We arrive at this point in history not from respect of others but via fear and loathing. European "fear" of Russia, Russophobia, in place for almost two centuries, has under Atlanticist doctrine, morphed into outright hate over the past eighty years. The result is the conviction that Russia should cease to exist and be broken into smaller parts and captured for exploitation as per Hitler's Lebensraum. If Russia has no right to exist, ergo it has no need for a zone of security - going so far as to say that it cannot object to hostile forces up against its borders. Going back to the reunification of Germany, the 2+4 Treaty, the "Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany" (Sept 1990) was secured because Mikhail Gorbachev was given solemn assurances, by Hans-Dietrich Genscher, by Helmut Kohl, by James Baker, and by other Western leaders, that NATO would not move eastward. That treaty restricts the placement of NATO troops in the GDR and recalls the principles of the Helsinki Final Act, which emphasizes that no nation's security should come at the expense of another's.
In her memoirs, Angela Merkel writes that she understood at the time of the 2008 Bucharest Summit that inviting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO would be tantamount to a declaration of war on Russia. But she gave in to American pressure, accepting the compromise communiqué that Ukraine and Georgia "will become" NATO members. This directly set in motion the events of 2014 and 2022, by violating the 21 February 2014 agreement in Kyiv signed by Germany, Poland and France, and violating the Minsk II "Declaration of Support" of February 2015, personally negotiated by Chancellor Merkel, with the key provision of autonomy for the Donbas region within a sovereign Ukraine, yet Merkel later acknowledged that this agreement had been used to buy time for Ukraine to rearm. Rearm for what? For the Atlanticist West's goal of attacking Russia via Ukraine, as spelled out in Zbigniew Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard program, with the ultimate goal of conquering all of Asia. Note that Ukraine doesn't sit along the west of Russia like Poland, it lies directly under Moscow. Note that from 2014 to 2022, the Donbas Oblast was continuously bombed and then shelled, its native Russian language and Orthodox religion banned and was never granted the agreed upon autonomy. But most history lies unread, while the unread lie about history.
In a better world, in a better Europe, the nations along Russia's borders would be genuinely neutral in the manner of Switzerland in former years. Actually, a condition of Ukraine's separation agreement from Russia was for Ukraine to remain non-aligned, but The West had other plans. That 2014 agreement in Kyiv was violated in the Maidan coup set up under Hilary Clinton and Victoria Nuland which installed the present Ukrainian government, which began attacking the eastern oblasts. To get these attacks stopped and allow the agreed upon autonomy of Donbas, the Russians began their Special Military Operation, mislabeled "All-Out Invasion" by the West. In the following month, April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators converged in Istanbul on the terms of a peace agreement: Ukrainian neutrality outside NATO, multilateral security guarantees, agreed troop limits, and the political resolution of the Donbas and Crimea questions over time. The agreement was within days of signature. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, one of the mediators, has confirmed publicly that the deal was close and that the West ” the United States and the United Kingdom in particular ” moved to block it. So here we are today, locked into unnecessary escalation by NATO against Russia, which could all end at any minute of any day.
Reference:
Jeffrey D. Sachs: An Open Letter to Chancellor Friedrich
Merz
or
local copy
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