a brief on the 2022 Ukraine War
i have seen several people make heartfelt posts claiming they oppose all wars and that everyone involved is bad. although the heart is in the right place, these posts fail to really say anything because they’re ideologically situated in neoliberalism: of course i oppose wars too, but it doesn’t mean i’m going to ignore the material conditions surrounding the conflict that allows me to understand the situation on some level, just because i think war is bad in the abstract, and leave my analysis at that.
while i offer an analysis of the particularities of the conflict of Russia-Ukraine, comrade Dr. Hassan Ali offers insight into how the Russia-Ukraine conflict fits into the wider scope of anti-imperialist struggle, which i highly recommend reading to further ground yourself in what is going on around the world.
to everyone reading this, remember: our whole life is founded on violence. i don’t only mean interpersonal and personal microaggressions of daily life emerging from traumas that are imprinted on families as history is imprinted on our bodies. here i mean literal violence, blood and death and missiles and gunshots, i am talking drone war, paramilitary subversion, cyberwarfare and disinformation campaigns, and economic sanctions maintaining a very specific global dynamic that favors the First World, the US and its allies — the Atlanticists. but this order has been weakening as both Russia and China increases in strength and become increasingly more capable of filling the vacuum that the destruction of the US’s reverse Midas touch leaves in its wake.
take any commodity in your vicinity, your pantry, your phone or laptop with which you read this: from the raw material needed, through extraction, transformation processes, production, and assembly — the entire network is shaped by explicit violence to acquire land; by the more subtle but still violent process of labor exploitation of workers in the Third World; and, more recently, in addition to it all, by the use of slave labor of incarcerated Americans employed by both the US government and private corporations; or quite plainly, by the hourly exploitation of a wage worker at Walmart or Amazon warehouse in the First World.
Introduction
after seeing a lot of screenshot of people’s Instagram stories being shared with explanations about the Ukrainian conflict by people trying to faithfully represent the situation as a conflict that the US/NATO began, so others can stop echoing liberal sentiments about the conflict, i decided to write this brief in order to help everyone connected to me from developing any brain indigestion after seeing all these stories crammed with text.
i have also seen others go in detail about the situation only to reduce the whole conflict as simply a war between imperialists powers, Russia and NATO, claiming that Russia is equally as bad. this is lazy — fuck the Russian oligarchy yes, and yes there should not be war on Ukraine because people aren’t to blame for the actions of oligarchs, but Russia isn’t to blame. but what happened is expected if you understand the conflict: there is reason behind an act of war, and if you don’t try to understand it, you will be easily swayed by any of the varieties of mainstream narratives being offered by the western media circuit.
here i am interested in understanding how the situation escalated to the point of Russia marching into Ukraine, and faithfully representing this situation so we know who to hold accountable, not that we could, within the parameters they have set for us, but hopefully in my network clusters there will be less confusion about this.
i say it like this because i wish to emphasize i have nothing to gain from the situation: as far as nationality goes i am a Brazilian person living in the US working a wage job, i am just observing from the perspective of someone who fundamentally opposes the United States, what it represents and how it functions (the US is a state in which the system of imperialism and international finance capital is centralized) — but from a materialist perspective, not an idealist perspective: for with an idealist lens i can say, “fuck all war, every politician is bad” and not bother researching anything and perhaps dive into some esoteria to cope; but when you understand the machinations of the human world we have created, there is geopolitics and history to work with, offering plenty of insight to learn from so we can begin to understand our place in all of this to intelligently plan a way out.
lastly, before i dive into the nitty gritty, i wish to say that the story that broke out on 24/02/22 that assault rifles were distributed to civilian male Ukrainians to fight the Russian army is so ridiculous to propagandize (it’s blatant propaganda duh) because of course that would happen, to me it doesn’t render it a heartwarming event: either they were forced to hold arms or view it as a duty. whatever the case, it’s their government’s fight, not their fight, they should flee — and if they choose to side with the government, to function as an extension of their government, it’s their choice to die or surrender: they’re no heroes, they’re fools, because “their” government played them yet there they are "defending “their” government (quoted because it’s properly not theirs, it’s the Ukrainian oligarchy’s government).
as for the analysis, i will proceed by discussing the causes of conflict, which will be divided into 4 parts, followed by a conclusion.
Deep causes, arising from the principal contradictions;
Precipitating causes, arising from internal contradictions in Ukraine; and the
Atlanticist perspective of Russian reaction, responding to the deep and precipitating causes.
