David Craig, on April 8th, 2022Friday/weekend blog
First, let me make it clear – I am not condoning Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But Putin has made it very clear for at least the last 14 years that he saw Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO as an existential threat to Russia and warned, “not an inch eastwards”.
When a large, vicious, slavering, mad dog starts snarling at you as it defends what it regards as its territory, do you either?
a. tell it to ‘f*ck itself’ believing it will never attack?
b. move carefully away to avoid a confrontation?
The West arrogantly ignored Putin’s warnings and told the mad dog to ‘go f*ck itself’. That was dumb.
Here are two short videos. The first is from a NATO conference in April 2008 where Putin was invited to address NATO leaders and where he warned (1 minute to 1 minute 10 seconds of this 2-minute video) that inviting Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO, and thus parking NATO troops and missiles directly on Russia’s borders, would be seen as an existential threat to Russia’s security:
For years, Putin has repeated his warnings that he would not allow Ukraine and Georgia, which both have long borders with Russia, to join NATO. In December 2021, Putin yet again warned the West that allowing Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO would be unacceptable – the first minute of this 3-minute video. In this video Putin (sensibly in my opinion) asks whether the US would allow Russian troops and missiles to be positioned along its borders with Canada or Mexico and reiterates his “not an inch eastwards” threat:
Yet in January 2022, the US presented its written response to Russian demands on Ukraine not joining NATO and on NATO troops being withdrawn from Romania and Bulgaria, but made clear that it did not change Washington’s support for Ukraine’s right to pursue NATO membership, the most contentious issue in relations with Moscow.
The reply, which was delivered to the Russian Foreign Ministry by the US ambassador in Moscow, John Sullivan, repeated the US offer to negotiate with Russia over some aspects of European security, but the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said the issue of eventual Ukrainian membership of the alliance was one of principle.
Blinken was speaking hours after his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, threatened “retaliatory measures” if the US response did not satisfy the Kremlin.
“Without going to the specifics of the document, I can tell you that it reiterates what we said publicly for many weeks, and in a sense for many, many years. That we will uphold the principle of NATO’s open door,” Blinken said, adding: “There is no change. There will be no change.”
The West thought Putin was bluffing. But Putin wasn’t bluffing. Putin doesn’t do bluffing. After all, he has had three successful mini-wars in the last few years – the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia in which Russia routed the Georgian military; the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea without a shot being fired and the Russian invasion (sorry, I meant “peace-keeping force”) during the Armenia and Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
It would seem that Putin believed the Ukraine invasion would be just another of Russia’s quick mini-wars – charge into Ukraine with 169,000 troops, take the main cities, depose the West-friendly government and install a Russian glove-puppet regime. But Putin got that one horribly wrong and so now we have a real mess on our hands.
I guess all I’m trying to say is that NATO – due to its arrogance, short-sightedness and catastrophic misjudgement of Putin’s character – bears just as much responsibility for the Ukraine mess as Putin’s nationalist aggression and misjudgement of Russia’s military power compared to Ukraine’s.
Though, apart from one article by Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail, I haven’t seen such a balanced view expressed anywhere else in the Western mainstream media.
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Spot on. The powers that run the US (&UK/EU) governments put Biden into power so he would do their bidding without question. Those power hungry neo-cons want WWIII to put Europe back into the dark ages
I think Putin made a huge blunder here too and he should have waited and let the energy costs for europe continue to ratchet up and induce economic misery across the continent. Play the long game although maybe his health is an issue and time is not on his side.
It would drive a wedge between europe and the usa who are sitting pretty with low cost energy. What energy costs don’t do the fed reserve will finish with interest rates being pushed up over next 18 months and if they do not blink europe will struggle to finance itself without huge cuts.
A what point do the europeans decide nato aggression is not the most important game in town. To save their beloved eu they are going to bankrupt themselves to enrich ukrainian and us oligarchs.
Doesn’t this tell us everything we need to know about politicians? They are like children playing with toys. They will not share theirs but expect to take anything they want from others, but with politicians they play with land and people, and they don’t really care about either. It is about appearing important. If they played nicely nobody would notice them so they have to create problems and the bigger the better.
