Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Feb. 24 “special military operation” started because the failure of the Minsk accords when former German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised 70-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin that she would guarantee independence of Donetsk and Luhank. Putin now believes that Merkel lied to him to buy more time to arm Ukraine. Russia, France and Germany all guaranteed in 2014 and 2015 that Russian speaking populations would be protected, assuring their independence. “Over time, of course, it became obvious,” said Peskov, referring Russia being “deceived” by Germany and France. Before the Minsk accords, the West refused to acknowledge the Feb. 22, 2014 CIA-backed pro-Western coup that toppled the Kremlin-friendly government of Viktor Yanukovych. Putin annexed Crimea March 1, 2022 to protect his Sevastopol naval base.
So if anyone in the West wants to put the Feb. 24 Ukraine invasion into context, they’ll admit that the CIA-backed Feb. 22, 2022 Kiev coup destabilized the region. Ukraine would still possess the Crimean Peninsula if the CIA hadn’t meddled in Ukraine. Whatever the past, the Ukraine War has decimated U.S.-Russian relations where there’s, as Putin says, almost zero trust between the U.S. and Russia. Russia and the U.S. had cooperative, pragmatic relations since the end of WW II, all trashed by 80-year-old President Joe Biden’s proxy war against the Russian Federation. Biden made a serious mistake using Ukraine to fight a proxy war against the Kremlin. Whatever border dispute Ukraine has with Russia, Biden erred joining Ukraine at the hip in its fight against the Kremlin. Ukraine holds little advantage to U.S. national security, nothing close to U.S.-Russian Relations.
No one can underestimate the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that forced Putin to invade Crimea to protect his Sevastopol naval base. Without Yanukovych in Kiev, Putin had no assurance from the new pro-Western government about the fate of Russia’s warm water fleet in Sevastopol. So, when it came to the battle for Russian-speaking Donbas, including Donetsk and Luhansk, Ukraine spent eight years battling pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region. Former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko started the Ukrainian resistance in Donbas, killing over 14,000 before Zelensky eventually took over in 2019. Once Putin saw in the U.S. and NATO arming Ukraine to the teeth in 2021, he asked Biden to revisit security arrangements in Ukraine. Biden ignored Putin’s requests for at least three months before Putin launched his “special military operation” to de-fang Ukraine.
Zelensky had every opportunity to end the Feb. 24 war early on when Putin specified his conditions for ending the war. He told Zelensky, as he was promised in the Minsk accords, to recognize the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, including Russian sovereignty over Crimea. Zelensky rejected Putin’s offer, taking unlimited cash-and-arms to fight the Russian Federation. In nine-and-half-months of war, Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure has been decimated by Russia, leaving the country in a state of ruins. Yet no matter how bad it gets, Zelensky wants to press ahead with his vendetta with Putin at the expense of Ukraine. Putin’s missile strikes, that have destroyed Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, are called war crimes by Zelensky, even though he chose to continue the fight. No one told Zelensky to break off negotiations with Russia causing widespread carnage and destruction.
No one on the world stage other that French President Emmanuel Marcon, 44, has made coherent peace proposals. Macron has been criticized by Kiev for suggesting that the conflict should move from the battlefield to the peace table. “And, again, President Putin and our other representatives constantly kept saying this,” Peskov war reported in TASS state news agency. “But his was all ignored by other participants in the negotiation process,” Peskov said, referring to the failures of Germany and France to deliver the Minsk protocols. Putin recalls what happened Feb. 22, 2014 when Yanukovych was chased out of Kiev. He was busy hosting the Sochi Winter Olympics before he responded March 1, 2014 seizing Crimea. Meddling in a Kiev civil war in 2014, the CIA has once again harmed U.S. national security but, more importantly, endangered the security of all of Europe.
No question that the failure of the Minsk protocols led Putin to invade with his “special military operation.” Feb. 24. But before that, the Feb. 22, 2014 CIA-backed, pro-Western Kiev coup also caused the invasion of Crimea. Western leaders must come to the conclusion, as many military experts, that the Ukraine War cannot be won on the battlefield. Everyday that goes by sees Ukraine suffer more damage to its civilian infrastructure, creating less habitable conditions for ordinary citizens. Zelensky must stop his revenge tour and get realistic about the prospects for an eventual peace. Putin says he doesn’t trust the West because of Minsk. But the real issue is about an ongoing war that NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltensber could easily morph into a war on the European Continent. There’s no excuse for world leaders not to move the conflict off the battlefield to the peace table.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
