The past two weeks of public congressional impeachment testimony saturating the U.S. mainstream media was whether President Trump had held back $391 million of military aid until the Ukraine government launched an investigation into Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, pertaining to Hunter’s business deal with Burisma Energy, which earned him some $3 million as a member of its board.
The $391 million quid pro quo pales in comparison, however, to the more than $20 billion, revealed in recent testimony, that has been given to Ukraine since 2014 by the U.S. and its allies in the EU.
In testimony, David Holmes, chief political counselor at the U.S. embassy in Kiev, said, “The United States has provided combined civilian and military assistance to Ukraine since 2014 of about $3 billion plus” and that “The Europeans, at the level of the European Union plus the member states combined since 2014, my understanding has provided a combined $12 billion to Ukraine.”
Based on interviews with the co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the amount provided by the EU is actually much higher – close to $17 billion.
The reason the EU and the U.S. are so generous to Ukraine is clearly geopolitical. Ukraine shares a long border of about 1200 miles with Russia. The buildup of military force on this border combined with aid given to bolster forces in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which all border Russia, is a direct provocation aimed at Russia.
In his congressional impeachment testimony, David Holmes also revealed, “Since 2014, National Guard units from California, Oklahoma, New York, Tennessee, and Wisconsin have trained shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukrainian counterparts.”
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Under the agreement between U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush with then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, NATO would not expand its military presence following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Beginning with Bill Clinton and continued under George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump’s regimes, the U.S. and NATO have violated that agreement, bringing troops and weaponry throughout Eastern Europe to the borders of Russia.
This fact is continually ignored by both American politicians and its mainstream media.
While considered fully appropriate for the U.S. and its allies to stage war games and pour billions of dollars of military aid to countries bordering Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, and other nations it is in conflict with, should any of these nations do the same on U.S. borders, it would be called an “Act of War.”
Peace in Ukraine?
In a related story, last week Moscow returned three Ukrainian naval ships that had been captured last year after a light skirmish between the two countries. This comes after Moscow and Kiev agreed last month to withdraw troops in an area of eastern Ukraine. They will also both support open elections in the region.
These peace initiatives are in contrast to strong pressures on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from extreme nationalists in his country who are protesting against any agreements with Moscow.