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Written by Uriel Araujo, PhD, anthropology researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts
During the first presidential debate on Tuesday night, the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris at some point confronted her Republican opponent Donald Trump by saying:
“I did meet with Volodymyr Zelensky a few days before Russia invaded… I met with President Zelensky and shared with him American intelligence on how he can protect himself… Days later I went to NATO’s eastern flank – to Poland and Romania… we brought 50 countries together to support Ukraine.”
This prompted Trump to reply:
“They sent her in to negotiate with Zelensky and Putin. And she did and the war started three days later.”
Harris did not in fact meet with the Russian President (only with the Ukrainian one), but Trump’s point, implicitly, was that there is a cause-effect relationship between Harris’ trip to Eastern Europe and the crisis that followed it. While the so-called fact-checkers are busy analyzing every remark made by the two politicians, it might be worth delving into the role played by Democrats in the Ukrainian conflict.
While Harris made the aforementioned statement to boast that thanks to the actions of others and hers (as Joe Biden’s Vice President), Ukraine “stands as an independent and free country.” She sees, once again, a cause-effect relationship between Washington aiding and arming Kyiv “air defense, the ammunition, the artillery, the javelins, the Abrams tanks” and the fact that the Ukrainian still has military capabilities. Such causality is quite obvious and no one would deny it – so much so that the conflict has been described as an American “proxy attrition war” against Russia – by no less than former US ambassador to Finland, Earle Mack, among others.
However, Harris mixes up two things: her 2022 trip to Ukraine before a very important episode and the events after that. Of course there is some continuity between the American policies towards Ukraine before February 24, 2022 when the Russian military campaign started (all the way back to 2014 and even to the nineties) and American aid after the fact. However, February 24, 2022 was also a turning point that brought about major changes to the global scenario. It was not inevitable. It was not caused purely by the Russian President’s whim. The US-led West had a lot to do with it.
For one thing, military conflict is not really a novelty for Kyiv. One should also keep in mind that post-Soviet space in a lot of ways is like post-independence Africa where the border situation is not a done deal, and many frozen conflicts persist. Ukraine had been torn by a civil war in the Donbass region since 2014, following the US-aided Maidan coup (described as such by Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs). The Americans (mostly during the Obama years) have been funding and arming the far-right and even neo-Nazi Ukrainian militias, some of which have been turned into regular regiments and battalions.
It might have become politically incorrect to say so, but the fact remains that for almost a decade the people of Donbass endured under heavy Ukrainian artillery, with no one but Moscow to help them. Moreover, according to a New York Times’ exposé (by Adam Entous, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and Michael Schwirtz), the CIA has been waging a secret war against Russia in Ukraine for over a decade, with a network of spy bases “along the Russian border”.
Before Russia launched its attack on February 24, 2022, Ukraine had started its own bombing campaign on the mostly pro-Russian and russophone Donbass border region on February 18, thereby targeting its own population (from Kyiv’s perspective), namely the people living in the very territories it claims as its own. Amid the mayhem, a kindergarten in the Stanytsia Luganska town was bombed, among 47 points, causing the deaths of civilians.
On February 22, an El Pais news report described the humanitarian crisis in Donbass, and on February 24, CNN in turn reported that the Ukrainian forces had “destroyed” much of the region, which caused many refugees to seek shelter in the Rostov Oblast (Russian Federation). Interestingly, the week before that, Moscow had withdrawn troops from the border region, which should have de-escalated tensions at least temporarily. Finding these reports among the flood of news about the Russian-Ukrainian crisis in the English-language media can be quite hard. To a large extent, they become “non-events”. Not to mention the whole topic of NATO’s enlargement, which is arguably one of the main reasons for the overall crisis.
In other words, if one considers context, Kamala Harris in the aforementioned remark was basically boasting that she (and the administration she is part of) encouraged Ukraine to provoke Russia, and then, when the conflict escalated, she and her colleagues further aided and armed the same country. It is like purposely giving one the flu and then giving the medicine. She mentioned that Ukraine is “free” and “independent” thanks to her. By November 2024, Former NATO’s Supreme Commander James Stavridis was saying that there is no future for Ukraine other than a land-for-peace deal based “on the lessons of South Korea”. So much for American help.
Talking about causality has its own philosophical intricacies. It would be simplistic to say Kamala Harris caused the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict by meeting with Zelensky. It would be more reasonable to compare it perhaps with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 visit to Taiwan and the way it fueled tensions. Daring moves (such as crossing red lines) and escalations of tensions can always have unintended and unpredictable consequences, which in turn may spiral out of control – and Washington seems to be quite fond of such a modus operandi, regardless of the risks for regional and global peace.
Of course Donald Trump himself, as I wrote, is no peacemaker (or an isolationist that would end NATO, for that matter). Republican Senator McCain (who passed away in 2018) also played a major role in the Ukrainian Maidan, and that still needs to be scrutinized for the historical record. However, it is still true that Democrats particularly, including Barack Obama, as well as Kamala Harris and the administration she is part of, have a lot of responsibility for the current situation in Eastern Europe. They have, among other things, consistently funded and armed the far-right in Ukraine, and thus have poured gasoline on the fire.
The embarrassment brought by each and every Ukrainian soldier’s helmet with Nazi symbols caught by cameras on Western TV is a constant reminder of that fact. This is rather ironic, considering how the Democrat Party is fond of throwing accusations of Nazism as a political weapon. Much blood (and swastikas) is on them.
