A great article that lays out the hard, incontrovertible facts, certainly within the framework of past agreements.
We need more of this historical oversight because when we have the facts at our disposal, we begin to map out causes and their potential cures. Then, and only then, can phoney political rhetoric and moral posturing be exposed: we see the ‘wizard’ behind the curtain; all is revealed.
The stand out moments in this article is the role the extreme nationalists played in the disaster. It appears Europe and the US have effectively bankrolled fascists - not noble, national sovereigntists, as they claim. How else can it be seen?
One day the history of this tragedy will be written and the current cabal that mismanage Europe will be exposed for the craven wretches they most surely are.
Like you I crave real insight and context when making sense of events over the past decade and more. So many people, especially in the west, fall back on slogans and unhelpful tropes, rather than engaging with real events and their causes. Glad that my article added in a small way to our collective understanding.
I think the value of your Substack articles is that you aren’t doctrinaire or full of the kind of rhetorical swagger that is the hallmark of polarising and populist alternative sources. Your grounding in diplomacy - ‘what the world needs now, is diplomacy, sweet diplomacy’ - is a real strength.
One of the reasons I have subscribed to your Substack is because I don’t always agree with you - and why should we? After all, how on earth are any of us ever going to learn anything new if we kick around with those who assent to all our ideas and opinions?
We have to seek common ground with those who are governed by a realistic desire for peace and fraternity. This must become a sincere wish shared by all who care for our matchless world.
Personally, I think political struggle is only a grubby, brutal thing if we fail to approach it in the right spirit. However, if we put aside our egos and step beyond the safe boundaries of our ideological fortresses, we can begin to meet those who share a similar desire for a more equal, just and decent life for all.
In this sense, political struggle has a spiritual core. Not in an institutionalised, formal sense - churches, doctrine, ritual, etc - but in the deeper sense of our life’s finite realities and how this transience connects with the eternal forces of nature and the remarkable cosmos we are all born into. If seen in this way, why would anyone want anything other than health, happiness and prosperity for all? If we seek justice, then we must try and be just, not only to those who are confederate with ourselves and our own interests. Why? Because time is short; the only thing we leave this world with is the love, kindness and humanity we share.
Perhaps diplomacy can then be seen not only as a practical vehicle for the resolution of conflicts but also as a foundational pillar that supports a mutual polis - a true senate of the people, for the people - and one that can help secure societal bonds in a time of extraordinary change and the challenges therein.
This has been obvious to anyone who actually understands the origins of the original 'civil war' in Ukraine, these people are the real driving force behind the well polished PR of the Kiev regime, they are the ones that provided the muscle for Maidan. If you want to see who these folks are and how absolutely contemptuous they are of mainstream politicians from the Ukraine side then just watch the excellent 'Russian Roulette' by Vice News, Simon Ostrovsky interviews them and they openly say on camera that they call the shots, not Poroshenko. The problem now is that Nuland, Biden, Sullivan and Blinken have created a very well armed monster that will not be tamed easily inside Ukrainian politics.
Thank you Ian for this very helpful article. Perhaps even more helpful to those we know who blame Russia aka Putin for the entirety of the war. Boris Johnson has 'blood on his hands'.
Thanks for putting this together, Ian. I've been wanting some sort of reference document like this for ages. I hope it is shared far and wide...
It is a source of great shame in the West, or at least it ought to be, that we can no longer rely on our encyclopaedias as they have been completely hijacked by political (and 'intelligence') forces. Shittypedia's page on the so-called 'Bucha massacre' is just a collection of unproven allegations by Western 'journalists', probably cascading out from one original lie. It is pitiful.
You get presented with a photo of what you are told are people killed by the Russians. The photo could be anywhere. The people might not even be dead, they might be actors, there is a distinct lack of blood everywhere considering these people have supposedly been shot. Even if they have been, they could have been shot by anyone. There is literally not an iota of proof.
Bucha was closed to outsiders for 3 days. During that time I saw video of notorious Ukrainian Nazis, known murderers, stalking the streets of Bucha looking for 'Russian collaborators' to kill. They were so unafraid of being caught, knowing the Ukrainian authorities (and the West) had their backs, that they actually filmed themselves in the act, and then put it out on social media.
Dead bodies, instead of being respectfully treated, were put in black bin bags and then left to decompose in the streets for days until a photoshoot could be organised with von der Leyen.
Unfortunately, people in the West have been so brainwashed over the last 3 or 4 (or 11) years that I suspect that when finally presented with the truth they will simply refuse to believe it.
How many people in the West will be aware of the massacre of around 50 pro-Russians in the trade union building in Odessa on 2nd May 2014 by Ukrainian 'nationalists'? Almost nobody.
An excellent article, I truly hope the US take the time to study it and understand the complexities. Without solving the ultra nationalist problem in Ukraine it’s going to be a tenuous peace I fear.
