Why did NATO refuse to not threaten Russia by continuing encroaching on its borders? The NATO Chief Openly Admits that the war in Ukraine is due to continued NATO Expansion & refusal to enter into a treaty with Russia. Thus finally proving that the US puppet, NATO is to blame for the war. its deliberate refusal to comply resulted in the war in Ukraine.**
Listen to NATO Chief Openly Admits Russia Invaded Ukraine Because Of NATO Expansion by Caitlin Johnstone on #SoundCloud
[on.soundcloud.com]
Despite requesting NATO not to threaten Russia by encroaching on it border the NATO Chief Openly Admits Russia Invaded Ukraine Because Of NATO Expansion. Thus finally proving that the US puppet, NATO through its deliberate refusal to comply resulted in the war in Ukraine.
Caitlin Johnstone
Sep 9
Listen to a reading of this article by Tim Foley
Transcript: -
During a speech at the EU Parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Thursday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg clearly and repeatedly acknowledged that Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine because of fears of NATO expansionism.
His comments, initially flagged by journalist Thomas Frazi, read as follows:
The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.
The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.
So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.
Yesterday, speaking at the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg admitted that NATO is responsible for deliberately provoking the war in Ukraine:
“President Putin in the autumn of 2021 sent a draft treaty that they wanted…
— Thomas Fazi (@battleforeurope) September 8, 2023
Stoltenberg made these remarks as part of a general gloat about the fact that Putin invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO expansion and yet the invasion has resulted in Sweden and Finland applying to join the alliance, saying it “demonstrates that when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he’s getting the exact opposite.”
Stoltenberg’s remarks would probably have been classified as Russian propaganda by plutocrat-funded “disinformation experts” and imperial “fact checkers” if it had been said online by someone like you or me, but because it came from the head of NATO as part of a screed against the Russian president it’s been allowed to pass through without objection.
In reality Stoltenberg is just stating a well-established fact: contrary to the official western narrative, Putin invaded Ukraine not because he is evil and hates freedom but because no great power ever allows foreign military threats to amass on its borders — including the United States. That’s why so many western analysts and officials spent years warning that NATO’s actions were going to provoke a war, and yet when war broke out we were slammed with a tsunami of mass media propaganda repeating over and over and over again that this was an “unprovoked invasion”.
It would have been so very, very easy to prevent this horrific war. Off-ramp after off-ramp after off-ramp was passed to get us to where we’re at now. Chance after chance after chance to avoid all this pointless death and misery was passed up, both before 2014 and every year since. The US-centralized power structure knowingly chose this war, and it did so to advance its own interests. If people really, deeply understood this, the entire western empire would collapse.
Standing with our allies against Russian aggression isn't charity. In fact – it's a direct investment in replenishing America’s arsenal with American weapons built by American workers. Expanding our defense industrial base puts America in a stronger position to out-compete China.
— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) September 7, 2023
It’s the damnedest thing how you’ll get called a Kremlin agent for saying that this war was provoked by NATO expansionism and that it serves US interests, even when NATO openly says this war was provoked by NATO expansionism and US officials keep openly saying that this war serves US interests.
The latest entry in the latter category came in the form of a Thursday tweet by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, which reads, “Standing with our allies against Russian aggression isn’t charity. In fact — it’s a direct investment in replenishing America’s arsenal with American weapons built by American workers. Expanding our defense industrial base puts America in a stronger position to out-compete China.”
When official authorized narrative-makers acknowledge these things it’s okay, but when normal human beings do it it’s Kremlin disinformation. This is because when the authorized narrative-makers do it they’re doing it to advance the information interests of the US empire — to explain to war-weary Americans how this war benefits their country, or to mock Putin’s failure to stop the enlargement of NATO — whereas when normal people do it it’s to establish what’s true and factual.
