Without historical context, which is buried by corporate media, it’s impossible to understand Ukraine. Historians will tell the story, but journalists are cut short for trying to tell it now.
May 18, 2015: Remains of an Eastern Orthodox church after shelling by the Ukrainian Army near Donetsk International Airport. Eastern Ukraine. (Mstyslav Chernov. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
The way to prevent the Ukraine war from being understood is to suppress its history.
A cartoon version has the conflict beginning on Feb. 24, 2022 when Vladimir Putin woke up that morning and decided to invade Ukraine.
There was no other cause, according to this version, other than unprovoked, Russian aggression against an innocent country.
Please use this short, historical guide to share with people who still flip through the funny pages trying to figure out what’s going on in Ukraine.
The mainstream account is like opening a novel in the middle of the book to read a random chapter as though it’s the beginning of the story.
Thirty years from now historians will write about the context of the Ukraine war: the coup, the attack on Donbass, NATO expansion, rejection of the Minsk Accords and Russian treaty proposals — without being called Putin puppets.
It will be the same way historians write of the Versailles Treaty as a cause of Nazism and WWII, without being called Nazi-sympathizers.
Providing context is taboo while the war continues in Ukraine, as it would have been during WWII. Context is paramount in journalism.
But journalists have to get with the program of war propaganda while a war goes on. Journalists are clearly not afforded these same liberties as historians. Long after the war, historians are free to sift through the facts.
THE UKRAINE TIMELINE
World War II— Ukrainian national fascists, led by Stepan Bandera, at first allied with the German Nazis, massacre more than a hundred thousands Jews and Poles.
1950s to 1990 – C.I.A. brought Ukrainian fascists to the U.S. and worked with them to undermine the Soviet Union in Ukraine, running sabotage and propaganda operations. Ukrainian fascist leader Mykola Lebed was taken to New York where he worked with the C.I.A. through at least the 1960s and was still useful to the C.I.A. until 1991, the year of Ukraine’s independence. The evidence is in a U.S. government report starting from page 82. Ukraine has thus been a staging ground for the U.S. to weaken and threaten Moscow for nearly 80 years.
November 1990: A year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Charter of Paris for a New Europe (also known as the Paris Charter) is adopted by the U.S., Europe and the Soviet Union. The charter is based on the Helsinki Accords and is updated in the 1999 Charter for European Security. These documents are the foundation of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The OSCE charter says no country or bloc can preserve its own security at another country’s expense.
Dec. 25, 1991: Soviet Union collapses. Wall Street and Washington carpetbaggers move in during ensuing decade to asset-strip the country of formerly state-owned properties, enrich themselves, help give rise to oligarchs, and impoverish the Russian, Ukrainian and other former Soviet peoples.
1990s: U.S. reneges on promise to last Soviet leader Gorbachev not to expand NATO to Eastern Europe in exchange for a unified Germany. George Kennan, the leading U.S. government expert on the U.S.S.R., opposes expansion. Sen. Joe Biden, who supports NATO enlargement, predicts Russia will react hostilely to it.
1997 :: The only thing that could provoke a "vigorous and hostile" Russian response would be needless NATO Expansion Far East right till the border of Russia – Sen. Joe Biden pic.twitter.com/hRW47hLL5y
— Rishi Bagree (@rishibagree) June 17, 2022
1997: Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security adviser, in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, writes:
“Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire. Russia without Ukraine can still strive for imperial status, but it would then become a predominantly Asian imperial state.”
New Year’s Eve 1999: After eight years of U.S. and Wall Street dominance, Vladimir Putin becomes president of Russia. Bill Clinton rebuffs him in 2000 when he asks to join NATO.
Putin begins closing the door on Western interlopers, restoring Russian sovereignty, ultimately angering Washington and Wall Street. This process does not occur in Ukraine, which remains subject to Western exploitation and impoverishment of Ukrainian people.
Feb. 10, 2007: Putin gives his Munich Security Conference speech in which he condemns U.S. aggressive unilateralism, including its illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq and its NATO expansion eastward.
He said: “We have the right to ask: against whom is this [NATO] expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.”
Putin speaks three years after the Baltic States, former Soviet republics bordering on Russia, joined the Western Alliance. The West humiliates Putin and Russia by ignoring its legitimate concerns. A year after his speech, NATO says Ukraine and Georgia will become members. Four other former Warsaw Pact states join in 2009.
2004-5: Orange Revolution. Election results are overturned giving the presidency in a run-off to U.S.-aligned Viktor Yuschenko over Viktor Yanukovich. Yuschenko makes fascist leader Bandera a “hero of Ukraine.”
April 3, 2008: At a NATO conference in Bucharest, a summit declaration “welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO”. Russia harshly objects. William Burns, then U.S. ambassador to Russia, and presently C.I.A. director, warns in a cable to Washington, revealed by WikiLeaks, that,
“Foreign Minister Lavrov and other senior officials have reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward expansion as a potential military threat. NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains ‘an emotional and neuralgic’ issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene. … Lavrov stressed that Russia had to view continued eastward expansion of NATO, particularly to Ukraine and Georgia, as a potential military threat.”
A crisis in Georgia erupts four months later leading to a brief war with Russia, which the European Union blames on provocation from Georgia.
November 2009: Russia seeks new security arrangement in Europe. Moscow releases a draft of a proposal for a new European security architecture that the Kremlin says should replace outdated institutions such as NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
The text, posted on the Kremlin’s website on Nov. 29, comes more than a year after President Dmitry Medvedev first formally raised the issue. Speaking in Berlin in June 2008, Medvedev said the new pact was necessary to finally update Cold War-era arrangements.
“I’m convinced that Europe’s problems won’t be solved until its unity is established, an organic wholeness of all its integral parts, including Russia,” Medvedev said.
2010: Viktor Yanukovich is elected president of Ukraine in a free and fair election, according to the OSCE.
2013: Yanukovich chooses an economic package from Russia rather than an association agreement with the EU. This threatens Western exploiters in Ukraine and Ukrainian comprador political leaders and oligarchs.
February 2014: Yanukovich is overthrown in a violent, U.S.-backed coup (presaged by the Nuland-Pyatt intercept), with Ukrainian fascist groups, like Right Sector, playing a lead role. Ukrainian fascists parade through cities in torch-lit parades with portraits of Bandera.
Protesters clash with police in Kiev, Ukraine, February 2014. (Wikimedia Commons)
March 16, 2014: In a rejection of the coup and the unconstitutional installation of an anti-Russian government in Kiev, Crimeans vote by 97 percent to join Russia in a referendum with 89 percent turn out. The Wagner private military organization is created to support Crimea. Virtually no shots are fired and no one was killed in what Western media wrongly portrays as a “Russian invasion of Crimea.”
April 12, 2014: Coup government in Kiev launches war against anti-coup, pro-democracy separatists in Donbass. Openly neo-Nazi Azov Battalion plays a key role in the fighting for Kiev. Wagner forces arrive to support Donbass militias. U.S. again exaggerates this as a Russian “invasion” of Ukraine. “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text,” says U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who voted as a senator in favor of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 on a completely trumped up pre-text.
May 2, 2014: Dozens of ethnic Russian protestors are burnt alive in a building in Odessa by neo-Nazi thugs. Eight days later, Luhansk and Donetsk declare independence and vote to leave Ukraine.
Sept. 5, 2014: First Minsk agreement is signed in Minsk, Belarus by Russia, Ukraine, the OSCE, and the leaders of the breakaway Donbass republics, with mediation by Germany and France in a Normandy Format. It fails to resolve the conflict.
Feb. 12, 2015: Minsk II is signed in Belarus, which would end the fighting and grant the republics autonomy while they remain part of Ukraine. The accord was unanimously endorsed by the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 15. In December 2022 former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admits West never had intention of pushing for Minsk implementation and essentially used it as a ruse to give time for NATO to arm and train the Ukraine armed forces.
2016: The hoax known as Russiagate grips the Democratic Party and its allied media in the United States, in which it is falsely alleged that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to get Donald Trump elected. The phony scandal serves to further demonize Russia in the U.S. and raise tensions between the nuclear-armed powers, conditioning the public for war against Russia.
May 12, 2016: U.S. activates missile system in Romania, angering Russia. U.S. claims it is purely defensive, but Moscow says the system could also be used offensively and would cut the time to deliver a strike on the Russian capital to within 10 to 12 minutes.
June 6, 2016: Symbolically on the anniversary of the Normandy invasion, NATO launches aggressive exercises against Russia. It begins war games with 31,000 troops near Russia’s borders, the largest exercise in Eastern Europe since the Cold War ended. For the first time in 75 years, German troops retrace the steps of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union across Poland.
