BIDEN’S WAR – SWADLINCOTE SPEECH 18 FEBRUARY 2023 – KEN CAPSTICK
As we approach the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine it is vital that we take a long hard look at the real causes of the war, who bears responsibility for it and its consequences, and how will this catastrophic war end?
I have relied, for parts of my speech, on a lecture given by Professor John J. Mearsheimer, a Professor at the University of Chicago.
In the past year the whole of the western media has been commandeered and turned into the most one-sided war machine in its history.
The same, can no doubt be said, of the Russian media but I cannot comment on that because access to it was stopped, and denied to me, at the beginning of the war. We have all been prevented from hearing an alternate narrative to that presented by all western media outlets. never in my memory has the world’s media been so blatantly appropriated, or should I say misappropriated, for such constant one-sided, unchallengeable western propaganda.
Day after day I have listened to news outlets, be it American outlets, France 24, Euronews, Aljazeera, BBC and Sky News to mention but a few and heard embedded propaganda trained journalists spin the same message – Ukraine good, even saintly – Russia bad, even evil.
The first totally misleading narrative is that the war started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, but the war and its causes can be traced back to a NATO summit meeting in Bucharest, Romania, in April 2008 – more than 14 years ago to which Putin had been invited and was present and not seen as the dangerous representation of him we are asked to believe today.
It was at this summit, in the knowledge that Putin was there, that NATO announced that Georgia and Ukraine would be integrated into NATO.
I invite you to imagine Putin’s reaction to that announcement.
It was a blatant provocation and an obvious signal to Putin that he and Russia were regarded as powerless, in 2008, and in no position to prevent such a blatant enlargement.
After all, had Russia not been so weakened by the collapse of the Soviet Union that it no longer had the power or ability to prevent further NATO expansion which would come on top of other tranches of NATO enlargement in the 1990s and the Bush regime in Washington could, and did, pay scant regard to Putin’s protests.
The events that have flowed from that NATO summit demonstrate that the United States and its allies have played a pivotal role in the conduct of the war and bear responsibility for the calamity we see today.
The United States and its leaders are at the very heart of this conflict, they instigated it, set in train the events that have been created in Europe and have been amply assisted, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, by member states and other states coerced into supporting, what in the end, has become Biden’s war, not Putin’s war.
Ukraine, of course, is playing a central role. It is their people who are dying on and off the battlefield, their homes, villages, towns and cities that are being destroyed while others, thousands of miles away, egg them on and provide the military hardware for what seems like an endless and totally unnecessary war.
America’s and Biden’s obsession with bringing Ukraine into NATO, in line with the 2008 Bucharest decision and pushing NATO right onto Russia’s border, possibly with the intention of placing nuclear weapons there pointed at Moscow was a massive threat to Russia
I want to make the case that the United States has been the main driver of the events that have led to the war and that Joe Biden has been central to those events. under the Obama administration Biden, as Vice President, was given responsibility for Ukraine and the drive towards its eventual membership of NATO.
In 2013 we saw the Maidan uprising supported by America, Senator John McCain and the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, inspiring the demonstrators to violently attack the police. Nuland herself was seen handing out sandwiches to those building barricades and driving vehicles straight into the police ranks.
Following the Maidan uprising in 2013 Nuland stated that the United States had “invested” five billion dollars to bring about a “secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.”
The real stated purpose of the United States was to bring Ukraine into NATO at all costs and in line with the Bucharest Declaration of 2008, to overthrow the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, who was seen as pro-Russian which they knew Russia saw as the brightest of redlines.
The United States is principally responsible for causing this crisis and pushed policies in respect of Ukraine that Russia sees as an existential threat to Russia itself but in the arrogant belief that Russia was no longer in a position to respond – a miscalculation of monumental proportions and for which millions of men, women and children, on both sides, are paying the ultimate price, not just in the war itself but in the wider world as a result of the famine it has caused and other drastic global effects.
If anyone should be indicted for war crimes it should be Joe Biden.
