Is Russia about to invade Ukraine? (10 Viewers)

[superchuck500]

Russia continues to mass assets within range of Ukraine - though the official explanations are that they are for various exercises. United States intelligence has noted that Russian operatives in Ukraine could launch 'false flag' operations as a predicate to invasion. The West has pressed for negotiations and on Friday in Geneva, the US Sec. State Blinken will meet with the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov.

Certainly the Russian movements evidence some plan - but what is it? Some analysts believe that Putin's grand scheme involves securing Western commitments that NATO would never expand beyond its current composition. Whether that means action in Ukraine or merely the movement of pieces on the chess board remains to be seen.

VIENNA — No one expected much progress from this past week’s diplomatic marathon to defuse the security crisis Russia has ignited in Eastern Europe by surrounding Ukraine on three sides with 100,000 troops and then, by the White House’s accounting, sending in saboteurs to create a pretext for invasion.

But as the Biden administration and NATO conduct tabletop simulations about how the next few months could unfold, they are increasingly wary of another set of options for President Vladimir V. Putin, steps that are more far-reaching than simply rolling his troops and armor over Ukraine’s border.

Mr. Putin wants to extend Russia’s sphere of influence to Eastern Europe and secure written commitments that NATO will never again enlarge. If he is frustrated in reaching that goal, some of his aides suggested on the sidelines of the negotiations last week, then he would pursue Russia’s security interests with results that would be felt acutely in Europe and the United States.

There were hints, never quite spelled out, that nuclear weapons could be shifted to places — perhaps not far from the United States coastline — that would reduce warning times after a launch to as little as five minutes, potentially igniting a confrontation with echoes of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Russia Issues Subtle Threats More Far-Reaching Than a Ukraine Invasion

If the West fails to meet its security demands, Moscow could take measures like placing nuclear missiles close to the U.S. coastline, Russian officials have hinted.

www.nytimes.com

Blinken Will Meet With Russia as U.S. Pushes for More Diplomacy

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will meet with Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia in Geneva on Friday as the United States warns that Russia could soon attack Ukraine.

www.nytimes.com

How to think about war in Ukraine

Start with the Ukrainians

snyder.substack.com

 

[DaveXA]

Biden and this administration deserves credit.

Yeah, a lot of people give him a hard time, but he's doing the walk softly and carry a big stick pretty well. I don't think I'd do a whole lot different if I were President.

 

[SaintForLife]

Russia was going to attack an independent Ukraine at some point regardless of the west's involvement. It is not the west's fault that Putin is a monster.

Do you think if the US hadn't pushed the 2014 coup in Ukraine and we hadn't been in a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine since then that Putin still would have invaded Ukraine?

 

[SamAndreas]

Do you think if the US hadn't pushed the 2014 coup in Ukraine and we hadn't been in a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine since then that Putin still would have invaded Ukraine?

What is this 2014 thing you are calling a coup? Are you nuts?

I think such things are called free and fair elections. Here in America we believe in free and fair elections. Always have, hopefully always will.

Maybe you should figure out a way to sound more like an American and less like an authoritarian tin pot.

 

[SaintForLife]

Your ignorance of Hertling's twitter posting history is painfully obvious here. Terrible.

It's not him in particular, but I usually question the conflicts of interests with many of the former security state officials on Cable News.

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[SaulGoodmanEsq]

I keep waiting for you to post a Jimmy Dore video. Then we'll know you've hit rock bottom.

 

[SaintForLife]

What is this 2014 thing you are calling a coup? Are you nuts?

I think such things are called free and fair elections. Here in America we believe in free and fair elections. Always have, hopefully always will.

Maybe you should figure out a way to sound more like an American and less like an authoritarian tin pot.

NULAND: I think Yats [opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk] is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside.

PYATT: The other issue is some kind of outreach to Yanukovych but we probably regroup on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into place.

NULAND: Sullivan’s come back to me VFR, saying you need [Vice President] Biden and I said probably tomorrow. So Biden’s willing.

PYATT: I think we’re in play. The Klitschko [Vitaly Klitschko, one of three main opposition leaders] piece is obviously the complicated electron here.

NULAND: Good. I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea.

On or before February 4 2014 – Call between Pyatt and Nuland.

February 22, 2014 – Yanukovych was removed as President of Ukraine.

February 27 2014 – Yatsenyuk was installed as Prime Minister of Ukraine. Klitschko was left out.

 

[CoolBrees]

Do you think if the US hadn't pushed the 2014 coup in Ukraine and we hadn't been in a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine since then that Putin still would have invaded Ukraine?

I am a tad confused.

You bring up Yanukovych’s ouster as a US backed coup. He went against his own word, his Parliament’s voted on decree, and the overwhelming will of his people and refused to sign the free trade agreement with the EU; and instead expanded national police and announced closer ties to Russia. They rioted in the streets and they forced him out. Then rolled back all of the laws under that regime. Did we force that? If so, how? Do you consider his ouster a good or bad thing? I consider it a good thing and so did the people of Ukraine.