This all happens as a study sponsored by the EU with a group funded by US oligarch Pierre Omidyar is being circulated by mass media outlets like The Washington Post finding that Twitter under Elon Musk has not been doing enough to censor “Russian propaganda” on the platform. This would put Musk in violation of the European Union’s Digital Services Act, which requires platforms to restrict such materials.
The Washington Post’s latest “disinformation study” – sponsored by the EU with an Omidyar-funded group that accuses Twitter of failing to censor "Russian propaganda" – is another in a long line of fraudulent attempts to justify censorship with pro-censorship demands.
Looking at… pic.twitter.com/2B63fpnPwB
— System Update (@SystemUpdate_) September 7, 2023
As Glenn Greenwald has noted, the Digital Services Act defines “Russian propaganda” so extremely broadly that it includes “ideological alignment with the Russian state” in the category of materials that must be censored, which includes people who “parrot the Kremlin’s narratives through originally produced content or by spreading Kremlin aligned narratives to different target audiences and languages.”
Anyone who speaks out against US foreign policy relating to Russia online is always immediately accused of “parroting Kremlin narratives” by empire apologists mindlessly regurgitating what they’ve been told to believe by outlets like The Washington Post, whether they have anything to do with the Russian government or not. I myself have no affiliation or interaction with the Russian state whatsoever, yet I receive many of these accusations every single day online just for criticizing US foreign policy.
If I were the NATO Secretary General publicly gloating about how Putin’s efforts to stop the expansion of NATO have failed, it would be fine for me to acknowledge that NATO expansion provoked this war after our refusal to prevent a needless conflict. But because I am harming the information interests of the western empire instead of helping them, that makes me a Russian propagandist.
This isn’t because the definition of “Russian propaganda” is flawed, but because it is working exactly as intended. The push to marginalize and eliminate “Russian propaganda” has never had anything to do with fighting the actual materials put out by the Russian state (which have essentially zero meaningful existence in the western world); the push has always been about stomping out opposition to US foreign policy.
Like so much else in this world when examining the behavior of power, it’s ultimately all about narrative control. The powerful understand that whoever controls the dominant narrative about world events actually controls the world, because real power isn’t just controlling what happens but controlling what people think about what happens. That’s the real glue holding the US-centralized empire together, and the world will never have a chance at knowing peace until people start bringing consciousness to it.
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Firstly the headline is misleading. It sounds like poor little Russia has been battling encroachment like some overzealous neighbour land dispute. When in reality it is more like trying to stop said neighbour from joining the local HOA. Or to put it another way. It is like trying to control who your ex can date (or vice versa). And considering how much of an abusive ex Russia is, it is not surprising that their exes want to date a club bouncer.
Btw Britain has listened very carefully to all the reasons given as to why Russia is justified in its invasion of Ukraine and in light of such irrefutable arguments, we have decided to reclaim Ireland as part of the UK.
The reasons are roughly the same.
Ireland was never really a country in its own right and has been both historically and culturally part of the UK for centuries.
Its vote for independence in 1920 was very suspect, with much intimidation.
Its presence on our border as an EU member post-Brexit has created an untenable situation.
Oh and what's a little genocidal famine between friends?
Watch this space for developments.
273kelvin
Level 8
Sep 10, 2023
1
An interesting analogy Kelvin. It doesn't however answer the unanswered question of "how much better off people would be if armed conflict did not occur or never occurred?" Conflict merely occurring from pride & discrimination against the falsely accused "non people" whether Irish, Russian, Muslim, aboriginal FNP, woman, black, yellow or rainbow colour.
@FrayedBear Well you would have to charge Russia with waging an aggressive war. Which is a war crime. Yes, I know the US and other countries could/should have been charged with this vis-a-vis Iran/Afghanistan but two wrongs do not make a right. Although my example of the UK retaking Ireland is tongue in cheek, it does throw into moral absurdity any justifications Russia had for invading another sovereign nation. Especially considering the carnage that has since ensued. To say that the West provoked this war is like justifying a home invasion of your ex because you disapprove of her new boyfriend. While also ignoring Russia's well-documented and public intentions to regain its pre-1989 hegemony.
