Russia States the Conditions Under Which It Will Invade NATO

Eric Zuesse

On June 20th, the Russian Government’s RT News issued an English-language translation, titled “Russia fears a NATO attack. Here’s why.”, of a June 19th Russian-language article by Professor Igor Istomin, who is the acting head of the Department of Applied Analysis of International Problems, at MGIMO University, which is a part of Russia’s Foreign Ministry. This article would not be so published if it did not express accurately the views and policies of Russia’s Government.

It stated that there are three things which would spark a Russian response to eliminate “the notorious ‘decision centers’” within NATO. 1: Russia’s decision that in order to complete its win in Ukraine, the increase of NATO’s involvement had become so large that conquering all of NATO will be needed in order to protect Russia’s national security against the threat from NATO; 2: NATO’s “restricting Moscow’s access to the Baltic Sea, which ignores the inevitable response to threats to Kaliningrad.”; or 3: (in a poorly written passage): anything that would threaten Russia’s most important naval base, which is in the Black Sea (at Sevastopol in Crimea).

Publishing in The West this article, as coming from Professor Istomin instead of from Putin or even Lavrov (the Foreign Minister), is unofficially giving notice to all heads-of-state and legislatures in the U.S. empire, that in any of those three conditions, Russia will immediately eliminate them. However, elsewhere in the article, Istomin says that within NATO itself, the belief is instead that NATO “still needs to work to prepare for a protracted confrontation that could lead to a clash with Russia” rather than to prepare for that sudden “clash with Russia.” He is, in other words, saying that NATO is falsely assuming that in terms of the nuclear phase of WW3, NATO instead of Russia will be the first to strike. However, Istomin makes clear that “Moscow doesn’t countenance losing in any way” the war in Ukraine. If it will need to resort to the nuclear phase in order to eliminate the threat that NATO is posing to Russia’s inviolable national security — Russia’s sovereignty over its own land (which is the threat that the U.S. team has been presenting by expanding NATO ever-closer to Moscow (despite repeated promises never to do that)) — it will do so (and it will do so promptly — without any “protracted confrontation”).

So: in Russia’s priorities, the worst possible outcome would be if Russia’s central command becomes beheaded (such as by a blitz nuclear U.S. missile-strike from Ukraine only 317 miles away from The Kremlin, or by one from Finland only 507 miles away) and so Russia loses its sovereignty over its own territory. The second-worst is if Russia is forced to strike first in order to prevent that. And the best is if the U.S. and its colonies halt and permanently end their effort ever since 1945 to conquer Russia (originally using the ‘anti-communist’ excuse for doing that). 

Despite the U.S. team’s constant lies to the contrary, Russia has zero interest in conquering the American empire (or any part of it) unless the rulers of America will never halt their goal of adding Russia to their empire. The imperialist nation here is America, NOT Russia — and ALSO not China.

ONLY America poses a threat to the entire world. And it constantly lies.

——

Nowhere in that article (nor clearly stated in anything else from Russia’s Government) is the evidence presented that this war (the war in Ukraine) was started not by Putin in 2022 (as the U.S. empire lies to allege), but by Obama in 2014 — so that that Obama was the aggressor (the violator of the U.N.’s Charter) and Putin is the defender, in this war; so, I shall, yet again, do that here, in order that any reader who will want to know whom the international war-criminal here is, will find the evidence on this matter to be found only a mere click away:

We are actually now in year ten of this war. The war in Ukraine started in 2014, as both NATO’s Stoltenberg and Ukraine’s Zelensky have said. It was started in February 2014 by a U.S. coup which replaced the democratically elected and neutralist President with a U.S. selected and rabidly anti-Russian leader, who immediately imposed an ethnic-cleansing program to get rid of the residents in the regions that had voted overwhelmingly for the overthrown President (who had been democratically elected). Russia responded militarily on 24 February 2022 in order to prevent Ukraine from allowing the U.S. to place a missile there a mere 317 miles or five minutes of missile-flying-time away from The Kremlin and thus too brief for Russia to respond before its central command would already be beheaded by America’s nuclear strike. (As I headlined on 28 October 2022, “NATO Wants To Place Nuclear Missiles On Finland’s Russian Border — Finland Says Yes”. The U.S. had demanded this, especially because it will place American nuclear missiles far nearer to The Kremlin than at present, only 507 miles away — not as close as Ukraine, but the closest yet. That is the threat which Ukraine was posing to Russia — the same threat that Cuba posed to America during the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis.)

Ukraine was neutral between Russia and America until Obama’s brilliantly executed Ukrainian coup, which his Administration started planning by no later than June 2011, culminated successfully in February 2014 and promptly appointed a rabid anti-Russian to impose in regions that rejected the new anti-Russian U.S.-controlled goverment an “Anti-Terrorist Operation” to kill protesters, and, ultimately, to terrorize the residents in those regions in order to kill as many of them as possible and to force the others to flee into Russia so that when elections would be held, pro-Russian voters would no longer be in the electorate.

The U.S. Government had engaged the Gallup polling organization, both  before  and  after  the  coup,  in order to poll Ukrainians, and especially ones who lived in its Crimean independent republic, regarding their views on U.S., Russia, NATO, and the EU; and, generally, Ukrainians were far more pro-Russia than pro-U.S., NATO, or EU, but this was especially the case in Crimea; so, America’s Government knew that Crimeans would be especially resistant. However, this was not really new information. During 2003-2009, only around 20% of Ukrainians had wanted NATO membership, while around 55% opposed it. In 2010, Gallup found that whereas 17% of Ukrainians considered NATO to mean “protection of your country,” 40% said it’s “a threat to your country.” Ukrainians predominantly saw NATO as an enemy, not a friend. But after Obama’s February 2014 Ukrainian coup, “Ukraine’s NATO membership would get 53.4% of the votes, one third of Ukrainians (33.6%) would oppose it.” However, afterward, the support averaged around 45% — still over twice as high as had been the case prior to the coup.

In other words: what Obama did was generally successful, it grabbed Ukraine, or most of it, and it changed Ukrainians’ minds regarding America and Russia. But only after the subsequent passage of time did the American billionaires’ neoconservative heart become successfully grafted into the Ukrainian nation so as to make Ukraine a viable place to position U.S. nuclear missiles against Moscow (which is the U.S. Government’s goal there). Furthermore: America’s rulers also needed to do some work upon U.S. public opinion. Not until February of 2014 — the time of Obama’s coup — did more than 15% of the American public have a “very unfavorable” view of Russia. (Right before Russia invaded Ukraine, that figure had already risen to 42%. America’s press — and academia or public-policy ‘experts’ — have been very effective at managing public opinion, for the benefit of America’s billionaires.)—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.