Zelensky Not Victim But Instigator? Ukraine President Took an Ego Trip and Refused Talks With Russia Days Before War

IBT ^ | 4/4/22 | Anshu Seth

[libh8er]

The Russians had Ukraine surrounded and thought they were making him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Well Kudos to Zelensky for refusing.

[dforest]

He did what he was supposed to do by the people who put him in place. He is being paid to do this. A war with Russia was needed and so it is.

[Carl Vehse]

"Please explain NATOs Eastward expansion, post 1991 and the collapse of the USSR."

Please identify which post-1991 nations NATO troops, tanks, aircraft and missiles have invaded, kill civilians, and forcibly annexed.

[PGR88]

What, he is supposed to “negotiate” with his country’s molester?

Europe/Germany brokered two peace agreements in 2014 and 2015 (Minsk I & II), both of which Ukraine did not implement.

[UNGN]

The ENTIRE purpose of the SMO was regime change in Kiev at the point of a gun.

The Russians failed at this, and the SMO was doomed to fail.

When the Ukraine SMO AAR is written, this will be the key mistake that led to it’s failure.

[Destroyer Sailor]

No a Russian history of taking over its neighbors inspired Ukraine to seek NATO membership for protection.

[MalPearce]

Complete nonsense. The Ukrainians were desperately trying to get through to Russia to avert the SMO - Russia was responding to a smorgasbord of complete bullshit from Pushilin and Pasechnik while ignoring its own intelligence telling it that the Ukes were getting tooled up on a massive scale. And the intel actually suggested Ukraine was arming itself to DEFEND itself from Russia, rather than to attack the separatists.

Look no further than Russia's own news agency, Tass, for proof. What led up to and sparked the Ukraine conflict in 2022 | TASS

"In January 2022, Western states started ramping up military assistance to Kiev.... In addition, Ukraine received free-of-charge financial assistance and loans from the West."

Anyone who is not a completely vodka-sozzled vatnik would read that intelligence report and the enormous list of countries throwing help Ukraine's way and think this might merit some checking out BEFORE ordering a convoy of extremely poorly maintained vehicles staffed by conscripts who are by law prohibited from taking on combat missions in other countries, to go on a slow march into Ukraine, to force a regime change.

So why did they press on? Well, rather brilliantly, TASS explained that as well.

"Pushilin said according to him Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky was going to soon order the military to implement a plan to invade the territory of the DPR and LPR. With that in mind, the people’s republics declared general mobilization."

Unfortunately for Russia, this claim turned out to be as accurate as

• DPR claims that the Donbas was on the receiving end of ongoing GENOCIDE despite in the same breath admitting Ukraine hadn't mobilised anyone yet. Who contradicted this statement? Why, the DPR's own Human Rights Ombudsman who kept a tally of all civilian and military casualties.
   
• Separatist intelligence providers telling the Russians that Mariupol Hospital had been completely cleared of patients and medical staff, and Axov had been the sole occupants of the buildings for weeks. Lavrov ended up with massive egg on his face because he explained this at a summit in Turkey. At which point, someone should've said "Didn't it occur to you to get some independent confirmation before bombing it given that only last week they were filming a fly-on-the-wall documentary IN THAT HOSPITAL and it was clearly still operational?"
   
• Strelkov and Motorola both pulling the same kinds of stunt several years ago by spreading rampant disinformation and making unsupported accusations.

What isn't clear is, did the D/LPR stooges invent the claims themselves or were they making claims that the Kremlin had told them to make. Either way you get a brilliant confirmation bias - A tells B to say something, B tells C, C asks A, A assumes B is telling the truth because surely C would've checked, and bingo - all three parties end up convinced that nobody made anything up.

Tass rightly points out, Putin jumped to it literally because he believed whatever the (hardly impartial) separatist leaders told each other to tell the security agencies to tell him. Note the second sentence.

"On February 21, the heads of the DPR and LPR, Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, asked the Russian president to recognize the republics’ independence. On the same day, after the expanded meeting with the Security Council members, Putin announced in a televised address to the citizens a decision on recognizing the sovereignty of the DPR and LPR.

The president urged the Ukrainian authorities to immediately stop combat operations in Donbass, stressing that otherwise Kiev would be responsible for any possible continuation of bloodshed."

OK, so in the same article you've got confirmation that the DPR said Z was ABOUT to launch an operation, and therefore Putin needed to tell Z to stop combat operations. You can't stop something that hasn't started yet.

Pushilin and Pesechnik lied. That much is obvious. What's not clear is, why (given their narratives ended up so contradictory, they couldn't be telling the truth) did Putin follow their call and make a total prat of himself? Surely at some point someone would've spotted the myriad of contradictions and falsehoods in their intel?

And, why did nobody weigh up their inconsistent narrative with the far more robust intelligence about Europe and NATO readying themselves to throw Ukraine a huge amount of support to repel an invasion?

[Dead Dog]

It’s good to know who’s on the FSB’s payroll.

[BobL]

“Zelensky’s war???”

Naa, he was just taking orders by the Neocons, backed up by the Azovs - pretty obvious.

[Tench_Coxe]

Well there was that little dustup in the Balkans....

[JonPreston]

The Ukrainians were desperately trying to get through to Russia to avert the SMO - Russia was responding to a smorgasbord of complete bullshit

Please provide links to this nonsense.

[Destroyer Sailor]

🤨😆😆😆

[Destroyer Sailor]

😆

[JonPreston]

NATO doesn’t invade, expand or try and influence

Please explain NATOs bombing of Serbia.

[Who is John Galt?]

Its actually making this site unusable (which might be the aim). Posters on a couple of other sites have remarked on it.

There was a time it wouldn't be tolerated for long on this site. I mean come on--three or more articles from the same handle within 5 minutes of each other on the same topic? That's troll behavior.

True on both counts. I stopped visiting FR for several months, because of the number of posts with over-the-top invective. And it's amazing how some people post dozens of articles from questionable sites, with just minutes between many of the threads - it really does appear to be some kind of for-profit operation. When did CNN, MSNBC, and British tabloids become credible sources for threads on FR? But you'll see three threads posted by the same person, all in a ten minute period, all on the same subject, and all from "the most rusted name in news"...

;>)

[JonPreston]

Please don’t ever PM me again. Keep anything you have to say to me in the open and on the forum

[elpadre]

USA aid coming through Biden, whether as VP or POTUS, comes with strings attached. Biden has been a major player in Ukrainian politics for a long time. Could Zelensky have been just a Biden proxy all along???

[MalPearce]

What led up to and sparked the Ukraine conflict in 2022 | TASS

The link confirms that Putin’s actions were entirely a result of him listening to bullshit from the DPR and LPR leaders, rather reacting to anything Zelenskyy said/didn’t say or did/didn’t do.

Putin decided to just take their word for it that Zelenskyy was about to invade the separatist regions (both were suggesting he hadn't actually done it yet, but was about to).

In fact even Kremlin intelligence had also confirmed that Ukraine was readying ITSELF to repel an invasion by Russia.

[MalPearce]

My apologies, I hit the wrong button while typing on a phone.

[JonPreston]

The Eastward expansion of NATO, post 1991 and the collapse of the USSR, provoked Putin.