which] exposes a system that enables crime, corruption and wrongdoing,” Zelensky is likely just as corrupt as his predecessors, as he, his wife and several associates all own “hidden offshore assets.”
With that in mind, why is the U.S. sending billions of dollars to Ukraine without requiring any kind of accounting for where all this money is going? According to official aid trackers, the U.S. had sent $76.8 billion in military, financial, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine as of the end of July 2023.
The European Union contributed another $85.1 billion in that same timeframe. And, in mid-October 2023, Biden proposed yet another $105 billion foreign aid package, $61 billion of which will go to Ukraine.
The lack of oversight combined with the lack of Ukrainian progress in the conflict and the refusal to enter into peace negotiations raises suspicions that these aid packages may simply be another money laundering scheme like we saw with FTX. At least $178 million sent to Ukraine through the now-defunct FTX crypto exchange may have been laundered back to the Democratic Party in the U.S.
Ukraine still rife with corruption
Lately, mainstream media have started to revisit the issue of corruption in Ukraine, probably because public perception of corruption may undermine the entire operation.
For example, October 2, 2023, Politico reported receiving a “sensitive but unclassified” strategy paper in which Biden administration officials warn that “Perceptions of high-level corruption” could “undermine the Ukrainian public’s and foreign leaders’ confidence in the war-time government.” According to Politico:
The administration wants to press Ukraine to cut graft… But being too loud about the issue could embolden opponents of U.S. aid to Ukraine, many of them Republican lawmakers who are trying to block such assistance. Any perception of weakened American support for Kyiv also could cause more European countries to think twice about their role.
Ukrainian graft has long been a concern of U.S. officials… But the topic was deemphasized in the wake of Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion…
More than a year into the full-scale war, U.S. officials are pressing the matter more in public and private. National security adviser Jake Sullivan, for instance, met in early September with a delegation from Ukrainian anti-corruption institutions.
A second U.S. official familiar with the discussions confirmed to POLITICO reports that the Biden administration is talking to Ukrainian leaders about potentially conditioning future economic aid on ‘reforms to tackle corruption and make Ukraine a more attractive place for private investment.’
No such conditions have been proposed for military aid, however, which makes up the bulk of the money spent on Ukraine. Similarly, in mid-September 2023, Reuters reported that “billions of dollars of aid earmarked for Zelensky’s government as well as ambitions to join the European Union ride on Ukraine proving that it is serious about fighting corruption and embracing good governance.”
Zelensky, for his part, has increasingly tried to portray himself as a staunch corruption fighter, firing more than a dozen senior officials on corruption charges in January 2023.
In August he also fired all the heads of the draft offices across the country, after it became known that men were bribing their way out of military service by paying for medical exemptions. In September he also fired his minister of defense over allegations of corruption within the ministry. A Ukrainian Supreme Court justice was also arrested this past summer for taking bribes.
Yet, such mass firings and arrests of high-level individuals have done little to quell rumors and accusations that Zelensky still tolerates corruption within his inner circle, perhaps because it’s true. According to a top adviser to Zelensky, who spoke to a Time journalist off the record, “People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow.”
An expensive, unwinnable war
In a September 2023 meeting with U.S. senators, Zelensky pleaded for more funds saying “You’re giving money. We’re giving our lives.” Indeed, according to U.S. officials, at least 70,000 of Ukraine’s 500,000 troops had been killed by mid-August 2023, and another 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.
Another 9,614 Ukrainian civilians had also been killed as of September 10, 2023. So many Ukrainian youths have been thrown into the meat grinder that the average age of Ukrainian soldiers is now 43. Men up to the age of 60 face the risk of being drafted at any time.
The supply of cannon fodder is running so low that Ukraine recently updated its conscription law to include women. Women between the ages of 18 and 60 with medical backgrounds, including doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists and pharmacists, must register for military service as of October 1, 2023.
However, unlike their male counterparts, women are not barred from leaving the country unless they’re called in for active duty. Ukraine is also trying to get as many Ukrainians back from other countries as well. To that end, Norway recently announced it will pay EUR 1,500 in cash to any Ukrainian willing to go home.
