The Real History of the War in Ukraine: A Chronology of Events

This is one of the best articles on the history of the Ukraine war.

By none other than Globalist Jeffrey Sachs!!?

Why the man is saying that beats me but the truth is the truth and at least in this matter he’s nailed it I think.

Given its tremendous prophetic significance I think we all should try to understand the geopolitical reasons that led to this tragic unnecessary war.

And no! Looking at these facts does NOT mean we think Russia is paradise on earth or that Putin is the second coming.

The Real History of the War in Ukraine: A Chronology of Events and Case for Diplomacy

The American people urgently need to know the true history of the war in Ukraine and its current prospects. Unfortunately, the mainstream media ––The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, MSNBC, and CNN –– have become mere mouthpieces of the government, repeating US President Joe Biden’s lies and hiding history from the public.

Biden is again denigrating Russian President Vladimir Putin, this time accusing Putin of a “craven lust for land and power,” after declaring last year that “For God’s sake, that man [Putin] cannot stay in power.” Yet Biden is the one who is trapping Ukraine in an open-ended war by continuing to push NATO enlargement to Ukraine. He is afraid to tell the truth to the American and Ukrainian people, rejecting diplomacy, and opting instead for perpetual war.

Expanding NATO to Ukraine, which Biden has long promoted, is a U.S. gambit that has failed. The neocons, including Biden, thought from the late 1990s onward that the US could expand NATO to Ukraine (and Georgia) despite Russia’s vociferous and long-standing opposition. They didn’t believe that Putin would actually go to war over NATO expansion.

Yet for Russia, NATO enlargement to Ukraine (and Georgia) is viewed as an existential threat to Russia’s national security, notably given Russia’s 2,000-km border with Ukraine, and Georgia’s strategic position on the eastern edge of the Black Sea. U.S. diplomats have explained this basic reality to U.S. politicians and generals for decades, but the politicians and generals have arrogantly and crudely persisted in pushing NATO enlargement nonetheless.

At this point, Biden knows full well that NATO enlargement to Ukraine would trigger World War III. That’s why behind the scenes Biden put NATO enlargement into low gear at the Vilnius NATO Summit. Yet rather than admit the truth – that Ukraine will not be part of NATO – Biden prevaricates, promising Ukraine’s eventual membership. In reality, he is committing Ukraine to ongoing bloodletting for no reason other than U.S. domestic politics, specifically Biden’s fear of looking weak to his political foes. (A half-century ago, Presidents Johnson and Nixon sustained the Vietnam War for essentially the same pathetic reason, and with the same lying, as the late Daniel Ellsberg brilliantly explained.)

Ukraine can’t win. Russia is more likely than not to prevail on the battlefield, as it seems now to be doing. Yet even if Ukraine were to break through with conventional forces and NATO weaponry, Russia would escalate to nuclear war if necessary to prevent NATO in Ukraine.

Throughout his entire career, Biden has served the military-industrial complex. He has relentlessly promoted NATO enlargement and supported America’s deeply destabilizing wars of choice in Afghanistan, Serbia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Ukraine. He defers to generals who want more war and more “surges,” and who predict imminent victory just ahead to keep the gullible public onside.

Moreover, Biden and his team (Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland) seem to have believed their own propaganda that Western sanctions would strangle the Russian economy, while miracle weapons such as HIMARS would defeat Russia. And all the while, they have been telling Americans to pay no attention to Russia’s 6,000 nuclear weapons.

Ukrainian leaders have gone along with the US deception for reasons that are hard to fathom. Perhaps they believe the US, or are afraid of the US, or fear their own extremists, or simply are extremists, ready to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to death and injury in the naïve belief that Ukraine can defeat a nuclear superpower that regards the war as existential. Or possibly some of the Ukrainian leaders are making fortunes by skimming from the tens of billions of dollars of Western aid and arms.

The only way to save Ukraine is a negotiated peace. In a negotiated settlement, the US would agree that NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine while Russia would agree to withdraw its troops. Remaining issues – Crimea, the Donbas, US and European sanctions, the future of European security arrangements – would be handled politically, not by endless war.

