If the Russians agree to any residual Ukraine with Zelensky in charge I'll be quite surprised. I think they want their guy in charge, along with control over future "elections". I just find this whole talk about "elections" amusing and find it strange how everyone seems to just gloss over and completely fail to mention that the US
literally hand-picked an interim government in Ukraine
after they plotted a coup to overthrow the
democratically elected government in Ukraine. A government in which
multiple independent outside organizations had verified the elections of said government as free, open, and fair. US plotted to remove a democratically elected President and his government
unconstitutionally and
then
hand-picked it's replacement government, and we're sitting here talking about "elections".
Yanukovych was actually
dead set on joining the EU.
Until the EU wouldn't negotiate terms with Ukraine and Russia wound up offering them a
way better deal. Yanukovych was trying to get a massive $160 billion package from EU. EU offered $828 million, and said take it or leave it. Obviously he was trying to get the best possible deal he could and figured they'd meet him somewhere in the middle. They didn't. EU offered Ukraine less than $1 billion, and the EU/IMF flatly refused any negotiations with Ukraine. They said this is the deal. Period. Take it or leave it. Russia came in and offered Ukraine a $15 billion aid/loan guarantee package (more than 20x what EU was offering), offered to pay higher carrier rates for transferring Russian natural gas through Ukrainian territory, and they also cut the price of Russian natural gas exports to Ukraine by 1/3rd. The decision to cancel the EU negotiations wasn't a unilateral move by Yanukovych either, it was
voted on and
passed in the Ukraine Parliament.
There were protests after this, but they didn't go critical mass and turn into disaster until....you guessed it....US interferring in the
sovereignty of another nation.
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US Intervention VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV9J6sxCs5k Here are what I believe to be the key quotes from the call and their context and implications: (00:45) Nuland: “So I don’t think Klitschko should go into the government. I don’t think it’s a good idea. I don’t think it’s necessary.” This is followed by a distressed sigh from Pyatt and he asks for clarification, implying this is his first time hearing this. He later mentions that Nuland should speak to Klitschko one-on-one. (2:06) Pyatt: “just knowing the dynamic that’s been with them where Klitschko’s been the top dog… I think you reaching out directly to him helps with the personality management.” A couple months prior, Klitschko had announced a campaign for the presidency and early polls showed him as the most popular opposition candidate. During the time of the phone call, he was still campaigning, making headlines in US outlets.despite his populist support, Klitschko announced that he would be withdrawing from the race and running for Mayor of Kiev. It appears Nuland was successful in “corner office-ing” him out of national and into local government. (1:22) Nuland: “I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience.” She’s referring to Arseniy Yatsenuk and emphasizing that he should play a leading role in the new government.
Less than one month later, Yatsenyuk went on to the position of prime minister.
"Yats" promptly signed the long sought-after EU trade agreement that initially started this fiasco. To illustrate the new regime’s stance on Russia, the following year Yats called on the EU to stop the Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and tightened immigration policy for Russian citizens entering Ukraine.
(2:48) Nuland: “When I talked to Jeff Feltman this morning, he had a new name for the UN guy - Robert Serry… He’s now gotten both Serry and Ban Ki-moon to agree that
Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday. So that would be great to help glue this thing and to have the UN to help glue it.” A little under a month after this phone call, Yanukovych fled the country due to dwindling support from his allies. This prompted the Verkhovna Rada, a legislative body within the Ukrainian parliament, to claim itself to be “the only legitimate authority in the country” (from a government press release on the matter). In that same press release,
“Robert H. Serry informed that the United Nations Organization ‘highly appreciates Ukraine and supports current processes.’” However, the vote to impeach Yanukovych and elect new officials was illegal under the Ukrainian Constitution. To quote Huffington Post, “
It is simply untrue that the Rada followed the procedure laid down in the Ukrainian constitution to impeach and remove a president from power.” For more details check out their article.
Pyatt also mentions the need to “get somebody with an international personality to help midwife this thing” to which Nuland replies she’s been in touch with Obama’s director of policy planning who told her that “Biden’s willing”. So, ironically,
Biden himself likely played a key role in getting this vote through. It’s fairly clear that the subject of Nuland and Pyatt’s conversation was how to influence opposition leaders and leverage ties with the United Nations to legitimize this unconstitutional vote. Such an act, by the way, falls under the definition of a coup. The prescient nature of this conversation, how subsequent events played out in accordance with Nuland’s directives, implies it was not simply a brainstorm session. This was a deliberate attempt to install a Western-friendly regime into a sovereign nation - one sharing a border with Russia just 500 km from Moscow - and it was a successful attempt at that. All because US officials couldn’t settle for neutrality and self-governance; they knew better than the people of Ukraine. Jonathan Marcus of the BBC summed it up well at the time:Consequences These acts by the US forever changed the trajectory of Russia-Ukraine relations: The 2013 Russian trade deal was revoked, this pushed Russia into a similar deal with China a few months later, and the following years were filled with periodic announcements of Ukraine’s intentions to join NATO accompanied with showy military exercises like the NATO-sponsored ‘Clear Sky’ event held in Ukraine in 2018.
Remember, NATO was created by the US and other Western countries in 1949 with the stated goal to “provide collective security against the Soviet Union.” Given that the Soviet Union hasn’t existed in decades… why does NATO need to exist, let alone expand?! Tensions have continued to fester ever since, culminating in the catalytic spark of today’s conflict when president Volodymyr Zelensky implied that Ukraine might pursue nuclear weapon accumulation if international treaties were unsatisfactory. This was all the justification that Putin needed.
Putin watched in the early 2000s as seven former Soviet Union countries joined NATO. Despite promises by the Clinton administration that NATO would not keep military forces in Eastern Europe permanently, over 20 years later NATO “has about 4,000 troops in multinational battalions, backed by tanks, air defenses and intelligence and surveillance units” across Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, according to Reuters. Putin tolerated such expansions for decades, and while it was not without complaints and retaliatory acts of his own, he clearly is not a madman intent on re-establishing the Soviet Union.
If you are a US citizen, and if, God willing, the world survives this war, then please, do not continue to tolerate these neo-conservative and neo-liberal establishment politicians. They are on both sides of the aisle - Bush’s, Clinton’s, Obama, Schumer, McConnell, Pelosi, Cheney’s, Anthony Blinken, McCain, John Bolton.
It’s a special kind of hubris and naiveté to believe covert and reckless regime change operations will flourish into Western values. The Middle East has paid this price for years and now neo-con machinations are potentially putting the entire planet at risk. As a funny aside, during the leaked call Pyatt said, “We could land jelly-side up on this one if we move fast.” I think it’s safe to say, after 8 years, which direction the ‘jelly-side’ landed. https://spaceworms.substack.com/p/the-us-is-culpable-in-todays-ukraine?s=r ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
US really needs to just knock it the f**k off with meddling in the sovereignty of other nations and knock it off with their regime change plans in every corner of the globe.
ALL it ever does is fails (Cuba, Venezuela, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan) and just causes what the CIA calls blowback - just winds up biting us and the world in the f**ing ass.
