The U.S. and EU Lie About How and Why the War in Ukraine Started.

4 August 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

The war in Ukraine is, but in reverse, actually the same 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; Obama, Biden, and Trump, are not; and, so, the world again stands at the brink of a WW3, but this time because of a truly evil head-of-state (Obama, then Biden, and now Trump — in other words, it is the United States Government ITSELF), who might even be willing to go beyond that brink — into WW3 itself — in order to become able to achieve world-conquest (which had been Hitler’s goal to achieve, but which was NOT the goal of EITHER Khrushchev or Kennedy, but IS the current U.S. Government’s goal). In other words: the war in Ukraine is as-if Khrushchev had said no to JFK’s proposal in 1962 (which would have forced the U.S. to invade and take over Cuba) — but, thankfully, Khrushchev didn’t (he wasn’t an imperialist); so, WW3 was averted, on that occasion, by BOTH Kennedy and Khrushchev. However, this time, under an insanely imperialist U.S. Government, Putin was, indeed FORCED to invade Ukraine on 24 February 2022, forced BY Obama, and then Biden and Trump, to do what Putin had intensely been trying to AVOID doing.

How often have you heard or seen the situation in the matter of Cuba being too near to the White House (too near to America’s central command) for America to have accepted as a location-site for Soviet missiles in 1962, being analogized to Ukraine’s being too near — far nearer, in fact — to The Kremlin (Russia’s central command) for Russia to accept it as being a location-site for U.S. missiles now? You probably haven’t encountered this crucial historical context before, because it’s not being published — at least not in America and its allied countries. It is instead being hidden by all of the billionaires-owned-and-controlled ‘news’-media throughout the U.S. empire.

Here was how Putin addressed this question when addressing the Russian people on 22 December 2021:

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http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67438

https://web.archive.org/web/20220206142649/http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67438

https://archive.ph/w47f7

Vladimir Putin’s annual news conference

The President’s annual news conference was broadcast live by Rossiya 1, Channel One, NTV and Rossiya 24 television channels, as well as Mayak, Vesti FM and Radio Rossii radio stations.

December 23, 2021 16:10 Moscow

Dmitry Peskov: Maybe we should give the floor to foreign media.

Sky News.

Diana Magnay: Thank you for taking my question. I am afraid it is in English.

You have talked a lot about security guarantees, and now we have seen your proposals. You also say you have no intention of invading Ukraine.

So, will you guarantee unconditionally that you will not invade Ukraine or any other sovereign country? Or does that depend on how negotiations go?

And another question: what is it, do you think, that the West does not understand about Russia or about your intentions?

Thank you

Vladimir Putin: Regarding your question about guarantees or whether things depend on the negotiations, our actions will not depend on the negotiation process, but rather on unconditional guarantees for Russia’s security today and in the historical perspective.

In this connection, we have made it clear that any further movement of NATO to the East is unacceptable. Is there anything unclear about this? Are we deploying missiles near the US border? No, we are not. It is the United States that has come to our home with its missiles and is already standing at our doorstep. Is it going too far to demand that no strike systems be placed near our home? What is so unusual about this?

What would the Americans say if we stationed our missiles on the border between Canada and the United States, or between Mexico and the United States? Haven’t Mexico and the US had territorial disputes in the past? Which country owned California? And Texas? Have you forgotten? All right, nobody is talking about this now the way they are talking about Crimea. Very well. But we are trying to avoid talking about the creation of Ukraine as well. Who created it? Vladimir Lenin did, when he established the Soviet Union. This is set out in the 1922 Treaty on the creation of the Soviet Union and in the 1924 Constitution. True, this happened after his death, but in accordance with the principles he formulated.

But the matter at hand concerns security, not history, but security guarantees. This is why it is not the negotiations themselves but the results that matter to us.

We remember, as I have mentioned many times before and as you know very well, how you promised us in the 1990s that [NATO] would not move an inch to the East. You cheated us shamelessly: there have been five waves of NATO expansion, and now the weapons systems I mentioned have been deployed in Romania and deployment has recently begun in Poland. This is what we are talking about, can you not see?

We are not threatening anyone. Have we approached US borders? Or the borders of Britain or any other country? It is you who have come to our border, and now you say that Ukraine will become a member of NATO as well. Or, even if it does not join NATO, that military bases and strike systems will be placed on its territory under bilateral agreements. This is the point.

