Missed opportunities and tragedies: the untold story of the Ukraine conflict in the form of a short chronicle
And why bloodshed could have been avoided, but ultimately was not intended to be.
In 1990, the slogan was: “Not one inch eastward!”. The slogan refers to assurances given by Western politicians to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during negotiations on German reunification in 1990. US Secretary of State James Baker coined this phrase to reassure Gorbachev that NATO would not extend its sphere of influence eastwards beyond Germany. Reality check: Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic join NATO in 1999, followed by seven more countries in 2004: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Albania and Croatia become members in 2009. Montenegro joins NATO in 2017. North Macedonia joins in 2020, Finland in 2023. Sweden also becomes a member in 2024.
2007: In a speech at the Munich Security Conference, President Vladimir Putin strongly opposes the further eastward expansion of NATO and the possible membership of Ukraine in the alliance. He argues that NATO's actions represent a direct threat to Russia's security and stability. Putin emphasizes that Russia will take the “necessary measures” to protect its national interests and maintain regional security. His speech is ridiculed in the West instead of being taken seriously.
Preparing the ground for a coup early on
1991 to the end of 2013: According to Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland, who is responsible for Ukraine in the US State Department, the USA spends five billion dollars on so-called civil, political and “media projects” in Ukraine, which is probably one of the biggest psy-ops in recent history (not including the budgets for military, paramilitary or covert actions and the money from private oligarch NGOs such as those of Soros, Omidyar, Gates and Thiel). The ground has been prepared for a political upheaval.
In 2014, following controlled mass demonstrations supported and promoted by the West, the democratically elected Ukrainian government is overthrown by a violent, US-backed coup in Kiev and replaced by an ultra-nationalist, Russophobic Bandera regime. Its military, police and secret services are infiltrated by neo-Nazis, who shortly afterwards begin bombing the Russian-speaking population in the east, killing thousands of civilians. The Ukrainian government forces are using cluster munitions in densely populated areas such as the Donbas, for example in the city of Donetsk, as Human Rights Watch (HRW) also reported. HRW added that “due to the indiscriminate nature of the weapon, the use of cluster munitions in populated areas violates the laws of war and may constitute a war crime.” In parallel and as a military response, Russia annexed the - ethnically majority Russian - Crimea.
The Western mainstream media generally prefer not to report on Kiev's war against the Russian-speaking population in the Donbass. CNN was an exception at the time, when it reported on an airstrike on civilians: “The carnage was sudden, unexpected. This was the middle of a city, a building adjacent to a leafy square, where civilians walked and worked. Eight people were killed, five women and three men, according to the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic; the authorities in Kiev reported the same tally”.
Also in 2014, Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) signed the Minsk -I agreement brokered by France and Germany, which essentially provided for an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line in eastern Ukraine by the Kiev regime. However, the regime is not adhering to the agreement - and is continuing its aggression against the population of the Donbas unabated.
With their old ideals from the 1930s, the new heroes of Ukrainian white supremacy stand for a future in a “cleansed” Ukraine, free of Russian speakers, Jews and other “inferior” minorities. Throughout Ukraine, squares, streets and stadiums are being renamed after criminals who murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles and other minorities in the last century. They are the official national heroes of today's Ukraine. The veneration of these bloodstained heroes is largely ignored, downplayed or glossed over by Western politicians and their media partners. (Screenshot; headline Ynet News)
The Minsk II agreement signed by the same parties in February 2015 also stipulates an immediate and comprehensive ceasefire in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east, as well as the withdrawal of heavy weapons and the establishment of security zones. It also provides for constitutional reforms that grant self-government to the areas inhabited by Russian-speaking people in the Donbas region and thus better protect their rights - including the exercise of the Russian language and culture.
Unlike in Ukraine, children from ethnic minorities (Uyghurs) in the Chinese province of Xinjiang are taught their mother tongue at school (alongside courses in Mandarin), and the use of their language is not restricted. On the contrary, the Uyghur language is present everywhere: on banknotes, official buildings, stores, public transportation and streets (see picture: Uyghur written language over Mandarin). While Kiev passed laws aimed primarily at eradicating the Russian language and culture, Beijing passed laws to preserve the minority languages. Paradoxically, the collective West loudly accuses China of “cultural genocide”, while in the case of Ukraine, where cultural genocide is real, it has spread a cloak of silence over it. (Image: Felix Abt)
Kiev is not complying with this agreement either. As former Ukrainian President Poroshenko, former German Chancellor Merkel and French President Hollande, who all took part in the negotiations, admitted years later, it merely serves to buy time and prepare Ukraine for an apparently planned proxy war against Russia.
