AUTHORS NOTE: This article is not intended to be a
justification for the Russian invasion.
Although you've probably never heard, since it is never reported in American media, Russia reported that there were as many as 125,000 Ukrainian troops inside the ethnically Russian Donbass region of Ukraine by December of 2021, when the 8-year old conflict between Ukraine and the breakaway Republics was heating up again. These troops had been funded and heavily armed by the US, which had been encouraging Ukraine to forcibly take them back. On February 24th, the day the invasion began, Ukraine was clearly poised to invade the self-declared independent Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The newly revealed records confirm what many of us suspected, that the Ukrainian invasion was scheduled to occur within days.
It is very likely that this was apparent to Russian military intelligence, which would provide a totally different explanation for why the invasion occurred even as Russia was negotiating with Ukraine than the idea that Putin was simply "mad" and "wanted to restore the long-lost Russian Empire." The claim that Putin was lying about not wanting to invade was based on the fact that he was conducting a troop buildup while negotiating, and in the end did invade. However, taking literally Putin's statement that Russia had "no plans to invade" is disingenuous. Obviously, the Russian military buildup meant that they had a plan, but he said repeatedly that whether there would be war depended entirely on Ukraine's actions. It is entirely possible that he would have preferred to not invade, as he repeatedly indicated. Unless, of course, you start with the assumption that he is mad.
Unlike those who believe the US wanted to avoid war, Zelensky understood what Putin was saying. He called for a halt to inflammatory rhetoric coming from the US and asked Biden to come to Ukraine underscore the fact that there need be no war. In the end, Zelensky was put in a position where he had no choice but to refuse to deescalate the situation by removing troops from Donbass. The video in this article shows why: When he had tried order troops out of Donbass in 2019, neo-Nazis with much greater power over the government and military than their numbers would indicate laughed in his face and sent him away. That's how a Jewish president came to realize that he had better go along with what these US-backed fascists had in mind.
So go ahead and hate Putin if it makes you feel better. War is always a choice, and it is always brutal. Civilians are always killed, even though dead children make excellent propaganda for those who want to paint a war as one-sided. But if you want to prevent the next war, for God's sake try to understand the logic of both sides of this conflict. More specifically, do whatever you can do to try and get your government to stop constantly provoking a nuclear power, while denying its legitimate security interests.
Here is the official Russian Defense Ministry announcement (video at the end, this translation supplied by Konstantin Scheglikov). The cited documents can be seen here.
Briefing by the Russian Defense Ministry on the discovery of secret documents indicating that the puppet Neo-Nazi Ukrainian regime prepared an offensive against the Donetsk and Lugansk republics with the support of NATO:
"During a special military operation, secret documents of the command of the National Guard of Ukraine came into the possession of Russian military personnel. These documents confirm the covert preparation by the Kiev regime of an offensive operation in the Donbass in March 2022.
The Russian Defense Ministry publishes the original secret order of the commander of the National Guard of Ukraine, Colonel General Nikolay Balan, dated January 22, 2022.
The order "On the organization of training of the battalion tactical group of the 4th Operational Brigade to perform combat (special) tasks in the operation of the united forces as part of the brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine".
The document is addressed to the heads of the northern Kiev, southern Odessa and western territorial administrations of the National Guard of Ukraine.
The order, brought to the command of the National Guard of Ukraine, details a plan for the preparation of one of the strike groups for offensive actions in the zone of the so-called "operation of the united forces" in the Donbass.
The document approves the organizational and staff structure of the battalion-tactical group of the 4th operational brigade of the National Guard, the organization of its comprehensive support and reassignment to the 80th separate airborne assault Brigade of Ukraine.
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