Atlanticist myths about Russia, discussing lies people are told about Putin and Russia
Russia from Dugin’s perspective, exploring how Dugin’s fourth political theory has been shaping current Russian geopolitics
Deep Causes: Principal Contradictions
the principal contradiction that forms the material fabric upon which Ukraine operates, has been and still is, that tension of Capital between US Imperialism with its European military wing NATO, and the rest of the world.
that Nick Land and Aleksandr Dugin and Tiqqun et al point to the idea of Capital having been abstracted from its production processes so it may now be conceptualized as behaving “independently” is only a philosophical reflection of the emergent behavior of Capital, itself a consequence of the time-series scientific and technological breakthroughs in the 20th century, which developed technology that facilitated the reproduction and maintenance of Capital.
indeed, today we have so many start ups and venture capitalists and NGOs and hedge funds and this and that, which, when you try to hold the scope of the situation in mind, it is almost overwhelming: there are so many people, so many different people, with so much more resources than me or you, who view themselves as individuals acting according to their will, yet all behaving in a way that reproduces one ideology: these are the managers and administrators and maintainers of this neoliberal culture and its capitalist order, assisted by technology that “streamlines” this process, so that everything within it now reproduces the order of the whole thing, from phones and social media to secondary education curricula, to generational trauma and epigenetic adaptation to damaged environments.
but to understand the situation in a wider scope, i think it’s important to highlight what has been the playbook for the US i.e. financial capital, after the Monroe Doctrine but especially since the 1900s.
basically until 2000, the US’s “core strategic interests” as they love to call it, has been:
protect the Western Hemisphere at all costs;
protect Europe at all costs, and this of course meant a westernized Europe;
pivot on Northeast Asia; and
pressure the Persian Gulf, which is inextricably linked to Asia, so you have oil flowing to India and China from the Persian Gulf.
then in 2001 things changed (do not research), and defending Europe became less of a priority. the new order of importance became:
Western hemisphere;
Asia (because of China);
Persian Gulf (which links with Asia); and
Europe.
this shift where Europe loses priority is worth researching, and though i haven’t explored this shift much, i could speculate: i would connect it to Africa’s growth and separating from Europe while China supports Africans, and since western europe has not much to offer except predatory consumption, they will be left behind in the next 20 years — if no Samson option is activated once the zionists get their shit handed post-US collapse and Palestine is liberated.
before the “redpilled” or liberanarchist reader rolls their eyes and utter “but Chinese imperialism,” an Atlanticist observation to be sure (i.e. pro-US, pro-British) — i say: though one may claim opposition to all empires, we can only at most take this statement seriously in a vacuum, during some moment of philosophical abstraction, ungrounded in what is actually happening in the world at the level that parametrizes the conditions of our lives: though i do not deny the existence and influence of invisible hyperstructures (such as the spiritual world), it remains that how much a commodity costs, labor laws, property laws, tax laws etc influences your life more directly and immediately. and i remind y’all that China has been supporting initiatives in African nations that actually benefits the whole African economic and transportation infrastructures by building transcontinental highways and railroads to transport people and goods, as well as to distribute commodities and services within the African continent.
whereas, as the Atlanticist knows, as every reader of this Substack should know, the European imperialists built roads that lead to ports because Africa was only meant to export cheap labor and cheap raw material for the Anglos. to better understand this, i recommend Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, as well as comrade Dr. Hassan’s substack (and his Twitter), both offering a source of excellent information and critical insights.
if the US has lied to you about Iraq, about the vaccines, about the everything else y'all discuss (and they absolutely did), then they also feed you lies about how their strategic enemies interact with other countries: any isolated instance will be used to condemn China or Russia or Iran as a whole: they'll argue China is imperialistic, they'll argue that Iran government is evil incarnate, that Assad is evil, and you may even think i'm a Russian agent for writing all this, which only but proves me right because i really am not, but it remains that the empire of the Antichrist, of Moloch — Babylon — whatever you want to call it, is represented by the US empire: in Europe they're NATO, elsewhere they're IMF, in the US they're democrats or republicans, but they're all representing the same interests.
anyway, as part of Financial Capital’s strategy (i capitalize it to represent it as the emergent property of this planetary cyberneticized capitalism), the US and European allies’ goal was to peel Ukraine away from the Soviet orbit and westernize it — basically turning it into a western bulwark on Russia’s border.
at this point, i find it necessary to emphasize that after WWII, many n*z!s escaped to Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Ukraine, Britain/British territories, and the US (do not research ratlines or operation paperclip—spoiler: many n*z! scientists ended up working for NASA/US government/US private corporations, they worked, taught, married, reproduced, held family dinners, raised kids, became American: they lived).
in fact, in this article Wayne Madsen discusses the 3800 declassified CIA files which provide proof that since 1953 the US government through the CIA has been engaged in covert operations meant to de-stabilize Ukraine and n*z!fy the borders of USSR/Russia.
THIS IS CRUCIAL TO EMPHASIZE: i am aware Atlanticist propaganda makes you believe the Americans and allies defeated the n*z!s, BUT the historical fact, whether you accept it or not, is that the Soviets were the ones responsible for destroying the n*z!s, which is why the brave Russian people suffered the most casualties. so when Azov battalion trashmen dip their bullets in pig lard to kill Muslim and Jewish Russians, this is ethnic, religious violence. that the US has taken in n*z! scientists (OPERATION PAPERCLIP) and have funded n*z! paramilitaries along the western border of Russia, is an extension of this conflict as part of the long game of Capitalism against Communism, which includes the use of religious conflicts — it should not be surprising that they would use n*z!s because we all know the US government is founded on white supremacist ideologies.
we need only look at similar historical examples to avoid falling prey to the ideological dumbification caused by cancel culture of calling everything a Russian or Chinese psyop and refusing to elaborate (because there is not a position to elaborate): Juan Guaidó with the Voluntad Popular in Venezuela; Jeanine Áñez with the Movimiento Demócrata Social in Bolivia; Kurds in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan; on and on.
