“The invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. Putin has taken leave of his senses. He’s crazy. He’s evil. He wants to reconquer all of Eastern Europe. He thought he’d be welcomed by the Ukrainians. He wasn’t. He’s a warmonger. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a traitor. His attack on Ukraine was unprovoked.”
This is how I am greeted when I suggest that we have been actively participating in the current unrest.
In 2012, the democratically elected government in Ukraine, with Viktor Yanukovych as president, chose to accept a Russian offer of economic assistance rather than the economic assistance offered by the European Union and International Monetary Fund. Protests in Ukraine’s pro-EU west eventually drove Yanukovych into exile in Russia. Neo-Nazis appear to have played a part in provoking the violence. In 2014, Victoria Nuland, then the U.S.’s assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, had plotted with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt to force Yanukovych from office and replace him with the pro-EU/NATO Artseniy Yatsenyuk. Three weeks later, their wishes were accomplished and a civil war in eastern Ukraine that has so far killed about 14,000 people commenced. We even provided weapons to the Ukrainians who wanted to become part of NATO, while Russians provided weapons to the Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainians who wanted to secede from the Ukraine that had abandoned Ukraine’s close relationship with Russia. It appears that we have participated in, even may have provoked Ukrainian unrest. To assign all the blame to Russia seems dishonest at best.