Russia has repeatedly tried negotiations: to try to forestall the eastward enlargement of NATO; to try to find suitable security arrangements with the US and Europe; to try to settle inter-ethnic issues in Ukraine after 2014 (the Minsk I and Minsk II agreements); to try to sustain limits on anti-ballistic missiles; and to try to end the Ukraine war in 2022 via direct negotiations with Ukraine. In all cases, the US government disdained, ignored, or blocked these attempts, often putting forward the big lie that Russia rather than the US rejects negotiations. JFK said it exactly right in 1961: “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” If only Biden would heed JFK’s enduring wisdom.

To help the public move beyond the simplistic narrative of Biden and the mainstream media, I offer a brief chronology of some key events leading to the ongoing war.

January 31, 1990. German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich-Genscher pledges to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that in the context of German reunification and disbanding of the Soviet Warsaw Pact military alliance, NATO will rule out an “expansion of its territory to the East, i.e., moving it closer to the Soviet borders.”

February 9, 1990. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III agrees with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that “NATO expansion is unacceptable.”

June 29 – July 2, 1990. NATO Secretary-General Manfred Woerner tells a high-level Russian delegation that “the NATO Council and he [Woerner] are against the expansion of NATO.”

Cont. below

 

July 1, 1990. Ukrainian Rada (parliament) adopts the Declaration of State Sovereignty, in which “The Ukrainian SSR solemnly declares its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs and adheres to three nuclear free principles: to accept, to produce and to purchase no nuclear weapons.”

August 24, 1991. Ukraine declares independence on the basis of the 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty, which includes the pledge of neutrality.

Mid-1992. Bush Administration policymakers reach a secret internal consensus to expand NATO, contrary to commitments recently made to the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation.

July 8, 1997. At the Madrid NATO Summit, Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic are invited to begin NATO accession talks.

September-October, 1997. In Foreign Affairs (Sept/Oct, 1997) former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski details the timeline for NATO enlargement, with Ukraine’s negotiations provisionally to begin during 2005-2010.

March 24 – June 10, 1999. NATO bombs Serbia. Russia terms the NATO bombing “a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter."

March 2000. Ukrainian President Kuchma declares that "there is no question of Ukraine joining NATO today since this issue is extremely complex and has many angles to it.”

June 13, 2002. The US unilaterally withdraws from the Anti-Ballistic Weapons Treaty, an action which the Vice-Chair of the Russian Duma Defense Committee characterizes as an “extremely negative event of historical scale.”

November-December 2004. The “Orange Revolution” occurs in Ukraine, events that the West characterizes as a democratic revolution and the Russian government characterizes as a Western-manufactured grab for power with overt and covert US support.

February 10, 2007. Putin strongly criticizes the U.S. attempt to create a unipolar world, backed by NATO enlargement, in a speech to the Munich Security Conference, declaring: “I think it is obvious that NATO expansion … represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?”

February 1, 2008. US Ambassador to Russia William Burns sends a confidential cable to U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, entitled “Nyet means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines,” emphasizing that “Ukraine and Georgia's NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region.”

February 18, 2008. The US recognizes Kosovo independence over heated Russian objections. The Russian Government declares that Kosovo independence violates “the sovereignty of the Republic of Serbia, the Charter of the United Nations, UNSCR 1244, the principles of the Helsinki Final Act, Kosovo’s Constitutional Framework and the high-level Contact Group accords."

April 3, 2008. NATO declares that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO.” Russia declares that “Georgia’s and Ukraine’s membership in the alliance is a huge strategic mistake which would have most serious consequences for pan-European security.”

August 20, 2008. The US announces that it will deploy ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems in Poland, to be followed later by Romania. Russia expresses strenuous opposition to the BMD systems.

January 28, 2014. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt plot regime change in Ukraine in a call that is intercepted and posted on YouTube on February 7, in which Nuland notes that “[Vice President] Biden’s willing” to help close the deal.

February 21, 2014. Governments of Ukraine, Poland, France, and Germany reach an Agreement on settlement of political crisis in Ukraine, calling for new elections later in the year. The far-right Right Sector and other armed groups instead demand Yanukovych’s immediate resignation, and take over government buildings. Yanukovych flees. The Parliament immediately strips the President of his powers without an impeachment process.

