Eric Zuesse -- How Both Putin and Biden Bungled in Ukraine

 

 

How Both Putin and Biden Bungled in Ukraine

 

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at The Duran

 

Vladimir Putin’s repeatedly pre-announced goals for Ukraine, and for his invasion of Ukraine, consistently contained two main points:

 

(1) to permanently block Ukrainian membership for Ukraine in the anti-Russian military alliance NATO; and, (2) to “denazify” Ukraine.

 

On 21 March, AP reported that “Zelenskyy said that Kyiv will be ready to discuss the status of Crimea and the eastern Donbas region held by Russian-backed separatists after a cease-fire and steps toward providing security guarantees.” This milestone was the very first time that Ukraine’s President Zelensky said that there might be circumstances under which “the status of Crimea and the eastern Donbas region held by Russian-backed separatists” could even possibly be negotiated by Ukraine’s government. All Ukrainian-government leaders, after U.S. President Barack Obama perpetrated in Ukraine a violent coup which overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected and neutralist President, and installed a U.S.-controlled rabidly anti-Russian government in Ukraine, in February 2014, have said that Ukraine will never consider the status of those two former regions of Ukraine to be negotiable — that they’re both parts of Ukraine, regardless of what the residents there want (which, clearly and overwhelmingly, after that coup, has been NOT to be ruled by that regime). (It definitely was a coup — NOT an authentic revolution — that installed it.)

 

So: Zelensky was now saying that “after a cease-fire and steps toward providing security guarantees,” Zelensky would negotiate “the status of Crimea and the eastern Donbas region held by Russian-backed separatists.” This was the first major change-in-position by EITHER side in the present conflict; and the fact that it was being made by Ukraine was indisputable proof that militarily Russia was winning the war, up to that moment in time. (Subsequently, however, the war-situation is far less clear; Ukraine might be winning it.)

 

The deeper, and continuing, deadlock is (2) denazification of Ukraine. In my news-report on March 21, “Why The Question Of Which Side Is ‘nazi’ Blocks Any Peace Settlement”, was explained WHY that issue is so extremely unlikely to be able to be agreed-upon between Zelensky and Putin — and, therefore, why Russia will either have to accept defeat in this war, or else defeat Ukraine 100% militarily before there will be any capitulation by Ukraine in this conflict.

 

However, even if  Russia defeats Ukraine in this war, Russia’s own national-security situation (which is the ultimate reason that can justify ANY nation’s participation in any war) will be substantially reduced by the war, for the following reasons:

 

On March 14th, Chris Hedges very realistically summed up the war-situation (both present and future) as follows:

 

The decision [by Biden) to destroy the Russian economy, to turn the Ukrainian war into a quagmire for Russia and topple the regime of Vladimir Putin will open a Pandora’s box of evils. Massive social engineering — look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya or Vietnam — has its own centrifugal force. It destroys those who play God.

The Ukrainian war has silenced the last vestiges of the Left. Nearly everyone has giddily signed on for the great crusade against the latest embodiment of evil, Vladimir Putin, who, like all our enemies, has become the new Hitler.

The United States will give $13.6 billion in military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, with the Biden administration authorizing an additional $200 million in military assistance. The 5,000-strong EU rapid deployment force, the recruitment of all Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, into NATO, the reconfiguration of former Soviet bloc militaries to NATO weapons and technology have all been fast tracked.

Germany, for the first time since World War II, is massively rearming. It has lifted its ban on exporting weapons. Its new military budget is twice the amount of the old budget, with promises to raise the budget to more than 2 percent of GDP, which would move its military from the seventh largest in the world to the third, behind China and the United States.

NATO battlegroups are being doubled in size in the Baltic states to more than 6,000 troops. Battlegroups will be sent to Romania and Slovakia. Washington will double the number of U.S. troops stationed in Poland to 9,000. Sweden and Finland are considering dropping their neutral status to integrate with NATO.

This is a recipe for global war.

