America set a trap in Ukraine using its standard bait and bleed tactic and Russia took the bait. What else could it do, given the circumstances? It is obvious that the purpose of the trap was to put Russia in a position where it would be badly weakened militarily and its economy ruined, and so bring down Putin when ordinary Russians turned on him. In other words, America wanted Russia to invade Ukraine.
Let’s look at the facts that show that support this view:
NATO Expansion. Since the time of Bill Clinton’s presidency NATO has been expanding eastwards towards Russia, despite promises to Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, that NATO would not expand beyond the borders of a united Germany. Despite its full understanding of Russia’s objections, the Alliance holds military exercises near Russia’s border knowing they will provoke a hostile reaction. US Senator Joe Biden said as much in 1997.
The 2014 coup. The USA backed a CIA instigated coup in Kiev in 2014 and the installation of an anti-Russian government. In a reaction to the coup, the Donbass industrial region of Ukraine tried to break away from Ukraine and the Ukrainian civil war erupted. The USA supported Kiev and Ukraine’s notorious Azov brigade were trained by the CIA to do the dirty work in the Donbass.
Minsk Accords. The 2015 Minsk II Accords, endorsed by the UN Security Council, to end the Ukrainian civil war and negotiate a degree of self-governance for the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in the Donbass were never implemented but used to buy time to reform Ukraine’s military and bring it up to NATO standards in the knowledge that an intervention by Russia was likely.
This was admitted in 2022 by a variety of European leaders including Petro Poroschenko (ex-president of Ukraine), Boris Johnson (former prime minister of the UK), Angela Merkel (former Chancellor of Germany), and Francois Holland (former president of France), among others.
Russia’s security concerns. Ever since NATO began expanding eastwards Russia has been mouthing its protests. It proposed a new security architecture in Europe which took its concerns about security into account. But the USA and NATO rejected Russia’s proposals without discussion, even after the latter warned of a military response should that happen. It is obvious that the USA and NATO were welcoming the consequences of refusing to discuss Russia’s worries over its security.
Shelling the Donbas. In February 2022, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) reported an increase in shelling of the breakaway Donbas region by Ukrainian troops even though there were at least 100,000 Russian troops massing on the Russian side of the border. The shelling suggested strongly that the Ukrainians were about to invade the Donbas, which is populated by ethnic Russian civilians, another bait to get the Russians to cross the border.
Preplanning sanctions. According to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Council, the planning of economic sanctions against Russia began in November 2021, three months before the invasion of Ukraine.
On the day Russia invaded Ukraine, President Biden stated that the purpose of economic sanctions was not to stop the war but to hurt the economic well-being of the Russian people and so turn them against President Putin. In other words, the US was not trying to stop the invasion but to overthrow Putin, in order to restore the dominance over Russia that America enjoyed in the 1990s as the world’s sole hegemon.
No negotiations for peace. Lloyd Austin, the America Secretary of Defence acknowledged that the USA’s strategy in Ukraine is to weaken Russia. To this end, the USA has nixed all efforts to stop the fighting and secure a peace deal, even by Turkey (a member of NATO) and by Israel, in order to prolong the conflict.
Taken together, all this evidence leaves little doubt that the United States of America was provoking Russia to invade Ukraine in order to implement its plan to bring down the Russian government by destroying Russia’s economy. The fact that the USA’s plan has failed so far is another matter entirely.
Meanwhile the proxy war with its physical, economic and humanitarian costs as well as its one-sided media propaganda rages on and on.
