-by Eric Zuesse
Someone asked me:
Can you make sense out of the current Ukraine situation/stand-off? You indicated in an earlier note that you didn't think Putin would invade Ukraine unless Ukraine invaded Donbass. So, what is going on right now? Why the massive Russian build-up on the borders (assuming the news isn't exaggerating)?
I answered:
Putin intends to assure that if Ukraine invades Donbass, the residents in Donbass will win. He has armed and trained them how to use the weapons, but if Russian soldiers would need to enter Donbass and fight there against Ukraine, he also will need to defeat the Ukrainian soldiers there. He is waiting for Ukraine to invade Donbass.
Biden wants Zelensky to order the invasion; Zelensky doesn’t want to do it, because then the EU almost certainly will never allow Ukraine into the EU. Ukraine needs the EU because it lost its main trading-partner, Russia, on account of Obama's 2014 anti-Russian coup in Ukraine.
The EU won’t support Ukraine if Ukraine starts the invasion to occupy Donbass, except if it is responding to a prior Russian entrance into Donbass, in which case Ukraine wouldn’t be blamed for the carnage there. That is the reason why Biden wants Ukraine to set up a false-flag event, so as to make a Ukrainian invasion SEEM to be a defense against Russian aggression.
For a long time, there have been allegations that nazis in Ukraine were preparing a false-flag event and were threatening Zelensky with a coup to overthrow him if he refused to do it, to give the go-ahead. He’s walking a tightrope.
But recently, American media have been reporting that U.S. intelligence shows that Putin has planned a false-flag event in order to "justify" a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The EU’s position is to demand Ukraine to fulfill its promise under the February 2015 Minsk II accord to negotiate with the Donbass government so as to accept Donbass back into Ukraine without hostility and with independence like Crimea had inside Ukraine during 1954-2014 which was when Crimea had been part of Ukraine instead of part of Russia (of which it was a part during 1783-2014). But if Zelensky were to go forward with the Minsk II deal (to which Hollande, Merkel, and Putin had forced both Ukraine and Donbass to sign), then the nazis would almost certainly overthrow him.
I believe that Zelensky is doing all he can to comply with EU and not with U.S. (and Ukraine’s own nazis-- whom the U.S. had, essentially, hired and trained, along with others from other countries, in order to carry out the 2014 coup) but still stay alive. However, Ukraine’s and America’s billionaires both are demanding that Ukraine invade Donbass and are the biggest lobbying group in Washington right now; so, almost all members of Congress are backing Biden on this.
As regards whether or not the U.S. Government’s desire to go to war against Russia will be allowed by the rest of the world to succeed, a (typically) masterful analysis has already been posted by the great geostrategic analyst Alexander Mercouris on February 13th, titled “NATO military build up in Slovakia as US takes over airbase”, and it is especially understandable in light of the neoconservative Victoria Nuland (Obama’s organizer of the ultimate 2014 Ukrainian coup) famous “F—k the EU” phone-call that was leaked online on 4 February 2014, in which she selected the leader of Ukraine’s soon-to-be-imposed coup-government, who did become officially appointed only a few weeks thereafter, which led to the new Ukrainian government, which then quickly started their ethnic-cleansing campaign in Ukraine’s former (now-breakaway) Donbass region, which region had voted 90% for the Ukrainian President (“Janukovych”) whom Obama’s coup had overthrown, this ethnic-cleansing being imposed there in order to get rid of those voters, so that no such (anti-NATO, pro-Russia) voters would be voting in future Ukrainian elections, and thereby America’s control over Ukraine would become virtually permanent. This ethnic-cleansing was succeeding, but the Minsk II accord, that was arranged between Hollande, Merkel, and Putin, and which they forced both Donbass and Ukraine to sign, greatly reduced the carnage, though Ukraine still refuses to go forward with its main commitments under it-- which has led to the present predicament. If Zelensky would try to get Ukraine’s government to comply with it, he might end up not only overthrown by another U.S.-backed coup, but dead. And that is HIS predicament. So: nobody knows what the result will be.