As 2023 draws to a close, it’s time to take stock. The most important story, however, requires us to look back beyond one year, since it is part of a long-term process. Such is the case with the war in Ukraine. To tell the story, we need to go back to the very beginning of 1990. The decade that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR was what John Mearsheimer called the « unipolar moment », a short-lived period when the United States believed itself to be the sole master of the world. This is what made possible 800 military bases in 150 countries, 900 billion US dollars in annual spending on the military-industrial complex, and sanctions imposed on some 40 countries representing a third of the world’s population. Since 1991, this has also led to more than 200 military interventions around the globe. NATO’s enlargement was also achieved despite a promise made to Russian representatives not to extend its presence in Europe « one inch » to the east.

2001 and the power of the Neo-Cons

At the turn of year 2000, and especially following the affront to America represented by the fall of the two World Trade Center towers, the American Neo-Cons saw their influence in the White House increase, and they were once again able to impose their agenda. This involved massive intervention in the Middle East and North-East Africa, to prevent nationalist leaders such as Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Bashar Al Assad in Syria from standing up to them. The destabilization of regimes, with or without instrumentalizing the popular revolts of the Arab Spring, would enable the United States to occupy part of these countries, as is still the case today in Iraq and Syria, or to impose regime change, as in Egypt and Iraq, and as was done temporarily in Afghanistan.

However, with the rise of China and Russia’s economic recovery, American domination of the world was put to the test. Already with a strong presence in the Far East, including numerous military bases and warships in the China Sea, it was now necessary to create as many obstacles as possible to China’s Silk Road project, and put the brakes on Russia’s expansion into Europe. A way had to be found to stop Gazprom selling cheap oil and gas. We also had to block the creation of a pipeline from Iran via Syria to Europe. These measures were all the more necessary as the United States, now self-sufficient in these materials, could itself become an exporter of fossil fuels. Even more importantly, it was important for the US to maintain Saudi Arabia as the most important foreign oil producer in the world, and the reason was that it was oil sold and paid in US dollars. Petrodollars played a major role in keeping the US dollar as the main international reserve currency.

Despite a promise not to enlarge, NATO had grown from sixteen to thirty member countries. The United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002. NATO military bases had already been set up in the former Warsaw Pact countries. Despite strong opposition from the Russian leadership, a promise was even made in 2008 to eventually include Georgia and Ukraine within NATO. Knowing that the extension of the EU and NATO into these two countries was a red line Russia could not allow anyone to cross, Neo-Con Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 plan to extend NATO to Ukraine, formulated in his book The Grand Chessboard, finally made sense.

The 2014 Coup d’État

To deepen their threatening presence and force Russia to react and compromise itself into a military intervention and replay the 1979 playbook of a failed Russian intervention in Afghanistan, the Americans resorted to their usual methods. Taking advantage of popular dissatisfaction with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, they fomented a coup d’état in 2014. John McCain, Victoria Nuland, Lesley Graham and Joe Biden took turns meeting the three opposition leaders in preparation for the coup.

Following this violent insurrection, which the United States supported, financed and supervised, Ukraine was prepared for war. The aim was to instrumentalize a neo-Nazi minority of Banderist inspiration, directly involved in the violence leading up to the coup. Once in power, they passed anti-Russian laws that provoked secessionist movements in the Donbass oblasts. Far-right militias, also Banderist, engaged in civil war with Russian-speaking minorities in the east, killing 14,000 people from both sides.

The neo-Nazi minority thus played a major role in the Maydan coup, in the Russophobic policies adopted by the Rada, and in the civil war in the Donbass. To restore order, the Minsk Agreements were adopted. Sponsored by France and Germany, they provided for the restoration of laws protecting the Russian language, as well as a constitutionalized administrative autonomy for the Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts. However, Ukraine has never had any intention of implementing them. By the very admission of Angela Merkel, François Hollande and Petro Poroshenko, these agreements, to which Russia adhered, were merely a means of buying time in the run-up to war. 

The Americans had installed anti-missile shields in Poland and Romania. In less than 24 hours, these could be transformed into launch pads for offensive missiles capable of reaching Moscow in a matter of minutes. This fact alone placed Russia in an extremely vulnerable position. The US response, that the shields were designed to protect Europe against Iran, was as contemptuous as it was misleading.

The Rand Corporation’s 2019 Project

The USA has implemented to the letter the Rand Corporation’s suggestions contained in the 2019 document (« Extending Russia »). To destabilize Russia, the document envisaged the possibility of imposing sanctions, supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine, withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty , interrupting the sale of Russian oil and gas to Europe, and ending the Nordstream project. The authors of the report warned, however, that this was an escalation that would lead to a Russian counter-escalation. It might also lead to Ukrainian deaths. Despite these warnings, the USA went ahead anyway. Presumably they did so precisely because counter-escalation would pave the way for sanctions. The idea was to weaken Russia by first forcing them to engage in a military operation in Ukraine. The Americans would then have ample justification to inflict a coup de grâce by imposing economic sanctions, excluding Russia from the Swift system, demanding that Europeans give up bying oil and gas from Russia, and destroying the Nordstream pipeline.

