WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SLAUGHTER IN UKRAINE?
Gennady Shkliarevsky
The war in Ukraine–the largest and most dangerous military conflict in Europe since WWII–has been raging for almost three years. It has already claimed over a million human lives, in both Ukraine and Russia, and has brought much suffering and destruction. As the war continues to escalate, it creates a threat of turning into much wider conflict that may consume the world in a nuclear conflagration.
There is one question that has dominated discussions of this war since it started: Who is responsible for this war? Who is the main culprit? Answers to these questions differ. From the very beginning of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine the American and Western political elites have tried to take a high ground in this war. They have claimed and continue to claim that by supporting Ukraine, they stand on the side of peace, justice, and democracy against the savage authoritarian Russia. The narrative that has been constructed by the American and Western political elites and spread by Western mainstream media portrayed Russia as a ruthless aggressor that started this war by invading Ukraine.
There are dissonant voices that point to the United States and the collective West as possible culprits in this war. They claim that the West has contributed to this conflict by trying to expand NATO’s reach beyond Europe—the move that Russia has considered hostile. These discordant voices are relatively few. They drown in the shrill cacophony of mainstream propaganda that claims that the accusations they make are too general and unconvincing since they do not indicate any specific role that the West has played in the outbreak of hostilities.
As developments in Ukraine continue to unfold, more and more facts come into the open, and they shed new light on the war. Facts are emerging that indicate that the role of the American government in the outbreak of hostilities was much more direct and more specific than generally assumed.
Some of these facts come directly from government sources. Their authenticity has not been disputed. The recent interview of Victoria Nuland, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, indicates that the United States had an opportunity to prevent the eruption of the war in Ukraine and deliberately rejected it. Nuland acknowledges that this opportunity came in early spring of 2022 during the negotiations between representatives of Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul, Turkey.
The negotiations in Turkey yielded a draft that would have ended hostilities. The agreement addressed concerns of both sides in the conflict. According to the agreement, Ukraine was to declare military neutrality and non-alliance with military blocs. It was also to reduce its military and accept limitations on the use of certain types of weapons. In exchange, Russia offered to guarantee Ukraine’s security and to withdraw Russian forces from all occupied territories, with the exception of Donbass and Crimea.
The agreement was on the table and ready to be signed by the governments of Russia and Ukraine. However, when the news of the deal reached Washington, Biden’s government urged Ukraine to reject the agreement. The obedient collective West followed the ruling from Washington. Boris Johnson, the ever-mercurial American puppet, traveled to Ukraine on April 9, 2022, to deliver the message to Zelensky. The deal was to be rejected. The official pretext was Russia’s alleged atrocities in Bucha (a town near Kiev) that were inflated and misrepresented by politicians, media, and self-proclaimed experts.
The acceptance of the agreement could have ended the conflict at its very beginning. It would have prevented the destruction of Ukraine and spared many lives. Yet it was rejected . . . and the rest is history. The United States, the collective West, and NATO emerge in this episode as warmongers, not peacemakers. What could be the reason that motivated the American government to reject this opportunity to end the war? Certainly not the interests of Ukraine and not concerns for peace and security in this region and in the world. The motivation appears to be the goal that the U.S. has pursued since the fall of communism: a defeat and a breakup of Russia. The dismantling of Russia would have given an opportunity to spread America’s influence in the region and become the sole arbiter of its politics. This development would have been a very significant step toward establishing America’s hegemony in the world.
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Ukrainian-born American Gennady Shkliarevsky is Professor Emeritus of History at Bard College, New York.
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