@273kelvin what is the problem you have recognising that since 2014 Ukraine has pursued a policy of genocide against Russian ethnics living in the Crimea, & Donbass areas.
Interestingly in your Irish analogy of the IRA creating trouble in N.Ireland resulted in huge numbers of English troops being sent to try & stop the genocide occurring there. I don't recall any squeals of invasion in that instance.
Sadly Kelvin you are still being fed the colonial propaganda long put out by the UK government.
Equally I don't here you decrying any of the US malfeasance in the Americas even when merely a left wing democratically elected government like Chile's Allende.
@FrayedBear 1) "What is the problem you have recognising that since 2014 Ukraine has pursued a policy of genocide against Russian ethnics living in the Crimea, & Donbas areas?" One word "Putin", we are talking about a murdering ex-KGB dictator who has killed, imprisoned or exiled every single voice of opposition in Russia. Keep in mind that we would not be having this discussion there. Even calling it a war could have us up on charges. So forgive me if do not believe a single word that comes out of Pravda, oops sorry RT. We are talking about the man who sent assassins to England and killed UK citizens in Salisbury in 2018. Not sure you would be as welcoming if it happened in Brisbane. Plus the guy is not even that original in his bs. This is the same crap Himmler touted before the annexation of the Sudatenlaand.
2) Last time I checked NI was still part of the UK so no invasion, any more than Australian troops invading Queensland. Now if they invaded NZ? Even so, there was a lot of opposition to troops being deployed there and everyone was glad when they left.
3) See 1.
4) I already dealt with some of the US war crimes in my previous comment and I do not intend to defend any others but like I also said two wrongs do not make a right and no amount of whataboutism can justify the destruction that Putin has wrecked on Ukraine.
Also, keep in mind that this is MY continent. For me the events there are not some far distant conflict you can pick sides with like it was a sporting event. I have worked, drank and broken bread with many people of that region. Perhaps if you had talked to a Ukrainian refugee or two, you might not be so gung-ho at touting RT claptrap
@273kelvin you wish to espouse US claptrap - your business. Have you read "Another moment of US shame - the School of the Americas (now renamed the Western Hemisphere ..."?
@FrayedBear I have consistently said that I am not about to justify US foreign policies for the past 50 years. However, we ARE able to discuss them if we choose. Are the citizens of Russia able to discuss such subjects as openly? Is there an open debate surrounding why so many prominent Russians have fallen out of windows? No, because ALL opposition parties and media outlets have conveniently been found guilty of crimes.
You can rail all you want about the corporate media and such. But we still enjoy a relatively free press. Opposing ideas and information are still able to be discussed. The very fact that we are here discussing them internationally is a testament to that. Can Russians do the same? Are there any Russians on this site? Do you know of any sites where you could have a free discourse with Russian citizens without fear of state reprisals?
These factors HAVE to be taken into consideration when you disseminate your sources of information. In that light, I would be no more ready to quote anything from RT than I would be to quote the Watchtower
@273kelvin 90% of RT is simply regurgitated western media. Did you read the article of Putin criticising the USSR invasions in 1956 & 1968?
@FrayedBear No I did not but it must have been heartwarming to read. All we need now is for Biden to say that the US interference in S. America was wrong and we can all sit around singing "Cum-by-ya".
Meanwhile, did you read anything by Dmitry Muratov on RT? (Nobel Peace Prize Winner 2021) Well you are not likely to anytime soon as he had to fuck off Pdq for violating Putins Basil Faulty policy (Dont mention the war)
[theguardian.com]
@273kelvin "The Kremlin, Muratov suggests, “has learned many lessons in manipulating the public”. He points to the words of Putin’s unhinged political adviser, Alexander Dugin, who has shaped the extremist rhetoric of war: “Dugin said that [to prevail] Russia needs repression and censorship, an exact repetition of the words Stalin’s propagandists used in the last century…”" aka as words of mass deception more commonly associated with US propaganda.