seriously: all of them were promised US support and left to die when their conflicts escalated or were overcome by popular demand, as was the case with the election fraud in Bolivia, resulting in Áñez “somehow” winning over Morales only to later be removed for corruption. it should be noted that how her government, a group of pro-US evangelical paramilitaries, handled the 2019 protests has placed her in court defending against charges of genocide — she even attempted suicide recently because of her terrible decisions.
at this point we can easily get lost with the amount of information that deals with the principal contradiction, but i narrow it down by focusing on three key elements in the US strategy with respect to Europe and specifically Ukraine:
NATO expansion (military wing)
EU expansion (economic/cultural wing)
Fostering dissent (orange revolutions, coups)
NATO and EU Expansion: increasing Atlanticist presence
since the Cold War, starting with the Clinton administration, NATO has been moving eastward toward Russia's border despite the Russians adamantly expressing their concerns with and opposition to NATO expanding towards their border.
this expansion most recently advanced in two stages:
the first expansion happened in 1999 with the inclusion of Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary into NATO
the second advance happened in 2004 with the inclusion of the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Bulgaria
for reference, look at this eastward expansion taking place on this map:
by 1993, Russia did not publicly declare NATO as a threat though they opposed NATO expansion towards Russia.
around the same time in the US, within Bush's administration, the consensus was to expand NATO as a measure of strengthening US hegemony. interestingly, there was also a trend of thought that believed failure to expand NATO would result in the European Union filling the security vacuum in Central Europe, and thus challenging US post-Cold War influence. there was further debate within the Clinton administration between a rapid offer of full membership to several select countries versus a slower, more limited membership to a wide range of states over a longer time span.
majority victory by the Republican Party in the 1994 US congressional election, who advocated for aggressive expansion, helped sway US policy in favor of wider full-membership enlargement.
all throughout this period, since the early 90s, Russia opposed this eastward expansion but 1) they were in no position to act against it, economically or militarily, because they still very much depended on US markets and financial capital; and 2) the annexed states were not directly on their border so they conceded, and assumed the expansion was not aggressive, though they remained on alert — as they should have: can you see that the aggression is on NATO's side? the Atlanticists are clearly to blame, but we go on.
then comes the 2008 Bucharest NATO summit, resulting in their final declaration at the summit on April 3, 2008:
NATO welcomes Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.
the Russians made it perfectly clear that this was unacceptable.
the Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia said,
Georgia's and Ukraine's membership in the alliance is a huge strategic mistake which will have most serious consequences for pan-European security.
here we begin to see the ideology of the Russians which i connect to the influence of Dugin later on, because Sergei Ivov explicitly says "pan-European security" or in other words, a unified “Eurasia.”
Putin himself said, "Georgia and Ukraine becoming part of NATO is a direct threat to Russia" not because he's some crazy person, but because of the historical relationship between the peoples of Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia: in a way, they are the same people or at least share close ancestral lineage. this is the nationalistic influence of Aleksandr Dugin's fourth political theory: to relate it to a work explicitly on the left, it is the application of Fanon's nationalism to the Euroasian struggle against the US/NATO/IMF triad.
the consequence of this was that by August 2008, Russia went to war with Georgia — again, not because Putin is crazy bad man. Russia's government declared it a direct threat, NATO ignored, and thinking the Georgian government would be supported by the Atlanticists (US/NATO), they acted aggressively with Russia during negotiations and with military exercises on the border. Russia destroyed Georgia, who never received military support from the Atlanticists, and to this day the Georgian people suffer because they were offered empty promises.
in the background, on the US side, in 2007 there was the financial housing crisis unfolding as defaults on mortgage markets were rising, collapsing the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) market; all while a short squeeze of Volkswagen stock was unfolding by 2008 due to financial market corruption (naked short selling) in the US derivative/option markets:
the reverse Midas touch.
Precipitating causes
the event of interest is the coup on February 22, 2014 — from then on, everything went to shit.
so what caused the coup?
i begin by discussing the previous two presidential elections prior to the 2014 election coup, and hopefully offer some insight into the issue. by no means am i claiming to be a specialist on this, but as with all things, i do my research.
i first consider the 2004 election because it directly resulted in the Orange Revolution:
in blue representing pro-Russian government is Viktor Yanukovych;
in orange representing pro-EU government is Viktor Yushchenko.
emerging victorious from this election was Yuschenko — but this wasn’t at all a simple victory, so i proceed by highlighting how the candidates and Russian/Ukrainian population regarded one another during the election campaign:
first, the main candidates:
acting Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, former Governor of the Donetsk region and a representative of the Donetsk oligarch clan became the candidate of the administration. the fact that in his youth Viktor Yanukovych served two prison terms for theft and dealing physical injuries was constantly used during the opposition’s election campaign.