And you are demanding guarantees from me. It is you who must give us guarantees, and you must do it immediately, right now. …

Just six days earlier, on 17 December 2021, he had, in fact, presented separately to the U.S. President and to the NATO Secretary General, his demands for their consideration, in the expectation that this would start negotiations with both, in order for them to end their decades-long war to conquer his country. Had you ever seen those historically important documents before? Had you ever even heard of them? Why were they instead hidden by the U.S. empire’s ‘news’-media? Do both of these documents look, to you, like they are essential in order to establish the safety of both sides (the U.S. empire and Russia) to PREVENT a World War Three? On 7 January 2022, the AP headlined “US, NATO rule out halt to expansion, reject Russian demands”. This was the only direct news-report about this crucially important matter, and only one news-medium throughout the empire reported it, PBS television in the U.S. So, it was virtually invisible, though its importance was monumental — it signified that Putin now had no alternative to invading Ukraine. On 17 February 2022, the overtly neoconservative Business Insider U.S. ‘news’-site headlined “Russia says it may be ‘forced’ to respond militarily if the US won’t agree to its unacceptable security demands on Ukraine”. It opened: “Russia on Thursday warned it could be ‘forced to respond’ militarily if the US doesn’t agree to its demands for binding security guarantees, including permanently barring Ukraine and Georgia from NATO. The US has repeatedly made it clear that this demand is a non-starter.” It just assumed that the U.S. Government’s decision to go yet closer to the edge of WW3 was right, and that Russia is just a bully for caring about its essential national security. On 17 June 2022, the U.S. State Department’s site headlined “WARNING: Russian officials are spreading lies about Putin’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Government-sponsored messages on social media and messaging apps paint Russia as a generous actor remedying the suffereing caused by Ukraine’s government. These claims are 100% false. See for yourself:” And it included Putin’s alleged ‘lies’ such as:

LIE: “Ukraine’s ultra-right political forces that came to power via unconstitutional means in 2014 have taken punitive military measures against residents of the ‘Russian-speaking’ regions of the country who refuse to recognize the government’s legitimacy.”

TRUTH: “No ultra-right political forces came to power in Ukraine in 2014.

Russian speakers in Ukraine are able to freely exercise their human rights — freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association — unlike Russian citizens under Putin’s autocratic and increasingly repressive rule. Putin’s so-called “special operation” to allegedly “liberate” Russian speakers in Ukraine has killed thousands of civilians in predominantly Russian-speaking cities such as Kharkiv, Kherson, and Mykolayiv, not to mention Mariupol and the Donbas region.

Ukraine’s 2014 “Revolution of Dignity” was a popular democratic movement that took to the streets in support of Ukraine’s fuller integration with Europe. After a vicious crackdown that killed more than 100 peaceful protesters, then Kremlin-backed President Yanukovych fled the country for Russia. The quickly formed transitional government scheduled presidential elections for May 2014 and parliamentary elections for October 2014.

The far-right party “The Right Sector” failed to gain 5% of the vote required to enter Parliament and was not part of the new government.”

The Right Sector was and is only a small part of Ukraine’s Hitler-admiring political factions — all of which Obama placed in control of Ukraine’s government.

Here is from one of my articles about all of this, headlined on 15 August 2025, “Documentation that U.S. and EU Support Ukraine’s Nazis”:

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 Ukraine’s adjoining country Russia. This was being urged by them 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.

The war in Ukraine started in 2014, as both NATO’s Stoltenberg and Ukraine’s Zelensky have said — NOT in 2022 as is alleged by the U.S.-Government.

Now, here will be the proofs, which are contained in the links within, and the links within the articles that are here linked to within, the following detailed historical account of the war in Ukraine — it is a war which DID NOT EXIST AT ALL UNTIL the American Government’s long-planned-in-advance very bloody coup in Ukraine during 20-27 February 2014, which REPLACED the till-then internationally NEUTRALIST Ukrainian Government, and imposed an entirely illegitimate rabidly anti-Russian regime in the one nation that has the nearest of all borders to The Kremlin — Ukraine, a mere 5 minutes of missile-flying-time away by a U.S. missile nuking (from Ukraine) Russia’s central command and thus capturing Russia; this, the start of the war in Ukraine, was PURELY American aggression, and it started years before 2022:

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This war was started in 2014 by the U.S. against Russia; it is the U.S. regime’s proxy-war to capture Russia — NOT a war started by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, such as the liars allege — it was actually 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 (see the video here) in the regions that had voted overwhelmingly for the overthrown President. This was being done by the U.S.-imposed regime in order to make it into a ‘democracy’ whose remaining voters would be satisfied to select from ONLY rabidly anti-Russian candidates for public offices. 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.)

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. Ukraine’s Obama-imposed government did this in order to be no mere interim government but a permanent ‘democratically elected’ U.S.-controlled government of Ukraine.

For this reason, and as a part of Obama’s plan, 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 they 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. 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.

Furthermore, this opposition to Ukraine joining NATO wasn’t merely Ukrainian public opinion before Obama’s 2014 coup: Ukraine’s 16 July 1990 basic law and declaration of independence from the Soviet Union swore that Ukraine would NEVER join ANY “military bloc”. Of course, that commitment by the newly independent nation of Ukraine was simply ignored by the Obama-stooge regime, up till the present day.

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 in 2022, 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, such as the controlling owners of firms like Lockheed Martin and ExxonMobil.)

