Ten Inconvenient Truths About Ukraine Largely Ignored by the Media (2)

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The Minsk agreement of 2015

“The Minsk agreement, which the Russian government backed for diplomatic reasons, has served to allow Washington time to train, equip, and mobilize much stronger forces now preparing to resume the attack on Donetsk and Luhansk,” observed Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, former associate editor at The Wall Street Journal, and long time Russia connoisseur, back in 2015. He was right.

What is the Minsk agreement? Not to be confused with the 1991 agreement of the same name, the 2015 Minsk agreement was one that aimed to resolve the long-simmering conflict in eastern Ukraine. The conflict was between pro-Russian separatists mostly from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions who were more ethnically Russian and the Ukrainian government.

The following passage from Reuters describes the 2015 (Minsk II) agreement in a nutshell:

“Representatives of Russia, Ukraine, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the leaders of two pro-Russian separatist regions signed a 13-point agreement in February 2015 in Minsk. The leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine gathered there at the same time and issued a declaration of support for the deal.”

The agreement ultimately failed.

While which side is the blame is a contentious matter, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who was in charge of monitoring the implementation of the ceasefire agreement, determined that the Ukrainian government had repeatedly violated the agreement and around 200 weekly violations in 2016-2020 and more than 1,000 since 2021 occurred, according to Novaya Gazeta.

Though NATO stressed that the Minsk agreements remained “the best chance to settle the conflict,” its actions proved otherwise.

Back in 2015, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s Secretary General since 2014, indicated no less than an increase military support to the Ukraine during this so-called ceasefire period, stating “we have stepped up our support to Ukraine on command and control; logistics; cyber defence.”

And more specifically, in June of 2022, Stoltenberg affirmed NATO’s long-time push into Eastern Europe, stating:

“The reality is that we have also been preparing for this since 2014. Because that’s the reason why we have increased our presence in the eastern part of the Alliance, why NATO Allies have started to invest more in defence, and why we have increased the readiness.”

By “increase in the readiness”, Stoltenberg was referring to Russia. On the matter, Robert Bridge, an American writer and journalist for RT noted:

“What he neglected to mention, though, was the role Western powers played in the outbreak of civil violence in Kiev on February 24, 2014 that led to the Maidan coup and, ultimately, to the current situation. The US and its influence on the ground in Ukraine, channelled through ‘civil society’ groups it bankrolled, was largely responsibility for that mess.”

A month before the Russian invasion in 2022, Ukraine’s own security chief, Oleksiy Danilov, warned the West against enforcing the Minsk II peace deal.

Danilov also denounced the Russian demands for NATO to bar Ukraine from ever joining the alliance.

Former opposition MP Ilya Kiva (who had to flee the Ukraine for his stark opposition to Zelensky) blamed the Ukrainian President of supporting pro-NATO policies causing the war, allowing Nazism to permeate in the country, and enslaving his own people in the eastern part of the country.

In a March 2022 interview Kiva slammed the U.S. and NATO for “using Ukraine as bait to provoke Russia into a conflict.” He added that Washington and its allies had tricked Zelensky which has led to its current state of devastation.

In concluding this section, the Minsk agreements were practically doomed from the start since powerful forces influencing Kyiv, including NATO and many others mentioned in this exposition, really had no sincere interest in helping to establish peace in eastern Ukraine; but were more concerned with continuing their eastward expansion towards Russia’s borders.

The Maidan Coup & Victoria Nuland’s “F**k the EU”

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine became an independent country. In the years 2013-2014, the Ukraine was at a real crossroads. Geographically-perched between Europe in the west and Russia in the east, alliances were split and there was a lot at stake – economically and geopolitically.

The West was calling for the young country to align itself with European and American interests. But its President, democratically-elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, was instead leaning towards aligning the country’s interests with Russia. This was absolutely unacceptable to Western powers and NATO. Consequently, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in a violent coup on Feb. 21, 2014.

This operation is more commonly known as the Maidan Coup in which demonstrators (against Yanukovych’s government) leadership were riddled with neo-Nazis.

A phone call (transcript here) was leaked to the news media on February 4th, 2014 between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

During the call, they discussed which puppets could be installed in their new government; remember, this is a few weeks before the Maidan Coup had occurred.

Nuland and Pyatt schemed on how they would form the new government post-coup placing “Yats”, Arseniy Yatseniuk as a key plant for the new government.