Viktor Yushchenko, the former Prime Minister (1999-2001) and the former head of the National Bank of Ukraine was the opposition candidate. it’s worth noting that his wife is a U.S. citizen.
images of major presidential candidates strongly differed depending on the region: mass-media contributed much to this.
for example, the real information on the opposition candidate practically did not reach eastern and southern areas. in this part of Ukraine, Yushchenko is looked at as a vehement nationalist promoting an idea of compulsory imposing of the Ukrainian language on the Russian-speaking population and as a supporter of closing Russian schools in the region. he is called a demagogue who “is speaking a lot of but incomprehensibly while doing nothing.” Yushchenko is considered as a politician who has fallen under the influence of Westerners. moreover, the people there believe that the United States has financed Yushchenko’s campaign and in case of his coming to power, the relations with Russia would essentially worsen. on the other hand, Victor Yanukovych is respected very much in the east of Ukraine, especially in Donbass which he has revived being the Chairman of Donetsk regional council. he is looked at as a native from Donbass who has made a breathtaking career from a simple worker up to a serious politician. he was also strongly supported by Russia and promised, in turn, to grant the Russian language the status of the second state language in Ukraine.
however, the situation in the central and western parts of Ukraine sharply differs. Yushchenko is considered here as a progressive, educated politician-democrat, capable to lead Ukraine to a European level. he spent a lot of time meeting people since he was practically denied the use of mass-media. years of Yushchenko’s premiership were remembered in the central and western parts of Ukraine as successful attempts of restoring economic stability in the country. the people there were also more informed on the reasons of his disfigured face. Yanukovych is not practically accepted in this area: his criminal past has strongly affected the people’s opinion so he is looked at as a puppet created by Russian political technologists.
Yushchenko’s program consisted of 10 basic points known as “10 steps toward the people.” its provisions suggested the separation of business from politics, the struggle against corruption in power structures, returning the enterprises and means of production to the people, creating five million of work places, cutting taxes and a growth of the budget, an increase in financing of social programs as well as an accent in foreign policy on integrating into Europe and mutually advantageous relations with Russia.
as for Yanukovych’s, his electoral program was the same, but the struggle against corruption was omitted. Yushchenko's program was more constructive. the goal setting was accompanied by the ways of its implementing planned by the candidate. in Yanukovych's program the greater attention was given to questions of the veterans’ rights and respecting working trades as well as to problems of the village.
comparing the programs of these candidates, it is possible to draw a conclusion that there are no political disagreements in them. the main points that distinguish the candidates and their political vision of the development of Ukraine are a full transparency of politics and the struggle against corruption and permissiveness of the administration promoted by Yushchenko, and the continuation of Leonid Kuchma’s policy referred to in Yanukovych’s election campaign as his “policy of stability.”
however, six weeks prior to the elections Yanukovych put forward three initiatives which were not present in his initial program: a dual citizenship, granting to the Russian language the status of the second state language, and refusing to join NATO.
this is when shit hit the fan.
after a long-winded public relation battle and assassination attempts (dioxin poison and a car loaded with bombs), the results of the first round were extremely close, something like 39.32% for Yanukovych and 39.87% for Yushchenko by October 31, 2004.
on the eve of the second round in November, exit poll results showed Yushchenko to be 11% ahead while official polls showed Yanukovych ahead by 3% — this is when protests broke out. according to Wikipedia article on the Orange Revolution,
While Yanukovych supporters have claimed that Yushchenko's connections to the Ukrainian media explain this disparity, the Yushchenko team publicized evidence of many incidents of electoral fraud in favor of the government-backed Yanukovych, witnessed by many local and foreign observers. These accusations were reinforced by similar allegations, though at a lesser scale, during the first presidential run of 31 October.
the nationwide protests came to an end when the results of the second round were annulled, and a revote was ordered by Ukraine’s supreme court for December 26, 2004. under scrutiny by domestic and international observers, the second run-off was declared to be "free and fair".
the final results showed a clear victory for Yushchenko, who received about 52% of the vote, compared to Yanukovych's 45%.
Yushchenko was declared the official winner, and with his inauguration on January 23 2005 in Kyiv, the Orange Revolution ended.
why “orange”? because of the color they chose to represent themselves in the campaign, but because of Yuschenko’s connection to the EU and US, the fact the US used Agent Orange in the past should not go unremarked.
then came the election of 2010 which won by the blue guy, Yanukovych. the data is basically the same:
by 2013, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was negotiating with the EU to form an association agreement that brings the EU and Ukraine much closer together — it's a step in the direction of incorporating into the EU, or in other terms, westernizing Ukraine.
the Russians make it clear that is unacceptable and are even willing to make a deal that involves EU-Russia-IMF-Ukraine, because the idea that Ukraine would do a deal exclusively with EU and leave Russia out of it is out of question.
it is no wonder he offers a terrific deal: the "joint action plan" consisted of the Russian National Wealth Fund buying $15B of Ukrainian Eurobonds and the lowering of the cost of Russian natural gas supplied to Ukraine to $268 per 1000 cubic meters (Ukraine paid $400 at the time). the discount in gas was set contingent upon a quarterly review to be approved by both parties, upon which Russia reserved the right to rescind the discount. as part of the action plan, Russia committed itself to the restoration its customs regulations on imports from Ukraine that had existed before mid-August 2013.
so Yanukovych says no to the EU deal because Putin's deal compared to the EU's deal was much better for Ukraine, which leads to a series of pro-EU/pro-US protests known as the Euromaidan, with many n*z!s from the fascist Azov battalion present.