Yet despite the enormous sums of money being poured into Ukraine, the weapons sent, the conscription of women and aged civilians, Ukraine is making no headway and have no conceivable way of winning. Even some of Zelensky’s closest aides are now saying he’s “deluding himself” thinking he can still somehow win.
NATO countries are running out of ammunition and warn of shortages, while Russia has ramped up its military hardware production more than tenfold. And, even if we continue to supply the weapons, Ukraine is running out of able-bodied fighters to use them.
Preplanned post-war profiteering
In the final analysis, one wonders whether corruption might actually be a primary driver of this war. Is the American public being robbed and Ukraine drained of its youths while a relatively small number of corrupt individuals stuff their pockets with cash?
It looks that way, especially in light of the news that BlackRock, which already owns most of the private assets in the world, is positioning itself to profit from a post-war Ukraine. As reported by Business Today in early May 2023:
President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, recently met with the management team of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management company, to discuss the creation of an investment fund aimed at restoring the country’s economy through public and private capital. Netzines have not taken well to the news with many criticizing Zelensky over the meeting.
A Twitter user said, ‘Taxpayers pay the war bills, private firms get the profits.’ ‘Ukraine being privatized and sold off to companies like Blackrock,’ another said.
According to the press service of the Office of the President, the parties discussed the details of the investment fund’s creation and implementation of large-scale business projects in Ukraine.
The U.S. is also keen on Ukraine privatizing its banks, which will open the door for central bankers to take over. And let’s not forget that the big picture plan for Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction is to turn the whole country into smart cities with “smart governments” run by artificial intelligence.
It’s also a testing ground for warfare-related AI technologies said to be “paving the way for AI warfare in the future,” although it doesn’t appear to provide them with much advantage at the moment.
In short, it appears American and European taxpayers are paying for the destruction of Ukraine and the elimination of huge numbers of its inhabitants, so that technocrat globalists and central bankers can then profit from the privatization and rebuilding of Ukraine into a “smart country” model for the rest of the world.
Reprinted with permission from Mercola.
Note from LifeSiteNews co-founder Steve Jalsevac: Cost, death, and injury estimates quoted from U.S. government sources in this article are not reliable since the Biden administration cannot fully admit the political disaster of their proxy war using Russia to bring about regime change in Russia, break up the world’s largest nation, and take control of its vast natural resources. Many alternative news sources have indicated Ukrainian deaths to be far higher, up to possibly 400-500,000, and U.S. and EU financial costs to also be far higher than admitted.
No one knows the real costs because audits of U.S. military expenses have proven to be impossible, Ukraine is the most corrupt, money-laundering European nation, and there are additional, multi-billion-dollar intelligence gathering/CIA costs related to the conflict never provided to the public. The conflict has also cost the West massive direct and indirect expenses, such as devastating economic fallout from the U.S.-directed blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines for which a current U.S. propaganda campaign is attempting to assign blame for that disaster on Ukraine operatives as the U.S. is engaging in a withdrawal of support for the failed war.
As well, the unprecedented level of failed Western sanctions against Russia have backfired on the West with the EU suffering the most to the tune of many billions of dollars and to an extent that is threatening the economic stability of the EU. Many other, especially poor developing nations, have also greatly suffered from the war and sanctions. Ukraine/NATO destruction of Russia’s main ammonia pipeline has deprived those nations of critically needed fertilizer and advanced the globalist ‘climate change’ campaign against fertilizer use.
The war, sanctions, and disastrous U.S./NATO killing of the very reasonable diplomatic peace settlement agreed to between Ukraine and Russia in March 2022, have resulted in far more harm to Ukraine and the West than to Russia. The formerly communist nation has astonishingly managed to benefit in many ways from having to resist NATO actions against it related to the conflict.
Russia has astonishingly maintained a healthy economy and gained numerous new nation-state allies representing a majority of the world’s population because of this terrible war conspiracy to increase Western economic hegemony and force the globalist UN/WEF/ Blackrock/Vanguard/State Street/Great Reset/New World Order agenda. LifeSiteNews, from the very beginning of the conflict, sensed this agenda and has been strongly encouraging peace negotiations in order to save Ukrainian lives.