 

On April 2nd, Russia’s RT bannered “Finland can join NATO without referendum – president”, and reported:

 

The president of Finland, which borders Russia, has claimed that the widespread support for NATO membership expressed in recent opinion polls could pave the way for joining the US-led military bloc without a referendum. The attitude of the Finns towards NATO membership took a U-turn following Moscow's attack on Ukraine. …

Support for NATO membership reached a record-high 62% in Finland this month, according to a poll by Yle. A poll commissioned by Helsingin Sanomat and released this week shows that 61% of Finns want their country to join the bloc.

This indicates a complete reversal of public opinion after Moscow sent its forces into Ukraine – according to Yle, previous polls showed that Finns were against NATO membership.

 

Putin’s goal to block Ukrainian membership for Ukraine was part of his broader goal to shrink NATO (its membership) by reversing NATO's inclusion of the half of its member-countries that were added after 1991, which was when the Cold War ended on the Soviet Union’s side but secretly continued on the American side, and NATO therefore has expanded (even after the supposed end of the Cold War on — also —America’s side) to include in NATO virtually all European countries right up to Russia’s western border. (This produces a Cuban-Missile-Crisis-in-reverse crisis now, but one which will be far longer and more drawn-out.) 

 

On April 3rd, NATO invited not only Finland but also Sweden (both being officially neutral during the Cold War till now) to become members.

 

Consequently: Russia’s precipitate invasion of Ukraine, which was intended by Putin to shrink NATO, might instead lead to further expansion of NATO — even if  Russia will win the war in Ukraine.

 

This is not, however, to say that Putin made the wrong decision to invade Ukraine, but that he did it at the wrong time. Biden had forced him to invade in order for Putin to prevent American nuclear missiles from ultimately becoming installed into Ukraine just a 5-minute flight-time away from nuking Moscow and thereby (in post-2006 U.S. strategic thinking) able to ‘win’ a U.S.-planned World War III by blitz-invading Russia so fast as to disable Russia’s entire retaliatory capability.

 

I had therefore expected Putin to invade Ukraine, but not before Zelensky would finally unleash the 60,000 Ukrainian troops on the Ukraine-Donbass contact-line (border) for them to race into its former Donbass region in order to slaughter its people (who had voted over 90% for the democratically elected and internationally neutralist Ukrainian President whom Obama had overthrown) and to retake its land — restore it to Ukraine. If Putin had done that (waited, in order NOT to have started this war), then though many of the residents in Donbass would have been killed, and the war there would have been devastating, Russia would have been able to respond immediately and send its troops in within no more than a week to conquer and destroy almost all of those 60,000 invading Ukrainian troops (plus, unfortunately, many of their civilian hostages or “human shields” in Donbass), and the international “optics” of the situation would then have been vastly less bad for Russia (and vastly more bad for Ukraine) than has resulted from Russia’s having invaded first — invaded “preemptively.” Perhaps, in that situation, NATO’s own future would be its shrinkage, instead of (as now seems to be not only possible but even likely) its accelerated expansion. (In addition, the international image then of Zelensky would now be vastly worse, because he would have been the first to invade.)

 

Consequently, Putin invaded at the wrong time. Too early. I am NOT saying that he should have allowed Ukraine to conquer Donbass, but that his plan should have been to prepare Russia’s forces so that they could defeat Ukraine’s invasion — NOT MERELY so that they could themselves successfully invade Ukraine. Because of what Putin did, Russia’s key propaganda-losses in this matter could actually accelerate NATO’s enlargement and the U.S. regime’s success against Russia.

 

He clearly was scared by what Biden and NATO were doing in this matter, by their backing Ukraine all the way, rushing weapons into Ukraine — continuing the Obama-installed coup-regime of Ukraine as being an American vassal-nation. Those reinforcements by NATO unfortunately gave Putin an excessive sense of urgency. Russia’s enemy (today’s Axis Powers) used even that as grist for their propaganda-mills. On December 9th of 2021, Reuters headlined “Russia keeps tensions high over Ukraine” and (styled as a news-report no commentary) said “Moscow has an interest in keeping tensions high.” On December 15th they bannered “Russia hands proposals to U.S. on security guarantees”, which were demands (Putin’s “red lines”), not ‘proposals’. On December 17th IBT bannered “EU threatens Russia sanctions as NATO backs Ukraine”, and reported that NATO and almost all of the EU rejected Russia’s entirely reasonable demands. NATO’s chief emphasized Russia would have no say, whatsoever, on whether or not Ukraine becomes a NATO member. RT headlined December 20th, “Russia promises ‘military response’ to any further NATO expansion.” Then, on the 26th, it was a “‘life-and-death’ issue for Russia”. (It was — and is — an “existential” issue, as viewed by the Russian people, and has been referred-to as such by Putin.)