in Vinnytsia, on January 22 2014, thousands of protesters blocked the main street of the city and halted traffic flow.
on January 23 2014, Odessa city council member and Euromaidan activist Oleksandr Ostapenko's car was bombed — even the Mayor of Sumy threw his support behind the Euromaidan movement on January 24, laying blame for the civil disorder in Kyiv on the Party of Regions and Communists
so then the German foreign minister and the French foreign minister fly to Kyiv and a deal is worked out to have elections that would in effect remove Yanukovych from power — but the protestors speaking for the Euromaidan refuse the deal.
keep in mind, there is a significant fascist presence, this has been well-recorded, do a google search, the Atlanticists' own sources document it.
what opened space for the coup really was, i think, the overreaction by the government: they literally employed snipers from their special force Berkut, who shot at and killed people — officers were given order by Yanukovych and today those who followed the orders have been arrested and charged with murder of 39 protesters. as the situation further spiraled out of control, Yanukovych fled the country.
so basically the timeline up to the coup is:
November 21, 2013: Yanukovych says no to EU deal
December 1, 2013: Euromaidan protestors seize city hall in Kyiv
December 17, 2013: Putin announces a $15B loan
January 22, 2014: first 2 deaths in protests
February 18, 2014: street clashes, 26 dead
February 21, 2014: street clashes, 40 dead
February 22, 2014: Yanukovych flees the country
COUP!
then following the coup:
February 23, 2014: Parliament votes to repeal minority language laws in the east (about Russian language)
February 27, 2014: Russian units, already in Crimea since they have a leasing agreement with Ukraine where they were leasing that naval base in Sevastopol, began seizing checkpoints in Crimea
February 28, 2014: Additional Russian forces begin moving into Crimea
March 6, 2014: Crimean parliament votes to join Russia and hold a referendum on the issue
March 16, 2014: Referendum in Crimea
March 18, 2014: Russia incorporates Crimea
shortly after, conflict breaks out in eastern Ukraine, where Russian Muslim and Orthodox majority lives.
US perspective of Russian reaction
what was the Russia reaction? they took Crimea and they are not giving it back.
to be sure, most US strategists do not think this move is Russia seeking to conquer Ukraine — an American variety of opinion on the matter shared by professor John Mearsheimer and Henry Kissinger is basically that Putin is too smart to try to conquer Ukraine, he is simply wrecking Ukraine as he is saying:
either “back off and we go back to the status quo ante February 22, 2014 where Ukraine is a buffer state”;
or “continue trying to westernize Ukraine in which case we will destroy the country.”
since NATO never backed off and in fact doubled down, Russia continued on with wrecking Ukraine.
but it is important to emphasize they were wrecking military points held by the n*z!s, these are military neutralizations, not wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure like bridges and hospitals and schools and roads, but rather bases, production sites, n*z! safe houses etc using the intelligence the Russian gathered on these groups.
was it surprising to anyone paying attention to geopolitics that this would happen?
no.
was it surprising to the Obama administration and the Atlanticist elites, these 21st century men and women who think putting NATO missiles on Russian border will be taken lightly, regarded as some type of polite global positioning?
absolutely.
what motivated this? Russia is now a great power and has absolutely no interest to allow the US/NATO to take a piece of key strategic importance on its western border and incorporate it into the US/NATO.
this should not have been surprising to the Obama administration, which only leads me to believe these people nowadays are absolute fools, product of the very system that produced all this fuckery; or they are actually pursuing a white supremacist playbook; or, or, or…
this Russian reaction should be hardly surprising to Americans given that the US has the Monroe doctrine which basically says the Western hemisphere is the US's backyard, and no foreign power is to move military forces into the western hemisphere. case in point: the US-Cuban missile crisis. there the USSR wanted to put military forces in Cuba — the US government lost their shit, "no one does that!"
the situation with Ukraine is similar to the imagined scenario of a powerful China forming a military alliance with Canada and Mexico, and moving military forces onto their soil. based, i know, but the point here is that the act would not be accepted by the US.
the US government and elites wouldn't stand there as 21st century men and women who apparently don't think in a balance-of-power geopolitical sense anymore, thinking it doesn't matter, saying "oh this is no problem, we're 21st century people, this is not a threat."
fuck no, the US would directly attack China just like they did the USSR if that ever happened, mfs in Arkansas would even enlist, that's how deep anti-China/anti-Communism goes here.
so nobody should be surprised that the Russians, now a great power, backed by strong China and Iran relations, would back down from a clear NATO advance and western threat — except, apparently, the US elites, the US government, and their sheep, totally shocked, to the point of having to activate the media propaganda apparatus to cry for them, manufacturing consent for sanctions and defense spending, fomenting hate.
the rhetoric was there all along, Russia literally said in 2008 like i pointed out above, that incorporating Ukraine and Georgia is a direct threat against Russia.
if you must, ask yourself, why might you believe that NATO can do that, that the US can organize the world however they want, and react however in the face of any conflict, even with war or sanctions if necessary, but not the Russians or Chinese? do you not posit autonomy to the Oriental Other?
i claim it's significantly due to US/NATO propaganda — a wing of the US military is responsible for the US media indoctrination apparatus; whereas a wing of NATO is responsible for the European media indoctrination apparatus — it’s how it goes.