After Obama started the war, Russia, along with France, Germany, and Ukraine, negotiated the Minsk Agreements between Ukraine and its rebelling provinces, in order to have a ceasefire and to establish a process by which Ukraine and its rebelling provinces, of Donetsk and Luhansk (collectively called Donbass) would, by means of a series of steps, end the war totally. An essential provision in this agreement was that Ukraine would grant an autonomy to the two provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk that would be somewhat like the autonomy that Crimea had been granted when Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, and that Ukraine’s outlawing the Russian language and the Russian Orthodox Church — which had been done right after Obama’s coup — would be nullified so that peace could be restored to Ukraine (and the issue of Crimea would be addressed at a later time). However, though Ukraine signed, Ukraine simply refused to comply with those prerequisite conditions for moving toward peace; and, so, those accords never actually went into effect. Then, during the end of 2021 and the start of 2022, Ukraine’s shelling of Donbass (which had continued right through the ‘ceasefire’) increased, and Ukraine increased its forces that were doing it. So, on 17 December 2021, Russia presented, to both the U.S. Government and its NATO military alliance against Russia, the two proposed agreements for negotiation (one to U.S., the other to NATO). Central to both was that NATO and the U.S. would promise never to admit into NATO the country (Ukraine) that has the nearest of all borders to The Kremlin — a mere 300 miles or 5 minutes of missile-flying-time away from blitz-nuking Russia’s central command (The Kremlin); but neither the U.S. nor its NATO agreed to negotiate.

Then, on 7 January 2022, the Associated Press headlined “US, NATO rule out halt to expansion, reject Russian demands”, and reported a contemptuous rejection of Russia’s proposal. This made irrefutable the U.S. Government’s intention to blitz-decapitate Russia’s central command.

Russia did not respond to that by invading NATO; Russia responded by invading Ukraine, which happened on 24 February 2022. It was a far less dangerous, and far less harmful, option, than to go straight into WW3. (Similarly, if Khrushchev had insisted upon getting his missiles into Cuba, JFK would have launched an all-out invasion to conquer Cuba — not to conquer the USSR.)

On that momentous day, Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin addressed his nation to explain the invasion, and he opened (in stark contrast to what the BBC and Yahoo News alleged):

I will begin with what I said in my address on February 21, 2022. I spoke about our biggest concerns and worries, and about the fundamental threats which irresponsible Western politicians created for Russia consistently, rudely and unceremoniously from year to year. I am referring to the eastward expansion of NATO, which is moving its military infrastructure ever closer to the Russian border.

It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns. Its military machine is moving and, as I said, is approaching our very border.

Why is this happening? Where did this insolent manner of talking down from the height of their exceptionalism, infallibility and all-permissiveness come from? What is the explanation for this contemptuous and disdainful attitude to our interests and absolutely legitimate demands?

And, now, entire documents, which indisputably prove the racist-fascist-imperialist-supremacist, or “nazi,” character of the U.S. and EU, will be presented here, and these documents concern the post-WW2 American empire’s insatiable obsession to ultimately destroy Russia — to achieve what Hitler had failed to achieve with his Operation Barbarossa. That military invasion by Hitler’s forces, against Russia in WW2, was the largest military invasion in all of history (though it failed so disastrously that it caused Hitler’s defeat in WW2), and unless it will be stopped NOW by the U.S. empires’s acceptance of a Russian outright victory against America and its nazistic NATO military alliance — Russia’s victory against that nazi alliance against Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine — the war in Ukraine will suddenly expand all the way to a World War Three (WW3) between Russia and the American empire, and will thereby destroy the entire world in nuclear war, because there is NO realistic possibility that Russia will EVER accept to become a part of the nazistic American (or of any other — but there is no other — there is ONLY the American) empire.

In order to know when and why the U.S. Government decided to support Ukraine’s nazis, click here.

I shall introduce this sequence of documents by showing first the following video compilation of the pervasive nazism (racist-fascist-imperialist supremacism) of the Ukrainian government that Obama’s February 2014 coup in Ukraine has produced, so that the constant U.S.-and-allied lies about this can be starkly and indisputably displayed as being the vicious frauds that they are:

https://odysee.com/@nudaveritas:f/NudaVeritas-I-EN:b

That is how nazistic the post-Obama-coup Ukraine actually is. …

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And a follow-up on that is my 7 April 2024 “How & Why the UK, U.S., and Canada, Governments imported Nazis into Canada”, which includes the CIA historian’s “Cold War Allies: The Origins of CIA’s Relationship with Ukrainian Nationalists”.

The U.S. regime — starting with Truman — has been using Ukraine to assist its obsession to conquer ultimately Russia. The Trumanist U.S. regime (virtually all U.S. Administrations from Truman till now) has no concern for the people of Ukraine or anywhere else, but only to exploit them and their land so as to conquer Russia. It uses them as it uses the people and land everywhere — to expand the U.S. empire till it includes and exploits the whole planet.

Virtually all news-media and historians throughout the U.S. empire hide all of these ugly historical realities about post-WW2-America. The billionaires’ agenda is not the public’s agenda.

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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.