Russia’s Case Against the U.S. Empire

16 April 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

Most of Russia’s case against the U.S. and its colonies concerns Ukraine, and this part of the case will be presented here.

(I have presented this history before but documented it by using links to the world’s second-largest web-archiving service, archive.is, which recently went down; and, so, this time, I am doing it by using links to the world’s largest web-archiving service, web.archive, in order to make this history’s documentation available again. Functionality of the documentation is crucially important in this article, because most of its assertions contradict what ‘news’-people and ‘historians’ throughout the U.S. empire assert about these matters; and, so, many readers will need to be able to access the documentation here in order to determine whether what this history asserts is true. History that’s suppressed in The West needs to be fully documented in order to have any chance of becoming known in The West.)

The Ukrainian war started after the democratically elected President of Ukraine (an infamously corrupt country), who was committed to keeping his country internationally neutral (not allied with either Russia or the United States), met privately with both the U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2010, shortly following that Ukrainian President’s election earlier in 2010; and, on both occasions, he rejected their urgings for Ukraine to become allied with the United States against his adjoining country Russia. This was being urged upon him so that America could position its nuclear missiles at the Russian border with Ukraine, less than a five-minute striking-distance away from hitting the Kremlin in Moscow (so as to blitz-decapitate Russia’s central command and prevent a retaliatory response).

The war in Ukraine started in 2014, as both NATO’s Stoltenberg and Ukraine’s Zelensky have said — not in 2022, such as is widely but falsely reported throughout the U.S. empire. This war was started in February 2014 by a U.S. coup which replaced the democratically elected and neutralist Ukrainian 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. 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 near and 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.)

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 (where Russia has had its main naval base ever since 1783), regarding their views on U.S., Russia, NATO, and the EU; and found that, generally, Ukrainians were far more pro-Russia than pro-U.S., pro-NATO, or pro-EU, but that this was especially the case in Crimea; so, America’s Government knew that Crimeans would be especially resistant to the coup-imposed regime. 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. And after Obama’s February 2014 Ukrainian coup, still only the extreme far western portion of Ukrane (nearest Poland) favored (by 53.2%) joining NATO; all the rest of the country opposed joining NATO (by around 80%). After the coup by the U.S. Government, support for joining NATO rose from its previous average of around 20%, to (suddenly after it) an average of around 45%, and then (suddenly after Russia invaded in 2022) 85% to 90%. So, Obama was successful: America, which previously had been viewed by Ukrainians as their enemy, is, after the coup, and especially after Russia’s invasion, overwhemingly viewed as their friend.

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 (with their aim being to ultimately capture Russia — the world’s largest country).

Then came the Minsk Agreements (#1 & #2, with #2 being the final version, which is shown here, as a U.N. Security Council Resolution), between Ukraine and the separatist region in its far east, Donbass. The U.S. Government refused to participate in it. The Minsk 2 listed actions that Ukraine’s government must take as a prerequisite to the rejoining of Ukraine by the breakaway far-eastern Donbass region, none of which prerequisites was complied with by Ukraine’s government (though Ukraine had signed it); so, the ‘Agreements’ never went into actual effect. The U.S.-installed Ukrainian government (then under the oligarch Petro Poroshenko) signed it in order to have a chance of Ukraine’s gaining EU membership (and later NATO membership), but never complied with any of it; and, so, the war continued by Ukraine’s continuing to bomb the breakaway region. (There was no bombing of Ukraine by the separatists.)

