Ukrainian Crisis Was Always About Containing Russia

image: NATO expands, who’s the aggressor?

To careful and honest observers of the events unfolding in Ukraine, it was clear from the beginning that the US and EU through NATO were creating unrest in an attempt to foster regime change in Kiev. They had done so already, admittedly according to the Guardian which would admit in its 2004 article, “US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev,” that:

…while the gains of the orange-bedecked “chestnut revolution” are Ukraine’s, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.

Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.

The Western media has attempted to sidestep this inconvenient chapter in history and paper over what is an overt repeat of the so-called “Orange Revolution” but with the addition of snipers and mystery gunmen sowing violence alongside battalions of literal Neo-Nazi militants, armed and clamoring to back Ukraine’s integration into the EU and eventually NATO.

The constitution of the opposition that has since seized power and is occupying the Ukrainian capital city of Kiev, is a mixture of bigots, racists, Neo-Nazis, and anti-Semites – all bent in eager capitulation to Western interests including the IMF’s desire to impose crippling austerity upon the population.

It was no surprise then that the majority of Ukraine’s diverse population, which includes Russian-speakers, Jews, and other minorities, quickly rose up against the unelected regime. Despite the West’s best attempts to bolster the legitimacy of the regime, including visits from both the US Vice President himself and the CIA director, the uprisings have spread and intensified.

Image: Armored vehicles deployed by the regime occupying Kiev are part of an ongoing campaign to put down multiplying uprisings across the south and east of Ukraine. Almost immediately much of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking communities turned on the unelected regime in Kiev, with more likely to join them as mismanagement, incompetence, and foreign influence further mire the country in socioeconomic turmoil.

Attempts by the Western media to parade out in front of the global public, token “Jews,” claiming they wholly support the Neo-Nazi regime illegally occupying their nation’s capital is undermined by reports from Ukraine’s last round of actual elections in 2010. The Jewish Week reported then in an article titled, “Change For Ukraine, But Likely Not For Jews,” that:

In a country where anxieties about anti-Semitism are never far from the surface, Viktor Yanukovich’s victory in Ukraine’s presidential election is being welcomed with caution by Ukrainian Jews.

Yanukovich, who has close ties to the Kremlin, replaces Viktor Yushchenko, his West-leaning rival who won five years ago in a second runoff election between the candidates. Widespread protests claiming fraud in favor of Yanukovich in the original runoff spurred the rematch. The pro-democracy protests became known as the Orange Revolution.

As mentioned, the “Orange Revolution” was admittedly US-orchestrated, and yielded what Ukrainian Jews called “a rise in nationalism” which they claim is always “accompanied with the rise of anti-Semitism.”

Of course, President Yanukovich has been run out of power by literal Neo-Nazis. One must wonder what has changed across Ukraine’s Jewish communities that now make such a violent and abrupt transition suddenly “ok.” The answer of course is that Ukraine’s Jews are terrified, their voice simply drowned out by Western propaganda like the Guardian’s “Russia’s propaganda war is a danger for Ukraine’s Jews.” In it, Timothy Snyder claims:

The current Ukrainian government, we were told, was composed of antisemites, fascists, and Nazis. Russian intervention was required, went the argument, to rescue the Jews of Ukraine.

This version was peddled to the west, where it had some effect, but interestingly it failed entirely in Ukraine itself. Putin seems to have believed that Jewish people in Ukraine would identify with Russia, especially in times of threat. This was one of his many mistakes.

Ukrainian Jews, especially those from the major communities of Kiev and Dnipropetrovsk, made clear to me that they had no desire to be protected by Russia. Jews in Ukraine understand Russia far better than anyone in the west Jewish or otherwise.

“Made it clear to me…” Of course Snyder cites no organizations or leaders who told him anything, made no direct quotes nor linked to any official statement from any representative body among Ukraine’s Jews. We are to believe Snyder’s claims, apparently, because he says so.

This pattern is repeated across the Western media, except curiously enough, in the BBC which actually interviewed the Nazis Snyder claims are the creations of Russian propaganda. Not only did the BBC prove the existence of Neo-Nazis running rampant across Kiev, but proved that they were very much armed and had run their political opposition out of the capital quite literally. One interview takes place in Ukraine’s Communist Party headquarters now defaced with Nazi slogans and symbolism and occupied by the armed Neo-Nazi militants themselves.

Thus, despite the best efforts of the West’s media and politicians to claim the Nazi militants they used to overrun Kiev are creations of Russian propaganda, the truth exists in plain sight. The inability of the West to check Russia’s counterstrokes in Crimea and eastern Ukraine is precisely due to the fact that neither the people of the East nor the West believe what Washington, London, or Brussels are saying.

NATO, Nazis, and the “Expansion of Europe”

So what is NATO doing with Nazi militants in Ukraine? The same thing Adolf Hitler was doing – establishing “breathing room.” While the West attempts publicly to portray the crisis in Ukraine as Europe reacting to Russian aggression, behind semi-closed doors they are very open about their agenda in Ukraine and elsewhere along Russia’s peripheries – it is and always was about the expansion of Europe and the containment of Russia.

Image: Atlantic Council’s corporate members.

Recently the corporate-funded NATO think tank, the Atlantic Council, celebrated what it called, “anniversaries of crucial importance to the transatlantic community”, including the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 15th anniversary of NATO’s first post-Cold War enlargement, and the 10th anniversary of the “big bang” enlargements of both the European Union and NATO.” These “enlargements” all took place after the fall of the Cold War – in other words, after NATO’s mandate for existing expired. Yet the alliance continued to grow, and not only did it grow, in tandem with the European Union, it did so directly toward Moscow’s doorstep with every intention of eventually absorbing Russia as well.

In fact, many of the same organizations standing behind the unelected regime in Kiev, have been directing unrest within Russia as well. And in turn, Russian opposition leaders backed by Western-cash and diplomatic support have vocally supported the regime in Kiev.

In reality, what we have witnessed over the past several months is not “Russian aggression,” but the premeditated destabilization and overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine, and a resulting, and continuously escalating confrontation with Russia as Moscow reacts to the reappearance of Nazis along its borders, backed by NATO and the EU.

Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at Land Destroyer Report, Alternative Thai News Network and LocalOrg.

Read other contributed articles by Tony Cartalucci here.