For over 150 years politicians have started wars in Europe. Every time they move borders and do not care about the impact on people. The Franco-Prussian war may have been the start of what we are seeing today. Germany was created and Alsace-Lorraine annexed. Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia. Germany was becoming the dominant economy in Europe and overtaking the UK. The conditions for WWI were created. Not satisfied with “winning” a war the victors have to add further punishment. Foch set up WWII with the treaty conditions imposed on Germany. After WWII the terms allowed communism to spread into eastern Europe and the ridiculous division of Berlin. Only politicians could do anything this stupid. They did not care in the least about the people and we hear very little about deaths in Germany from starvation after WWII. The western politicians set up more division with the creation of NATO but there was an agreement between Gorbachev and Bush that it would not expand further east. As always they ignore their agreements and in the case of treaties they never set up a means to police the conditions.
It is impossible to predict what could have happened but everything possible should have been done to prevent the war in Ukraine. The west should have made a clear statement that Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO, but they would not do it. It might have put off the conflict and Putin would have been given a way out. Further, the west encouraged Ukraine to enter into conflict. How can the deaths and destruction be justified by politicians on either side?
Europe will suffer here as twi5ted says. The US and Russia have material and energy resources. Europe is determined to follow the zero carbon nonsense. The idiot Boris is even talking about us supplying Europe with energy.
The cost of NATO expansionism appears to have come at some cost.
I just filled up my diesel gas guzzler and got charged £1.81 a litre. last week it was 1.61 a litre.
To fill my tank 100% now costs an extra £21.33.
Food, gas and electricity and everything else is going to cost an average family about £5000.00 a year more.
The average wage in this country I am told is £27,000.00 before tax ! I can see problems ahead, down in the shire.
I can tell you right now that millions of families in this country are really going to struggle. One thing for sure is that as usual, the public sector will be well looked after at the expense of the mugs of which I am one.
I can forsee a massive increase in shoplifting, burglary, and all sorts of violence caused by stress brought on by money problems.
Perhaps if we all just pay the £30,000.00 to register as non domiciled in the UK and send in applications backdated for furlough money for non essential businesses like up market, liquidated gymnasiums and as a result, stop paying inheritance tax, this would help your average Joe.
It might also help if your dad is a foreign billionaire and he was able to claim millions on the furlough scheme while still scooping up UK government contracts by the bucket load.
The game is up and ordinary people will soon go into survival mode and it will be everyone for themselves, and who can blame them ?
Meanwhile I am busy measuring the angle of my stairs to check they are not too steep for the man at the council so that I can get the Ukranian refugee I have applied for. I have asked for a broad minded, fun type lady of about 22 who has a sound knowledge of roofing and general building maintenance relevant to an average Victorian semi-detached. She should also have a keen interest in gardening. The extra £350.00 a month coming in should just about cover my monthly council tax increase and tripled electricity bill, but unless she gets planting soon, she better get used to egg & onion sandwiches.
Western political leaders hate Putin because under him, Russia has become a factor in world politics once more, instead of remaining the bankrupt, impotent poodle they had made it under the drunken western stooge Boris Yeltsin. They would love ‘Regime Change’ and another pliant globalist in the Kremlin instead, humbly following the orders of the World Economic Forum.
They also hate Russia because it has conspicuously failed to sign up to the ‘Diversity, Equality and Inclusion’ agenda, because it has not become a centre for Greta-worship, and because it has declined to import its quota of millions of uneducated African and Pakistani males of military age.
That is why our Globalist rulers have spent the years since the overthrow of the Ukraine’s elected leadership in 2014 deliberately and ceaselessly provoking the Russian government, despite the above-mentioned clear warnings.
US government ministers, politicians, arms salesmen, and businessmen such as Biden and his son have been conspicuously active in the Ukraine ever since 2014, when Obama was President.
Ukraine is one of the poorest countries in Europe, a nest of corruption and thievery. If not for Putin Russia would be in the same state. Putin has said he has worked tirelessly to restore the economics of the ruin of the USSR, and to gradually control the oligarchs who rum riot in his neighbour. There is the question of the biolabs too, in which the ghastly Xidens and a lot of countries eg Israel are involved. There were rumours of collection of Russian DNA for specific bioweapons. Ye,s it appears Putin may have underestimated the support of Ukranians for the comedian regime, and perhaps did not realise Nato has been importing massive amounts of equipment, and training troops, who seem to hate Russians with a passion. The goal has been all along to confront Putin, regime change in mind and thus this confrontation was inevitable. Several bloggers based in the country/have sources of info do not have such a pessimistic outlook What fatso is doing is treasonous as we already pay for a stake in NATO. He should not be permitted to fly solo.
Can’t helping thinking back to the Cuban missile crisis, where the US lost it’s shit and nearly started WW3 when Russia moved missiles next to the US.