And, then, finally, as the Ukrainian government (now under Volodmyr Zelensky) was greatly intensifying its shelling of the break-away far-eastern region, Russia presented, to both the U.S. Government and its NATO military alliance against Russia, two proposed agreements for negotiation (one to U.S., the other to NATO), but neither the U.S. nor its NATO agreed to negotiate. The key portions of the two 17 December 2021 proposed Agreements, with both the U.S. and with its NATO, were, in regards to NATO:

Article 1

The Parties shall guide in their relations by the principles of cooperation, equal and indivisible security. They shall not strengthen their security individually, within international organizations, military alliances or coalitions at the expense of the security of other Parties. …

Article 4

The Russian Federation and all the Parties that were member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as of 27 May 1997, respectively, shall not deploy military forces and weaponry on the territory of any of the other States in Europe in addition to the forces stationed on that territory as of 27 May 1997. With the consent of all the Parties such deployments can take place in exceptional cases to eliminate a threat to security of one or more Parties.

Article 5

The Parties shall not deploy land-based intermediate- and short-range missiles in areas allowing them to reach the territory of the other Parties.

Article 6

All member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commit themselves to refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine as well as other States.

And, in regards to the U.S.:

Article 2

The Parties shall seek to ensure that all international organizations, military alliances and coalitions in which at least one of the Parties is taking part adhere to the principles contained in the Charter of the United Nations.

Article 3

The Parties shall not use the territories of other States with a view to preparing or carrying out an armed attack against the other Party or other actions affecting core security interests of the other Party.

Article 4

The United States of America shall undertake to prevent further eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and deny accession to the Alliance to the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The United States of America shall not establish military bases in the territory of the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that are not members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, use their infrastructure for any military activities or develop bilateral military cooperation with them.

Any reader here can easily click onto the respective link to either proposed Agreement, in order to read that entire document, so as to evaluate whether or not all of its proposed provisions are acceptable and reasonable. What was proposed by Russia in each of the two was only a proposal, and the other side (the U.S. side) in each of the two instances, was therefore able to pick and choose amongst those proposed provisions, which ones were accepted, and to negotiate regarding any of the others; but, instead, the U.S. side simply rejected all of them.

On 7 January 2022, the Associated Press (AP) headlined “US, NATO rule out halt to expansion, reject Russian demands”, and reported:

Washington and NATO have formally rejected Russia's key demands for assurances that the US-led military bloc will not expand closer towards its borders, leaked correspondence reportedly shows.

According to documents seen by Spanish daily El Pais and published on Wednesday morning, Moscow's calls for a written guarantee that Ukraine will not be admitted as a member of NATO were dismissed following several rounds of talks between Russian and Western diplomats. …

The US-led bloc denied that it posed a threat to Russia. …

The US similarly rejected the demand that NATO does not expand even closer to Russia’s borders. “The United States continues to firmly support NATO’s Open Door Policy.”

NATO-U.S. was by now clearly determined to get Ukraine into NATO and to place its nukes so near to The Kremlin as to constitute, like a checkmate in chess, a forced defeat of Russia, a capture of its central command. This was, but in reverse, the situation that America’s President JFK had faced with regard to the Soviet Union in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the U.S. would have invaded Cuba if Khrushchev wouldn’t agree to a mutually acceptable settlement — which he did, and so WW3 was averted on that occasion. But whereas Khrushchev was reasonable, Biden is not; and, so, we again stand at the brink of WW3, but this time with a truly evil head-of-state (Biden — no better than Obama), who might even be willing to go beyond that brink in order to become able to achieve world-conquest.

Russia did what it had to do: it invaded Ukraine, on 24 February 2022.

On April 15th, I headlined “Why Trump’s Proposed Solution to End Ukraine’s War Will Be Rejected by Russia”, and reported that though Trump’s rhetoric is different from what that of Biden and of Obama were, Trump continues, like they did, to base his Ukraine policies upon the false ‘historical’ narrative that this war started in February 2022 by Russia’s invasion instead of in February 2014 by America’s coup that grabbed Ukraine. As long as that false ‘historical’ narrative continues, Russia will need to continue this war until Ukraine itself will surrender, however long that will take. Because, otherwise, it is clear that America and its colonies are determined to conquer Russia, and a Ukraine that is allied with them would be the most dangerous scenario of all to Russia’s continued independence; and so it must be avoided by Russia at all costs..

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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.