Neocon Thirst for War – Part Nineteen

This is the ninety-sixth entry in our In Focus series identifying and exposing the tools that modern-day tyrants are using to thwart the will of We The People for power and control.

On February 24, 2022, Russian Federation forces crossed into eastern Ukraine and conflict in that region rages to this day. NATO, the Deep State and their allies in the Mainstream Media would have us believe that Russia's move constituted an unprovoked, unjustified, brutal invasion. On the other hand, President Putin has provided his reasons and today we continue to examine the credibility of those reasons. As more and more Americans become aware that we are lied to constantly by our government, we realize that 'the narrative' which is force-fed to us is often what they want us to believe, rather than what is true.

President Putin's Justifications

When the operation was launched on February 24, President Putin issued a short statement explaining his justification, stressing Russia's need."to protect people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide ... for the last eight years". He also sought."to bring to court those who committed numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation".

Two years later on February 9, 2024, journalist Tucker Carlson traveled to the Kremlin to interview President Putin, who again explained why Russia calls it a."special military operation".in Ukraine. President Putin explained Ukraine's policies repressing and violently attacking the ethnic Russian majority in Ukraine's Donbas region. This history is confusing and disputed, but was not widely reported in America. Yet it is essential to put this conflict into context.

Ukrainian Coups Supported by the US

The Ukrainian problem most certainly did not begin in February 2022. The United States has long meddled in Ukraine, including sponsoring two coups. The first coup, the so-called Orange Revolution, was in 2004. Scott Horton's book.Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine.from Libertarian Institute: 2024. provides an elaborately detailed account.

In the 2004 Ukrainian revolution, the George W. Bush (GWB) administration supported Viktor Yushchenko as the pro-Western candidate for Ukrainian President against Viktor Yanukovych who advocated closer ties to Russia. America spent more than $65 million funneled through NGOs (non government agencies) such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, the Carnegie Foundation, the Freedom House Foundation and others. USAID was also deeply involved. His book at pages 174-75.

The GWB administration brought Yushchenko to Washington and Neocon champions like Senators John McCain and Richard Lugar, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, General Wesley Clark, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell served as cheerleaders for Yushchenko. When pro-Russian Yanukovych overcame America's meddling and won the first round of balloting, Secretary Powell and Senator Joe Biden demanded a new vote. It took three rounds of balloting before the Bush Neocons got what they wanted, as Yushchenko won the third round. Page 177 in the book.

Yanukovych was actually declared the victor in a subsequent presidential election in 2010, triggering the U.S. to sponsor yet another coup called the 'Maidan Revolution' in 2014. The CIA-encouraged riots, termed the Euromaidan protests, occurred between November 2013 and February 2014. The protests began when President Yanukovych tried to steer a neutral path between Russia and Europe by refusing to sign an agreement with the European Union. The Deep State propaganda machine must have been working overtime as it labeled the Euromaidan Revolution as 'the Revolution of Dignity'.

A leaked phone call indicated that at least some of the officials in the new government were chosen not by Ukrainians, but by uber-Neocon American State Department official Victoria Nuland.. the book at 261-63. Again, Neocon politicians helped to seal the deal, as Senator McCain this time went to Ukraine to headline the protests...page 259. After the coup succeeded, Condoleezza Rice wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post, taking a Neocon victory lap... page 277.

After a transitional period, solidly pro-Western Petro Poroshenko assumed the Presidency on June 7, 2014, beginning a period of increased pressure on ethnic Russians in Ukraine, a policy desperately wanted by American and other Western Neocons.

Ukrainian Repression of Ethnic Russians

Ukraine is a polyglot country, with several well-established ethnic groups all speaking their own languages, with the dominant non-Ukrainian group being Russian. The Ukrainian Constitution has protected the speaking of the Russian language. Fully 17 percent of Ukraine's 45 million population is ethnic Russians.  In July 2012, Russian was spoken in 13 out of 27 regions in Ukraine. The history of Ukraine's treatment of minorities is complicated; however, the constitutional protection and a similar statute began to be eroded in 2014. Many sources, including a scholarly paper entitled 'Ethnocultural minority identities at war in Ukraine and beyond' explains how the Ukrainian government increased pressure on ethnic Russians to achieve the 'Ukrainisation' of the entire country.