You also brought up the Russo Ukraine war. Are you insinuating that Russia is just now invading Ukraine? Can you explain who invaded Crimea in 2014 if it wasn’t Russia?

The Donbas War has been underway since 2018. Do you consider this battle between pro-Ukraine and Pro Russia who are supported by Russia militarily and financially in the region - started by the US or OUR “proxy war? Why? Because we sold arms to Ukraine? What Russia was doing circa 2018 in Donbas is a hot proxy war. What we did in Iran in the 50’s was a cold proxy war that culminated in ‘79. We certainly aren’t innocent from using nations.

But because we sell arms and even support one side of a conflict means we are fighting a proxy war? No don’t agree at all. We are supporting a nation that is standing up to tyranny and fighting for their right to exist. If we were actually fighting a proxy war, Russia would have been defeated and more than likely used nukes by now.

We have not gotten involved to this level in most conflicts because every time in the past, there was no one to support. Crimea and parts of Georgia were taken with nary a shot fired. They were Julia Robers in Sleeping with the Enemy. Now, an Eastern European former satellite nation has gone Jennifer Lopez in “Enough” on them.

Give em everything they need to win.

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

Notice that people like Greenwald often criticize the US for their "imperialism", while often ignoring putin's Russia for their aggression. Now when the time comes when 87% of Ukrainians prefer the campaign to regain their lands, these anti imperialists demands that the US force a peace deal. Their hypocrisy is sickening. Strangely again lock stepped with Putin's will.

This is spot on with all of SFL's takes in this thread... and this forum in general. By amazing coincidence and happenstance he only criticizes Democrats and never Republicans or the actual aggressors in these foreign wars. (Of course... when you get all of your opinions from Greenwald...)

It's called intellectual dishonesty.

 

[SamAndreas]

NULAND: I think Yats [opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk] is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside.

PYATT: The other issue is some kind of outreach to Yanukovych but we probably regroup on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into place.

NULAND: Sullivan’s come back to me VFR, saying you need [Vice President] Biden and I said probably tomorrow. So Biden’s willing.

PYATT: I think we’re in play. The Klitschko [Vitaly Klitschko, one of three main opposition leaders] piece is obviously the complicated electron here.

NULAND: Good. I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea.

On or before February 4 2014 – Call between Pyatt and Nuland.

February 22, 2014 – Yanukovych was removed as President of Ukraine.

February 27 2014 – Yatsenyuk was installed as Prime Minister of Ukraine. Klitschko was left out.

That didn't make a lick of sense to me.

That's obviously some of that deep conspiracy theory stuff.

Here's something real:

 

[bdb13]

Do you think if the US hadn't pushed the 2014 coup in Ukraine and we hadn't been in a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine since then that Putin still would have invaded Ukraine?

If Putin controlled their government by proxy then no probably wouldn't have straight up attacked because it wouldn't have been necessary and I assume they would have just started annexing or whatever. But a Ukraine free from Russian control/influence was always going to be attacked

NULAND: I think Yats [opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk] is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside.

PYATT: The other issue is some kind of outreach to Yanukovych but we probably regroup on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into place.

NULAND: Sullivan’s come back to me VFR, saying you need [Vice President] Biden and I said probably tomorrow. So Biden’s willing.

PYATT: I think we’re in play. The Klitschko [Vitaly Klitschko, one of three main opposition leaders] piece is obviously the complicated electron here.

NULAND: Good. I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea.

On or before February 4 2014 – Call between Pyatt and Nuland.

February 22, 2014 – Yanukovych was removed as President of Ukraine.

February 27 2014 – Yatsenyuk was installed as Prime Minister of Ukraine. Klitschko was left out.

The claims of nefarious plotting by American puppet masters revolve primarily around Nuland’s role. According to Sohrab Ahmari, “Nuland in 2013 went down to Maidan Square to personally supervise the velvet revolution.” American Conservative contributing editor James Carden elaborates:

She oversaw U.S. efforts to encourage a street coup in Kiev—going so far as to hand out cookies to anti-government protesters alongside the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. . . . After the coup, Nuland became an unwitting symbol of American heavy-handedness in the region when a call between her and Pyatt leaked in which they were heard to be hand-picking personnel for the new government in Ukraine. What would the EU think? “fork the EU,” exclaimed Nuland, a diplomat.