German Foreign Minister Frank Walter-Steinmeier objects. “What we shouldn’t do now is inflame the situation further through saber-rattling and warmongering,” Steinmeier stunningly tells Bild am Sontag newspaper. “Whoever believes that a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is mistaken.”
Instead Steinmeier calls for dialogue with Moscow. “We are well-advised to not create pretexts to renew an old confrontation,” he warns, adding it would be “fatal to search only for military solutions and a policy of deterrence.”
December 2021: Russia offers draft treaty proposals to the United States and NATO proposing a new security architecture in Europe, reviving the failed Russian attempt to do so in 2009. The treaties propose the removal of the Romanian missile system and the withdrawal of NATO troop deployments from Eastern Europe. Russia says there will be a “technical-military” response if there are not serious negotiations on the treaties. The U.S. and NATO reject them essentially out of hand.
February 2022: Russia begins its military intervention into Donbass in the still ongoing Ukrainian civil war after first recognizing the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Before the intervention, OSCE maps show a significant uptick of shelling from Ukraine into the separatist republics, where more than 10,000 people have been killed since 2014.
Ukrainian troops in the Donbass region, March 2015. (OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
March-April 2022: Russia and Ukraine agree on a framework agreement that would end the war, including Ukraine pledging not to join NATO. The U.S. and U.K. object. Prime Minister Boris Johnson flies to Kiev to tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to stop negotiating with Russia. The war continues with Russia seizing much of the Donbass.
March 26, 2022: Biden admits in a speech in Warsaw that the U.S. is seeking through its proxy war against Russia to overthrow the Putin government. Earlier in March he overruled his secretary of state on establishing a no-fly zone against Russian aircraft in Ukraine. Biden opposed the no-fly zone, he said at the time, because “that’s called World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine.”
September 2022: Donbass republics vote to join Russian Federation, as well as two other regions: Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
May 2023: Ukraine begins counter-offensive to try to take back territory controlled by Russia. As seen in leaked documents earlier in the year, U.S. intelligence concludes the offensive will fail before it begins.
June 2023: A 36-hour rebellion by the Wagner group fails, when its leader Yevegny Prigoshzin takes a deal to go into exile in Belarus. The Wagner private army, which was funded and armed by the Russian Ministry of Defense, is absorbed into the Russian army. The Ukrainian offensive ends in failure at the end of November.
September 2024: Biden deferred to the realists in the Pentagon to oppose long-range British Storm Shadow missiles from being fired by Ukraine deep into Russia out of fear it would also lead to a direct NATO-Russia military confrontation with all that that entails.
Putin warned at the time that because British soldiers on the ground in Ukraine would actually launch the British missiles into Russia with U.S. geostrategic support, it “will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”
November 2024: After he was driven from the race and his party lost the White House, a lame duck Biden suddenly switched gears, allowing not only British, but also U.S. long-range ATACMS missiles to be fired into Russia. It’s not clear that the White House ever informed the Pentagon in advance in a move that risked the very World War III that Biden had previously sought to avoid.
February 2025: The first direct contact between senior leadership of the United States and Russia in more than three takes place, with a phone call between the countries’ presidents, and a meeting of foreign ministers in Saudi Arabia. They agree to begin negotiations to end the war.
This timeline clearly shows an aggressive Western intent towards Russia, and how the tragedy could have been avoided if NATO would not allow Ukraine to join; if the Minsk accords had been implemented; and if the U.S. and NATO negotiated a new security arrangement in Europe, taking Russian security concerns into account.
After Trump ran the Ukrainians out of the White House today I figure I can claim everything I ever said about the democrats and the republicans is true.
One party holds the victim while the other party beats the hell out of them.
If King Dumpster Fire can’t handle the job he needs to be ousted. How safe you feel now, watching the free world leader not so damn much, acting his true character, that of a spoiled, vindictive, lying, spiteful 12 year old year old who has the nuke codes.
The purpose of this tightly focused timeline is to illustrate the progression of U.S. aggression against Russia starting from the end of World War II, when a new phase in U.S. and world history began. It is not intended to be a comprehensive history of Ukraine, which would distract from and dilute the story being told here. Several readers have written in trying to “correct” the timeline to include Catherine the Great in the 18th century and even earlier events on the territory that is today’s Ukraine. We might as well go back to the earliest migrations out of Africa that settled there.
