Why Putin had to launch his “Special Military Operation”
After decades of pleading and accommodation, Putin finally had no choice but to act as he did.
NOTE: This article was originally posted on my Medium Account on November 19, 2022.
When Putin launched his “Special Military Operation”, he said that he had three goals:
Safeguard and protect the people in the Donbas and their fledgling republics
De-Nazify the Kiev regime — i.e., liquidate the Azov Battalion and the other Nazi groups
Demilitarise Ukraine and restore it to neutrality — i.e., kick NATO and the US out of Ukraine.
The Russian people support these goals.
First, however, we must realise that Russia does not consider itself to be “fighting with Ukraine.” Russia believes it is fighting against NATO, an organisation of Western powers that it perceives as a massive threat to Russian sovereignty, indeed to Russian survival.
Russia has long considered NATO to be an adversary. We should remember that NATO was formed to oppose the USSR and the Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe. After the collapse of the USSR, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved and there was no longer any reason to maintain NATO. But the US was determined to maintain a military presence in Europe, and in order to provide a “fig leaf” of diplomatic cover for the USA’s maintaining a huge military presence in the territory of its European “friends”, they needed to keep NATO going, so that all those dozens of US bases were no longer US bases in foreign countries, but rather NATO bases.
Russia has had major beefs with NATO since the Clinton Administration. When Gorbachev agreed to let Germany reunite in 1990, and further to allow a united Germany to be a member of NATO, he was promised and assured by all the Western powers (Bush, Baker, Kohl, Genscher, Thatcher, Major, etc.) that NATO would not extend “one inch” past Germany. But since no formal treaty was signed, Bill Clinton felt he did not have to abide by this agreement, and proceeded to expand NATO right up to Russia’s borders.
This was viewed as a huge betrayal by Russia, and especially Putin, who has condemned Gorbachev as having “sold out” Russia by failing to get the promise in writing.
Russia’s belief in Nato ‘betrayal’ — and why it matters today (The GUARDIAN)
The idea that the Soviet Union was tricked in 1989–90 is at the heart of Russia’s confrontation with the west (The GUARDIAN)
Tensions and conflict have been brewing between NATO and Russia for some time. Putin harshly criticised the West and the US in particular when he addressed the Munich Security Conference in 2007. He accused the US of fuelling a new arms race, and asked the US directly: “Why do you need to move your military infrastructure to our borders?”
Despite Putin’s repeated protests, the US kept pushing. They added all sorts of former Warsaw Pact countries like Poland and Romania and the Czech Republic.
Moreover, the US has stationed “dual use” missile systems in Poland and in Romania. These Aegis Onshore systems can easily be modified with a software update to go from defensive to offensive use, capable of launching nuclear tipped cruise missiles with a minutes-long flightpath to Moscow.
And since 2007, the US and its allies have extended an “Open Door” invitation to NATO membership for Ukraine, where both Washington and Kiev are keen to station more nuclear capable missile systems, even closer to Moscow and Russia’s own deterrence forces.
This is a threat that NO Russian leader could tolerate.
The situation between NATO and Russia reached a boiling point in 2021, when Russia, frustrated with NATO’s refusal to remove its missile systems or to guarantee a “neutral” Ukraine, broke off its diplomatic relations with NATO.
In August 2022, Russia announced what every sentient observer has known since the conflict in Ukraine started: NATO is fighting a proxy war with Russia in the Ukraine. Absurdly, NATO has formerly denied the Russian accusation. But in a weird case of dissonant messaging, the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, has repeatedly said that if Ukraine loses, it will be a loss for NATO.
Historical context
Russian leadership believe that they are in an existential struggle against NATO. But the argument for the Russian people is less abstract: Russia had to invade Ukraine to stop the slaughter of Russians living in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine.
When the US engineered the Maidan Coup in 2014, it installed a pro-Western, pro-US, pro-NATO, pro-EU government that was hand picked by the US State Department.
That government passed laws outlawing Russian as an official language. It made other changes that were decidedly aimed at excluding and persecuting the Russian speaking Ukrainian population.
The Prime Minister of the interim government that Nuland setup, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, was a Pro-Nazi revisionist, racist and ardent Russian hater who promised his government would “cleanse sub-humans” from Eastern Ukraine. They even published his Nazi plan for ethnic cleansing on the Ukrainian US Embassy web site (the text has since been redacted to substitute “inhumans” for “subhumans”, but the point is unmistakable.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/06/ukraine-echoes-of-the-third-reich-yatsenyuks-subhumans-.html
In reaction to Yatsenyuk‘s racist laws and pronouncements, there were demonstrations and acts of rebellion in the Eastern provinces of the country. These were put down by the Nazi thugs who had provided the “muscle” for the putsch in Kiev.
In one infamous and outrageous instance, the far right group Right Sector, trapped and burned 39 protesters alive in Odessa. It is a gruesome story, but one that had many analogs take place all across the Russian speaking areas that refused to accept the Coup government in Kiev.
Burnt alive in Odessa (documentary)
There were then two provinces that declared independence from Kiev: the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR).
When we read about the revolts in the East, it is important to remember that 60% to 70%+ of the residents speak Russian as their primary language.
The Donbas slaughter
Kiev reacted immediately. They sent the Territorial Defense Force to attack the new republics. But the regular soldiers often defected, turning over their equipment, tanks, etc. to the rebel forces. Even high ranking military officers defected.
Hundreds of Ukrainian troops cross into Russia (CBS News)
All that was in 2014. Since then, a civil war has raged across the Donbas region, with civilians being slaughtered by the Azov Battalion on an almost daily basis. Indeed, in the run-up to Russia’s invasion, the shelling of the Donbas region had skyrocketed, increasing 300% over previous levels. In fact, the OSCE had recorded 41 “explosions” in the Donbas on February 14, but that number jumped to 1,481 on February 21 (three days before Russia invaded).
The increased shelling, combined with a massing of fighters along the Donbas contact line, indicated to NATO and OSCE observers that the Nazi led divisions of Ukraine were about to launch a massive invasion of the DPR and LPR, with the aim of implementing a “Final Solution” to what the Nazis saw as the “Russian Problem” in Ukraine.
Many believe it was the fear of this invasion, and the slaughter of Russian civilians that would surely follow, that prompted Putin to finally act.
Russia/Putin had been trying to avoid this war for decades. They made it clear as could be, that Ukraine MUST remain neutral, that it could NEVER be allowed to enter NATO. And yet. The US and its allies continued to maintain that Ukraine enjoyed an “open door” invitation to join NATO. NO Russian leader could afford to let this happen. Putin HAD to do something. He could not allow the Black Sea Fleet’s home base at Sevastopol, the largest and most important Russian military base, to be handed over to NATO. And so he annexed Crimea. He had no choice, given the stated intentions of both Ukraine and NATO leadership to bring Ukraine into NATO.
For eight years, Russia/Putin tried to sue for PEACE in the Donbas in accordance with the Minsk Accords. For eight years, fanatical Ukrainian Nazis bombed, shelled, sniped and generally murdered the ethnic Russians living in the Donbas. For eight years, Ukraine and the West IGNORED Russia’s pleas for peace, cynically using the Minsk Accords to “buy time” while they built up their weapons stockpiles and trained their army. Russia knew this.
So, faced with a Nazi run country, flooded with the latest NATO technology, a de facto NATO state, about to invade and start slaughtering Russian speakers in Donbas, PUTIN HAD TO ACT.
#End
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Well said.