Arseniy Yatseniuk became the new Prime Minister of Ukraine on February 27, 2014.

And in June of the same year, NATO- and Western-friendly Ukrainian oligarch Petro Poroshenko replaced Yanukovych as the new President of Ukraine in what was a very questionable election.

This phone call is also memorable for its “F**k the EU” reference uttered by Victoria Nuland. This was in reference to her frustration about how members of the European Union were somewhat divided on relations with Russia and thus not aggressive enough against their Cold War rival.

Joe Biden bragging about how he got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired, as he was investigating an energy firm that had Hunter Biden on its board

According to Consortium News, after the U.S.-led coup, Viktor Shokin, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, was investigating corruption allegations about Burisma holdings, a Ukrainian oil & gas giant for which Hunter Biden had been given a lucrative membership to sit on its board of directors.

Threatening to pull a U.S. billion-dollar aid package to the Ukraine, then Vice-President Joe Biden forced Ukrainian President Poroshenko to fire Shokin.

 In January 2018, Biden openly bragged about this at the Council on Foreign Relations:

Hunter Biden was paid handsomely, to the tune of $80,000 per month, despite having no experience whatsoever in the energy sector. It was thus presumed that he was on the board mostly because of his name and political ties, particularly with his father who was President Obama’s Vice-President at the time.

Though the mainstream press has largely exonerated Hunter Biden regarding his role and actions with Burisma, the New York Post did provide evidence which shows that Hunter had indeed introduced one of its board members to his Vice-President father.

The fact that Joe Biden leveraged the power of his V.P. position to avoid having an investigation into the firm for which his son was a board member represents a clear abuse of power and conflict of interest. Who knows what additional facts might have been revealed should the investigation have proceeded. The next section, however and nonetheless, provides damning evidence in this regard.

What’s more, this incident exemplifies the power and influence the U.S. Administration had over the President of Ukraine post the Maidan coup.

Biological Weapons Production Facilities

The corporate media has also largely ignored claims alleging the existence of biological weapons laboratories across the Ukraine.

In the month after Russian forces launched their invasion of Ukraine, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian radiological, chemical and biological defense force, claimed that as many as 30 biological laboratories had been established in Ukraine that are actively cooperating with the US military; and that the Ukrainian authorities have been urgently destroying pathogens studied at its laboratories linked to the US Department of Defense.

China also accused the U.S. military of operating such biolabs in the Ukraine which Bloomberg brushed off as a conspiracy theory.

On March 8, 2022, American ally Britain also downplayed the story alleging that they were fabricated to justify Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. Yet, hours later Victoria Nuland (the same mentioned above), acting as Undersecretary of State admitted that such facilities existed stating:

“Ukraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we’re now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how we can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”

And though the U.S. State Department two days later denied any involvement in their operations, evidence suggests otherwise.

On the subject Glenn Greenwald outlined the extent to which the legacy media were in full damage-control, labelling all those reporting on the matter as crazy conspiracy theorists and peddlers of misinformation. Greenwald began his piece with:

“Self-anointed ‘fact-checkers’ in the U.S. corporate press have spent two weeks mocking as disinformation and a false conspiracy theory the claim that Ukraine has biological weapons labs, either alone or with U.S. support. They never presented any evidence for their ruling — how could they possibly know? and how could they prove the negative? — but nonetheless they invoked their characteristically authoritative, above-it-all tone of self-assurance and self-arrogated right to decree the truth and label such claims false.”

Greenwald reiterated the fact that Nuland had indeed never denied the existence of the labs and, in fact, was quite worried about how their materials could “fall into the hands of Russian forces,” to which he posited some highly relevant questions:

“What is in those Ukrainian biological labs that make them so worrisome and dangerous? And has Ukraine, not exactly known for being a great power with advanced biological research, had the assistance of any other countries in developing those dangerous substances? Is American assistance confined to what Nuland described at the hearing — ‘working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces’ — or did the U.S. assistance extend to the construction and development of the ‘biological research facilities’ themselves?”

Greenwald also points out how the U.S. State Department downplays its role with the biolabs in the Ukraine, stating that they are merely for research purposes and for reducing biological threats. Yet, fact sheets on their website demonstrate millions in funding and for the specific purpose of building facilities and providing training.

Read the third part of the article

 

yogaesoteric
February 9, 2023