Just wait for our MSM to spin the forthcoming Russian victory into a defeat.
Russia wants … 1. no NATO membership or NATO troops present in Ukraine, 2. Recognition of the 4 Oblasts and Crimea (this is a nice to have), 3. a Ukraine with no NATO infrastructure. 4. lifting of sanctions and return of central bank funds (another nice to have)
But our MSM will make this sound like a ‘crushing Russian defeat’ because Russia did not annex all of Ukraine. But this was NEVER a stated goal of Russia, it was made up out of whole cloth by NATO analysts who claimed that Kiev would ‘fall in 3 days’. No Russian ever said that, but this is accepted as fact.
Thanks for a view often ignored in the Western Media, where off-stage special interests often prevail.
As Yanukovych faced coup violence, “The White House said Joe Biden, the vice-president, spoke to Viktor Yanukovych on Thursday by telephone and warned him that the US was preparing to sanction officials responsible for the violence”, see hxxps://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/20/ukraine-dead-protesters-police. Post coup, the anti-Russia coup repressed the pro-Russian group, see Time magazine, hxxps://time.com/6144109/russia-ukraine-vladimir-putin-viktor-medvedchuk/.
In coup prelude, the German and Polish (Radek Sikorski, husband of career-Russia-critic Anne Applebaum) Foreign Ministers were in Kyiv negotiating with the elected government, aiding the anti-Russia faction. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Lady Catherine Ashton, had already encouraged anti-Yanukovych demonstrators in the Maidan, as had the State Department’s Victoria Nuland (who gave them sandwiches). She later said she also gave sandwiches to Maidan police. See hxxps://en.topwar.ru/65067-viktoriya-nuland-ya-privozila-v-kiev-ne-pechene-a-sendvichi.html.
Zelensky is coup heir. Read extensive reporting on the Ukraine coup in The Guardian (UK) online. (By the way, Russian Crimea was arbitrarily tacked on to Ukraine by Khrushchev and later carried into in dependence by Ukraine.)
Joe this article is a perfect example what I have ranted about time and time again. ” One must know and understand their history!” or words to that affect.
Great find and recall, “New Year’s Eve 1999” “Bill Clinton rebuffs him in 2000 when he asks when he asks to join NATO.”
When I read this now I realize Clinton was likely given a fail \ pass, yes or no test by someone who was much more savvy. Enter Putin. Clinton failed. So Putin is a bad guy, I agree. I also agree we have had several presidents who were not angels by any stretch.
Zbig and the 1997 quote in your piece is telling. Same with George Keenan and Biden. They all had to have known how dangerous pressing Putin, encroaching on to Russian borders and placing any missiles would be and what it would lead to with Russia leadership. Clinton included.
My habit of repeatedly exploring certain topics is for a reason. One can explain concepts, opinions and observations until one is exhausted, if the audience is not capable of grasping the meaning of the spoken or the written word all may be lost. If that audience is otherwise distracted, lazy or delusional worse can happen. Now IMHO it has.
The democrats and the republicans both are guilty of malpractice of politics, at the very least and guilty of blatant personal corruption. The evidence is the fiasco we currently are witnessing in D.C., IMHO.
None of this makes any sense to me. And it should not make sense to anyone other than someone who wants nuclear war: PERIOD FULL STOP!
How did we get here? My opinion is straight forward and clear. When a country any country allows foreign lobbyist to influence lawmakers they are trading away that countries sovereignty. The SCOTUS should be held accountable for their Citizens United vs FEC ruling. The entire country should condemn the ruling and demand it be overturned. Simply examine what has happened to this country since the SCOTUS was overturned an earlier courts decision. The topic we all need to focus on if any of us expect constructive change to come to our government.
I find incredible irony in the fact that I fear using the ‘Z’ word here for fear on not getting another comment posted. But these are the people responsible and they dog damned sure must be called out for their role in selling out the county. Henry M. Jackson is a primary example given his history of lovingly birthing and embracing the neocon movement in this country. Another very strong supporter of the big “I” and an avowed Z-man. J. William Fulbright was correct.
