Galina takes issue with my article blaming the US for the war in Ukraine

T. Belman.  I continue to publish the emails from Galina because she is an authentic Russian voice.

By Galina.

I carefully read your article. Clearly, The US is the aggressor in the War in Ukraine. I disagree with some of your conclusions.

On the expansion of NATO to the east

At the NATO summit in London on July 5-6, 1990, the final declaration was adopted. NATO offered former adversaries friendship and the creation of institutions for interaction with the alliance, invited Mikhail Gorbachev to speak in Brussels, and invited the countries of the Warsaw Treaty Organization to join a joint declaration on the end of hostility. However, not a word was said in the document about the further expansion or, conversely, the cessation of NATO expansion. On July 17, US President Bush called the Secretary General and confirmed the main provisions of the declaration adopted at the summit, including the idea of expanding the role of the OSCE and creating new European institutions in which the Soviet Union could participate in order to become part of the new Europe.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-42483896

Mikhail Gorbachev gave an interview to the official Rossiyskaya Gazeta (October 16, 2014), where he spoke in detail about the events of 1990-1991. Here is his interview

“The issue of ‘NATO expansion’ in those years was not discussed at all and did not arise. I say this with all responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country raised it, including after the termination of the Warsaw Pact in 1991. Western leaders did not raise it either. We discussed another issue that we raised: that after the reunification of Germany there would be no advancement of NATO military structures and the deployment of additional armed forces of the alliance on the territory of the then GDR. Baker’s statement was made in this context… Kohl and Genscher spoke about the same. Everything that could and needed to be done to secure this political commitment has been done. And done. The treaty on the final settlement with Germany says that no new military structures will be created in the eastern part of the country, additional troops will be deployed, and weapons of mass destruction will not be deployed. This has been observed all these years. So there is no need to portray Gorbachev and the then Soviet leadership as naive people who have been fooled. If there was naivety, then later, when this question arose, and Russia at first “didn’t mind.”

Source: https://rg.ru/2014/10/15/gorbachev.html

Note. I personally heard Gorbachev’s interview on the radio station Ekho Moskvy.

                   The answer of the former president of the USSR leaves no doubt, as evidence from the first person: there was no promise, and no one demanded it. Gorbachev repeatedly repeated this thesis. For example, in an interview with the German TV channel ZDF on November 8, 2014, he bluntly said about the non-existent “promise” from NATO: “This is a myth. Indeed, the press had a hand in its creation.

Vladimir Putin’s psychological perception of the West and its notorious “threat” was well said by his former friend, Russian banker, and now a political emigrant Sergei Pugachev, in an interview with Ukrainian journalist Sergei Gordon on September 29, 2021:

“Gordon: Did Putin also aspire to the West at first?

Pugachev: Very.

Gordon: I wanted both NATO and the EU…

Pugachev: In general, in full. Sincerely

Gordon: The Bad West didn’t get it?

Pugachev: No. Bad Putin did not understand how the West works… The story of this radar station in Cuba… It was a gift, a bribe to Bush. Bush didn’t get it. And [Putin] says to me: “Am I just like that? This is for him. And [he] is nothing.” I say: “Volodya, you just don’t understand. Time will pass and you will understand…” [Politicians there] are elected so that it would be better for their countries, their citizens… How did [Putin] understand? That two bosses met and said: “We will divide like this. And what remains – we will give it to these dogs … It’s just that he is like this: a man said – a man did. It’s very simple in that sense.”

Comparing Putin’s opinion with that of Mikhail Gorbachev, Johns Hopkins University professor and expert at the Harvard Center for European Studies Mary Sarotte (Johns Hopkins University, Harvard’s Center for European Studies) says: “NATO has been expanding constantly, since the 50s … And if there was any naivety, it was [not with Gorbachev, but] on the part of later leaders in Moscow.” Sarotte sees the subsequent talk in Moscow about allegedly making a promise from NATO partly as an attempt by Russian politicians to “improve their historical image by forcing journalists to rewrite history… And when you get to Putin, you will see that he finally turned all this into just his tool.” “.

Book (Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate)

Retrieved from

????? military operations in the Donbass

          14,000 people died during the 8 years of the annexation of Donbass and Luhansk (2 people per year). And in the first two months of the war in 2022, 8,000 died.

