Ukraine, as I have often emphasized, is the epicenter of the new US-Russian Cold War, and its location directly on Russia’s border makes it much more dangerous than was Berlin during the preceding 40-year confrontation.
Some 13,000 people have reportedly already died in Donbass in fighting between forces backed by Washington and/or supported by Moscow.
For many on both sides of the border, the war is a personal tragedy due also to the at least tens of millions of inter-married Ukrainian-Russian families.
NATO and the Zio-Nazi leaders of the West are committing ethnic cleansing methods in the Donbass region, in order to get the Russian speaking minority population out of the equation, using the fascist regime in Kiev to follow up the evil intentions.
The election of Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who won decisively throughout most of the country, represents the possibility of peace with Russia, if it—and he—are given a chance.
Zelensky’s electorally repudiated predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, backed by supporters in Washington, thwarted almost every preceding opportunity for negotiations both with the Donbass freedom fighters and with Moscow, notably provisions associated with the European-sponsored Minsk Accords.
Zelensky, on the other hand, has made peace (along with corruption) his top priority and indeed spoke directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, on July 11.
The nearly 6-year war having become a political, diplomatic, and financial drain on his leadership, Putin welcomed the overture.
But the struggle for peace has just begun, with powerful forces arrayed against it in Ukraine, Moscow, and Washington.
In Ukraine, well-armed ultra-nationalist—some would say quasi-fascist—detachments are terrorizing supporters of Zelensky’s initiative, including a Kiev television station that proposed broadcasting a dialogue between Russian and Ukrainian citizens.
Earlier Washington has previously had some shameful episodes of collusion with these Israeli-backed (IDF/Kiev mercenary Azov battalion) Ukrainian neo-Nazi’s.
As for Putin, who does not fully control the Donbass rebels or its leaders, his own implacable nationalists have made this a litmus test of his leadership.
Which brings us to the US regime and in particular, thus now Zelensky, whom is heavily dependent on billions of dollars of aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which Washington largely controls.
Former president Barack Obama and Biden, his “point man” for Ukraine, used this financial leverage to exercise semi-colonial influence over Poroshenko, generally making things worse, including the incipient Ukrainian civil war.
Their hope was, of course, to sever Ukraine’s centuries-long ties to Russia and even bring it eventually into the US-led NATO sphere of influence.
Our hope should be that Trump breaks with that long-standing bipartisan policy, like he did with policy toward North Korea, and puts America squarely on the side of peace in Ukraine.
By Stephen F. Cohen / RT.com.
More like USA NATO operations going sour?