Nuland’s cookies—or sandwiches, in some versions—figure prominently in “U.S./Deep State coup” narratives of the Euromaidan revolution. (They have also provided, as it were, ample grist for the Kremlin propaganda mill: “State Department cookies” are a common sarcastic reference to the rewards supposedly bestowed on U.S.-friendly Russian dissidents and oppositionists.) But these narratives invariably leave out some important context, provided by American diplomat Christopher Smith in his book Ukraine’s Revolt, Russia’s Revenge. Nuland’s visit to the Maidan took place on December 13, 2013—the day after a violent clash between the protesters and the Berkut riot police trying to clear the square had left dozens injured. According to Smith:

Assistant Secretary Nuland felt she should go to the square as a way of acknowledging the night’s events. . . . In Eastern European culture, guests never arrive empty-handed. En route to the square, my colleague Eric Andersen quickly put together a plan for her visit, including that she hand out bread and cookies to the Ukrainians who had faced the overnight onslaught. It was a small but expressive gesture. Russian media immediately featured pictures of her handing out cookies in the square to assert that the United States was propping up the Maidan movement. Of course, they omitted mentioning that she had also handed out bread to black-helmeted Interior Ministry security troops that same day as an indication Washington was not taking sides. . . . No matter how many times the Russian propaganda machine uses those photos of Toria Nuland handing out cookies as some sort of talismanic evidence of something evil, I can’t help but look at the images and see what was a simple, compassionate, humane gesture. [Emphasis added.]

The intercepted Nuland-Pyatt conversation, too, lacks crucial context. While Carden wrongly places it “after the coup,” other Nuland detractors have claimed that it shows the two American diplomats talking about “regime change”—i.e., discussing which opposition leaders should join a post-Yanukovych government at a time when Yanukovych was still the lawful president of Ukraine. Yet Smith’s account makes clear that the conversation, which took place at some point before February 4, 2014 (when the recording was posted) actually concerned the makeup of the new cabinet that would be formed as a result of the agreement between Yanukovych and the opposition, then still in the negotiating stage. As for Nuland’s undiplomatically profane comment about the European Union (“fork the EU”), her point was not, as Carden implies, that the United States would do as it pleased whether the EU liked it or not; rather, it was that EU representatives were (in Nuland’s view) doing a poor job shepherding the negotiations and that it would be better for the United Nations to get the deal done—to “glue this thing.”

In a report three days after the leak of the recording, BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus noted that the disclosure was embarrassing because it showed that “the US is clearly much more involved in trying to broker a deal in Ukraine than it publicly lets on.” But that’s hardly the same as engineering a coup, a charge that not only paints the Americans as malignant puppeteers but denies agency to the Ukrainians who revolted.

What Really Happened in Ukraine in 2014—and Since Then

A close look at the lies and distortions from Russia apologists and propagandists about the roots of the Ukraine war.

www.thebulwark.com

Is there additional evidence to show that what I'm quoting in that article there is incorrect? Specifically, that the conversation "actually concerned the makeup of the new cabinet that would be formed as a result of the agreement between Yanukovych and the opposition"?

 

[SaintForLife]

 

[MT15]

Really reaching now.

 

[DJ1BigTymer]

If that is what you got from that, then

Jayapal's Ltr

We are under no illusions regarding the difficulties involved in engaging Russia given its outrageous and illegal invasion of Ukraine and its decision to make additional illegal annexations of Ukrainian territory. However, if there is a way to end the war while preserving a free and independent Ukraine, it is America’s responsibility to pursue every diplomatic avenue to support such a solution that is acceptable to the people of Ukraine. Such a framework would presumably include incentives to end hostilities, including some form of sanctions relief, and bring together the international community to establish security guarantees for a free and independent Ukraine that are acceptable for all parties, particularly Ukrainians. The alternative to diplomacy is protracted war, with both its attendant certainties and catastrophic and unknowable risks...

In conclusion, we urge you to make vigorous diplomatic efforts in support of a negotiated settlement and ceasefire, engage in direct talks with Russia, explore prospects for a new European security arrangement acceptable to all parties that will allow for a sovereign and independent Ukraine, and, in coordination with our Ukrainian partners, seek a rapid end to the conflict and reiterate this goal as America’s chief priority.

The letter is full of nothing, with exception of that one paragraph and its conclusion. Those two paragraphs contain options that are not under our control. Those actions have to begin and end with the Ukrainians and Russians, we are not the belligerents of this war special operation.

 

[BullSheetBuddha]

Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine
YaleCourses
14 videos Updated today

 

[DaveXA]

It's not him in particular, but I usually question the conflicts of interests with many of the former security state officials on Cable News.

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I don't buy a lot of what they say like what's described, although not nearly to that degree in every case. That said, Hertling is an exceptionally good source and I've learned quite a bit from him even if I haven't agreed with everything he's posted. He's one of the few truly level-headed guys commenting on the conflict and all that's gone into it, not to mention his tweets on other issues. He's one of the best sources out there.

 

[SaintForLife]

 

[samiam5211]

So, are you saying Biden was right?

Does that change the reality of what Biden is facing today?

Should he kick Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia out of NATO because he didn’t support adding them 25 years ago?

 

[bird]

Do you think if the US hadn't pushed the 2014 coup in Ukraine and we hadn't been in a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine since then that Putin still would have invaded Ukraine?

Yes. Of course, your scenario didn’t happen but, yes, Putin would have.