What Provoked Russia’s ‘Unprovoked’ Invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022

Eric Zuesse

What provoked it was the same thing that provoked John Fitzgerald Kennedy to threaten the Soviet Union and Cuba with a U.S. invasion if the Soviet Union were to post its nuclear missiles in Cuba a mere 1,131 miles (30 minutes) away from America’s central command in Washington DC in 1962, but this time it would instead be Russia’s demand for the U.S. not to place its nuclear missiles in Ukraine a mere 317 miles (5 minutes) away from Russia’s central command in Moscow.

The overthrow of the democratically elected and neutralist President of Ukraine by a U.S. coup in February 2014 and installation by the U.S. of a rabidly anti-Russian regime instead, was done with the ultimate objective of posting U.S. nuclear missiles there against The Kremlin. The war in Ukraine started with that very bloody U.S. coup. Immediately, the U.S.-installed new leader of Ukraine changed Ukraine’s top generals and installed ones who declared that they would carry out a “filtration” to eliminate their opponents. This was necessary so that in such regions as Donbass and Crimea, where the vote had been over 75% for the U.S.-overthrown President, enough of the residents would be killed or else flee into Russia, so that ONLY anti-Russian candidates would then be able to win ‘democratic’ elections in Ukraine, and so the U.S.-installed regime would then remain permanently, but do so in a ‘democratic’ way (in order for the U.S. and its colonies — or ‘allies’ — to be able to claim they were fighting for “democracy,” which is the exact opposite of the truth).

The war in Ukraine started on 20 February 2014, the first day of the 7-day coup. The U.S.-installed new leader of Ukraine sacked the existing three Deputy Defense Ministers, on March 5th, and replaced them with three rabidly anti-Russian neo-Nazis, who were committed to this bombing-policy in Donbass. The person who was made the Minister of Defense, Mikhail Koval, announced his intention to ethnically cleanse from southeastern Ukraine the “subhumans” who voted for Yanukovych, who will “be resettled in other regions,” meaning either Russia (if Russia accepts these Ukrainian refugees) or else concentration-camps inside Ukraine (and then perhaps death). “There will be a thorough filtration of people.” (That English translation has since been taken down; so, instead, try this and this.) Their property will be confiscated, and “Land parcels will be given out for free to the servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and other military formations, as well as to the employees of Interior Ministry and the Security Service of Ukraine that are defending territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country in eastern and southeastern regions of Ukraine.” That’s the euphemism for the ethnic cleansing, and mass-theft.

Here are still photos from a cellphone video on 2 June 2014 of the Ukraine Air Force's bombings of Lugansk in Donbass. And here is the video from which those stills were taken. 

Here are photos taken in Donbass, in the village of Stanitsa Luganskaya and the village of Kondrashovka, on 2 July 2014, during that bombing campaign.

Here’s an 82-minute video, issued on 30 July 2014, of a battalion of Ukrainian troops being commissioned, displaying Nazi symbols, and then going into the Donbass to kill the residents and take control over the resistant region.

Here are stills from a 97-minute video on 18 August 2014, of the Ukrainian bombing campaign against Donbass.

With lulls and peaks in this invasion continuing into 2021, Russia finally presented to the U.S. regime on 17 December 2021, its national-security demands for the regime to commit to NOT continuing their effort to get Ukraine into their NATO military alliance against Russia, and were finally turned down on 7 January 2022, with refusal even to negotiate about the matter. Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. It’s Russia’s last-ditch effort to protect its sovereignty over its own land; but — just as had happened in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — a major power cannot protect its own sovereignty unless its nearby (to its own central-command or “capital”) neighbors will be and remain off-limits for alliance with any enemy power (such as America has been ever since 25 July 1945 — the date when the Deep State took control over America’s Government, and so began the “Cold War” or actually the ever-expanding U.S. empire, or the control of the U.S. Government by America’s billionaires).

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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.