We have never supported the Russian Special Military Operation. However, we have acknowledged that Russia has legitimate fears over broken U.S. promises related to the constant, unnecessary expansion of NATO along its borders. And there has been understandable, grave Russian concern over the horrific shelling and unprovoked killing of 14,000 Russian-speaking Ukrainian civilians by the Ukraine military since the U.S.-assisted violent, Ukraine regime change coup in 2014. We are simply uncompromisingly pro-life, pro-peace, and anti-globalist tyranny.
conflict
How Biden-Harris blocked a Russia-Ukraine peace deal
From LifeSiteNews
By Bob Marshall
While a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine seemed likely weeks into the war, we must remember when U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin admitted in April 2022 that America’s goal wasn’t peace, but weakening Russia.
Western media sources documented Ukraine and Russia peace proposals during the first weeks of the conflict in February 2022. Reuters noted, “Ukraine wants peace and is ready for talks with Russia, including on neutral status regarding NATO, Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters. … ‘If talks are possible, they should be held. If Moscow … want[s] to hold talks, including on neutral status, we are not afraid of this. … Our readiness for dialogue is part of our persistent pursuit of peace.’”
Reuters printed a follow-up 14 hours later: “The Russian and Ukrainian governments … signaled an openness to negotiations even as authorities in Kyiv urged citizens to help defend the capital from advancing Russian forces. … Ukraine and Russia will consult in the coming hours on a time and place for talks.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s spokesman said, “Ukraine was and remains ready to talk about a ceasefire and peace. … We agreed to the proposal of the President of the Russian Federation.” But as Reuters went on to note, “U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Russia’s offer was an attempt to conduct diplomacy ‘at the barrel of a gun,’ and that President Vladimir Putin’s military must stop bombing Ukraine if it was serious about negotiations.”
In Foreign Affairs, Fiona Hill and Angela Stent wrote: “According to multiple former senior U.S. officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and … Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”
The British Financial Times reported in March 2022: “Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has been the primary international mediator. … Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Zelensky told the Financial Times that any deal would involve: ‘the troops of the Russian Federation … leaving the territory of Ukraine’ captured since the invasion began on February 24. … Ukraine would maintain its armed forces but would be obliged to stay outside military alliances such as NATO and refrain from hosting foreign military bases on its territory.”
The Times report continued, “Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters … that neutrality for Ukraine based on the status of Austria or Sweden was a possibility. ‘This option is really being discussed now, and is one that can be considered neutral.’ … Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said that ‘absolutely specific wordings’ were ‘close to being agreed’ in the negotiations. … The putative deal also included … rights for the Russian language in Ukraine, where it is widely spoken though Ukrainian is the only official language. … The biggest sticking point remains Russia’s demand that Ukraine recognize its 2014 annexation of Crimea and the independence of two separatist statelets in the eastern Donbas border region. Ukraine … was willing to compartmentalise the issue.”
Ukrainska Pravda reported: “[T]he Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages. The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not. Johnson’s position was that the collective West … now felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined, and that here was a chance to ‘press him.’ Three days after Johnson left for Britain, Putin went public and said talks with Ukraine ‘had turned into a dead end.’”
U.S. changes war aims
Originally, NATO and the U.S. claimed that they were helping Ukraine simply so that it could retain its sovereignty and defend its territory. But U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced at an April 2022 press conference in Poland that the U.S. wants to see “Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” adding that with “the right equipment” and the “right support” Ukraine could win over Russia.
But logically, weakening Russia was significantly less likely to happen if the Ukraine war ended in April 2022. Pentagon officials met in mid-April in a classified meeting with eight large defense contractors including Raytheon Company and Lockheed Martin Corporation for discussion on resupplying weapons to Ukraine to prepare for a longer war with Russia.
Charles Freeman, past U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, noted that “from the very beginning the solution has been obvious, which is some variant of the Austrian State Treaty of 1955, meaning a guaranteed independence in return for … decent treatment of minorities inside the guaranteed state; and … neutrality for the guaranteed state.”
