(revised and expanded version)
By Dr.Vyacheslav Tetekin,
The Russian Army operation in Ukraine revealed important circumstances which led to the confrontation. It becomes clear that Ukraine started to prepare for the war as far back as 2014 i.e. eight years ago. To put it more accurately, Ukraine was purposefully pushed into the war. For many observers Russia’s actions in Ukraine looked unexpected. Now on the basis of many available facts it seems that the war was inevitable and that Russia was forced into it. The United States of America all these eight years played a dirty strategic game of pushing two brotherly peoples into a bloody war against each other.
It all started with a coup in Ukraine in February 2014, when anti-Russian forces came to power with support of the United States and local Neo-Nazis. The indignation with the coup in Crimea resulted in its return back to Russia. This happened not because of Russia’s intervention, but because of the clearly expressed will of the local people to be back to Russia where it belonged since 1783. It was followed by an uprising in Donbass over an attempt by the new rulers to impose Ukrainian language in the predominantly Russian-speaking region. Kiev failed to suppress this uprising due to armed resistance of the population.
Ukrainian Neo-Nazis interpreted these developments as a territorial seizure and a national humiliation calling for revenge. The US and their allies encouraged this idea in order to strengthen anti-Russian feelings in Ukraine. After new unsuccessful attempt in spring 2015 to take over Donbass by force, Kiev decided to prepare for the seizure of the rebellious region more thoroughly.
In fact after 1991 the army was regarded by the new Ukrainian elite as something unnecessary. So by 2014 it was far from being an effective fighting force. Military equipment fell into disrepair; the morale of officers and soldiers was bad due to low salaries. The Ukrainian army did not want and could not fight. Only Nazi battalions formed after the coup d’état in February 2014 were capable of fighting. This is where Americans came in offering military assistance. At that time the then US Vice President Biden was personally supervising American policy on Ukraine while his son was trying to make a fortune exploring Ukraine’s natural resources.
Having decided to get Donbass and Crimea back by force, Kiev ruling group redirected country’s finances from the tasks of improving the welfare of the people to strengthening the army. Ukraine’s military budget has grown from $1.7 billion in 2014 to $8.9 billion in 2019 (5.9% of the country’s GDP). For comparison, the 2021 budget allocated only $ 84 million (0.5% of GDP) for culture. The United States fails to get their NATO allies to spend 2% of GDP on defence. But impoverished Ukraine, barely surviving on IMF and EU loans, spends three times more for military purposes than prosperous European states. One does not need to talk about the concentration of Ukrainian troops in Donbass or about captured operational plans. The dynamics of military spending convincingly prove that Ukraine was steadily preparing for a large-scale war. For eight years.
It’s no secret that after 2014, Ukraine in terms of strategic decision-making was governed not by its government, but by the US State Department represented by the American Embassy in Kiev. Some of the key ministers (including finance) were Americans of Ukrainian origin. CIA and FBI officials openly controlled Ukrainian security services. Up to 160 US instructors were training the army. Since 2014 the total amount of the US military aid to Kiev exceeded 2, 5 billion USD. Ukraine was getting ready for war under direct supervision if now orders of the Government of the United States of America.
Huge funds were spent on the restoration of military hardware. During the war in Donbass in 2014-15, Ukrainian army hardly had air support, as practically all combat planes required repair. However, by February 2022, Ukrainian Air Force had about 150 combat ready fighters, bombers and attack aircraft. At the same time, powerful fortifications were constructed close to Donbass capable to withstand retaliatory strikes. The thickness of the walls and ceilings of some of the fortifications exceeded 3 meters of reinforced concrete.
The beginning of the war was planned for the end of February – beginning of March, 2022. Significantly the soldiers’ salaries at the end of 2021 jumped 3 (!) times from 170 to 510 dollars. The Government of Ukraine has been dramatically increasing the size of its Armed Forces.
The moral and psychological training of the army was a major part of war preparations. In 2014 Ukrainian army was reluctant to fight against Donbass. But after 8 years of powerful brainwashing in an ultranationalist spirit, in the spirit of rabid Russophobia the situation has changed. In fact the entire population of Ukraine has become a victim of brainwashing. While in Russia we are talking about fraternal people of Ukraine, the leading Ukrainian mass–media all these eight years were creating an image of Russia as the enemy, deliberately incited hatred towards Russians.
The history of Ukraine has been rewritten from openly Russophobic and anti-Communist positions. History textbooks for school children were depicting Russians as enemies, and residents of Donbass as separatists and terrorists, presenting the war against them as a good deed. Such ideas were laid both in textbooks and in methodological guidelines for teachers.