December 2021: Russia, which feels encircled and threatened by NATO, reiterates its call for a security architecture in Europe. In his letter to the US President and the NATO Secretary General, President Putin essentially demands that there should be no further NATO expansion: In particular, a ban on Ukraine and other former Soviet states such as Georgia joining NATO. Putin's negotiation offer is entitled “Agreement on measures to ensure the security of the Russian Federation and the member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization” and can still be read publicly on the homepage of the Russian Foreign Ministry (as access is blocked in the EU, it must be read with a VPN). But the West does not want to negotiate. As a result, Putin's initiative remains unanswered and Russia's security concerns are once again completely ignored.
Russian security concerns continually ignored
February 2022: After Washington and NATO have once again ignored Russian security concerns, Russia launches its “special military operation” in the Donbas. The main military objective is to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and to put an end to the slaughter of the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine, which Russia feels obliged to protect. It is also about preventing the expected NATO missiles along the 2,000-kilometer common border with Russia, which could reach and wipe out Moscow and other Russian cities within minutes, which is seen as an existential threat in Russia.
March 2022: Moscow, which originally did not want the war, actively contacts Kiev to make peace. Peace negotiations take place in Istanbul, Turkey, leading to a peace agreement initialed by the parties and to be signed by the presidents of Ukraine and Russia. Essentially, Ukraine agrees to a neutral status - meaning that it will not become a member of NATO - and Russia agrees not to take over any territories from Ukraine. The status of Crimea is left open for later negotiations.
The sabotaged peace
April 9, 2022: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson exerts pressure on President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev on behalf of NATO not to sign the initialed peace agreement with Russia. Zelensky relents and decides to continue and escalate the war with NATO support “for as long as it takes”.
In an interview with the Ukrainian news agency “1+1”, Davyd Arakhamia, leader of the parliamentary group of Zelensky's party in the Ukrainian parliament, who was the main negotiator at the peace talks in Istanbul, clarifies that - literally - “Johnson advised Zelensky to just keep fighting!”
The former first deputy foreign minister of Ukraine, Oleksandr Chalyi, was a member of the Ukrainian negotiating delegation in Istanbul. He confirms in this video from minute 28:29: “We managed to find a real compromise... Putin really wanted to reach a peaceful agreement with Ukraine.”
October 2022: President Zelensky issues a decree banning negotiations with Russia.
The war will probably end in 2025 - one way or another
July 2023: The US President and other NATO heads of state and government agree at the NATO summit in Vilnius to accelerate Ukraine's path to membership. The USA and other Western heads of state and government had already decided years earlier that Ukraine should become a member of NATO (thus finally crossing Russia's “red line”).
Current status: Ukraine's decree banning negotiations with Russia is still in force. Instead of a diplomatically negotiated conflict resolution, the war, which could easily have been avoided, continues to this day - as significant parts of NATO still believe they can win their proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
President Biden's successor Donald Trump, one of the few realistic Western leaders, wants to end the war, which was as avoidable as it is unwinnable. Most informed observers now assume that the war will end either diplomatically or on the battlefield (by the advancing Russian forces) in 2025.
If the allegations of large-scale massacres of Russian civilians by the Ukrainian armed forces in the Russian region of Kursk prove to be true, Russia's stance is likely to harden considerably once again - with unforeseeable consequences. There are already an increasing number of media reports in Russia stating: “Orders were given to kill people who spoke Russian. AFU (Ukrainian) commanders in the Kursk region organized the genocide along linguistic lines, experts say.”
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This is another piece written for Eastern Angle, the Asian Internet Magazine
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Deliberately Ignored By Western Politicians And Media: Ukraine's Old And New National Heroes Are Bloodthirsty Nazi Criminals
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Felix Abt is an entrepreneur, author and travel blogger, living in Asia.
With his articles, he tries to make a modest contribution to debunking the omnipresent propaganda of the mainstream media for those who don’t have the time (and that’s most people) to do the research to see through it.
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