Prolonging the war for whatever reason is not a criteria for conducting a “just war.” Extending the war would mean many more grandchildren, children, husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, cousins, and civilians would be killed, wounded, or maimed among both Ukrainian and Russian casualties. Surely, the Russian and Ukrainian families and friends of those killed, wounded, or injured as well as owners of businesses destroyed in the war, when reflecting on their losses, would have thought that accepting the initial agreements were much better than what has happened since.
American columnist Pat Buchanan pointed out that “President Joe Biden almost hourly promises, ‘We are not going to war in Ukraine.’ Why would he then not readily rule out NATO membership for Ukraine, which would require us to do something Biden himself says we Americans, for our own survival, should never do: go to war with Russia?”
Russia-Ukraine accidental nuclear war
Putin warned that if the U.S. or NATO gave permission for Ukraine to use western missiles to strike deeply into Russia, that would radically change the current war because while choosing targets inside Russia can be done by Ukraine military personnel, getting the missiles to hit the long range Russian targets depends directly on western control guiding and directing the missiles. Putin said, “[I]t will mean nothing less than the direct participation of NATO countries, the United States, and European countries, in the war in Ukraine.”
Dmitry Peskov, Russia’s press representative, said that Putin’s statement was, “extremely clear, unambiguous and does not allow for any double readings. We have no doubt that it has reached its intended recipients.” Biden-Harris have backed away for now.
America was founded on the belief in Providence, which consists of the Creator acting within the sphere of human history. Similarly, many citizens of Austria, a Catholic country, placed their trust in Divine Providence by engaging in a multi-year prayer crusade to free Austria from the Soviet military occupation that occurred after World War II. It included the Catholic Rosary organized by the Austrian Franciscan priest, Fr. Petrus Pavlicek, who believed that, “Peace is a gift of God, not the work of politicians.”
The effort to secure Austrian neutrality succeeded on May 15, 1955 with representatives of the Soviet Union, Great Britain, the United States, and France signing a treaty under which all military occupation forces from WWII would withdraw from Austria if it would maintain neutrality. Austria has not joined NATO and has remained neutral to this day.
Unlike Biden-Harris, President Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance do not have to reverse themselves on the prosecution of the Russia-Ukraine war. Barron’s reported in October that Donald Trump told Ukraine President Zelenskyy that the war never needed to happen, and that The Wall Street Journal reported that about one million have been killed or wounded on both sides.
Our late President John F. Kennedy told the 1963 graduates at American University that nuclear powers must avoid confrontations where the choice is between, “either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy — or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
Rolling the dice on nuclear war especially when the United States has no defensive shield to stop ICBMs and no defense whatsoever against Russia’s 6,000mph hypersonic nuclear missiles is completely lacking in prudence.
When Americans voted on November 5, perhaps they considered which ticket had promised to “quickly” end the Russia-Ukraine war.
This article is reprinted with permission from the Family Research Council, publishers of The Washington Stand at washingtonstand.com.
conflict
How the Biden-Harris admin pushed Russia into war with Ukraine
From LifeSiteNews
By Bob Marshall
I was … bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.… Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.
In September, Vice President Kamala Harris stated several points at the White House as to how she would handle the Ukraine-Russia war: “I will work to ensure Ukraine prevails in this war.… Putin started this war, and … Putin could set his sights on Poland, the Baltic states, and other NATO Allies.… [S]ome in my country … demand that Ukraine accept neutrality, and would require Ukraine to forego security relationships with other nations. These proposals are the same of those of Putin.”
But these are the same Biden-Harris tactics and policies that provoked war.
Harris blames Russian President Vladimir Putin for the war. But the proximate source of the Russia-Ukraine conflict goes back beyond Putin to the breakup of the Soviet Empire and even earlier.
End of the Cold War
In late October 1989, the famed Berlin Wall as a dividing line between Socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) and West Germany, called a “wall of mistrust” by then former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, was crumbling.
Obviously, Gorbachev, with almost 400,000 troops in East Germany could have stopped the reunification. But Western officials gave Russian leaders assurances there was nothing to worry about. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker told Gorbachev that NATO expansion would proceed, “not one inch eastward.” The next day, West German chancellor Helmut Kohl assured Gorbachev, “NATO should not expand the sphere of its activity.”