The former commander of the Donbas militia, Igor Strelkov (FSB colonel), admitted responsibility for starting a military conflict in eastern Ukraine. He made the corresponding statement in an interview with the “Zavtra” newspaper.

“I still pulled the trigger of the war. If our detachment had not crossed the border, in the end everything would have ended, as in Kharkov, as in Odessa. There would have been several dozen killed, burned, arrested. And that would have ended there,” Strelkov said, repeating that “practically the flywheel of the war, which is still going on, launched our detachment.”

I am responsible for the fact that Donetsk is still being shelled. For the fact that Slavyansk is abandoned, of course, I am responsible, ”he concluded.

Commenting on the beginning of the conflict, Strelkov noted that initially neither side wanted to fight: neither the militias nor the Ukrainian security forces.

Source. https://lenta.ru/news/2014/11/20/strelkov/

You: “In an interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit last week, former German chancellor Angela Merkel revealed the West’s real intention behind its negotiation with Russia and Ukraine to promote a ceasefire in 2014. She admitted the Minsk agreements were an “attempt to give Ukraine time” and that Kiev had used it “to become stronger.”

Merkel, together with former Chancellor Schroeder, put Germany and all of Europe on the oil and gas needles. Even with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Schröder refused to step down from positions in Russian companies, despite calls to do so from across the German political spectrum, including SPD chancellor Olaf Scholz

Putin outplayed that old fool Merkel 100 percent. Her statement is to put a good face on a bad game. These statements justify her anti-state actions in the field of economic security in Germany and Europe. Putin thought that Europe would freeze without Russian hydrocarbons and miscalculated badly. Just don’t write to me that America did it all. Europe survived and found alternative sources and not only at the expense of America. Pipeline gas enters the EU from Norway, Azerbaijan (through Turkey via the Trans-Adriatic gas pipeline), as well as from Algeria and Libya (via the Maghreb-Europe gas pipeline). Even Israel is ready to supply gas.

You. After the fall of the USSR, the US invaded Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq , and Libya. She overthrew Mubarak, the long standing ruler of Egypt and installed its own regime and attempted to do the same with Syria.

Russia interfered no less in the affairs of other states. Russia since 1991 has taken part in the following wars

Angola (until 1992)

Ethiopia (2000)

Tajikistan (1992, 1993-1997)

Chechnya (1994-1996)

North Caucasus region (from 1999 to the present)

1996,97,98 – operations (artillery and air strikes) in the Kodori Gorge (Georgian territory).

1998 – Operation “AF of Abkhazia” against Georgian military formations. There were no military personnel from the Russian Federation there officially. But military equipment (including aviation) was.

Georgia (2008)

2014-2015 – “Krymnash” and the Russian “voentorg” in the Donbass, which supplies not only weapons, but also “lost” Grushnikov, Buryat tractor drivers and so on.

I highly recommend reading the study at the link below.

??? ????? ???????????? ???????

This study reveals how Putin’s mentality has evolved over the course of 20 years and how he went from liberal to dictator.

If you can’t translate it into English through Google, I will make this translation for you.

***

Bill Clinton: “In 2011, I realized that Putin’s attack on Ukraine is only a matter of time”

Former US President Bill Clinton<

“Vladimir Putin did not want to recognize the 1994 international agreement on security guarantees for Ukraine in exchange for its renunciation of nuclear weapons.”  This was told by former US President Bill Clinton, who, together with Boris Yeltsin, participated in the preparation and signing of the Budapest Memorandum.<

Clinton and then-Prime Minister Putin met at the World Economic Forum summit in Davos.  “Vladimir Putin told me in 2011, three years before he took over Crimea, that he did not agree with the agreement I made with Boris Yeltsin,” Clinton said at an event in New York where he and his wife Hillary gave  interview.  According to him, Putin said:<

“I don’t agree with him.  I don’t support him.  And it doesn’t restrict me.”<

“And from that day on, I knew,” Clinton added, that Putin’s attack on Ukraine was “only a matter of time.”<

Memorandum on security guarantees in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (Budapest Memorandum) is an interstate document signed on December 5, 1994 by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Great Britain and the United States.  The last three countries have committed themselves to respect the independence, sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine, to refrain from threats or the use of force and economic pressure, and in the event of any threats to Ukraine with the use of nuclear weapons, to demand immediate action from the UN Security Council.<

