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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday once again brushed off the Ukrainian counteroffensive and issued a wider threat to the West for its military support for Kyiv.
Putin has recently said his forces largely have not begun to fight. The troops in Ukraine have been volunteers up until this point. His recent mobilization will increase his forces by 300,000.
He said, “We are in no rush.”
The Russian president sees the war in Ukraine as a clear effort by the West to “weaken, divide, and ultimately destroy our country.”
“They are already directly saying that in 1991 they were able to split the Soviet Union, and now the time has come for Russia itself, and that it should disintegrate into many mortally warring regions and regions.”
Sputnik News noted that Putin said the collective West has been working to destabilize Russia by encouraging terrorists in the Caucasus and the buildup of NATO infrastructure along the border. (See “RUSSIA WARNS FINLAND AND SWEDEN: DON’T JOIN NATO” 26 Apr 2022, “WASHINGTON AND NATO: NO CONCESSIONS TO RUSSIA” (1 Feb 2022) and “PUTIN CALLS OUT U.S. AND NATO, BLAMES THEM FOR UKRAINE WAR” 10 May 2022.)
Putin has mentioned NATO’s expansion as one of the top causes of the war.
In May, during Russia’s Victory Parade celebrating the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, the Russian leader said the Kremlin was aware of NATO’s military infrastructure build-up and how “hundreds of foreign advisers had begun to work” inside these countries. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are trained almost exclusively by NATO and some Baltic states that border Russia have been recipients of modern weapons from the Alliance.
The U.S. State Department has denied Russia’s claims and has written them off as propaganda.
“The danger was growing every day. Russia offered a pre-emptive rebuff to the aggression—this was a forced, timely move and the only correct decision, one taken by a strong and independent country,” Putin said.
Putin said last week that the Western elites have been intentionally targeting Russia to maintain their dominance. He said these elites are trying to suppress “any sovereign independent centers of development in order to further brutally impose their will on other countries and nations, to plant their fake values.”
President Joe Biden told the UN General Assembly last week that the war in Ukraine is about “extinguishing” a country’s right to exist and that “should make your blood run cold.”
TRENDPOST: Agree or disagree with Vladimir Putin’s statements, in the Western media there is just one side to the Ukraine War: Russia aggression.
The Presstitutes in the West never reported on the U.S.’s failing military campaign in Afghanistan after the 20-year war. There was never daily coverage of the United States murderous Iraq War which killed an estimated million Iraqis and destroyed the nation.
But since the beginning of the Ukraine War, reports have been that these Russian forces were in disarray. But, somehow, these bumbling forces managed to take 20 percent of Ukraine. Ukraine has been credited for winning the “messaging war” with Russia, but that is easy to do in the West, where corporate media companies have to answer to their media overlords.
Take any major newspaper and their stories on Ukraine read like press releases from Kyiv.
Totally ignored, as we have greatly detailed over the decades, is the United States and NATO actions that were, to Russia, moves of aggression.
Also, long forgotten was the U.S. and NATO’S pledge not to expand into Eastern Europe following the deal made during the 1990 negotiations between the West and the Soviet Union over German unification.
The Alliance continued its expansion in waves. There were 16 members at the peak of the Cold War and 30 in 2020. NATO’s goal, according to a quote commonly attributed to Lord Lionel Hastings Ismay, its first secretary-general, is “keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down,” International Politics noted.
“NATO’s continued existence ensures that Europe remains a strategic subordinate to the USA, which explains why the USA, though it has complained often about inequitable burden sharing, has never demanded a dramatic increase in European military power, let alone a Europe with an autonomous defense policy,” the essay read.
Therefore, in the view of Russia, it is taking self-defense actions to protect itself from NATO’s eastward march. Putin started moving tens of thousands of troops to the Ukrainian border late last year and said they will not leave until there are “concrete agreements prohibiting any further eastward expansion of NATO.”
Washington refused to acknowledge Russia’s security concerns in the weeks before the war and turned down Russia’s list of security demands. Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said, “There is no change, there will be no change.”
TRENDPOST: The Trends Journal has cited an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times from May 2016 titled “Russia’s Got A Point: The U.S. Broke a NATO Promise.”
The article noted that while the U.S. and NATO deny that no such agreement was struck, “…hundreds of memos, meeting minutes and transcripts from U.S. archives indicate otherwise.”