Atlanticist myths
Putin is the main cause: as i have hopefully demonstrated here, NATO is responsible for this conflict
Putin is crazy or irrational: Angela Merkel made this argument for a while, trying to discredit him by using a mental illness
Putin wants to establish a Greater Russia: if he could do it, he would, but he can't and he recognizes this so he's not going to try
Putin resembles H!tler: anyone who says this should not be taken seriously
of course, this is all based on the myth that US is a benign hegemon seeking to promote democracy and European stability.
but of course this might (will?) be spun as the sentiment that Putin's behavior proves it was necessary to expand NATO eastward, specifically to include Ukraine and Georgia.
this is blatantly false, it needs to be recognized as such.
there is absolutely no concrete evidence that the US thought Putin was being aggressive, anyone who has been keeping up as i have and knows anything about anything, knows they were all empty accusations.
it was only after January 22, 2014 that the US decided the Russians are the aggressors and began pushing the narrative in its media apparatus.
so what happened as a result? the US has doubled down and has been playing tougher with the Russia — which is exactly what you'd expect from a government blaming their famous boogieman, the Russians, since they're incapable of taking accountability for this conflict: as we all know, all the problems in the world are caused by everybody else except the US, according to Americans.
so you have an idea of what was the US sentiment under Obama in 2014, consider this quote from the New York Times from April 19, 2014:
Just as the US resolved in the aftermath of WWII to counter the Soviet Union and its global ambitions, Mr. Obama is focused on isolating President Putin’s Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the outside world, limiting its expansionist ambitions in its own neighborhood and effectively making it a pariah state.
In effect, Mr. Obama is retrofitting for a new age the approach to Moscow that was first set out by the diplomat George F. Kennan in 1947 and that dominated American strategy through the fall of the Soviet Union. The administration’s priority is to hold together an international consensus against Russia, including even China, its longtime supporter on the United Nations Security Council.
as you can see, the basic mindset of people in the West is that you can punish the Russians economically and they'll throw their hands up.
is the US capable of succeeding? i would argue this is a losing hand because this is a competition between economic and security considerations between the Atlanticists and the Russians, so when considering security, when core strategic issues are at stake, and there's no question that Ukraine isn't a core strategic interest for Russia, countries will suffer great economic losses before giving in.
on the other hand, Ukraine doesn't matter to the US at this point.
or at least it shouldn't, from a US core strategic geopolitical point of view.
why do i think this? if NATO were serious about Ukraine joining them because it is in fact a vital strategic point for US/NATO interests, then there would be NATO boots on the ground already; there aren’t any.
but it does appear to matter, why?
likely because certain families in Washington currently in power have special interests in the region of Ukraine.
consider Burisma Holdings, a holding company founded in 2002, registered in Cyprus but based in Kiyv, Ukraine. it has operated in the Ukrainian natural gas sector as one of the largest private natural gas producers. the founder is Mykola Zlochevsky, an Ukrainian oligarch who was on the National Security and Defense Council from April 2012 until February 2014 when Euromaidan protests happened. in 2012, the Ukrainian general prosecutor began investigating Zlochevsky over allegations of tax evasion and money laundering. at the end of 2014, Zlochevsky fled Ukraine amid allegations of unlawful self enrichment and legalization of funds (Article 368-2, Criminal Code of Ukraine) during his tenure in public office. at the end of January 2015, the Central Criminal Court in London released the $23 million that were blocked on accounts of Zlochevsky due to inadequate evidence. in June 2018, the Serious Fraud Office stated that the case was closed.
guess who was on the board of Burisma Holdings? the one and only Hunter Biden.
if that's not enough (it's hard to find counter info, you have to keep in mind cyberwarfare is also happening on all fronts, against the people domestically and against strategic international enemies to US interests), there's also this report on Reuters.
there's more, of course: according to the New York Post article on October 2020,
An associate at Blue Star Strategies then emailed a memo with minutes of the conference call hosted by the White House to a top Burisma executive, Vadym Pozharskyi, as well as to Joe Biden’s son Hunter and Hunter’s business partner, Devon Archer, both of whom sat on Burisma’s board.
that's as far as i will go on about this point though, i won't entertain claims of Paul Pelosi Jr. or John Kerry's stepsons having ties to Ukrainian oligarchy. although it is entirely in the realm of possibility, and while, for instance, Pelosi Jr. did sit on board of Viscoil as president and COO, their LLC was registered in California — which i admit it doesn't matter, for as we saw above, Burisma is registered in Cyprus but operates in Ukraine.
this is because i don't want this brief to lose itself to entertaining US neoconservative fear, though it's worth mentioning that Viscoil came under investigation for securities fraud and was purportedly on the radar as one of the companies that was part of the Obama administration’s redistribution of billions of dollars into new energy technology.