Bill and Hillary Clinton, who was Secretary of State under Barack Obama and in 2009 tried to implement his announced “reset” in relations with Russia (where Dmitry Medvedev temporarily replaced Putin as president), said that the West needs to increase support for Ukraine.  In their opinion, she can win the war with Russia if she is provided with the necessary weapons and ammunition.<

Failure to defend Ukraine will give courage and aggressiveness not only to Putin, but also to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Hillary Clinton believes.  In her opinion, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Xi could start an operation to annex Taiwan within two to three years.  But the failure of the Russian army and the rebuff given by the West to Russian aggression could force Xi Jinping to postpone it.<

Clinton also shared her opinion about Putin:<

“Putin is waging what he sees as a righteous fight to undermine Western democracy and restore, as far as possible, the Russian Empire.  “Therefore, he is not going to stop.<

” For the armed conflict in Europe to end, Ukraine must either defeat Russia, or at least liberate the territories occupied since the start of the war, Clinton said.  Kiev needs “leverage,” she said: “I would under no circumstances trust Putin at the negotiating table if the Ukrainians (with our support) don’t have enough leverage.”<

https://www.ft.com/content/404af8ef-d073-4edc-ab25-384442864342
***

Galina
Wed, 10 May, 12:01 (19 hours ago)

So this is what victory is: Putin as the new leader of neo-Nazis from around the world
Karina Orlova, journalist, May 9, 2023

Vladimir Putin, tirelessly celebrating Victory Day, has gradually taken over the empty niche of the leader of far-right extremists and neo-Nazis around the world.

American far-right extremists are increasingly acquiring ties with Russia, the American press writes today. So, according to NBC, Mauricio Garcia, who shot eight people in a shopping mall near Dallas, Texas, last week had a profile on classmates, where he reposted extremist posts from other extremist platforms, such as 4chan, and white nationalist posts. Garcia declared hatred of Jews, women, and racial minorities.

Jack Teichera, who leaked Pentagon documents, gathered Russians and those who support Russia in the war against Ukraine on his forums. Teixera also held far-right extremist views.

A George Washington University study last year showed links between Russian propaganda and far-right extremists around the world. VK alone accounted for half of all links shared by extremists.

Extremist groups on 4chan and Gab, which are based in the US, have almost as many links to Russian state media as they do on VKontakte.

“Our study has connected these two worlds: the Russian media that promote certain types of narratives around topics like immigration or racism, and the whole ecology of online extremist communities that listen to them,” says study co-author Neil Johnson.

Add to this Putin’s funding of far-right politicians in Europe, as well as the fact that the same Maria Butina (Maria Butina gained notoriety after her arrest in Washington in July 2018, on the eve of the meeting between Trump and Putin in Helsinki, on charges of working as a “foreign agent” in the United States without registration. On December 13, 2018, Butina, as part of a deal with the investigation, admitted her guilt in an American court of participating in a conspiracy against the United States, and also said that she acted under the guidance of a Russian official) worked on the Republican front, where far-right ideas became mainstream with the advent of Trump, and the fact that Trumpist star Tucker Carslon openly called himself a Putinist, and it becomes obvious that Putin has finally found his place in the world: he is the new leader of Nazism. In relation to Ukraine and Ukrainians, in general, he openly proclaims and puts into practice the Nazi ideas of extermination on a national basis.

And on May 9, as it has now finally become clear, Putin celebrates his personal victory – he took the place of Hitler.

Galina added:

Apparently, Clinton’s words did not convince you.  OK, but please don’t send me articles about America being to blame for Russia’s war with Ukraine.  We are at different poles.  I have lived in Russia all my life and know all its problems.  I know how it all started.  I know what Putin is like.  This is the second Stalin.  As the Soviet Union and Germany once invaded Poland and divided it, as Stalin snatched off a piece of Finland, so Putin attacked Ukraine.  Putin dreams of Stalin’s laurels.  He considers himself a “collector of the Russian world.”  And you draw knowledge from some unknown political scientists, who do not understand our life and did not live in our country.  You and they have one argument – America is bad, it is an aggressor, Putin is white and fluffy.

Many Soviet people, did not starve to death thanks to the United States.  Three times America saved our country from starvation: the 20s in the Volga region, during the war and the 90s.  And  that’s not counting Lend-Lease during the war.

Ted Belman

She is right of course. She experienced it first hand. Who am I to say otherwise.