Ukraine: The Avoidable War

Text of briefing presented by me at the U.N. Security Council on Sept. 12, 2023

Thank you, Madame President.

And thank you for giving me the opportunity to address this distinguished body.

This is a war that could easily have been avoided. On Dec. 17, 2021, Russia published two draft proposals outlining a new security architecture for Europe: one for the United States and one for NATO. The proposed framework recalled the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 in which the mutually antagonistic parties of the Cold War agreed to recognize one another’s security concerns and pledged not to enhance their own security at the expense of that of their purported adversaries. 

At the heart of Russia’s proposals was a commitment by NATO to no further expansion, and in particular to no NATO membership for Ukraine. There was nothing at all unreasonable about these demands, nothing there that could not have been addressed with a little deft diplomacy.

There are many countries in the world, including even in Europe, that do not join military alliances. Russia was not demanding a military alliance with Ukraine, merely requesting that its neighbor, with whom it shared a centuries’ long history, not join a hostile military alliance. Neither the U.S. nor NATO deigned to respond to Russia’s proposals.

Let’s recall that in its 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty, Ukraine avowed quote “its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs.”

Let’s also recall that though NATO at its 2008 Bucharest summit had promised membership for Ukraine and Georgia, there was no desire on the part of the people of Ukraine to join NATO. A May 2009 Gallup poll showed that Ukrainians were more than twice as likely to see NATO as threat than as a source of protection. A September 2009 Pew Research Center survey found that 51% of Ukrainians opposed NATO membership, with only 28% in favor.

In February 2010, Viktor Yanukovych ran for the presidency of Ukraine on a platform pledging not to join NATO or any military alliance. Following his election victory, Yanukovych submitted a bill to Ukraine’s parliament barring Ukraine's membership in any military bloc. In other words, Ukraine, through the democratic process, had declared itself a militarily non-aligned country.

This all changed following the illegal and violent overthrow of the elected government of Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014. The coup was actively supported by the United States and the European Union. This is no conspiracy theory: just recall the leaked phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt. During the call, which took place weeks before the coup, the two U.S. officials happily discussed who would and who wouldn’t be part of the post-Yanukovych regime.

How did the NATO powers react to the coup? Well, the very same countries that today vent their fury at those who ousted the legally-elected government of Niger exulted in the toppling of the legally-elected government of Ukraine.

Within two days, E.U. foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton was in Kiev to discuss E.U. support for a quote “lasting solution to the political crisis and measures to stabilize the economic situation.” A couple of days later, it was the turn of Deputy U.S. Secretary of State William Burns, who came, according to the State Department to “consult…on U.S. support for Ukraine’s efforts to secure a stable, democratic, inclusive, prosperous future.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew encouraged the new leaders to begin discussions with the IMF on an assistance package. U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne immediately offered cash: “We are here ready to help just as soon as there is someone at the end of the telephone. We should be there with a checkbook to help the people of Ukraine rebuild their country.”

The European Commission announced that it was ready to conclude a trade deal with Ukraine and offer aid once a new government was formed.

In reality no one was waiting for any elections. On March 21, one month after the coup, and before any elections had been held, the illegally-constituted regime in Kiev and the European Union signed the E.U. Association Agreement, the very agreement that Yanukovych, in accordance with his legally-defined powers, had decided to delay signing. The association agreement, one should add, had a strong security and defense component. Ukraine and the E.U. agreed to  quote “promote gradual convergence in the area of foreign and security policy, including the Common Security and Defense Policy.”  The Common Security and Defense Policy is of course a back-door into NATO.

President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy issued a statement congratulating the people of Ukraine for taking to the streets and using violence to ensure that the association agreement was signed: quote “the refusal to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union created a popular uprising, a political and cultural shift. We pay tribute to those who gave their life for freedom.” And he went on without a trace of irony: the agreement “recognizes the aspirations of the people of Ukraine to live in a country governed by values, by democracy and the rule of law.”

The most important consequence of the coup was the disenfranchisement of the people of the east and the southeast of Ukraine, Yanukovych’s base of support. Much like sovereign people anywhere else in the world, they did not appreciate the violent overthrow of the leader they had voted for, and they refused to accept the legitimacy of the coup regime.

Today, the United States is sending people to prison for decades for calling into question the integrity of the 2020 election. And yet the people of the Donbass were supposed to sit quietly and accept an illegal seizure of power, one that was at least in part orchestrated from abroad?  

Let’s also not forget that, as its first order of business, the coup regime, in order to demonstrate its respect for diversity and European values, scrapped a minority-language law passed by Ukraine’s parliament in 2012 that had granted regional language status—meaning that it could be used in courts, schools and government institutions—to Russian and other minority languages in any region where a minority exceeded 10% of the population. This was obviously a matter of some concern to the Russian-speaking residents of the Donbass.

Not surprisingly, the disenfranchised rebelled against Ukraine’s new rulers, who responded to this act of defiance with overwhelming force.

NATO responded by going all in to support the rulers in Kiev as they waged a war against their own people. Just listen to the words of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg:

NATO Allies have supported Ukraine since 2014,” he has admitted. “We didn’t wake up in February 2022….The Ukrainian Armed Forces are much better equipped, much better trained, much larger, much better commanded in 2022 than in 2014. Not least because of the support, the training, the equipment they have received for many years from the NATO allied countries.

