USA Responsible For Russia-Ukraine War: Ukraine Abandoned Peace Deal Due To Us Pressure
Ukrainian leaders were ready to sign a peace deal with Russia but they gave up due to USA pressure, Nikolai Patrushev said
USA exerted pressure on Ukraine to abandon peace talks with Russia
Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, claimed that Ukraine sought to resolve its issue with Russia but backed down due to US pressure. He said that the Ukrainian government was prepared to enter into a peace agreement and had sent formal proposals to Russia which were, in broad terms, accepted.
Beginning March 2022, in Belarus, the inaugural round of Russian-Ukrainian discussions were held following the start of Russia’s special military intervention in Ukraine. However, these discussions did not lead to any productive conclusions.
A fresh round of negotiations was held in Istanbul on March 29, 2022. Upon these negotiations, the Russian delegation’s leader, Presidential Aide Vladimir Medinsky, declared that Moscow had for the very first time received Kiev’s terms for a potential future arrangement in writing. These principles, in particular, stipulated Ukraine’s promises to maintaining its neutral, non-aligned position and its refusal to station foreign troops as well as armaments, which include nuclear weapons, on the territory of the country.
Russia withdrew its troops from the Chernigov as well as Kiev regions. The discussions for a peaceful resolution, however, came to a complete halt after that, and Kiev abandoned the Istanbul accords, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, implemented a National Security and Defense Council order to forbid any discussions with Putin in October of the previous year.
This crisis would not have occurred if the US had not applied pressure to people who they put in charge of Ukraine. Even the Ukrainian authorities themselves were prepared. Patrushev stated, apparently alluding to the other round of talks held in Turkey in March of last year involving the Russian and Ukrainian collaboration. However, as Patrushev continued, during the morning conversations, the Ukrainian delegation members offered them proposals, and during the evening conversations, they denied stating they had given them up.
The secretary of Russia’s Security Council emphasized that this only occurred due to the imposition of pressure by United States on them by which they insisted that no conversations should take place between Ukraine and Russia. The United States and Great Britain are the two main parties with an interest in this dispute, as Patrushev noted.
Putin’s justification of aggression by Russia
Every conflict has an instantaneous trigger as well as a more fundamental cause or causes. The majority of historians worth their salt will concur, even if they disagree on the causes. But not diplomats.
These individuals are present only to speak up for their respective side and frequently to criticize and condemn the other party. The US ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, addressed the World Peace Forum in Beijing earlier in the week that Russia’s conflict in Ukraine was unprovoked and posed the gravest danger to global order.
Both of his arguments might be valid if just the immediate cause of the conflict is considered. When the fundamental causes are examined, the picture changes.
Regarding the latter, Burns’ nation has immediate accountability for both establishing the circumstances for the war and maintaining the pouring of the greatest amount of gasoline onto the flame in order to ensure that the burning impacts everyone around the globe, including the risks of starvation and escalating inflation.
While Indonesian President Joko Widodo along with other leaders have stated that the conflict must stop soon, Washington as well as its Western allies are ensuring that it does not.
Vladimir Putin did not arise out of nowhere to create a gangster state, attack Ukraine, wreak havoc on the world, and command his hobgoblins on Russian television to constantly terrorize the world with mushroom clouds. The former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently stated that Russia’s invasions and atrocities are perhaps the most organic and genuine occurrence that has ever happened in history.
Putin attempted to defend the Russian invasion with a more-than-hour-long address, stating that Russia was striving to let inhabitants in the disputed Donbas area communicate in their native language and was seeking a peaceful settlement. He said that NATO expansion as well as new European anti-rocket defense systems were inciting Russia, and that the West’s goal was endless power. Putin additionally utilized the address to announce Russia’s withdrawal from the New START deal, which restricts the two countries’ strategic nuclear arsenals.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had called on Russia to rethink the choice it made. Stoltenberg also emphasized that Russia had become the aggressor, and that Putin had stated that he was ready for another battle. He said Ukraine’s backing had to keep going, and he was concerned that China will support Russia throughout the war.
On Twitter, Russian government minister Mikhail Ulyanov stated that the discontinuation of New START did not imply withdrawal, and he added that getting back to the deal was feasible under specific situations. The US government publicly declared that Moscow carried out crimes against humanity amid its year-long attack against its neighboring country. According to some political commentators, Putin’s choice to invade Ukraine was his worst error in politics, and it has harmed Russia for decades yet to come.
After a rigged vote, Russia captured Crimea in 2014. The international world strongly criticized the invasion, which resulted in waves of Western penalties targeting Russian leaders. It also seized four Ukrainian districts last year (Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas region, as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia), that Ukraine along with its allies denounced as unlawful and illegitimate. Putin highlighted the concerns about Donbas on Tuesday, alleging that the Kremlin noticed an increase in threats in the disputed territory prior of the February 24 assault.
All of this was completely against the documents that were accepted by the United Nations Security Council. I would like to repeat: they started the war. And we used the force in order to stop it.
Putin made his “state of the nation” address to legislators and military leaders in Moscow on Tuesday, and the speech was also carried on state television. Putin stated that Russia was aiming to build a roadway to Crimea and implement a social reconstruction initiative in the territory it claims sovereignty over.