Putin's ideological motivations
lastly, for a more complete picture, i think it's important to consider the ideological motivations of Putin because being in the west, we only are aware or think through the ideology of the west so it's important to become aware of other worldviews.
without offering a whole biography on the man, it's worth pointing out that he went through the KGB, the Soviet government, and eventually became the president of Russia, which is to say, he is properly a "19th century" man who views the world in terms of geopolitics and balance of power: this means that, for example, even if he did not agree with Iran's motives in some political play, he would still back the Iranian government if the play didn't threaten Russia, just to maintain an offense position against Atlanticist imperialism (US/NATO/IMF).
but to understand the ideology of Putin today, i turn to Aleksandr Dugin.
if you do a quick search, you'll read all the scary words the US wants you to stay on high alert against: "ultra nationalist," "fascist," "Eurasianist," and so on.
but to be sure, Dugin is not a fascist ideologue if he is serious about his plans, which he seems to be serious about. in fact, among officials close to Putin, Dugin is not seen as a preacher of an ideological sect, but as an officially recognized specialist on geopolitical questions — therefore his ideas are to be taken seriously.
in his The Fourth Political Theory, Dugin makes it clear that Communism and Fascism failed, and Liberalism won — marking the end of ideology, because Liberalism, through cultural postmodernism and cyberneticized capitalism, elevated itself to an ontological status, becoming "the way things ought to be," that is, the end of ideological and civilizational progress itself: "history ends here, now we just have to do better,: go to therapy, vote, recycle, exercise, drop-ship for Amazon, re-invent yourself," is what Liberalism feeds us.
his project is to reject the orthodoxy of Communism and Fascism, and by carefully studying how Liberalism won and what is has done, construct projects (propaganda, educational, military, cyberwar) to counter the postmodern neoliberal order of rootless consumerism. he is very clear about this: Fascism and Communism failed in Eurasia, they should be discarded totally; Liberalism won, it should be studied and fought against, because all modern symptoms are attributed to Liberalism triumphing.
it is true to an extent: anyone who seriously studies US politics and has observed the debasement of communalist politics among US leftists and its bastardization among the rightists can sympathize with this assessment.
anyway, on April 2001, Dugin founded the congress of the pan-Russian Political social movement, Eurasia. in his address, Dugin expressed gratitude "to the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation," for its assistance before also thanking the Moscow Patriarchate, which is the central spiritual administration for the Muslims of Russia.
by May 2001, the Russian Ministry of Justice officially registered the "Eurasia" movement.
journalist Dmitrii Radyshevskii once asked Dugin, "what induces Russia to seek a new ideology for Eurasianism?" Dugin answered:
Here [in Dugin Eurasianism] are ideas which meet the psychological needs of society: there is an alternative to the failed love affair with the West, the Russian tradition of Messianism, proximity to Asia [...] the Russian government stands in need of a new ideology, but of a traditional one, integral and great, and all of this is happily combined in Eurasianism.
i know this sounds close to traditional fascism for the studied ear, but bear with me. Dugin sees the project that westernized reformed-Russians attempted to implement during the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years as having been completely discredited, and now they are dealing with the cultural-economic remnants left behind by this strain of thought. about his, Dugin said,
This project [the Westernization of Russia with Liberalism] denies such values as the people, the nation, history, geopolitical interests, social justice, the religious factor, etc. In it, everything is constructed on the principle of maximal economic effectiveness, on the primacy of the individual, on consumerism, and the "free market."
like me, Dugin also believes the Atlanticists consciously plotted the downfall of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR.
so their goal is to make the US and British pay, as they should.
as for the traditionalism not focused on state but on cultural ethnicity, Dugin believes that the Russian people are "the bearers of a unique civilization." he goes further:
[The Russian people] are a messianic people, possessing universal, pan-human significance [...] the Russian people never made its goal the creation of a mono-ethnic, racially uniform state. Such a distorted view represents the Atlanticist line masking itself as Russian nationalism.
i echo Fanon's nationalism here: Palestinian nationalism, Syrian nationalism, Iranian nationalism, Korean nationalism, Vietnamese nationalism, Pan-Africanism — here is not the reactionary nationalism of invading european settlers, but the nationalism of a native people coming to self-consciousness in this historical moment and expressing their collective sovereign will.
every nation has the right to defend themselves from those who have been the aggressors for the past 500 years, who are the US hydra and its many heads: the cultural EU, the military NATO, and financial IMF/UN.
if a people demand a national spirit, let them; if they end up opposing it later, let them. the US government should not be playing world police, because the policing they perform on the world stage is the same policing that police within the US perform: unnecessarily violent, racist, classist, xenophobic.
so how would a revived Eurasian-Russian empire bring about the geopolitical defeat of the US?
