Antinuclear

Conveniently forgotten and ignored – the 8 years war in Ukraine up to 2022

 https://theaimn.net/conveniently-forgotten-and-ignored-the-8-years-war-in-ukraine-up-to-2022/ 22 Feb 25

There’s uproar in the Western media, about Donald Trump wanting to negotiate with Putin, a peace deal in Ukraine. And Trump called Ukraine’s President Zelensky a dictator and blamed him for starting the present war Ukraine.war. And he said that that Zelensky’s approval rating has fallen to 4%. General agreement that Donald Trump was “rewriting history”.

Well, Trump is well known for lying, and it’s just so easy to scrutinise those statements and smugly assert that they are incorrect, and obviously Donald Trump has no idea of what he’s talking about.

And yet, and yet…. all those statements deserve further scrutiny. Because underneath their careless inaccuracy lies the real history of the Ukraine mess.

Historically, Ukraine as a sovereign State goes back only until 1991. In its previous history, it was dominated by a motley succession of European powers, but in the 19th and 20th.Century, by Russia. Cruel exploitation by Stalin’s rule in the 1930’s, was followed in 1941 by a brutal Nazi regime, and after 1944 back under oppressive Soviet control.

It is no surprise that there are long-standing resentments among both Ukrainian dwellers and in the diaspora. There is also a variety of ethnic backgrounds, and a clear difference between the ‘West-leaning” culture of Western Ukraine, and the more pro-Russian culture to the East.

At the end of World War 2, the Allies had the opportunity to include Russia in some co-operative Council of the powers, as was done by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, after the Napoleonic Wars. Instead, the USA, Britain and France chose to set up a co-operative group, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), that excluded Russia. American triumphalism gradually encouraged this into a defensive group against Russia, and encouraged former Soviet States to be part of America’s “sphere of influence” and to join NATO.

As Ukraine is the largest Western State on Russia’s border, it is obvious that Russia would not want it to be NATO state, potentially with U.S military bases aimed at Russia

Now, to go to the forgotten 8 years Ukrainian war.

In 2014, an American-sponsored coup overthrew the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych. He was subsequently followed by oligarch Petro Poroshenko, who removed Russian as an official language, – causing opposition in the Eastern provinces. The result was fierce repression against the Russian-speaking regions (Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk). The rebels of Donetsk and Lugansk held referendums, seeking  not to separate from Ukraine, but to have a status of autonomy, guaranteeing them the use of the Russian language as an official language .

2014-15 Minsk Agreements. Leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine gathered in Minsk, and supported the agreements between Russia, Ukraine, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the leaders of separatist-held regions Donetsk and Luhansk. This formally gave Donetsk an Luhansk autonomous status within Ukraine.

2015 – 2022 . The agreements were never implemented. The Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko launched a massive “anti-terrorist operation” against the Donbass, and the fighting continued. This war was not popular, reservists failed to tun up. “. In October/November 2017, 70% of conscripts did not show up for the “Fall 2017” recall campaign. This is not counting suicides and desertions (often over to the autonomists), which reached up to 30 percent of the workforce in the ATO area”. Young Ukrainians refused to go and fight in the Donbass and preferred emigration, which also explains, at least partially, the demographic deficit of the country.”  

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)OHCHR estimates the total number of war-related casualties in Ukraine from 14 April 2014 to 31 December 2021 to be 51,000–54,000

This entire 8 years of war is rarely mentioned by the Western media. There’s no recognition of the impact of imposing the Ukrainian language on Russian-speakers. No consideration of some loyalties to Russia and her role in WW2. No consideration of the influence of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, and the role of the minority neo-Nazis. There was one exceptional coverage by The Guardian in 2014 – It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war.

2019. Volodymr Zelensky was elected with a huge majority, on his pledge to uphold the Minsk agreements, and bring peace to Ukraine. But soon after coming to power, Zelensky reneged on that pledge. He later made it clear that he intentionally chose to sabotage Minsk, give his country more time to prepare for war. A large-scale militarisation of Ukraine began. The build-up of the Ukrainian army was accompanied by the development of militias, notoriously the Azov brigade, with links to the Nazi past and the philosophy of past far-right leader Stepan Bandera.

2022. February 24. Russia launched its Special Military Operation into Ukraine, claiming that it was a limited operation, not a war. Russia argued that this was lawful under Article 51 of the UN Charter, that it may use force against Ukraine in order to defend the Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples Peoples Republics.  Anyway it soon turned into a full-scale war against Ukraine, which certainly was not legal, and Ukraine got the enthusiastic backing of the USA and NATO, though no foreign troops.

The Political situation in Ukraine. The Zelensky regime has banned opposition parties, cracked down on the use of the Russian language, restricted media and freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly, violating international law. Zelensky signed a law that threatens to effectively shut down the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) – the largest faith-based organization in the country. He  signed a law that restricted import of  books from Russia.

So – to go back to Donald Trump’s inaccurate claims and “rewriting history”. How far off the mark was Trump? In fact, Zelensky was elected democratically, but has now turned Ukraine into a dictatorship. Zelensky did not start the war, but he provoked it, by overturning his election policy to implement the Minsk agreements. Zelensky’s approval rating is still above 50%, but has slipped over the past year.

It is Western dogma that you can’t approve of anything that Donald Trump does. So for anyone to even mention the 8 years’ war in Ukraine is to invite being branded as an idiotic puppet of Russian propaganda and disinformation.

The “progressive” West notices with disapproval, that Donald Trump’s aim is to get American business’s control of Ukraine’s mineral resources, in exchange for Russia getting territorial concessions. Well, what else would you expect from Trump – whose whole aim is to get American (and his) control of business, preferably everywhere? It still might be a better deal for Ukrainians than obliteration. Way back, the West, and Zelensky could have honoured the Minsk agreement, and given the Donbass provinces self-government within the state of Ukraine.

February 22, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized