June 2014: Left to right: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Ukraine’s post-coup President Petro Poroshenko, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt Pyatt and Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. (State Department)
- Six years ago, in June 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Western reporters of his concern that so-called antiballistic missiles sites in Romania and Poland could be converted overnight to accommodate offensive strike missiles posing a threat to Russia’s own nuclear forces. (See this unique video, with English subtitles, from minute 37 to 49.) There is a direct analogy with the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when Moscow put offensive strike missiles in Cuba and President John Kennedy reacted strongly to the existential threat that posed to the U.S.
Armored vehicles from a U.S. regiment pull into the Romanian town of Brasov, May 14, 2015. (NATO)
- On Dec. 21, 2021, Putin told his most senior military leaders: “It is extremely alarming that elements of the U.S. global defense system are being deployed near Russia. The Mk 41 launchers, which are located in Romania and are to be deployed in Poland, are adapted for launching the Tomahawk strike missiles. If this infrastructure continues to move forward, and if U.S. and NATO missile systems are deployed in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be only seven to 10 minutes, or even five minutes for hypersonic systems. This is a huge challenge for us, for our security.” [Emphasis added.]
- On Dec. 30, 2021, Biden and Putin talked by phone at Putin’s urgent request. The Kremlin readout stated: “Joseph Biden emphasized that Russia and the U.S. shared a special responsibility for ensuring stability in Europe and the whole world and that Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine.” Yuri Ushakov, a top foreign policy adviser to Putin, pointed out that this was also one of the goals Moscow hoped to achieve with its proposals for security guarantees to the U.S. and NATO. [Emphasis added.]
Dec. 7, 2021: U.S. President Joe Biden, on screen during video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
- On Feb. 12, Ushakov briefed the media on the telephone conversation between Putin and Biden earlier that day. “The call was as a follow-up of sorts to the … December 30 telephone conversation. … The Russian President made clear that President Biden’s proposals did not really address the central, key elements of Russia’s initiatives either with regards to non-expansion of NATO, or non-deployment of strike weapons systems on Ukrainian territory … To these items, we have received no meaningful response.” [Emphasis added.]
- On Feb. 24, Russia invaded Ukraine.
Unprovoked?
The U.S. insists that Russia’s invasion was “unprovoked.” Establishment media dutifully regurgitate that line, while keeping Americans in the dark about such facts (not opinion) as are outlined (and sourced) above. Most Americans are just as taken in by the media as they were 20 years ago, when they were told there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They simply took it on faith. Nor did the guilty media express remorse — or a modicum of embarrassment.
The late Fred Hiatt, who was op-ed editor at The Washington Post, is a case in point. In an interview with The Columbia Journalism Review [CJR, March/April 2004] he commented: “If you look at the editorials we wrote running up [to the war], we state as flat fact that he [Saddam Hussein] has weapons of mass destruction. … If that’s not true, it would have been better not to say it.”
(My journalism mentor, Robert Parry, had this to say about Hiatt’s remark. “Yes, that is a common principle of journalism, that if something isn’t real, we’re not supposed to confidently declare that it is.”)
It’s worse now. Russia is not Iraq. And Putin has been so demonized over the past six years that people are inclined to believe the likes of James Clapper to the effect there’s something genetic that makes Russians evil. “Russia-gate” was a big con (and, now, demonstrably so), but Americans don’t know that either. The consequences of prolonged demonization are extremely dangerous – and will become even more so in the next several weeks as politicians vie to be the strongest in opposing and countering Russia’s “unprovoked” attack on Ukraine.
Humorist Will Rogers had it right: “The problem ain’t what people know. It’s what people know that ain’t so; that’s the problem.”
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a C.I.A. analyst includes serving as chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
This article is from AntiWar.com
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