Putin, in 2014, was aware of the developing situation in Ukraine, especially the U.S. supported riots taking place in the Maidan, in the centre of European and the violent overthrow of Victor Yanukovych who had to abandon the presidential palace and run for his life to Russia on 21 February 2014. Arseniy Yatsenuk, Victoria Nuland’s preferred candidate, was installed as Prime Minister six days later on 27 February 2014. It was clearly an American takeover of the Ukraine government.
Almost simultaneously on the 27 February 2014, the same day Yatsenuk took office as Ukraine’s Prime Minister, Russia moved to annex Crimea and a large area in the east of Ukraine was occupied by pro Russian separatists who proclaimed and established the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic, highlighting the real problem for a divided Ukraine.
The West of Ukraine is pro-western but the East of Ukraine, along with Crimea tends to be pro-Russian with Russian speaking ethnic Russians who identify more with Russia than they do with the West. Any hope the Americans or NATO had of uniting the people of Ukraine and integrating them into NATO and the EU was a busted flush from almost day one of the 2014 conflict.
This led to talks between Russia and Ukraine and hostilities continued albeit at a less intense level.
This current war and the 2014 war are not as a result of the sudden invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24 February 2022 but in response to the massive build-up of Ukraine troops armed to the teeth with western sophisticated weaponry. NATO’s high-level training and financing of the Ukraine army in anticipation of the fulfilment of the 2008 NATO summit Declaration by the then U.S. President George W Bush and embraced by the Obama regime, the Trump regime and the Biden regime, from the moment Biden took office in January 2021, seeing Ukraine as unfinished U.S. business.
At the 2008 NATO summit Angela Merkel, the then German Chancellor. and Nicolas Sarkosy, Former French President, was opposed to moving forward on NATO membership for Ukraine. Merkel said. “i am very sure that Putin is not going to let this happen. from his perspective it would be a declaration of war.”
Washington couldn’t have cared less about Russia’s redlines and pressured the French and German leaders to agree to the issuing of a public announcement that made it absolutely clear that Ukraine and Georgia will eventually join the NATO alliance.
Putin spoke to western leaders in late 2021 and early 2022, including Biden, in the days before the war and could gain no assurances in respect of western intentions in Ukraine and the threat as Putin saw it remained.
Biden’s refusal, in 2021, to eliminate that threat when he spoke to Putin prior to the war, when he should have known that Putin, having amassed thousands of troops on Ukraine’s border was deadly serious, makes Biden irresponsibly culpable.
Professor John Mearsheimer of the Chicago University says:
“The United States is not interested in finding a diplomatic peace formula because it would represent a massive climb down. In essence, the U.S. and its allies are leading Ukraine down this destructive path.”
the EU and NATO have been forced into Biden’s war, it is crazy to pretend otherwise.
We are asked to believe by the western media and western politicians that Putin is totally responsible for this war.
Ridiculously he is said to have wider ambitions to create a greater Russia. there is not a shred of evidence to support that. On the contrary, the wider ambitions are America’s and NATOs. It has been the ambition since 1990 to encircle Russia with NATO supporting countries and NATO troops and sophisticated, high powered weaponry.
On the outbreak of war on 24 February 2022 Putin said:
“It is not our plan to occupy Ukraine territory. Russia cannot feel safe, develop and exist while facing a permanent threat from the territory of today’s Ukraine.”
It is well known that Russia possesses vast rich natural energy resources, mainly oil and gas. It uses only about 27 percent of its gas for internal use and has 73 percent for export. America, by contrast, is energy deficient. it uses its own energy resources at an alarming rate and needs to acquire imported energy from other global sources like Saudi Arabia. A more compliant regime in Russia could open up Russia’s considerable energy resources to American oil and gas multinationals.
Pushing NATO right onto the borders of Russia in Ukraine and Georgia could be the prelude to further encroachment into a weakened Russia itself, hence the existential threat Russia perceives and has perceived since the declaration at the NATO summit in 2008.
so, Putin’s opposition to the 2008 NATO threat had hardly any effect on Washington because Russia was still regarded as a busted flush since the downfall of the Soviet Union.