February 22, 2014. The US immediately endorses the regime change.

March 16, 2014. Russia holds a referendum in Crimea that according to the Russian Government results in a large majority vote for Russian rule. On March 21, the Russian Duma votes to admit Crimea to the Russian Federation. The Russian Government draws the analogy to the Kosovo referendum. The US rejects the Crimea referendum as illegitimate.

March 18, 2014. President Putin characterizes the regime change as a coup, stating: “those who stood behind the latest events in Ukraine had a different agenda: they were preparing yet another government takeover; they wanted to seize power and would stop short of nothing. They resorted to terror, murder and riots.”

March 25, 2014. President Barack Obama mocks Russia “as a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors — not out of strength but out of weakness,”

February 12, 2015. Signing of Minsk II agreement. The agreement is unanimously backed by the UN Security Council Resolution 2202 on February 17, 2015. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel later acknowledges that the Minsk II agreement was designed to give time for Ukraine to strengthen its military. It was not implemented by Ukraine, and President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that he had no intention to implement the agreement.

February 1, 2019. The U.S. unilaterally withdraws from the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty. Russia harshly criticizes the INF withdrawal as a “destructive” act that stoked security risks.

June 14, 2021. At the 2021 NATO Summit in Brussels, NATO reconfirms NATO’s intention to enlarge and include Ukraine: “We reiterate the decision made at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance.”

September 1, 2021. The US reiterates support for Ukraine’s NATO aspirations in the “Joint Statement on the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership.”

December 17, 2021. Putin puts forward a draft “Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Security Guarantees,” based on non-enlargement of NATO and limitations on the deployment of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.

January 26, 2022. The U.S. formally replies to Russia that the US and NATO will not negotiate with Russia over issues of NATO enlargement, slamming the door on a negotiated path to avoid an expansion of the war in Ukraine. The U.S. invokes NATO policy that “Any decision to invite a country to join the Alliance is taken by the North Atlantic Council on the basis of consensus among all Allies. No third country has a say in such deliberations.” In short, the US asserts that NATO enlargement to Ukraine is none of Russia’s business.


Continue here https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/history-of-war-in-ukraine

 

Not an expert on Sachs, but IIRC he's a Globalist. So some Globalists are Pro-Russia. What does that tell us? Anyway, Ukraine's Cause is Morally Righteous. I mean, Putin invaded and tried to take Kyiv for crying out loud. If someone invaded your Country and tried to take its Capital, would we or would we not fight back? I would, and I'm guessing others would too. So, to me, it's clear, Russia is blatantly violating Just War here. As for the past history, Finland and Sweden joined NATO because they felt threatened by Russia. No one joins NATO at Gunpoint - at least not NATO's Gunpoint, maybe Russia's though. NATO Membership is by Common Consent of 30+ Countries. Ukraine wants to join NATO for the same reason Finland and Sweden wanted to - because they feel threatened by Russia. If Russia works for Peaceful Relations with its neighbors, Countries will stop applying to join NATO.

Anyway, the Falcons (F-16s) are coming. I'd say there's a Good Chance the War ends in around 2-3 years now and does not break out into a World War. When Putin loses, he will go back home. The US did the same in Afghanistan, and then Russia did the same in Afghanistan also much earlier

Source: "OSLO, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Norway has decided to donate F-16 combat aircraft to Ukraine for its battle against Russia's invasion, Norwegian broadcaster TV2 reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources.

TV2 did not say how many jets Norway would provide.

The Norwegian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

If confirmed, Norway would become the third nation - after the Netherlands and Denmark - to announce donations of U.S.-made F-16 jets to Ukraine."