To comply with the scenario advocated by the Rand, the United States withdrew from the INF Treaty in 2019. They reiterated their desire to include Ukraine in NATO. The Ukrainian army was so fortified, equipped and trained that the country had become a de facto member of NATO. Neo-Nazi militias were integrated into the army. In 2021, Zelensky declared that he wanted to regain nuclear weapons. In December 2021, the US administration rejected Russia’s proposals for an agreement. Joe Biden, who had promised Vladimir Putin in December 2021 not to install nuclear weapons in Ukraine, withdrew this promise in January 2022. The Ukrainian army then moved towards the Donbass, ready to attack once again the secessionist republics. Putin realized he had no choice but to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.

February 24, 2022

The Russians invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022 with just 150,000 troops. To avoid getting bogged down in a protracted war, Putin chose to carry out only a Special Military Operation (SMO) with precise objectives (demilitarization and denazification). They wanted to bring about a rapid capitulation by Kiev. Without success, they were nevertheless able to start negotiations as early as March 2022. The negotiations were about to be concluded when the USA-UK intervened to put an end to them. The Russian army then chose to concentrate its intervention in the Donbass. Initially, it even refused to attack civilian infrastructures.

Russia’s restraint was seen as a sign of weakness on the part of the United States, which is why the latter stepped up its involvement in the war. Russia would have much preferred to deepen its economic development and consolidate its presence in Europe, rather than find itself involved in a military escalation. They would also have preferred to maintain a Russian minority in Ukraine capable of influencing the country’s political direction. The Russians didn’t want this war, but the United States forced them into it. Their aim was to weaken them by getting bogged down in a costly war, then by imposing sanctions, and finally by destroying the Nordstream gas pipeline.

These American maneuvers to neutralize, dominate and weaken Russia, using NATO as a Trojan horse, have finally taken over the Russian agenda. And yet, they went under the radar screen of the established Western media. Mainstream medias unanimously described the Russian intervention as an unprovoked aggression, but in fact we were clearly in the presence of a US-led proxy war made inevitable, and in which Russia found itself against its will.

Year 2023

Year 2023 brought about a head-on collision of minds with actively concealed realities. A mental universe formatted by the established media, built on myths, fantasies, fables, « alternative facts » and « narratives », not to mention the crass ignorance, self-delusion and complacency of an ill-informed population, shattered on the reefs of the real world. The shock was brutal, akin to a forced landing, and devastating for the story-telling into which the West has become accustomed to indulging itself.

Whereas the autumn of 2022 had enabled the Ukrainian army to make certain advances in Kharkov and Kherson and forced the Russians to retreat, year 2023 was one of lost illusions. Since recognition of Russian minorities proved impossible within Ukraine, the Russians annexed Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia. Russians took the time to consolidate their presence in these four territories. Moscow mobilized an army of over 400,000 men and set up new defense lines. The Ukrainian counter-offensive, announced and trumpeted on all sides, turned into a complete fiasco. Ukrainian losses were enormous. While the equipment supplied to Ukraine was becoming less and less available, Russia on the other hand was stepping up its military production. The myth of Russian military weakness had been shattered.

While some saw in these four annexations a Russian desire to reconquer the whole of Ukraine, or even to reconstitute the former Soviet Union, Russia has instead sought to consolidate its presence in eastern Ukraine. Forced to engage in a fratricidal confrontation with Ukraine, Russia nonetheless chose to wage first and foremost a war of attrition, not a war of territorial conquest. What is falsely interpreted by the West as a stalemate is in fact the position the Russians were adopting to convince Ukraine, NATO and the USA to respect Russia’s security and put an end to the conflict. The Russians chose to advance only if necessary to protect and secure the annexed territories and to force Ukraine to end the war.

It is now quite clear that the United States has made war inevitable in Ukraine and has dragged the Ukrainian people into a losing war. They used the neo-Nazis in power to wage a proxy war aimed at weakening Russia and stopping Gazprom’s sale of oil and gas to Europe. Russia’s involvement in Ukraine enabled the United States to destroy the Nordstream gas pipeline in retaliation. All that was needed was to make people believe that Russian entry into Ukraine was an unprovoked aggression motivated by the desire to expand its borders and reconstitute the Soviet Union. Public opinion, already inhabited by Russophobia, swallowed this propaganda very easily, but the masks are coming off.

Which « talking head » will recognize the U.S. propaganda and other fictions spouted in the mainstream media (and at their behest) during prime time? The long-awaited economic crisis has come true, but it is one affecting the West, not Russia. We are therefore also witnessing the end of the illusion that the Western economy could survive despite anti-Russian sanctions.

Conclusion

Russia has been engaged in an escalation created by the United States. It is the United States that is behind the tragic prolongation of this war. There is no possible comparison between the SMO and the American aggression in Iraq.

Geopolitical knowledge is required to understand that we are actually dealing with a Russian state having very reasonable security needs. How can Russia tolerate being surrounded by NATO military bases, when NATO is an offensive military organization hostile to Russia? Why should Russia be expected to tolerate the presence of missile defense system that can be transformed in less than 24 hours into launch pads for offensive weapons that can reach Moscow in few minutes?  Why should it accept the military presence in Ukraine of a NATO that wants to install nuclear missiles there? This would be tantamount to accepting a gun to the head.

Geopolitical knowledge allows us to understand that we are dealing with an American state seeking to neutralize its economic adversaries, and waging an economic war by other means. The US state want to stop its economic adversaries from setting up a multipolar, de-dollarized world that could have catastrophic effects on the financial situation of the United States.