This war and the 2014 war are not as a result of the sudden invasion of Ukraine by Russia on the 24 of February 2022 but in response to the massive build up and preparation of Ukrainian troops, over a number of years, armed to the teeth with western sophisticated weaponry, NATO’s high-level training and financing of the Ukraine army in anticipation of the fulfilment of the 2008 NATO Summit Bucharest declaration.
It is said that Putin left that 2008 summit and “flew into a rage and warned that if Ukraine joins NATO it will do so without Crimea and the Eastern region and its Russian speaking ethnic Russian majority”.
William Burns, now head of the CIA, was the UN ambassador to Moscow at the time of the Bucharest summit. He wrote a memo to the then Secretary of State, Condoleeszza Rice, that succinctly described Russian thinking about Ukraine joining NATO. Burns warned, “Ukraine entry into NATO is the brightest of red lines to Russian elite, not just Putin,” he wrote.
“In more than two and a half years of conversations with Russian players from the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine and NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russia’s interests”.
“NATO,” he said, “would be seen as throwing down the strategic gauntlet. today’s Russia will respond. Russia/Ukraine relations will go into a deep freeze.”
Burns said that Putin is not an anomaly, that every member of the Russian elite viewed it as Putin did.
The Bush administration which was determined to follow the policy through cared little about Moscow’s red lines and pressured the French and German leaders to agree to issuing a public announcement that said unequivocally that Ukraine and Georgia will eventually join the NATO alliance.These efforts eventually sparked the major crisis in 2014 after an American supported uprising in Ukraine and pro-Russian President Victor Yanukovych had to flee the country. he was replaced by Arseniy Yatsenyuk in what was basically a U.S. inspired, undemocratic coup.
This from the U.S. and Ukraine both of whom profess to be protectors of democracy. It is clear that where American interests are involved, democracy is the last consideration. America, a country that has invaded one sovereign state after another since world war II.
War broke out in eastern Donbas between European forces and ethnic-Russian separatists in the Donbas, who wanted nothing to do with the imposed Ukrainian government, NATO – and still doesn’t.
What you often hear is the argument that in the 8 years between 2014 and 2022 the United States and its allies paid little attention to bringing Ukraine into NATO and that the issue had been taken off the table but in fact NATO began training Ukrainian military in 2014 averaging 10,000 trained troops annually over the next eight years. so, NATO was training 10,000 Ukraine troops each year for eight years, that’s 80,000 Ukraine troops. Of course, America was involved up to the eyeballs between 2014 and the outbreak of war in 2022 and every single day since.
Professor Mearsheimer tells us, in an excellent youtube video, that in 2017 the Trump administration decided to provide Ukraine with defensive weapons. Other NATO countries quickly got into the act, shipping even more weapons to Ukraine.
In addition, Ukraine’s military participated in joint military exercises with NATO forces.
in July 2021 European and Washington co-hosted operation Seabreeze, an operational exercise in the Black Sea that included navies from 31 countries and directly aimed at Russia.So much for Russia being the aggressor.Two months later, in September 2021, Ukraine’s army led “Rapid Trident 2021” which was according to an official press release from the U.S. army: “a U.S. army, Europe and Africa assisted annual exercise designed for inter-actability among allied and partner nations.
Ukraine was being made into a de-facto member of NATO. NATO’s effort to arm and train Ukraine military explains why Ukraine has done so well against Russian forces in this ongoing war.
Ukrainian President Zelensky, who had never shown much enthusiasm for bringing Ukraine into NATO, elected in March 2019, on a platform of working with Russia to settle the ongoing conflict reversed course in 2021, coinciding with Biden taking office, and not only embraced NATO expansion but also suddenly adopted a hard-line approach towards Moscow.
Biden had long been committed to bringing Ukraine into NATO and was also super-hawkish towards Moscow. Biden was Vice-President in the Obama administration; President Obama had assigned Biden with the Ukraine portfolio.
On 14 June 2021, NATO issued the following communique at its annual Brussels summit:
“We reiterate the decision made at the 2008 Bucharest summit that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance … We reaffirm all elements of that decision as well as subsequent decisions including that we reaffirm all demands of that decision including that each partner will be judged on its own merits. We stand firm in our support for Ukraine’s right to decide its own future free from outside interference.” any outside interference - had always had been - from America.