As for Muratov's Nobel prize he is in good company - [britannica.com] and one yet to gain traction Obama's prize.
We are a little frustrated with Ukraine's progress so we will be nuking Moscow tomorrow night.
Alienbeing
Level 8
Sep 10, 2023
0
Reminds me of a Raygun Ronnie hot mike moment:
So the US interfered in the affairs of other countries because of the threat from Russia ?. A convenient excuse . It applies to both countries.
Moravian
Level 8
Sep 10, 2023
0
And also to keep US citizens under control & believing through fear the US propaganda.
@FrayedBear There probably is some truth in that. I recall the early days of the cold war with US children hiding under desks. Totally passed us by in the UK.
@Moravian didn't it just. Quite ridiculous considering the small size of the UK compared to USA.
NATO expansion was directly due to the rising threat Russia was becoming. Remember this was not the first time Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia has also invaded other neighboring countries as well. The first invasion made other European countries seek the protection of NATO. So, it is Russian's actions that resulted in NATOs proposed expansion(s).
NATO is responsible for a long lasting peace in Europe. Is it all that surprising that even long neutral countries would seek to join NATO as a result of Russian aggression?
Don't blame NATO because countries want protection from PUtin and Russian aggression. The more aggressive Russia gets the more countries who wish continued peace wish to join.
It is Russia's own aggressive actions which has led to NATO expansion(s), because European countries don't want Putin to march in troops to take over countries like Hitler did. Isn't that exactly what Russia expected to do with their latest invasion of Ukraine? Putin saw a president who was formerly a comedian and thought it would be an easy win, but instead found the former comedian was a capable president.
At this point the continued war is more to save face for Putin to not lose a war... to a former comedian, as that would be very damaging for Putin and Russia's reputation around the world.
snytiger6
Level 9
Sep 9, 2023
5
When your paranoia results in your aggressive behaviour & projection of that onto others it is when sane people recognise that you are mad and repeating your history as America has from Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Afghanistan, Libya to Palestine & a raft of other countries. Read & weap over "When the Chilean military overthrew Allende’s democratically elected government on Sept." but don't blame the subject of your bullying & intimidation.
@FrayedBear Well it was Brzezinski's idea to clandestinely push back against Moscow in Afghanistan that Reagan, for better or worse, escalated which helped turned Afghanistan into more of a quagmire for Russia and played a role in the eventual demise of the USSR. Afghanistan became their Vietnam. The lesson of Afghanistan should have kept them from making a similar mistake in Ukraine, which we are backing far more overtly and directly. So yeah…Afghanistan.
Vietnam was stupid on our part, blindly stumbling under containment doctrine and domino theory. Xenophobic Vietnam always side-eyed China and the way they fought the Mongols and later the French should have given us pause. We were in the midst of training the Viet Minh when the bombs dropped on Japan and we sorta split on Uncle Ho and abandoned him to the returning colonial French. We should have taken Giap’s master stroke at Điện Biên Phủ to heart, but we didn’t. At least now they are a potential offset against Chinese hegemony in Asia. They didn’t see humor in that Barbie map at all!
We also abandoned Afghanistan when the multifactional mujahideen were no longer of any use. Some Afghani fighters would eventually transform into Taliban. The Arab-Afghans would become al Qaeda but they were not a direct CIA asset as so often assumed.
You have no argument from me in the way we addressed the coup looming against Allende. We more directly participated in Guatemala against Arbenz and Iran against Mosaddegh. You missed those! Pinochet and the Condor thing was horrific despite the economic miracle of the Chicago boys that was the testing ground for later neoliberal projects.
Putin’s neo-tsarism represents a threat to Europe and must not be left unchecked. Sure he saw NATO as a threat. If he had no ulterior agenda he would not have perceived things that way. I think Dubya’s missile shield idea got under his skin too. At least Dubya got term-limited out of office. Putin is a poster boy for term limits.
This puppet show was a canary in the coal mine for the future of nascent Russian freedom:
Pussy Riot would suffer later. Your boy.
@Scott321 and so you claim that the USA had nothing to do with provoking the events in Afghanistan prior to the Russian invasion? Please explain operation Cyclone.
@FrayedBear So after all I said above you sidestep that and shift the goalposts. You tell me about Operation Cyclone without resorting to a TL/DR wall of text apparently copypasting the words of others. You’re boring me.
@Scott321 US wmd, words of mass deception, bored me long ago. . . As they have the majority of the world's populace. Only in most cases that boredom is actually hatred. Which explains why many in your country are pushing for Armageddon.
I read Stoltenburg's comments as merely him quoting Putin (or Putin's stated position vis-a-vis NATO) and then very accurately pointing out that Putin's actions have brought about exactly what Putin said he didn't want: expansion of NATO.
As for why Russia invaded Ukraine, that has less to do with NATO than with the fact that Putin is a murderous thug with a sweet tooth, and Ukraine is a fat, juicy plum that he wants to devour.
And this post from the frayed Russian bear is just another in a long line of Russian propaganda pieces, designed to muddy the waters and reduce the will of Ukraine's allies to continue supporting Ukraine in it's justified struggle for existence.
On that score the post is a failure, just as Putin's illegal and immoral bid for domination is a failure.
Flyingsaucesir
Level 8
Sep 9, 2023
1
And why ⅔ of the worlds population wish to join BRICS.
The US striving for hegemony & causing the overthrow of foreign governments, civil strife, wars & the deaths of tens of millions is not legal nor moral?
@FrayedBear Blah blah blah what-about-ism. Yes, trying to rid Iraq of its tyrant and set up a democratic government was not only illegal, it was stupid. Afghanistan was a little different; in that case there was a clear provocation (the Taliban hosting the authors of 9/11). Does that make what Putin is doing in Ukraine, trying to erase another country's sovereign identity annex their land, OK? No. Two wrongs have never made a right.
@FrayedBear As for BRICS, I'll just quote @Garban: "BRICS is a financial agreement, not a security agreement. Putin has demonstrated that a security agreement with him is useless."
Yeah, there’s no Russian propaganda. RT is not a Putin mouthpiece. Multiple people haven’t been poisoned or defenestrated. Former Iron Curtain members weren’t acting as free agents in choosing NATO membership over the years, they were duped or coerced by the bully US. Sweden and Finland better follow suit or the US has something up their sleeve for those pesky Nordics! Obviously Sweden and Finland wish they could ally with Putin instead, but the US is a defenestrating and poisoning bully, shades of the Borgias and has intimidated much of the Eastern Bloc into mindless compliance. It wasn’t the US’s involvement in the Balkans war against Russia aligned Serbia that made Albania friendlier as a Muslim country with the US. It was fear of the US and manipulation by NATO.
Viva Pussy Riot!
Scott321
Level 7
Sep 9, 2023
3
Love the dripping sarcasm 
Sarcasm is frequently called the lowest form of wit & the last resort of the guilty. Try reading astute accuracy -
If Everyone Understood That The US Deliberately Provoked This War
Caitlin Johnstone
Sep 7
War is the single worst thing humans do. The most insane. The most cruel. The most destructive. The most traumatic. The least sustainable. Those who knowingly choose to steer humanity into more war when it could be avoided are the worst people in the world, without exception.
And there are mountains of extensively documented evidence that that’s exactly what the drivers of the US-centralized empire did in Ukraine. That’s why so many western analysts and experts spent years warning that the actions of western powers were going to lead Ukraine into disaster, and it’s why US empire managers keep openly boasting about how much their proxy warfare in Ukraine advances US interests. They knowingly steered Ukraine into war to advance their own geostrategic interests while being fully aware that no powerful nation would ever permit the kinds of foreign threats the west was amassing on its borders, and then they intervened in the early days of the war to prevent the outbreak of peace.
