Russia’s accusations - setting the record straight

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has led to Russia’s international isolation, including NATO’s suspension of all practical cooperation with Russia. To divert attention away from its actions, Russia has levelled a series of accusations against NATO which are based on misrepresentations of the facts and ignore the sustained effort that NATO has put into building a partnership with Russia. Russia has also made baseless attacks on the legitimacy of the Ukrainian authorities and has used force to seize part of Ukraine’s territory. This document sets the record straight.

The US, EU and Russia agreed on Ukraine borders in return for Ukraine eliminating the Soviet nukes they inherited. But there was also an understanding that Ukraine will not be EU or NATO. If the EU did not push for pro EU Ukraine via Soros Orange Revolution, Russia would not be playing hardball to win it back via election thuggery. EU/US was pushing the boundaries of Russian patience in Yugoslavia, moving NATO up to the Russian border by accepting Poland, Baltic States and Balkans. Pushing into Georgia and Ukraine would be Russia’s last straw. Anyone who understands geopolitical history of Russia will know that Russian patience is running out the way the US/EU keeps pushing eastward.
When the Soviet Union fell, the average Russian hated Communism and loved the US. In a space of 30 years our gov manage to rekindle hatred of the US amongst average Russians and help push China and Russia together (largest population with the largest landmass) into an alliance that we spent most of the Cold War pulling apart. Between the lack of post Cold War vision of Clinton and the ill conceived neocons of GWB we manage to rekindle a new Cold War at a time when our nation needs rest and ability to pay down our debt. Today we will face Russia/China with our economy in shambles and gov (state, federal, local) debt equal to the annual GDP of the US. The only thing saving our debt ridden asses is the Russian GDP is only $ 2 trillion and the US/EU combined GDP is $ 30 trillion. Even if we manage to win, more damage is done to our debt and economy.

Beyond all of that any country as the inalienable right to ask anybody to help DEFEND itself. Do you understand inalienable rights.

Of course Ukraine has the inalienable right to ask for whatever it wants. But it does not gave the inalienable right to claim that it is another's duty to provide what it asks. Are you just as eager to fight for the inalienable rights of Ugandans, Burmese or North Koreans?

US can't annex Canada, Mexico...any country.

How do you think we got California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Colorado? The short answer is that we bought those territories for $18,500,000 in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, but the full answer is that we invaded Mexico in a two year war, occupied the capital of Mexico City, and dictated the treaty's terms to the vanquished Mexican government.

There is nothing that can happen in Ukraine that can threaten the security of the United States, therefore its affairs are none of our business. On the other hand, the alignment of Ukraine is vital to Russia's defense and worth fighting over to Russia. This calculation should be instructive.

I was perfectly willing to fight to protect Great Britain, West Germany, Holland and Italy from Soviet invasion, but I am not willing to waste one American life for Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia or Croatia in some accidental war instigated by our treaty-bound new "allies." The original NATO franchise has been inflated and devalued by the addition of so many new countries that we have no real intention to defend in a fight to the finish.

~The declaration of the end of the Cold War was always unwarranted by the geo political reality that Russia remained a hostile state towards the members of NATO~

Please, name any aggressive acts toward NATO and it’s allies from Russian side in a period of 1992-2008?
Then name any positive acts toward Russia from NATO side for that same period of time?
Would you?
Do you still remember a purpose of NATO?
Which Russian-led alliance is countering it right now if any?

“Please, name any aggressive acts toward NATO and it’s allies from Russian side in a period of 1992-2008?”

ROFLMAO...that has to be one of the most stupid questions you could possibly have come up with to support your wildly false propaganda. Russia has been engaging in a war by proxies against NATO virtually without letup from 1916 to the present. Russia’s invasions of the Ukraine is an aggressor’s armed attack and annexation of the territories of a NATO Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) partner. So too was Russia’s aggressor attack upon and partition of another NATO Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) partner, Georgia. Going back to 1992 we have Russian military personnel serving covertly in the armed forces of Saddam Hussein and firing missiles at U.S. and NATO aircraft conducting peacekeeping operations. We also have covert Soviet/Russian military personnel pretending to be FRY/Serbian volunteers conducting ethnic cleansing operations in the Yugoslav civil wars and Kosovo War. Then there was the overt Russian military operation that led to a direct military confrontation with NATO forces at the Pristina airport during the peacekeeping operations there. Russian covert military personnel provided military support to Saddam Hussein in the 2003 Gulf War, and Russian Spetnaz troops helped to remove evidence of Russian aid for weapons of mass destruction as the NATO military campaign against Iraq was underway. Russia threatened the United States and NATO when it adopted the paranoid belief for a time that the submarine Kursk was sunk by them. Russia has conducted extensive covert espionage and sabotage against the Internet assets of NATO headquarters and NATO members. Suffice it to observe the list of Russian aggressions against NATO members and partners would fill one or more books. So, your propaganda statement is wildly absurd.

Clandestine Russian soldiers were included in some Iraqi radar units and SAM air defense units. This is typical practice with many Soviet-Russian export weapons systems. I don’t know whether or not any of the Scud SSM units included Russians. Soviet (Russian) fighter pilots piloted Egyptian fighter aircraft against Israel in the Arab-Israeli wars. Soviet (Russian) pilots piloted North Korean and Chinese fighter aircraft in the Korean War. A Soviet (Russian) air force provided fighter and bomber operations in China supporting the Chinese Communists against Nationalist Chinese and japanese forces in the 1930s. Russian Cossack cavalry units fought in China in the 1930s. In other words, post-Soviet Russia has continued the generatons old Soviet and pre-Soviet practice of conducting covert military operations against the West and other targets, and they used proxies with the assistance of Russian military personnel as before. Putin is simply continuing the traditional Russian hostility against the victims it would target.