Biden made it clear to Zelensky in September 2021, during a visit to the White House that the U.S. was firmly committed to Ukraine’s Euro/Atlantic aspirations and later in November 2021 Antony Blinken signed a commitment to the U.S./Ukraine strategic partnership, it said:
“The aim of both parties is to “Underscore deep and comprehensive reform necessary for full integration into Europe and Euro/Atlantic institutions”
There is no doubt that this current crisis started, and was initiated, early in 2021 within weeks, if not days, of Biden taking office as U.S. president and the Ukraine began moving rapidly toward joining NATO.
You might say this posed no threat to Russia but that’s not how Russia saw it and it is what Russia thinks, not what NATO or you or I might think, and they see NATO’s expansion into Ukraine as an existential threat to Russia. They see it has the brightest of red lines and have done so since the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008.
Putin, of course, could see this threat from the new Biden regime of 2021 and began deployment of Russian troops on Ukraine’s border. On 17 December 2021, the Russians sent separate letters to NATO and to Biden demanding a written guarantee that:
Ukraine would not join NATO.
No offensive weapons would be placed near Russia’s borders
Troops and equipment moved into western Europe would be moved back.
It was during this period that Putin made it abundantly clear that he viewed NATO expansion in Ukraine as an existential threat.
Speaking in the defence ministry board on 21 December 2021, he stated:
“What they are doing or planning to do in Ukraine is not happening thousands of kilometres from our national borders, it's happening on the doorstep of our house. Do they really think we do not see these threats? or do they think that we will just stand idly by watching threats to Russia emerge.”
Two months later at a press conference on 22 February 2022, two days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin said:
“We are categorically opposed to Ukraine joining NATO because this poses a threat to us and we have arguments to support this. I have repeatedly spoken about it ...”
He then made it clear that he recognised that Ukraine was becoming a de-facto member of NATO.
The U.S. and its allies, he said:
“Continue to pump the European authorities full of modern types of weapons”. he went on to say that if this was not stopped Moscow “would be wrecked with an anti-Russia armed to the teeth and this was totally unacceptable.”
Other Russian leaders including his Defence Minister, the Foreign minister, the Deputy Foreign Minister and the Russian Ambassador to Washington also emphasised the centrality of NATO expansion for causing the Ukraine crisis.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the point succinctly at a press conference on 14 January 2022 when he said,
“The key to everything is to guarantee that NATO will not expand eastward.”
All these efforts proved futile in getting the West, which was firmly in the grip of the Biden regime to abandon aims set out in 2008 in Bucharest and reiterated on a number of following occasions.
Secretary of state, Antony Blinken responded to Russia in mid-December 2021 by simply and arrogantly saying, “There is no change, there will be no change.”
This is what Blinken said – not Zelensky. So you ask yourself who has been running this war?
Prospects
What are the prospects for negotiating a peace and ending Biden’s war?
This war has cost thousands of human lives and will cost billions of dollars, if not trillions, to rebuild Ukraine.
The stakes are high, there seems no easy way out of Biden’s war. If Russia is driven back to its borders the existential threat it fears becomes reality with the prospect of nuclear weapons sitting on its borders pointed at Moscow.
If, on the other hand, Russia takes more territory and consolidates its gains, it represents a defeat and a massive humiliation for Washington and its 2008 declaration at the Bucharest summit.
There is a serious possibility that nuclear weapons might be used in Ukraine and that might lead to a nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States if either side is facing defeat. The stakes are so high on both sides. We are already seeing escalation taking place in response to Russia’s recent advances.
The tragedy is that had the wiser counsel of Merkel and Sarkosy, who understood the Russians better, prevailed at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008 instead of the hot-headedness of George W. Bush, and now Biden, it is unlikely there would be a war in Ukraine today and Crimea would still be part of Ukraine. In essence Bucharest in 2008 planted the seed for a catastrophic war which now threatens the whole of mankind.
History will judge the United States with abundant harshness for its remarkably foolish policy in Ukraine.