The terrible mistreatment of prisoners, torture of wounded Russian soldiers, to which even the UN was forced to react, are a direct consequence of the “culture of hatred” imposed on Ukraine for many years. Even according to a large group of American congressmen, Ukraine has become the center of international Nazism.
The Ukraine’s war preparations were completed by the end of 2021. The combat capability of the army has been restored, military equipment repaired and modernized, morale raised on the basis of Russophobia. Hatred of the “terrorists” and “separatists” of Donbass has been successfully implanted into the minds of servicemen. The Ukrainian Army and the Nazi battalions were ready for a war.
Interestingly, the growth of Nazism in Germany went along much the same lines. First, the feeling of humiliation from defeat in the 1st World War, the ideas of revenge picked up by Hitler, the help of British and American capital in the revival of the German war machine and finally readiness to start a war against neighboring states. That’s exactly how Ukrainian Nazism began to revive after it was crushed by 1953 in the regions of its historic origin in Western Ukraine. But now Neo-Nazism became state policy in the whole of Ukraine. Everything was set for an invasion into Donbass.
But Americans who tightly controlled Ukraine as if it was a Puerto Rico did not limit themselves by preparing it for a war. They went much further. After Russian army entered Ukraine it was discovered that nearly 30 US-sponsored biological laboratories operated on its territory. They were doing research into deadly diseases including Covid-19 and the ways to spread them. It is clear that the US used Ukrainian territory to develop biological weapons in gross violation of international law that prohibits this type of weapons. The research on Covid-19 in Ukraine started much earlier than it hit China confirming claims that this disease was developed in the USA and then tested on China.
However, even the modernized Ukrainian army could not challenge Russia which stood behind Donbass. But it did not bother American masters. The grand design was to use Ukraine as a weapon against Russia. Therefore, the United States planned two options for the new, militarized Ukraine under the rule of Neo-Nazis. The first one was to conquer Donbass and invade Crimea. The second option was to provoke Russia’s armed intervention.
This was not easy as Russia until the last moment insisted on fulfillment of Minsk-2 agreements under which Donbass remained part of Ukraine albeit with considerable autonomy. The war could have been avoided should the Western powers have fulfilled their obligations and force Kiev to implement Minsk-2. But they were dragging their feet all these years claiming that Kiev is too stubborn.
In order to push Moscow into action, reports were constantly coming from Western capitals to Moscow that Europe and America were tired of Ukraine’s impermanence and were dreaming of ending this protracted conflict. The United States began to declare that they would not send troops if Russian army goes into Ukraine.
All this strongly resembles how the US dealt with Iraq in 1990. Before entering into Kuwait (which Iraq considered its land, illegally torn away from it by the British), the Iraqis sought the opinion of the United States. The American ambassador to Kuwait said that “the US does not have specific point of view on inter Arab conflicts including border dispute with Kuwait”. But as soon as the Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait, the US instantly created a powerful anti-Iraqi coalition and organized total economic blockade, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, in the US invasion of Iraq and murder of Saddam Hussein. It seems that the same model was used by the United States in Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Biden was back to the White House this time as the US President. He had to finish the job he had started as Vice-President.
Russia realized that Ukraine under the US control becomes a very real danger. To add to the feeling of danger Americans started to discuss the possibility of deployment in Ukraine close to Russian borders of advanced missile attack systems already deployed in Romania. In December 2021, Moscow put forward a complex of demands to NATO to ensure Russia’s legitimate security interests. The West has arrogantly ignored these demands, knowing that preparations for the invasion of Donbas are in full swing. The most combat-ready unites of the Ukrainian Army numbering up to 150 thousand people were concentrated close to Donbass. They could break the resistance of local troops within days, with the complete destruction of Donetsk and Lugansk and death of thousands of DPR-LPR defenders. Russia had an obligation to protect over 800 thousand Russian citizens in the two people’s republics and nearly 4 million Russian-speaking people there. Moscow had no other option but to intervene.
Now wild cries come from the West about the alleged Russian “imperialism”. However, the blame for what is happening in Ukraine lies entirely with the United States and its allies, who have used the fraternal people of Ukraine as a weapon in their malicious plans to maintain global dominance. The US military and industrial complex reported enormous profits. The blood of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers as well as of innocent civilians is on the hands of those on both sides of the Atlantics who planned and accomplished this tragic scenario.