Very interesting, the neocons, the Z-ists and other Maga haters are those who cause CN the most heartburn by attacking this site threatening censorship of and or shutting it down. Hopefully they are about to learn an important lesson about patriotism and the Constitution. Something many current Americans have sworn to protect.
Thanks CN
If you are interested in the roots of Western Russophobia, I suggest the excellent book by swiss author Guy Mettan – “Creating Russophobia”. The origins of this particular variation of orientalism go back more than 1000 years — with tropes being reused today that were developed over 100 years ago.
I keep wondering what it the US goal for it’s endless harrassment of the Russian Federation. (Assuming there is one.) Break the Russian Federation into component parts? “Independent” Tatarstan, Yakutia, Manchuria? All as weak and quarrelsome as war-lord era China? All easily used and abused by Wall St. et al.?
I have had the same thought. Having grown up in the 50s, with the constant Red Scare, one would have thought that with the demise of the Soviet Union, the fear mongers would have been satisfied that the Commies were no longer a threat. But no, now the neo-Cons, with nary a thought to peace, decide the Russians are still the bad guys. And thus was lost the rarest of opportunites to address world peace and cooperation, desperately needed with Climate Change barreling towards us, and more and more nukes just waiting for the first mistake to happen. These 19th Century fossils belong in history’s dustbin.
February 20, 2014: Maidan Massacre in which 108 demonstrators were killed. The police, and Yanukovych, were blamed which helped justify Yanukovych’s overthrow and frame it as a revolution. Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian/Canadian professor at the University of Ottawa, conducted an extensive study of the massacre which concluded that the massacre was a false flag operation. In October 2023 the Ukrainian Court, referencing Katchanovski’s work, ruled that the demonstrators were shot by snipers in the top floors of the Hotel Ukrainia, a building that was controlled by the Maidan. (This is eerily reminiscent of the Llaguno Bridge massacre in Caracas in 2002 in which 19 anti-Chavez demonstrators were killed and 127 were injured in a false flag operation. It has been well documented that the CIA was deeply involved in the attempted coup against Chavez.)
Although the mainstream media tried its best to hide the facts, I and others who disdain mainstream propaganda followed the entire story from the beginning. A very good report on this subject can be found on The New Atlas with Brian Berletic. Brian pulls no punches and has documents to confirm everything he discusses about the long chain of events. I recommend it.
Thanks Joe
timely and important article
One of the main lessons from my perspective is that
there is not one so-called leader in all this debacle that is to be trusted.
And as ‘international law’ continues to break down, however effective it may or may not be, we, the so-called ‘ordinary people’ have no protections against such marauding maniacs.
Double thanks and more. Authentic journalists and CN bring
truth to history while mainstream media lies keeping the
war industry economies of the military-industrial complex
expanding Wall Street profits.
Now maybe Trump could apply peaceful rationality to
stop Israeli genocide in Gaza now moving into the West Bank
Some additional details;
1783 – Crimea officially becomes part of Russia. In the period leading up to 1783, the Crimean Khanate, a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, conducted frequent raids into Russia to capture slaves.
Post WW2 – The CIA, under Allen Dulles, provides immunity from prosecution for the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists), who had collaborated with the German Nazis. This included SS Galizien (also known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS). There are accounts among historians that Adolph Hitler expressed concern that some SS groups, with particular reference to Galicia, were harming the overall Nazi effort through their excessively harsh and extreme measures against the local population. Hitler considered the Ukrainian collaborators too harsh and extreme. These were the groups protected by Allen Dulles following WW2.
February 19th 1954 – Nikita Khrushchev transfers Crimea to the Ukraine
March 17, 1991 – Crimea holds a successful referendum to establish its independence.
August 24, 1991 – Ukraine declares independence. This declaration is confirmed by a national referendum held December 1, 1991.
February 26, 1992 – The Crimean parliament proclaims the “Republic of Crimea” with the agreement of the Ukrainian government, which granted it the status of a self-governing republic.
May 5, 1992, Crimea declares its independence and adopted a Constitution.
March 17, 1995 – Ukraine illegally and unilaterally abolishes the 1992 constitution of Crimea. Strife between Crimea, Ukraine, and Russia continues until the referendum of 2014 mentioned in the article. 97% in favor of Russia, with an 89% turnout.