 

However, Biden himself has likewise vastly miscalculated in this matter, because of reasons that were well-described by Alasdaire Macleod in his March 31st article “Edging Towards A Gold Standard”. The response by Biden (and by the leaders of all of America’s vassal-nations) to impose upon Russia the sanctions that now have been imposed, will harm the entire world’s economy — not ONLY Russia’s — and could very well turn out to benefit greatly Russia’s economy; but, definitely, NOT benefit the economies of the nations that are cooperating with those sanctions (all of whom will be suffering from this).

 

On the other hand, if the allegations that were published in CNN’s April 3rd “Bodies of 'executed people' strewn across street in Bucha as Ukraine accuses Russia of war crimes” turn out to be true, then Putin’s own reputation will be so negatively affected that he will lose this global conflict personally, even if Russia itself turns out to have won it. If that article is true, then he might even end up being prosecuted as an international war-criminal (as George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden — and Ukraine’s post-coup leaders Yatsenyuk, Poroshenko, and Zelensky — definitely ought to be, but never will be).

 

The comparisons in The West analogizing Putin to Hitler are obscene not only because this war had been started by Obama’s 2014 Ukrainian coup and Putin has been forced constantly to be responding to it (and had very effectively been doing so up until 24 February 2022), but because Hitler (like the other imperialistic fascists in his time) was championing imperialism, whereas Putin (and Xi, and Iran) defend their nation against U.S. imperialism (neoconservatism), exactly as their people demand them to do. Today’s Hitlers are on the American Government’s side; they are called “neoconservatives,” and are now demanding that the entire world either follow their demands or else will be punished by their supposedly all-encompassing empire for disobeying the U.S. Government. That’s why neoconservatives hate the U.N. They want it to be destroyed so that the U.S. Government will take over the entire world. They are in Hitler’s tradition, just for a different country to become the ruler-of-the world. FDR would have puked to see today’s Amerika. Most Americans, prior to 1945, were anti-fascists, and anti-imperialists. This is a fundamentally different country than it was then. Sadly, most Americans today tolerate its being so — if they’re not neocons themselves. Obama should face a firing-squad. This war was started by him. Biden merely continues it (and should be punished severely — also a war-criminal — for doing so). Even if Putin has now responded in a wrong way to it (by failing to be sure that his soldiers would adhere to the laws that internationally pertain to warfare), a defender against imperialism is not nearly as evil as a perpetrator of imperialism is; and the perpetrator in this case (the U.S. Government) therefore deserves to be treated far more harshly by the international legal bodies. Otherwise, there can be no justifiable international law pertaining to international wars. To defend improperly against an aggressor is never as bad as to be an aggressor — not even when a stage of that defense (such as is the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) is a part of that defense against imperialism. Today’s rulers of Ukraine want their country to remain an American vassal-nation. They need to be dealt with as such. But never do the mere residents of any land deserve to be treated that way. This is — and should be — basic in international law pertaining to warfare.

 

UPDATE:

 

On April 4th, Russia’s RT headlined “Russia and Ukraine trade accusations over Bucha civilian deaths (TIMELINE): After footage of dead civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha emerged, the West immediately pointed the finger at Moscow”, and included such items as, on April 2nd,

 

One clip published and later deleted by Ukrainian military commander Sergey Korotkih showed Ukrainian troops in Bucha discussing engagement rules. Korotkih, formerly a citizen of Belarus, is an open neo-Nazi who went to Ukraine back in 2014 to fight in the ranks of the notorious Azov Battalion. In Russia, Korotkih is wanted on multiple murder charges. One of the fighters can be heard asking if it was OK to shoot at “guys not wearing blue armbands” identifying Ukrainian soldiers. The response was an affirmative “you bet”.