From: https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...f-16-jets-ukraine-broadcaster-tv2-2023-08-24/

 

he wants to disguise himself as the "Great Humanitarian"

 

I just want to say, the boko haram war in nigeria-kenya has a higher death toll and forced relocation toll than ukraine war...but no one cares because big gas resources aren't at play there

 

This is Bad. While I'm Pro-Nato generally, one of the Clear Defects of the Alliance is its Euro-Centric Focus. Nato should include Global South Countries that are Democratic and Peaceful - against those that are Autocratic and not - if it wants to have credibility as a Multilateral Alliance, not to mention widespread support. When African Countries see European Countries seriously concerned about their problems, they'll reciprocate and do the same for local European problems. Most likely not before then. That's why support for NATO is fairly low in the Global South. Still, all that notwithstanding, NATO has prevented World War III in Europe and helped win the Cold War without a Hot War. It is an ok Alliance, but needs some Improvements and Modernization imo. It cannot discriminate based on Race or Geographic Location, otherwise it won't have Credibility when it says this is a Global Fight.

 

Quite possible. Still, a bit bewildering.

 

Seriously? And when will that be?

Given their past history this may take a while…

Check out if you can this brief recap of how France colonized West Africa.

 

This talk of Democracy is all a big lie. Our Holy Mother the Church has never sanctified the idea of Democracy. In the Old Testament the desired aim of God was that people be led to do the Will of God through the Prophets.

Later God granted them Kings very reluctantly as a concession but warned them what bad things they would do.

This idea that Democracy is the best of the best is an illusion. The people who talk the most about Democracy are the very people who believe in it the least.

The idea that we must go to war to force Democracy down other people's throats is a form of deceptive madness.

Let all peoples like individuals choose their own paths. Democracy or otherwise.

The Church points to an inner Salvation through repentance and conversion, not some kind of political conversion through all holy democracy.

 

As Pope St John Paul said a thing does become right because a majority of people say it is.

A thing is right simply because it is, not because most people say it is.

Supposedly Democratic countries in the world are moral abominations. So much for Democracy.

Democracy is a Secular illusion..

 

Which is why Pope's until recently wore the Triple Tiara, reminding us that Christ is King.

Not men.

 

The very men who most want to Rule over us appear almost always to be those the most ill suited to do so simply because of their desire to so.

Yet the logic of Democracy is this: that we should place those in power who most desire to be in power.

I fail to see the moral logic in this.

I would rather see the person who least desired to be in power, be in power.

Yet Democracy militates against this. It does quite the reverse. It ensures that the richest and most proud amongst us gain power. More than that that the more they lie and pretend the better they do in democratic conflict,

 

People in the West say Russia is not a Democracy yet the USA is. But polls show people in Russia support Putin far, far more than people in the USA support Biden.

That is their choice. Who are we to dictate to them? Who would they be to dictate to us?

This war against Russia can only end one war, World War Three.

President Trump is right. The only good, wise way is to talk pEACE ANYTHING ELSE IS MADNESS.

 

I don't often agree with Pope Francis about anything but he is right in this. The only way is the way of peace.

 

I have a deep love for the Russian people as I do for the American people and as I do for the Ukrainian people.

War is not the way. It will only lead to the destruction of the entire planet.

Let us with an open and generous heart talk peACE.

 

People in America or Russia or anywhere else in the World or anywhere else in history only get good Government to the degree that they submit themselves to the Will of God through the good lives they live.

Not through the form of political system they choose.

Good personal lives and a good relationship with God lives leadas to good Government.

The founders in the USA expressly state this.

Democracy is not some magical formula.

 

In Good Monarchical Government the Sovereign is always seen as the servant of God.

In modern democracies such as in Europe, the very existence of God is seen as irrelevant
Which then would be most blessed by God?

 

Will October be the Beginning of the Great Tribulation?https://www.youtube.com/live/0_GUyYFGdSY?si=HZIzIvOrRLKJOWmo

 

I believe that this whole synodal process that has its initial spark in the so-called "Catholic Spring" will create a pretext for the communist tribulation caused by Russia against the church. I believe that Russia's army will ruthlessly slaughter Europe alongside Muslims; however, people will not be killed by any political opposition, as has been the case with Putin's enemies, but because they are inside the Church, which will have its scarecrow represented in the synodal process.

 

If the sodomy guidelines are left for the second part of the synod in October 2024, then the propitious scenario is created for Russia to lead a moral crusade against the West (running over the Church on the way) after this year's synod stage and before the conclusion of the process in 2024.