December 15, 2014 – Ukraine (Kyiv)-based website Myrotvorets is launched by Ukrainian politician Georgy Tuka, which claims to track ‘Enemies of Ukraine’. Thousands are placed on the list which continues to expand to this day (February 25, 2025); Numerous members of the political opposition in Ukraine, along with over 140 journalists (including international), and 327 children. The youngest child on the list was added at age 8 (eight).
It would take a book to chronicle all of the events surrounding this conflict, even if only presented in an abridged timeline format. For additional details, I encourage everyone to also seek out the writings of Jacques Baud.
The purpose of this tightly focused timeline is to illustrate the progression of U.S. aggression against Russia starting from the end of World War II, when a new phase in U.S. and world history began. It is not intended to be a comprehensive history of Ukraine, which would distract from and dilute the story being told here. Several readers have written in trying to “correct” the timeline to include Catherine the Great in the 18th century and even earlier events on the territory that is today’s Ukraine. We might as well go back to the earliest migrations out of Africa that settled there.
Thank you, Joe. So grateful for this concise truth telling and displacement of war fog.
Thank you, Mr Lauria.
A huge thanks, Joe. I am going to bookmark and share this with people who need to understand how it all happened.
NATO is an extension of German fascism transferred to the Western “democracies.” Western democracy has been a cover for covert efforts to continue fascist capitalism via coups, interventions and all other means of undermining real democracy since the end of WWll. The world outside of Washington’s version of the international community have awoken to this reality. The multipolar world is perceived as a threat to the “rules based international order” dictated by Washington. The managers of the declining empire will of course attempt to disrupt the emerging multipolar world until they are finally driven from power by their own impoverished and fed up populations. Once they awaken to how manipulated they have been. Please make it be sooner rather than later.
I for one was never fooled by all the lies. Probably because I do not pay any attention to mainstream propaganda. Consortium News is just one of the great reporting sites on the Ukraine war. Another is Brian Berletic on the New Atlas.
Thanks so much for the needed historical context. Adopting the “immaculate conception” view of history whereby everything begins on a convenient date and nothing matters before is used repeatedly in America’s foreign policy efforts, and in particular neocon projects, and is also the playbook for rendering the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023. If you do not have truth on your side, hide the history. The fact that Americans tend to be so repeatedly gullible regarding this is truly depressing.
How to undo it? Now we’ve had both prof. Jeffrey Sachs’ speech at the EU Parliament as well as Trump’s postings. Direct broadsides to the Western narrative games. A beginning. This makes Trump the first American president in about 30 years to offer a limited but mostly factual account of “project Ukraine.” But until the zeitgeist of the public changes, we will continue careening from one conflict to another.
Far too many Americans operate via what I call “the Dick & Jane version of history”, named after the series of books for first graders learning to read. Simplistic and shallow and slanted and false, most people’s thinking skims the surface of events with no depth of understanding of history or the passage of time. CN is one of the outlets that corrects this.
Thank you for this timeline! I am printing it out so I can show it to all the people I know who have been duped into thinking that Putin is totally at fault for the Ukraine War.
Anyone who thinks that Putin is totally at fault has not been paying attention to world events for the last several decades. Such ignorance is the reason the populace is so easily fooled. It’s embarrassing.
Thank you Joe. One of the things I bang on about all the time: historical context is always necessary to understand any issue. Willfully, or ignorantly omitting context is a form of misinformation, disinformation, spin, PR and propaganda.
In the famous dystopia novel, historical context is shoved down the Memory Hole. Who controls the past, controls the present and all that…
Just to add: the DT1 regime (2017-2021) approved aid to Ukraine, and sanctioned Russia. The DT1 regime withdrew from the INF treaty with Russia, and also put sanctions on the Nordstream pipeline projects. This does not fit the storyline of the mass media though, who portrayed DT as Putin’s stooge. It was all a bunch of BS of course. The phony straw-man argument created a huge distraction and millions have no idea of the facts.
Agreed. Check out Brian Berletic’s most recent podcast. He presents reports from the Rand Corporation and other outfits outlining plans to do exactly what has been being done for decades. He also says that although Trump and his government are getting out of the Ukraine War like a shyster leaving town after throwing a case, it is only a plan to gain time to attack China. Of course others have pointed this out, like the World Socialist Web Site. Don’t cheer yet.
Yes, and John Pilger had it figured out back in 2016 when he produced the documentary: The Coming War on China. It is still on YT the last I checked. Prof. Michael Hudson has also been very accurate on the topic.