 

which links through to this uploaded cellphone video evidence recording that conversation, physically onsite at Bucha, as Ukraine’s forces were coming into the area to inspect and evaluate the situation and to record and display the extent of their victory there.

 

Furthermore, on April 4th, Russia’s Ministry of Defense alleged that “All units of Russian troops completely withdrew from Bucha on March 30, and these shots [videos about Bucha that were distributed to the press] appeared on the 4th day after that, when SBU officers and representatives of Ukrainian TV arrived in the area” — which, if true, would conclusively prove (even without there having been the necessary independent international investigation into Ukraine’s allegations on the matter) that Ukraine’s accusations were, in fact, bald-faced lies.

 

If Russia’s allegations in that Bucha matter are true, then, of course, the propaganda-value of the ‘news’-reports by CNN and others regarding it will reduce with time, and perhaps even become the enduring scandal here — yet another scandal of U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media being actually instead propaganda-media. Trusting Western reports regarding Russia might then turn out to be even stupider than it was before. Putin’s reputation in the U.S.-and-allied countries might then not suffer long-term harm from the Bucha matter. Putin’s approval-rating within Russia, itself, has risen from his low of around 60% in August 2021 to above 80% now, mainly as a result of soaring from 71% just before the February 24th invasion. However, what’s far more important going forward will be the public opinion of him outside Russia, in the countries that never really stopped their Cold War against Russia after the Soviet Union’s 1991 end. America’s regime-change-in-Russia campaign will almost certainly not succeed by driving Putin’s approval-rating inside Russia down to where, say, Joe Biden’s in America is. But if America takes an alternative approach, such as a military coup, or a blitz invasion of Russia, perhaps the people who rule in America might ultimately succeed (in which case what happened to Ukraine after Obama conquered it in 2014 might happen, some day, to Russia itself).

 

Then, later on April 4th, the best news-site on the war, South Front, bannered “NEW EVIDENCES SHED LIGHT ON ALLEGED MASSACRE IN BUCHA, KIEV REGION (VIDEO, PHOTO)”, and reported that,

 

Today, there are more interesting videos from Bucha shared by the Ukrainian military which may help to shed light on what did really happen in the town left by the Russian troops on March 30.

On April 2, a day before Ukrainian “journalists” came to Bucha to stage the horrific scenes on the streets, the National Police of Ukraine published a video of the mop up operation in Bucha.

Video Player

00:00

07:48

The footage confirmed that:

• there were no corpses laying on the streets. Not a single civilian confirmed that any mass shootings [had occurred] in the city.

• Ukrainian demining teams who entered the town right after the Russian withdrawal had no work to do. They are seen walking on the streets along with civilians. Not a single mine left by the Russians was shown on the video.

• Servicemen of the National Guard asked some civilians if they needed help, none of them replied asking for any immediate assistance, confirming that they are fine.

Only one man is seen killed in his car. It is not clear how did his death happen. Another victim was obviously a servicemen of one of the warring sides killed in clashes, whose corps[e] is laying [lying] near a destroyed military equipment.

One of [the] Ukrainian “patriots” made a comment on behaviour of the “Russian invaders”. After his own compatriots told Russian servicemen about his acute social awareness, Russian military checked his apartment but found only flags and a bunch of Ukrainian symbols. To add some drama to his case, the man claimed that [a] Russian soldier took him out “to kill him”, but suddenly changed his mind and brought the man to the military commander. The brave patriot only had a short peaceful conversation with Russian servicemen, with no tortures. …

This video of the National Police of Ukraine, shot presumably on April 1 or earlier, does not really correspond to what the Ukrainian media published on April 3, trumpeting to the whole world that the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation allegedly carried out a “mass massacre” of civilians.

As more photos are shared from the spot, more proves [proofs], that the scene was staged, appear.

As the main video proof from Bucha raised a lot of suspicions and was quickly disclaimed, it was accompanied by more fake photos allegedly made in the town.