Note his words: NATO was pouring in weaponry and providing training to Ukraine’s armed forces from 2014 on. What was supposed to be happening during those years? Of course—the implementation of the Minsk Accords. The Minsk Accords constituted a step-by-step reconciliation process, signed by the Kiev government and the representatives of the breakaway regions, that would have led to their reintegration into Ukraine. The key condition was to be a constitutional amendment granting the breakaway regions “special status.” France, Germany and Russia served as guarantors. The U.N. Security Council endorsed the Minsk Accords in 2015 in Resolution 2202.

We now know that neither Kiev nor France nor Germany took their pledges seriously. Former Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko, who signed the Minsk agreements on behalf of Ukraine, has admitted that he never had the slightest intention of fulfilling their terms. “What is the result of the Minsk agreement?” he boasted a few months ago. “We win eight years to create an army. We win eight years to restore economy.”

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has also admitted that Minsk was never anything more than a mechanism to buy time for Ukraine. “The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time,” Merkel told the weekly Die Zeit last December. “It used this time to become stronger, as you can see today.” And she went on: “It was clear to all of us that this was a frozen conflict, that the problem had not been solved, but that is precisely what gave Ukraine valuable time.” In other words, she pretended to go along with Minsk even though she didn’t believe in it for a second.

Former French President François Hollande echoed Merkel: “Since 2014, Ukraine has strengthened its military posture,” he told Kiev Independent last December. “Indeed, the Ukrainian army was completely different from that of 2014. It was better trained and equipped. It is the merit of the Minsk agreements to have given the Ukrainian army this opportunity.”

From 2014 on, the NATO powers continued to pour arms into Ukraine, pretending to be interested in implementing Minsk while in reality encouraging Ukraine to resolve the problem of the Donbass by force. The result was some 14,000 deaths in the Donbass

Since February 2022, NATO countries have continued pouring weaponry into Ukraine. The list is mind-blowing: shoulder-fired MANPAD systems, anti-ship missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, Stinger missiles, tanks, armored personnel carriers, fighting vehicles, attack helicopters, howitzers, multiple-launch rocket systems, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, drones, anti-tank missiles, Patriot missile systems, long-range cruise missiles, depleted uranium shells and cluster munitions. Ukraine is now promised F-16 fighter aircraft and long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems.

In addition, NATO countries, particularly the United States, have provided tactical intelligence to Ukraine enabling it to target and kill Russians.

What the NATO powers have notably failed to do is offer a convincing explanation as to what they are trying to achieve. President Biden once suggested that the goal was regime change in Moscow. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the objective is to degrade Russia’s military capability. U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says  that it’s all about not quote “letting Russia run roughshod over Ukraine”—something that  would allegedly “place the continent of Europe at military risk.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken claims that “Investing in Ukraine’s strength…paves the way for” diplomacy. U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly claims that “Giving the Ukrainians the tools they need to finish the job is the swiftest…path to peace.” NATO’s Stoltenberg says “the more gains Ukraine makes, the stronger their hand will be at the negotiating table.”

None of this makes the slightest sense. Does anyone seriously believe that as soon as Ukraine makes serious gains, the NATO powers will decide to call it a day and demand that Ukraine head towards the negotiating table? Of course not. Any Ukrainian success would immediately be touted as a reason for stepping up military deliveries.

That is why today there is no diplomacy and no negotiating table. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has disclosed that he came close to reaching a peace agreement within a few days of the start of the war. As Bennett described the agreement, Ukraine would pledge not to join NATO, and Russia would abandon its goal of the so-called “demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine.” However, according to Bennett, Western leaders, Boris Johnson in particular, “blocked” the deal.

This pattern was to be repeated in Istanbul at the end of March. A peace agreement was in the offing, but then Boris Johnson flew to Kiev and urged Zelensky to drop the idea. Putin was a “war criminal,” Johnson said. He should be crushed, not negotiated with. Even if Ukraine were ready to sign a deal, Johnson told him, the NATO powers were not. Following the collapse of the talks, Turkey’s foreign minister declared, quote “there are those within the NATO member states that want the war to continue…and Russia to get weaker.”

The truth is: key NATO powers want to keep the war going because Russians are dying, and military contractors and their lobbyists are getting rich.

U.S. politicians are at least honest about admitting this. Just listen to Senator Richard Blumenthal: “We’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment. For less than 3% of our nation’s military budget, we’ve enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half … All without a single American service woman or man injured or lost.”

Or to Senator Mitt Romney. The money spent on Ukraine, he said, was “the best national defense spending we’ve ever done….We’re losing no lives…and we’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military.”

And, of course, Senator Lindsey Graham who famously chirped: “Russians are dying…best money we’ve ever spent.”

To sum up: The NATO powers embarked on a deliberately provocative policy back in 2008 when they offered NATO membership to a country that wasn’t interested in it, doubled down on the policy when they supported the overthrow of an elected government in 2014, then compounded their errors by pouring in weaponry for eight years, refusing to implement the Minsk Accords and ignoring Russian warnings about red lines. Now they are keeping a war going even as casualties continue to mount and the dangers of world war, and thus of nuclear conflict, continue to escalate.

Thank you very much for your time and attention.