The article states:
“According to transcripts of meetings in Moscow on Feb. 9, then-Secretary of State James Baker suggested that in exchange for cooperation with Germany, the U.S. could make ‘iron-clad guarantees’ that NATO would not expand ‘one inch eastward.’ Less than a week later, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to begin reunification talks.
“No formal deal was struck, but from all the evidence, the quid pro quo was clear: Gorbachev acceded to Germany’s western alignment and the U.S. would limit NATO’s expansion.”
It was George Washington who wrote in his farewell address that the U.S. should avoid foreign entanglements and join no permanent alliances.
“The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave,” Washington wrote.
Western Support for Ukraine
Putin said that the West has crossed every possible line in its “aggressive anti-Russian policy” and “we constantly hear threats against our country and our people.”
“Some irresponsible politicians in the West talk about plans to organize the supply of long range offensive weapons to Ukraine, systems that are capable of launching strikes against Crimea and other regions of Russia,” Putin said.
Putin ordered the partial mobilization of his forces last week because he said there is a need to protect the Motherland. About 300,000 reservists were called up in the mobilization.
Referendums
Voters in four Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine have been voting on whether to officially become part of Russia, which has been rejected by the U.S. as “sham referenda.”
“One man chose this war. One man can end it,” Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said at the UN. “Because if Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.”
Blinken called the annexation a “dangerous escalation” of the war and a “repudiation of diplomacy.”
Putin has said the people of Kherson and Zaporozhye regions are holding these referendums after asking Russia’s support. He said Russia will do all it can to “ensure security at these referendums for people to express their will.”
Some of the territories that are holding these votes are still under Ukrainian control, showing confidence from Russia that its troops will continue to advance. (See “MEDVEDEV WARNS OF ARMAGEDDON AS U.S. AND NATO RAMP UP UKRAINE WAR.”)
The New York Times reported that some residents in the area said they witnessed Russian soldiers coercing people to go vote.
Putin said Russia will defend its claimed territory and would “certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people.”
“This is not a bluff,” he said.
The West took Putin’s comment as a nuclear threat.
Jens Stoltenberg, then secretary-general, said Putin’s rhetoric was dangerous, noting that a nuclear war should “never be fought and cannot be won, and it will have unprecedented consequences for Russia.” (It is widely believed that Russia has 10 times as many tactical nuclear weapons as the U.S.)
TRENDPOST: Gerald Celente has said the world is already at war, but it will not be officially declared until the first flash of a nuclear detonation appears.
The Russian president said the Ukrainian government has carried out a brutal campaign against the population who have now been liberated from living under “neo-Nazis.” He said many from the region have already fled due to the artillery and rocket fire from these “neo-Nazi militants.”
He said these attacks have targeted schools and hospitals.
“We have no moral right to hand over people close to us to be torn to pieces by executions,” he said.
Putin downplayed Western reports that his forces are faltering and said “step by step,” they are liberating Donetsk land, clearing cities and towns from neo-Nazis, and helping people whom the Kyiv regime has turned into hostages and a human shield.”
“In Zaporozhye, the Kherson region, as well as Lugansk and Donetsk, people have seen and are seeing the atrocities that neo-Nazis conduct in the occupied areas of the Kharkov region,” Putin said. “The heirs of Bandera and Nazi punishers kill people, torture, throw them in prison, settle scores, crack down, abuse civilians.”
He continued, “Russia can’t give up people close to her to be torn apart by executioners and fail to respond to their desire to determine their own fate.”
Putin’s critics say the Kremlin is loose with the Nazi designation and uses it to win support from the public against adversaries.
TRENDPOST: The Trends Journal has long noted the link between top Ukrainian officials and neo-Nazis. (See “TOP UKRAINIAN AMBASSADOR: HEIL HITLER.”)
Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist leader who Wikipedia notes lead “the militant wing (OUN-B), served as head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, organization responsible for massacres and ethnic cleansings, also implicated in collaboration with Nazi Germany.”
Bandera was killed six decades ago by Soviet intelligence agents and is viewed as a father figure by some Ukrainians.
We’ve also reported on Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, which Russia says is made up of neo-Nazis. (See “UKRAINE’S AZOV BATTALION: ‘NAZI’S OR ‘FAR-RIGHT? DON’T CALL A SPADE A SPADE.”)
The Azov Battalion formed in May 2014—shortly after Crimean’s voted to leave Ukraine and go Russian—was comprised of civilian volunteers from neo-Nazi groups who faced off against Russian separatists in places like Donbas. The battalion was one of the reasons that Putin said he invaded the country. He said he wanted to “demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.”