Dugin details that an appropriate response to the looming Atlanticist threat is for the renascent Eurasian-Russian empire to direct all of its powers, as well as those of the remainder of humanity, against the “Atlanticist Anaconda”:
At the basis of the geopolitical construction of this Eurasian empire, there must be placed one fundamental principle: the principle of a common enemy.
this common enemy is the negation of Atlanticism i.e. a repudiation of the strategic control of the US, and the rejection of the supremacy of capitalist, liberal market values:
The anti-Americanism of the Japanese, who remember the nuclear genocide and the disgrace of political occupation, must be unleashed, as well as the fervent anti-Americanism of fundamentalist Muslim Iranians. On the global scale, the main scapegoat will be precisely the U.S.
one way the Russians will be able to turn other states against Atlanticism will be through an intelligent use of the country's raw material riches:
In the beginning stage [of the struggle against Atlanticism], Russia can offer its potential partners in the East and West its resources as compensation for exacerbating their relations with the US. All levels of geopolitical pressure must be activated simultaneously.
within the US itself, Dugin writes there is a need for the Russian special services and their allies "to provoke all forms of instability and separatism within the borders of the US."
if you are actually about opposing the US, this shouldn't scare you: embrace it. this is building up to our moment because if you also oppose the Atlanticists, you can ally with the Russians and take advantage of the vacuum that will be created once the US empire begins to fall — allying, of course, in a geopolitical sense, i.e. not necessarily because you believe in Russian supremacy, that's their world myth, not mine or yours. unless you are Russian, of course.
Dugin's Eurasian project also mandates attacking the US through Central and South America. Dugin writes,
The Eurasian project proposes Eurasian expansion into South and Central America with the goal of freeing them from the control of the North.
as a result of such unrelenting destabilization efforts, the United States and its close ally Britain eventually will be forced to leave the shores of Eurasia (and Africa). Dugin prophecies, “The entire gigantic edifice of Atlanticism will collapse.” he believes that this could happen unexpectedly, as occurred with the sudden collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR: expelled from the shores of Eurasia, the US would then be required to "limit its influence to the Americas."
within the territorial sprawl of Eurasia, Dugin's program focuses on the formation of three key axes:
Moscow-Berlin,
Moscow-Tokyo, and
Moscow-Tehran.
with regard to the future of Europe, Dugin writes:
"The task of Moscow is to tear Europe away from the control of the US/NATO, to assist European unification, and to strengthen ties with Central Europe under the aegis of the fundamental external axis Moscow-Berlin. Eurasia needs a united, friendly Europe.
in exchange for cooperating with Russia in this project, Dugin proposes that Germany be given back "Kaliningrad oblast (Eastern Prussia)." as a result of a grand alliance between Russia and Germany, the two countries will divide up the territories lying between them into de facto spheres of dominance. there is to be no "sanitary cordon."
"The task of Eurasia consists in making sure such a sanitary cordon does not exist. Russia and Germany together must decide all disputed questions together and in advance.
moving eastward, Dugin proposes offering Germany de facto political dominance over most Protestant and Catholic states located within Central and Eastern Europe.
the "unstable" state of Finland, which "historically enters into the geopolitical space of Russia" is seen as an exception. in this instance, Dugin proposes that Finland be combined together with the Karelian Autonomous Republic of the Russian Federation into a single ethnoterritorial formation "with maximal cultural autonomy, but with strategic integration into the Eurasian bloc."
and finally, on the key question of Ukraine, Dugin underlines:
"Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning. It has no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness. Ukraine as an independent state with certain territorial ambitions, represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics. The independent existence of Ukraine (especially within its present borders) can make sense only as a 'sanitary cordon' [neutral buffer zone].
Dugin speculates that three extreme western regions of Ukraine — Volynia, Galicia, and Trans-Carpathia — heavily populated with Uniates and other Catholics, could be permitted to form an independent "Western Ukrainian Federation," but this area must not under any circumstances be permitted to fall under Atlanticist control.
in other words, with the exception of these three western regions, Ukraine, like Belorussia, is seen as an integral part of Eurasia-Russia.
lastly, i note that Dugin warns in his book:
China is the most dangerous geopolitical neighbor of Russia to the South, both as a geopolitical base for Atlanticism and by itself, as a country with heightened demographic compactness in quest of ‘no man’s land.’
for readers of this Substack, i believe it’s important to highlight that Dugin is not pro-Chinese: in the book, under the chapter titled “The Fall of China,” he believes the PRC should be dismantled. he underlines, “Tibet-Sinkiang-Mongolia-Manchuria taken together should comprise a security belt of Russia.”
the above information on Dugin, including direct quotes, were extracted from, admittedly after a not-very-thorough skim-reading of Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics.
as for Putin himself, if you wish to understand him better, i highly recommend Dugin’s own Putin vs Putin: Vladimir Putin from the Right.
Conclusion
the main argument i'm making is that it's the Atlantic West (US + NATO) that is responsible for forcing Putin to make a decision involving the invasion of Ukraine in order to stand up to the increased pressure along its borders and the constant bombing of Eastern Ukrainian areas.
most US citizens don’t understand that Washington (the White House) has published detailed reports on the importance of pivoting against the Chinese superpower threat blah blah blah. if they are to continue on their warpath, they need Russia on their side to keep pressuring Iran and Syria, but thankfully, recently, the US has been doing everything to push Iran and Syria into Russian arms (e.g. Russian government and Iranian government agreed to the sale/purchase of Su-35 jets).
once China fully materializes by 2025-2030, it will become the greatest threat to the existence of the US at this level of development/production/consumption, so if they are to be the “good US leaders,” they should be aiming to develop an alliance with Japan, South Korea, and Russia (i don’t agree with this, i’m just assessing), so whatever happens between US/NATO and Ukraine/Russia as the days continue, should be understood relative to this basis.