Donbas Conflict and the Minsk Accords

In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, perhaps encouraging ethnic Russians in the Donbas to openly resist the Ukrainian government's moves against them and open conflict existed in early 2014. There is disagreement as to whether Russia helped foment and support the independence movement in the Donbas area or the degree that it was an indigenous response to provocation. However, there is no question that the ethnic Russians in this area were under attack from the Ukrainian government.

Western countries, led by France and Germany, attempted to arrange a ceasefire agreement in the Donbas area, known as the Minsk agreements. Minsk is the capital of Belarus, where the agreements were signed.  Minsk I was signed in September 2014 and Minsk II in February 2015. Importantly, the agreements were not signed by the heads of either Russia or Ukraine. The rather vague terms of these agreements were later disputed and the ceasefire soon fell apart, giving rise to countless academic papers being written seeking to explain why it failed. The plan in Minsk II to conduct elections in Donetsk and Luhansk was never fulfilled.

Continued Ukrainian Pressure on Ethnic Russians

In September 2017, President Poroshenko signed a Law on Education 'making Ukrainian the required language of study in state schools from the fifth grade on'. This law primarily disadvantaged Russians who attended the 581 Russian language schools in Ukraine. This law was also resisted by Hungarians, Poles and Romanians, but each of those nationalities makes up less than 1 percent of the population. In 2019, a Law on State Language was passed, further restricting minority languages and three years later:

The 2022 Law on National Minorities (Nationalities) required that all public information, including signs, announcements and captions, must be in Ukrainian with limited exceptions. 

They did the same in Quebec Canada; first it was French on the Corn Flakes boxes, then it became no English at all anywhee in Quebac. It was a communist divide of Canada, the way the communists always work. 

National and regional media must broadcast 90% of their content in Ukrainian and private publishing houses must produce half of their books in Ukrainian. For cultural and artistic events, translation into Ukrainian must be available if at least one participant so requests. Similarly, elections must be conducted in Ukrainian, inclusive of campaigning materials.

Ukrainian Attacks on Ethnic Russians in Donbas

President Poroshenko's moves against ethnic Russians were not limited to language, likely under direction from his U.S. sponsors. Ukraine launched military attacks against ethnic majority Russian separatists in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, beginning a reign of terror that continued after President Volodymyr Zelensky became President in May 2019. These attacks continued for almost eight years before Russia felt obligated to intervene. In 2018, before it was seemingly required that all American media outlets be faithfully pro-Ukraine, the Washington Post described the brutal Ukrainian attacks on the Donbas region of its own country as a 'war'.

The fighting in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region is entering its fifth year. More than 10,000 people have been killed in this persistent conflict; 2,800 were civilians. Nearly two million people have been internally displaced or put at risk if they remain in their homes. Today, the Donbas war is among the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with frequent attacks occurring from both sides across the oblasts (provinces) of Donetsk and Luhansk. Before the war, this compact, heavily urbanized and industrialized region held nearly 15 percent of Ukraine's population (6.6 million) and generated 16 percent of its gross domestic product. Now it’s a war zone. And our research has documented that, as its hospitals and medical facilities are destroyed, perhaps even targeted, its citizens are being deprived of basic health-care services, echoing Syria's similar if larger crisis.

Shortly before the Russians acting in February 2022, the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine broke away from Ukraine. These two oblasts were renamed the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic and leaders of each (Denis Pushilin and Leonoid Pasechnik) called on President Putin to 'render aid in repelling the military aggression of the Ukrainian regime'. Pushilin's letter to Putin stated that.'Ukrainian aggression is increasing', citing the alleged increase in artillery bombardment targeting critical civilian infrastructure and reportedly leaving 300,000 people without water after the republic's main waterworks were hit. He claimed Ukraine was conducting genocide.  Pasechnik's letter to Putin noted that over 51,000 people have been evacuated from Luhansk so far, more than half of them children. 

Americans can decide for themselves whether these actions by Ukraine against ethnic Russians in the Donbas justified Putin's claim that there had been years of bullying and genocide and crimes against civilians and whether they justified the Special Military Operation, but they certainly provide valuable context to assess who, truly, was the aggressor.