The Los Angeles Times noted, “Less than a week later, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to begin reunification talks. No formal deal was struck, but from all the evidence, the quid pro quo was clear: Gorbachev acceded to Germany’s western alignment and the U.S. would limit NATO’s expansion.… NATO’S widening umbrella doesn’t justify Putin’s … incursions in Ukraine or Georgia. Still, the evidence suggests that Russia’s protests have merit and that U.S. policy has contributed to current tensions in Europe.”
Documents at George Washington University testify to agreements made between Western leaders and Russian officials at this time – that western nations would not expand NATO to the East.
Boris Yeltsin was the first president of the Russian Federation from 1991 to 1999, coming to office immediately after Premier Gorbachev’s resignation with the dissolution of the Soviet Empire. In 1995, President Yeltsin met with President Clinton in St. Catherine’s Hall at the Kremlin.
Yeltsin said to Clinton, “I want to get a clear understanding of your idea of NATO expansion, because now I see nothing but humiliation for Russia if you proceed. How do you think it looks to us if one bloc continues to exist while the Warsaw Pact has been abolished? It’s a new form of encirclement if the one surviving Cold War bloc expands right up to the borders of Russia. Many Russians have a sense of fear. What do you want to achieve with this if Russia is your partner, they ask. I ask it too. Why do you want to do this?”
When Clinton spoke to Yeltsin in 1995, there were 15 NATO member countries. When Clinton left office, there were 18.
Russia’s opposition to NATO expansion
In 2016, President Clinton’s former Defense Secretary Bill Perry said, “In the last few years, most of the blame can be pointed at the actions that Putin has taken. But in the early years … the United States deserves much of the blame.… Our first action … in a bad direction was when NATO started to expand, bringing in eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia.”
Former CIA Director Robert Gates, who also served as Secretary of Defense for President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, opposed the policy of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”
In June 1997, 50 former senators, retired military officers, diplomats, and foreign policy academics wrote to President Clinton about the problems and ill consequences of NATO expansion:
[T]he current U.S. led effort to expand NATO … is a policy error of historic proportions.… NATO expansion will decrease allied security and unsettle European stability …
In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition … [and] bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement.
In 1998, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman asked George Kennan, who devised the successful “containment” policy to prevent the Soviet Union from achieving its goal of world domination through open warfare, what he thought of the U.S. Senate ratifying NATO expansion even up to Russia’s border. Kennan replied:
[I]t is the beginning of a new Cold War.… There was no reason for this.… No one was threatening anybody else.… We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so.
I was … bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.… Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.
In 2007, Putin noted, “NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders … and what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact … NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on May 17, 1990 … said … ‘The fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?”
Fiona Hill points to 2007 when Putin “put the world, and certainly Europe, on notice that Moscow would not accept the further expansion of NATO.… In 2008 NATO gave an open door to Georgia and Ukraine.… Four months after NATO’s Bucharest Summit, there was the [Russian] invasion of Georgia. There wasn’t an invasion of Ukraine then because the Ukrainian government pulled back from seeking NATO membership.”
William Burns, now President Biden’s Central Intelligence director and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2008:
Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players … I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.
Putin told Burns in 2008: “No Russian leader could stand idly by in the face of steps toward NATO membership for Ukraine. That would be a hostile act toward Russia. We would do all in our power to prevent it.”
In 2015, the German Der Speigel magazine interviewed Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter, regarding the status of Ukraine in response to the abrupt change in the presidential leadership and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Brzezinski suggested that “Ukraine should be free to choose its political identity.… But … Russia should be assured credibly that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.”
More recently in 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported, “Pope Francis said that the ‘barking of NATO at the door of Russia’ might have led to the invasion of Ukraine.… The pope … deplored the brutality of the war.… Pope Francis … described Russia’s attitude to Ukraine as ‘an anger that I don’t know whether it was provoked but was perhaps facilitated’ by the presence in nearby countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.… ‘In Ukraine, it was other states that created the conflict.’”
The caution of these experienced statesmen and world leaders is lost on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
This article is reprinted with permission from the Family Research Council, publishers of The Washington Stand at washingtonstand.com.
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