02/03/2025
Jeffrey D. Sachs, ... read more
This is not an attack by Putin on Ukraine, in the way that we are told everyday, This started in 9th Feb 1990, James Baker the-III, our secretary of state said to Mikhail Gorbachev, NATO will not move one inch eastward, if you agree to German unification, basically ending World War II, and Gorbachev said that's very important, yes, NATO doesn't move and we agree to German unification. The US then cheated on this already starting in 1994 when Clinton singed off on a basically a plan to expand NATO all the way to Ukraine,
This is when the so called Neocons took power and Clinton was the first agent of this and the expansion of NATO started in 1999 with Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic, at that point Russia didn't much care, there was no border other than with the Konigsberg, but other than that there was no direct threat then the US led the bombing of Serbia in 1999, that was bad by the way, because that was a use of NATO to bomb a European capital Belgrade, 78 Straight days to break the country apart. The Russians didn't like that very much, but Putin become president, they swallowed it, they complained, but even Putin started out pro-European, pro-American, actually asked maybe we should join NATO when there was still the idea of some kind of mutually respectful relationship. Then 9/11 came,
then came Afghanistan and the Russians said yeah we'll support you, we understand to root out terror, but then came two other decisive actions in 2002, the United States unilaterally walked out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. This was probably the most decisive event, never discussed in this context but what it did was trigger the US putting in missile systems in Eastern Europe. That Russia views as a dire direct theat. in 2004-5, we engaged in a soft regime change operation in Ukraine but 2009, Yanukovych won the election and he became president in 2010 on the basis of neutrality for Ukraine. That calm things down because the US was pushing NATO but the people of Ukraine on the opinion polls didn't even want to be a NATO, they know that the country is divided between ethnic Ukrainian ethnic Russian, we want to stay away from your problems. So, In Feb 22nd, 2014, the United States participated act in the overthrow of Yanukovych. A typical US regime change operation, have no doubt about it. And the Russians did us a favor, they intercepted a really ugly call Victoria Nuland, my Colleague at Columbia University now, Between her and the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, who's a senior State Department official till today and they talked about regime change. they said, who's going to be the next government! all of this is to say the US then said okay now NATO's really going to enlarge and Putin kept saying stop, you promised no NATO enlargement, it's been by the way I forget to mention in 2004, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania Slovakia, Slovenia; seven more countries in the not one inch eastward. and then okay it's a long story but the US kept rejecting the basic idea don't expand NATO to Russia's border, in a context where we're putting the goddamn missile systems, after breaking a treaty 2019 we walked out of the intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty, on December 15th, 2021 Putin put on the table "a draft Russia-US security agreement", you can find it online. The basis of it is no NATO enlargement. I called the Wite House that next week after that, begging them take the negotiations, Putin's offered something avoid this war, oh Jeff, there's not going to be a war, announced that NATO's not gonna enlarge, oh don't worry NATO's not gonna enlarge I said oh you're gonna have a war over something that's not gonna happen! why don't you announce him and he said no no our policy is an open door this is Jake Sullivan, our policy is an open door policy, open door for NATO enlargement. That is under the category of bu****it by the way. You don't have your right to put your military bases anywhere you want and expect peach in this world. They turned down to negotiations, then the Special Military Operation started, and five days later, Zelenskyy says, okay okay neutrality. And then the United States and Britain said no way! You guys fight on, we got your back, we don't have your front you're all gonna die but we got your back, as we kept pushing them into the front lines that's over 600,000 deaths now. of Ukrainians since Boris Johnson flew to Kyiv to tell them to be brave.
Jeffrey Sachs briefly lays down the history of the Russia-Ukraine war and US involvement.