Ukrainian leaders, on the other hand, remain uncompromising, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy constantly stating that the country would not accept anything less than a reestablishment of the country’s before the invasion boundaries along with additional conditions.
Putin also announced the establishment of a state fund to assist veterans along with the family members of deceased personnel, as well as the establishment of initiatives to stimulate the country’s economy, such as tax breaks for firms that purchase domestic goods and a program that will motivate residents to make savings and investment inside the nation at large.
Few days back, US President Joe Biden paid an unexpected visit to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, during which he conferred along with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The purpose of the trip, according to Biden, was to reassert their unshakeable and unflinching support to Ukraine’s democratic systems, autonomy, and territorial stability. He also pledged additional artillery ammunition as well as anti-armor weapons, in addition to more sanctions against Russian corporations and elites.
John Mearsheimer on the role of USA
One cannot do better than reference John Mearsheimer, an outstanding political science professor at the University of Chicago, when analyzing the fundamental reasons of the conflict. First and foremost, the United States is primarily accountable for the Ukraine crisis, he stated in a presentation last month at the European University Institute.
This is not to deny [Vladimir] Putin started the war and that he is responsible for Russia’s conduct on the battlefield. Nor is it to deny that America’s allies bear some responsibility, but they largely follow Washington’s lead.
He claims that the US has been pushing for Ukrainian policies that Putin along with his colleagues have long regarded as an existential danger to their nation, namely NATO’s eastern encroachment. The Russians have frequently expressed their point of view spanning a period of time, but they have been disregarded.
According to Mearsheimer, Moscow was reacting to America’s concern with getting Ukraine joining NATO thus rendering it a western bastion on Russian frontiers. The Biden administration reaffirmed its commitment to bringing Ukraine into NATO by 2021. Following the invasion, it doubled the amount of sanctions on Russia. He went on to say that Russia had little interest in a diplomatic resolution and continued to drag Ukraine along with the rest of the globe down with it.
The majority of Europeans and Americans might not subscribe to that opinion, but the remainder of the globe does.
Since the conclusion of the Cold War, John Mearsheimer has emerged as among the world’s most well-known sceptics of American foreign policy. Mearsheimer is an advocate of great-power political discourse, the branch of pragmatic international relations which holds that nations will pre-emptively act in anticipation of adversaries while making a self-serving effort to safeguard their country’s safety. Mearsheimer is most commonly recognized for the work that he co-authored with Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” but he also has other notable works to his credit.
Mearsheimer has long contended that by promoting NATO‘s eastward expansion and forging cordial ties with Ukraine, the U.S. enhanced the danger of nuclear war and set the stage for Vladimir Putin’s hostile stance against Ukraine. In fact, Mearsheimer stated in a 2014 article following Russia’s annexation of Crimea that the US along with its European allies bear the majority of the blame for this situation.
Several long-running discussions concerning the ties between the United States and Russia have been revived in light of the current siege of Ukraine. Mearsheimer still holds the view that the U.S. is to blame for inciting Putin, despite the fact that a number of his detractors have stated that he was going to pursue a forceful foreign strategy in erstwhile Soviet Republics irrespective of Western engagement.
He said in an interview over the phone that the conflict in this case truly began in April 2008 during the NATO summit that took place in Bucharest, following which NATO released a statement declaring that both Georgia and Ukraine will join the alliance. The Russians made a line in the sand thereby making it clearly apparent that they saw this as a life-threatening risk at this moment in time.
However, as time has gone on, the USA have advanced to incorporate Ukraine in the West with the objective of rendering Ukraine a Western bulwark at Russia’s border. Of course, this goes beyond simply expanding NATO. The core of the policy is NATO expansion, but it also involves E.U. enlargement and transforming Ukraine to become a pro-American liberal democracy, which, in the eyes of Russia, poses an existential danger.
Understanding that nobody anticipated NATO and EU enlargement as a strategy focused at limiting Russia before to 2014 is crucial when discussing Ukraine. Before February 22, 2014, no one genuinely believed that Russia posed a threat. It was the goal of NATO and EU enlargement, as well as the liberalization of Georgia, Ukraine, and other nations, to create a vast zone of peace including both Eastern and Western Europe. It was not meant to keep Russia in check.
Individuals had to place responsibility once this significant catastrophe occurred, and the USA were obviously never going to take the blame themselves. They intended to assign responsibility to the Russians. They thus concocted the narrative that Russia was hell-bent on waging war in Eastern Europe. Putin would be interested in enlarging Russia or possibly bringing back the Soviet Union.
Way forward for Ukraine
If Ukrainians fundamentally alienate the Russians, they are exposed to a serious danger. Ukraine will suffer a great deal of harm if Russia believes that Ukraine poses an existential danger to Russia because to its allegiance to the US and its friends in West Europe. Of fact, it is exactly what took place just now. For Ukraine, breaking up its tight ties with the West, notably with the USA, and attempting to appease the Russians would have proven a prudent geopolitical move. The Crimea and the Donbass would still be a part of Ukraine today, and there certainly would not be a conflict there, if the decision to expand NATO’s eastern border to encompass Ukraine had not been made.
In a perfect world, it would be incredibly pleasant if Ukrainians had the freedom to select their own political framework and foreign affairs strategy. However, that is not practical in the actual world. The Ukrainians, thus, in the real world possess a personal incentive to pay close attention to what Russia expects of them.