If there was widespread awareness of these facts, the US war machine would lose support around the world — not just for its actions in this one war, but for all future wars as well. Which is why so much energy goes into making sure this does not become a widespread understanding.
Professor John Mearsheimer in 2015:
"The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked."
Prophetic words. pic.twitter.com/R9suM3oABA
— James Melville (@JamesMelville) August 22, 2023
The official mainstream narrative throughout the western world is that Putin invaded Ukraine solely because he is evil and hates freedom. That’s the actual, literal belief about this war that the western political/media class works to instill in the western public. Anyone who counters this self-evidently ridiculous assessment with facts and evidence gets branded a Russian agent and swarmed with pro-US trolls on social media, and loses all hope of securing a major platform in any mass media.
And it’s important to notice that shutting down all mature adult analysis of the events which led to the war in this way does not actually save a single Ukrainian life. It doesn’t make Russia any more likely to stop fighting and withdraw its troops. All it does is prevent people from seeing the US empire for what it really is. It isn’t being done to protect Ukrainians, it’s done to protect the empire.
The worst thing that could possibly happen to the information interests of the US empire would be for a critical mass of people to become aware that all this death and destruction in Ukraine could have been avoided by the US-centralized empire behaving less aggressively on Russia’s doorstep, and that those aggressions were instead increased with the goal of advancing US strategic interests on the world stage. If everyone really, deeply understood that all this suffering, all these mountains of human corpses could simply not have happened if the US hadn’t been feverishly focused on securing planetary domination at all cost, the US would no longer be able to manufacture consent for its agendas. It would no longer be able to whip up international support for its actions against its enemies. It would no longer be able to persuade the world to help prop up the hegemony of the dollar.
True: “Russia pursued diplomatic options in 2021 to avoid war, while Biden rejected diplomacy, insisting that Russia had no say on NATO enlargement. And Russia pushed diplomacy in March 2022, while the Biden team again blocked a diplomatic end to the war.”[t.co]
— Tarik Cyril Amar (@TarikCyrilAmar) May 25, 2023
But because the US empire has the most advanced soft power apparatus that has ever existed, hardly anyone understands this. Not even the people who understand that the west provoked this war have deeply grappled with exactly what that means on a visceral emotional level, for the most part. It’s more of a superficial intellectual understanding for most, without really grokking into the horror of it all, really letting the enraging nature of what the US empire did wash over them.
The west was deceived into supporting yet another evil American war, this time with the added dimension of nuclear brinkmanship threatening the life of every terrestrial organism. All to suck Moscow into another draining military quagmire so war plans can be safely drawn up against China while advancing US energy interests in Europe and building support for US military alliances. It’s almost too evil to take in. There aren’t really words for it.
And that’s one of the reasons it’s hard to get people to take in exactly what happened with Ukraine: people have a hard time wrapping their minds around the idea that anyone could be that evil, much less the government we’ve been trained by Hollywood to think of as sane and humanitarian.
Everyone should take time to read this article from the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies on the "Immediate Origins of Putin's Preventative War on Ukraine"
It's a careful review of Putin's public statements in the runup to his decision to invade. pic.twitter.com/TXiIX0aA7S
— Bryce Greene (@TheGreeneBJ) March 25, 2023
It’s about as monstrous a thing as you could possibly come up with. Yet here it is, still unfolding in all its blood-spattered glory.
Our task then is to help people see this and understand it, not just intellectually but emotionally. Help people really grasp deep down the horrors the US empire unleashed upon our world with the war in Ukraine; the suffering; the death; the existential danger. We can’t fight the empire on our own, but we can each do what we can to help weaken the consent manufacturing machine it uses to rule and terrorize the world.
Of course this is all nonsense but suppose it was the reason, it has totally backfired as non aligned countries one being Finland,are now joining NATO
Moravian
Level 8
Sep 9, 2023
2
Listen to If Everyone Understood That The US Deliberately Provoked This War by Caitlin Johnstone on #SoundCloud
[on.soundcloud.com]
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