The Real History Behind Ukraine, Putin, the EU, Gas, & Donbass

Illustrative Image

Written by Eric Zuesse

Russia’s long-predicted invasion of Ukraine finally happened, but the reasons for it are widely misrepresented. Basic history is necessary in order to understand it.

The Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, from Russia, under the Baltic Sea, to Germany, was planned in order to enable greatly increased sales-volume of the lowest-cost natural gas, which came from Russia, into the EU, without having to rely upon the irregular pipelined supplies through the unstable and unpredictable nation of Ukraine. In fact, the planning-document noted on its page 12 that “Import of Russian natural gas to Europe takes place through three main routes, whereof 80% of the gas is in transit through the Ukraine.” They didn’t need to say that that was unstable; everyone knew it was; so, diplomatically speaking, this unfortunate fact about Ukraine wasn’t mentioned by them in the document, though the fact was a crucial reason for the Nord Stream project, which would transmit gas directly from Russia to Germany, no longer through unstable Ukraine.

On 8 November 2011, the BBC headlined “Nord Stream gas pipeline opened by Merkel and Medvedev”, and Russia’s RIA Novosty presented this happy photo of the signing-ceremony:

Click to see full-size image

From left to right, Gerhard Schroder had been Germany’s Chancellor; Francois Fillon had been France’s Prime Minister; Johannes Teyssen was the CEO of multinational German electrical utility E.ON; Angela Merkel was Germany’s Chancellor; Mark Rutte was Prime Minister of Netherlands; Dmitry Medvedev was Prime Minister of Russia; Alexey Miller was Chairman of Russia’s Gazprom; Guenter Oettinger was the European Commission’s V.P. in charge of Energy; Kurt Bock was CEO of Germany’s BASF; and Erwin Sellering was Germany’s Minister President of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

None of those people are or had been pro-Nazi. However, ideological anti-Russian racist-fascists (or nazis) dominated in Ukraine’s far-western provinces, near to Poland, of Lviv, Ternopil, Volyn, and Ivano-Frankivsk; and, so, there was, in Ukraine, intense nationalistic and nazi opposition to replacing Ukraine as the main transit-route for the crucial commodity of natural gas, from Russia into the EU, which new pipeline into the EU would greatly reduce the gas-transit-fees that were being paid by Russia into Ukraine’s Government — and reduce the geostrategic importance of their country (something that nazis tend to be very concerned with, since they’re supremacist-nationalists, not merely supremacist-racists). This proposed pipeline (which had been pressed upon Merkel by leaders of German industry, who needed cheaper energy) was viewed by those far-right Ukrainians as being an anti-Ukraine Russian scheme, even though Nord Stream was actually planned simply as a necessary business-deal between Germany and Russia. That’s what it actually was. And it also enjoyed considerable support elsewhere in the EU, such as in Netherlands, and France.

U.S. President Barack Obama intended even when he entered office in 2009, to replace Syria’s Government, but his decision to replace Ukraine’s Government didn’t come right away. On 12 April 2010, Ukraine’s democratically elected President, Viktor Yanukovych met the democratically elected U.S. President at the White House, to which Obama had invited him, but Yanukovych refused Obama’s suggestions that Ukraine join America’s alliance against Ukraine’s next-door neighbor Russia. (Obama wanted to take over Russia’s main naval base, which since 1783 has been in Crimea, which the Soviet dictator had transferred to Ukraine in 1954, so it was then in Ukraine — Obama was planning for that Russian naval base in Ukraine to become another U.S. naval base, and for Ukraine to be brought into NATO. But Yanukovych said no.) On 2 July 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Yanukovych held a joint press conference in Kiev, where she said that she had discussed with Yanukovych joint military exercises with U.S. forces against his neighbor, Russia. Yanukovych again declined the demands. Obama then assigned Victoria Nuland, Hillary’s friend (and the wife of the famous neoconservative — or American-imperialist — writer, Robert Kagan) to organize a coup against Ukraine, to place it under U.S. control. Planning for the coup was already under way by no later than 23 June 2011, which was even before the Nord Stream project had yet become signed. But after Nord Stream became agreed later in 2011, that proposed pipeline was immediately added to the Ukrainian-takeover target, as something that needed to be cancelled. (Ukraine’s gas-transit fees were crucial financial support to Ukraine’s government, and Obama wanted those fees to be supporting a post-coup Americanized Ukraine.) As CNBC accurately summarized on 11 July 2018: “President Barack Obama opposed Nord Stream 2 and President George W. Bush came out against the original Nord Stream prior to its completion in 2011. Like the central and eastern European countries, they worried it increased Russian influence over the Continent.” Post-WW-II American Presidents wanted America to control Europe, as key allies to conquer Russia. The Nord Stream project was, to a large extent, a European bid to work cooperatively with Russia and finally free itself of U.S. domination over European countries.