Unfortunately, these attempts are even less effective and are evident lies. For example, notorious Advisor to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Arestovich published the photo of a woman tortured in Mariupol last week by Ukrainian Azov militants, claiming that she was a victim tortured by the Russians. The photo was later deleted but was widely spread by the Ukrainian MSM, who even did not come together if it was in Gostomel or in Bucha. The Ukrainian media are trying their best to gain as much hype as possible, lying on any matter. …

 

However, at around the same time, Al Jazeera, from the Thani family who own U.S.-allied Qatar, headlined “Bucha killings: ‘The world cannot be tricked anymore’,” and showed Ukraine-government-supporting alleged “witnesses” who alleged that Russian soldiers had perpetrated a “massacre” there, and urged international war-crimes trials against Russia’s leaders (and nothing against America’s leaders).

 

No one has — at least in any prominent ‘news’-medium — urged any war-crimes trial against any American leader: not against George W. Bush, nor against Obama, nor against Biden: no American leader at all.

 

Yet later in the day, America’s AP bannered “Biden: Putin should face war crimes trial for Bucha killings”, and an editorial in Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post headlined “The Bucha massacre should prompt a forceful response” and said that “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the civilian executions ‘genocide,’ and President Biden declared that Mr. Putin is 'a war criminal.' Those words will find meaning only with a determined prosecution.”

 

As-of day’s-end on the 4th, it seemed that there were corpses in Bucha, but there was no public information yet on the identities of the dead, nor on how many were civilians, how many were Ukrainian soldiers, and how many were Russian soldiers, and the ways in which each of those individuals had become killed — much less on whether any legal grounds yet existed for asserting that any “war crimes” had been perpetrated by anyone there. And the Ukrainian account of the Bucha matter was full of faked ‘interpretations’ of the ‘evidence’ they were providing. Nonetheless, on the morning of April 4th, Washington’s The Hill had bannered “Macron, EU official join calls for further sanctions over ‘clear’ indications of war crimes in Bucha”. The neocon lynch-mob were out for blood — Russian blood. It was just another day in their empire, and Russia was one of the few countries they hadn’t yet conquered. So: now, they’ll use the incident to ‘justify’ adding sanctions against Russia, regardless whether it had actually been fraudulent and the criminality perpetrated by Ukraine. It’s just the same as they had done with the MH17 airliner shoot-down over Ukraine, blamed on Russia but perpetrated actually by Ukraine, in order to meet Obama’s demand for a ‘justification’ to add yet more sanctions against Russia.

 

Since that’s their objective, Russia requested at the U.N. Security Council an independent international investigation of the Bucha site, but the UK voted the proposal down there, in order to allow Ukraine’s lies and faked ‘evidence’ to control the public’s ‘understanding’ of the situation. 

 

I agree with Alex Christaforu’s view (as is superbly explained at the link there) (except that I do not agree with his gratuitous praise there of Trump) that this is aimed, by the UK/U.S regimes, and by their supporters (the “neocons”), actually against Germany, so as keep it inside the U.S./UK empire, against Russia.

 

But not ONLY that. All of this is actually the U.S./UK empire’s public-opinion-management in order to strong-arm the leaders of Europe to destroy their own nations’ economies (by keeping them U.S.-allied) and to keep them as vassal-nations of the U.S./UK empire — to keep America as being the #1 world power. (The U.S. regime is even blocking Russia’s foreign-debt payments so as to produce a Russian default, which would be blamed on Russia — NOT on the imperial regime itself, which forced it.)

 

So: would that neocon strategy (to hold the U.S./UK empire together, including Europe against Russia) be more difficult if Putin had waited until Zelensky invaded Donbass? I think it would. That strategy had worked (via the Pearl Harbor attack) for FDR, in order to get America united to join the Allied powers against Hitler, and subsequently to help get global public opinion increasingly united against Hitler (by exposing that Hitler’s side WAS the aggressors’ side) and in favor of the Allied cause; and I think that Putin, by what he did on February 24th, has missed his chance to use that strategy here.

 

—————

 

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.