Let us also not forget the recent suspected Russian assassination of the Polish leadership at Smolensk with the destruction of their aircraft and subsequent murdering of the survivors of the crashed aircraft seen in video recordings on YouTube.

“Do you understand what the Monroe Doctrine is and its almost two centuries of enforcement? The United States considers any such outside meddling in our hemisphere as an act of war against the United States itself. Yet Russia is supposed to relax as a hostile alliance seeks to encircle it with forces along its borders? Who has been provoking whom for the past twenty years?”

Grandpa but you see, Canada will never join an anti-American alliance... why ? Because It doesn't feel threatened by America... why ? Because civilized countries usually get along well.

Russia's only allies are shitty dictatorships, often installed by Russians themselves. The whole idea of “it's our fault, we have been provoking them” is nonsense. NATO was expanded because the whole bunch of countries was begging to be allowed in. Why ? Because they felt threatened by Russia, which found their independent existence alone to be provocative. And they were proved right, at this point Estonia would have been very likely re-annexed Crimean style If they weren't a part of NATO.

What I am telling you is that the overwhelming majority of Americans do not give a rat's ass about all the new treaty members that NATO has added since the collapse of the Soviet Union -- not enough to send our sons and daughters to die for them. We made a sober, rational decision to defend our Western European partners against a possible Soviet invasion, but the American people have not signed on to this Central and Eastern European vendetta against Moscow. These new NATO members remind me of a chihuahua barking at a pit bull from the safety of an automobile; they expect America to sail to their rescue and finish their fight when the pit bull has had enough of their yapping.

President Washington warned us against getting involved in entangling foreign alliances for good reason, as they can easily lead to wars that were never intended to be fought. For two decades after the Soviet collapse, we Americans thought we would be invincible forever and that all potential enemies would tremble at our words. In the process, we wrote more checks – payable in American blood and treasure – than we could ever cover. Our many enemies around the globe are beginning to understand this, and we now face a run on the bank of American military might, financial strength and political will. If you were one of these little chihuahuas that trusted us to protect you from Russia, you were a fool. We are tired, we are broke, and we don't give a damn. Bow down to Brussels or Moscow and make your own peace.

Well, the financial health of the country is one thing, regarding the equipment.

We had far less in 1969, but I agree, it's a current cluster F____.

As to being worn out.....

Now that is a argument that can be made both for and against. IMO worn out is a psychological mood of assessment as it has nothing to do with physical fitness. I think the worn out is due to the idiotic total withdrawal from Iran, making it appear that we did it for nothing and certainly will have to do it again at some point, and now the same in Afghanistan (but that was not a place we should have been except for fire bases near the pass.

Our soldiers had that worn-out look and feel in 1970-72 after some years of wasted efforts in Nam caused largely by civilian leaderships total inability to win a friggin war of any kind. One step forward and 2 back for years...with memories still somewhat fresh from Korea of the same thing.

I don't think it's the tasks that are causing these issues,(too hard, too long) I firmly believe it's the hysterical and convoluted nature of American body politic, that is directed by the American people and the Pied Piper Media.

I have ideas on how to repair that, but all of them seem to say that the return to a Republic from what seems to be a nanny statist mess.

This fix would not only help in determining how our conflicts are fought, but will help determine what conflicts we get involved with in the first place.

Cold Heat, my reference to "worn out" was to military equipment such as airframes and vehicles, which have been overtaxed beyond their already-advanced ages by two decades of perpetual war. This problem will take a lot of time and money to fix, if it is to be fixed at all.

I didn't even mention the severe depletion of critical weapons systems and ammunition stocks that has resulted from these wasted adventures, but it is also a significant problem. Last week's revelation of the critically low stock of Tomahawak missiles is probably not a singular problem. Even more troubling is the Administration's intention to discontinue production of that critical weapon system, which is a key deep-strike offensive weapon.

Lack of will to wage a war is difficult to gauge, but Americans are tired enough of small wars, and it will be a tough sell to convince them that a new and bloodier major war is absolutely necessary. Indifference is the most difficult attitude to overcome.

Sure....that's a reality that has to be mitigated with several years of heavy spending to replace stocks, weapons and yes, we need more people. Obama is never going to do that.

Now we would not need those things if our strategic plan for the next 50 years is to sit on our hands and use a microphone, which is what it appears to be.

If that is what the country wants, then that is what they will get. But I don't think that our strategic foes will allow us to do that for very long, and it has been too long already if I am reading the tea leaves correctly.

We currently have a third rate president, a third rate congress and a third rate voting majority.

This has decimated our military readiness. It has scared the hell out of our allies and emboldened our enemies. it has also divided our country.

It is possible, in fact likely that this situation will become the norm in the new normal. If that is true, then is follows that the United States has exhausted it's supply of patriots, incurred impossible debt, and has deteriorated to the level where we cannot survive as a intact country for much longer than a 50 year period.

This may indeed be intentional. I don't know, but it might as well be.

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