Nuland got caught managing the coup when on 4 February 2014 a phone call from her to the U.S. Ambassador in Kiev got posted to youtube in which she instructed him to get “Yats” or “Yatsenyuk” appointed to run the post-coup government, and “Yats” was a rabidly anti-Russian and pro-nazi politician, who, unlike some others that the U.S. regime had been considering for the purpose, didn’t yet have any clear or blatantly expressed racist-fascist sentiments (which would have meant bad PR), but who, once he did become appointed on 22 February 2014 to run the government, promptly replaced the generals with ones who favored exterminating enough people in the heavily pro-Yanukovych areas of Ukraine so that, in subsequent Ukrainian national elections, rabid anti-Russians like “Yats” would be able to become ‘democratically elected’ to lead the country. The objective wasn’t only to kill enough of those pro-Russian voters but even more importantly to scare enough of the residents there to escape to Russia, so that they’d be gone altogether from Ukraine’s voting-rolls (either by fleeing or by having been killed). Videos became posted online of some of the Obama-instigated local Ukrainian extermination-and terrorism operations, such as in Odessa, and in Donbass, and, of course, in Crimea, but those were basically covered-up and/or lied-about in the ’news’-media of the U.S.-and-allied (which included EU) regimes, because Obama needed those allies to agree with the U.S. regime’s anti-Russia sanctions, so as to block the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from being allowed to operate (which would strengthen not only Russia but Europe). This wasn’t merely in order to weaken the economies in Germany and throughout the EU and make them more dependent upon the U.S.; it was also in order to replace Europe’s low-priced Russian pipelined natural gas with America’s costly tanked-and-shipped expensive liquefied natural gas, so as to enrich America’s billionaires who financed America’s successful politicians. It was to force Europe to pay America’s prices.

As a result of the success of Obama and Trump and Biden — and of Congress-members of both of America’s two political Parties (this bipartisan effort) — the inexpensive Russian pipelined natural gas has, indeed, become replaced by the incredibly expensive canned American liquefied and cross-Atlantic-shipped natural gas, so as to weaken European industries, in the name of ‘protecting Ukraine’s democracy’, and this con-game strengthens the U.S., at Europe’s expense, and keeps Europe in its place as a U.S. vassal-region, which has consistently been ever since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. U.S. gas producers are laughing all the way to the bank, while blaming ‘the aggressive dictator” or “tyrant’, Putin, who is condemned by both America’s Republicans and Democrats. (Both of America’s Parties are nearly 100% neoconservative.)

On 17 February 2022, a retired head of Britain’s MI6, Sir John Sawers, was interviewed by NATO’s PR firm the Atlantic Council, and he seconded Nuland’s phone-call assertion that the U.N should “glue this thing”, when he used the phrase in a different context, saying that “If you try to install a new government which has no legitimacy, you’ve got to glue it in place.” She had said:

“Nuland: Ok. He’s now gotten both Serry and Ban ki-Moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday. That would be great, I think, to help glue this thing, and to have the UN help glue it, and, you know, fuck the EU.”

The last three words there, “fuck the EU,” were the only part of the entire phone call that the ‘news’-media in The West publicized; and, of course, The West’s widely deceived audiences had no idea, no way of knowing, what she was actually talking about, or why. The incuriosity of the masses in The West prevented the U.S. public from demanding or requiring to have more honestly informative and authentic news-media that would make more sense than simply displaying the U.S. President’s assigned diplomat for Europe privately referring so contemptuously to Europeans. And, so, under Obama’s V.P., Biden, now as the U.S. President, she’s assigned the #2 role at the U.S. State Department, and Americans aren’t shocked and repelled at that fact. America’s leaders also hold America’s own public in contempt. Only America’s billionaires are not. Only they are not viewed as chumps — to be deceived and exploited — because America’s billionaires are the politicians’ bosses.

Here is a ten-minute video that places this “Fuck the EU” into its correct perspective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWkfpGCAAuw

Here is an even fuller perspective on the matter:

https://archive.is/cU1oa

The geostrategic expert Alexander Mercouris has well explained the historic significance of what has just happened.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.