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ukraine-nato conflict started around 2008 when obama took office. the far-right propaganda psyop in ukraine started alongside the georgia-russia campaign in 2008 …
goergian former president saakashvili was another western puppet installed in 2004, by bush admin, to try to move nato to russian borders and failed and was jailed and is now being discarded by his puppet masters… this goes beyond biden crime family
it goes beyond obama, it is deep state establishment affair driven by banker financiers and american corporatocracy. to even think harris has cognitive competency for large scale scheme like this is absurd. she is sock puppet just like biden. a macabre muppet show.
but as author states, biden admin (at the behest of their shadow government deep-state) has added a lot of fuel to the fire by sending dozens and dozens of billions at us economy expense. thanks to biden admin the world has never been closer to thermonuclear war…
it goes without saying, but maybe that is why biden was selected to be president, as a en empty suit to blame for catastrophic economic failure at home and for the consequences of terrorizing and murdering of ethnic russians in ukraine which is demonic provocation that could not go unanswered and they knew this. the level of wickedness was too great to ignore. fortunately, good is winning versus evil.
nothing is what it seems
bidens the only ever second catholic to seem to win the presidency since jfk remeber the world poised on russian nuclear war then too.
what catholic? he’s an irish grifter. one of those irish travelers, traveling his way to america on a banana boat. too bad it wasn’t the titanic.
it’s driven by the rule of law
“georgian former president saakashvili was another western puppet installed in 2004”
so, shall we soon see zelensky strapped to his prison bed and raving about dirty diapers too?
poroshenko, first ukrainian pro western leader installed after 2014 coup, (served from 2014-2019) and survived treason charges a couple of years ago brought forward by zelensky. they have him on a very tight leash almost like house arrest — as he is considered a political threat to zelensky. maybe only reason the head piggy is allowed to roam the farm is because he is a billionaire oligarch. it’s a case by case basis. it is yet to be seen if zelensky would be allowed to live…
superficiality presented in public is propagandas obviously journalists must be and are the first deceived
i know a pro-ukrainian guy from mariupol that told me poroshenko’s corruption made yanukovych look like a choir boy.
i think it was about when georgia erupted under american guidance that the cat was out of the bag…. nato’s desire to control the entire black sea coast.
it’s pretty much a transparent plan at that point. georgia and ukraine? duh, what’s the most obvious geographical attribute desirable to nato that they have in common?
nato tried to turn the black sea into a nato lake and ended up turning ukraine and even itself into a black hole instead.
must be karma at work.
it started centuries before its another crimean war started by the imperialists and still is just rebranded as wef
yep, crimea’s always been the jewel of the black sea. too bad nato couldn’t settle for just half the black sea’s coast and wanted it all by getting too greedy and breaking one of the ten commandments: “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s naval base.’
after that, it was easy for them to break the remaining nine.
it started over 1200 years ago when russians expelled the khazarians from their kingdom and made it fully russian territory. the khazarians had it coming, they act like amalek. why are y’all still talking like biden is alive? he died in 2019, and has been played by jim carrie and others since. the star of ‘the mask’ playing the roll of pres. in a mask… perfect hollywood trolling in a ‘not a democracy’ country.
but the real reason was to weaken brics. of which russia is a significant part. challenging china follows the same continuum. brics is a major threat to the euro and dollar and their ability to impose sanctions. not to mention their value. libya was destroyed because gaddafi wanted an arab monetary union pegged to gold
nuland: “we need an idiot for this operation”
zelensky: “here, me, am”
nuland was not the architect but she was closer to the real architects then klamala. every nato misadventure was consulted in bildeberg long before it was formally voted in nato with the clear result in advance. the problem with the west democracy is it is in fact geronto-pluto-ochlocracy. it works that way, that 100 years old elites in bildeberg print money and they pay useful idiots to do what they need them to do. klamala is so dumb that she is ideal useful idiot, true biden2.
brzezinski doctrine: “the united states is destined to preserve its status as the first and the last truly global superpower” you can go further back from even the bushes and into the cold war era which always envisioned a future global conflict versus russia and china in order to maintain american geostrategic dominance.
so yeah, pretty ridiculous article title, no? to even lend credence to this air-headed sock muppet harris as if any policy actually derived from her, personally.
icarus flying too close to the sun comes to mind.
not really its set up like a staged show. it goes deeper than anything they let be classed as being in the public interest the truth isn’t in the public interest its secret “nothing that is done in secret comes from god” the bible. guess who?
the kagan piggies’ full spectrum dominance has turned into full spectrum flatulence.
they’ve been fed too much low grade slop, it seems.
founded by prinz berhard of the neverlands i(n english) ” the man who really runs the vatican comes bringing flowers” pope francis they have their flowers delivered all the way from neverlands
nuland’s the sort of architect that you never want to hire for your home, lest you end up sending that mike holmes guy from canada in to tear it down and rebuild it from scratch.
trudeau might slap a fine on him though. seize his banks accounts or something.
so many to choose from. did she just throw a dart while blindfolded?
i heard that she also wanted to claim that she invented the zeppelin but was warned not to.
she’s still trying to figure out how a zeppelin made from lead can fly.
lol, somebody on ativan and vodka all the time didn’t do anything but a hit and run and whatever she’s told for more of the same lifestyle.
she passed messages for the rule of law she’s totally obedient
ukraine was biden’s project while he was the vice president. assistance from soros led soros to say that ukraine was his greatest success.
a true coven of warlocks, that bunch.
kamala can take credit for falling out of a coconut tree, but not much more than that.
the dems would’ve been better off had they picked the coconut to replace biden.