As everyone keeps harping on about NATO expansion as the primary cause behind Putin's "unprovoked, full-scale invasion" of Ukraine, this is an extremely important article to remind everyone that it was in fact Ukraine's failure to comply with the terms of all Minsk agreements and the collective failure of the key European powers (namely France and Germany) to facilitate that compliance, which ultimately culminated in Russia's Special Military Operation in Ukraine.
It's as if the western world has forgotten that today's Kiev is screaming about defending the very people that they have been bombing and shelling since 2014! Their own fellow citizens about whom Zelensky's predecessor Poroshenko said that their children would be hiding in the basements while other Ukrainian children would be at schools!
The political class in Europe has seemingly become so lazy and so badly educated that I am starting to believe now that they actually all genuinely believe the propaganda fed to them by Kiev because they simply cannot be asked even to read, let alone investigate anything that's not been said, written or read to them by some Ukrainian journalist, official, social media influencer or another.
And this was already the case in 2014/15 when none of the European "leaders" could be bothered to verify the reports relating to the presence of Russian troops in Ukraine. There was no tangible evidence to support that but plenty of evidence to suggest that in fact the Ukrainian troops joined the LDNR fighters and brought their equipment with them. Given that inevitably those Ukrainian troops had plenty of the old Soviet equipment, it was easy enough to present them as Russian to the western governments with no further questions asked by either France or Germany but plenty of decisions made on the basis of unchecked lies and unverified false claims.
Today, in the context of the renewed effort to negotiate peace, the most important question to ask would be "what can and will be done differently to avoid repeating the failure of all Minsk agreements for the sake of lasting peace?"
One thing is clear: Trump is not going to have an easy time negotiating peace in Ukraine because today lasting peace in Donbass is much more important to Russia than it has ever been before since the Ukrainian and the Russian population of LDNR overwhelmingly voted to join Russia and has become Russia's citizens. If previously Russia's responsibility to protect looked like Putin's propaganda to the West, today it couldn't be more real.
Thank you for laying out this much needed and detailed diplomatic history.
You cannot understand any conflict without knowing the history, and western media and politicians have made matters considerably worse with their childish and dangerous sloganeering.
As well as Ukraine’s internal conflict there is the factor of NATO expansion and the US driven coup in 2014. It would be very interesting to hear your views on how that relates to the war.
In addition to the civil conflict in Ukraine, consider this sequence of US actions:
1994: Clinton co-signs Budapest Memorandum enshrining Ukrainian neutrality;
2001: Bush withdraws from Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia;
2003: Bush oversees overthrow of the Georgian government;
2003-2008: US begins arming and training Georgian forces;
2008: In April, Bush invites Ukraine to join NATO in violation of the Budapest Memorandum;
2008: In August, Georgian forces attack Russian peacekeepers triggering Russian-Georgian war;
2009: Under the Obama adminstration Secretary Clinton organizes a "reset" with Russia;
2011: Following the "Arab Spring," US Senator McCain claims Russia is next;
2014: Obama oversees overthrow of the Ukrainian government;
2014-2019: US begins training Ukrainian forces;
2019: Trump withdraws from the INF Treaty with Russia;
2019: Trump begins arming Ukrainian military;
2022: US trained and armed Ukrainian troops begin intensifying operations in the Donbass along Russia's border followed by the start of Russia's Special Military Operation;
2022-2025: US exhausts arms/ammunition in proxy war with Russia;
2025: Trump seeks "reset" with Russia while proposing Western troops enter Ukraine to freeze conflict as the West expands arms/ammunition production
Thank you, Ian for this piece. There can never be enough opportunities for those who were in positions where they were confronted with the actual facts, and who can articulate the truth, to do so.
The mind-bending machine of Western media and political discourses will be defeated in time, it is imperative if we are to find our way to sensible diplomacy and international relation policies again. But we need every such piece we can get to achieve this.
Thank you, Mr Proud, for doing the job that the media should have done.. I will save this excellent summary to pass on to others that are wilfully in the dark about the timeline of this conflict. Incidentally, Bojo’s revelations (similar to a previous one he made to the telegraph about Ukraine being a proxy war) will go the way of Iraq’s WMD scenario.. even after they admit it was all a lie, they will neither be held accountable nor even questioned by the complicit media. Can you blame intelligent people for their mistrust of the political and media class??
Thank you very much! That seems to be a very important point. The nationalists turned out to be the only organised and even armed force capable of systematically influencing the government. There were simply no other organised political movements and forces. The Russian government apparently tried to create something, but as is obvious, it was also very unsuccessful.
Ukrainians as a whole have not succumbed to the siren song of nationalism, and they traditionally look pale in parliament. But nationalists have regularly frightened presidents and prime ministers in Kiev. This is a very important aspect of all the events of the last few decades. Thanks again!
An important piece of controllable facts in understanding the True provocation of Russia that started in 2008 (and was planned before that date, going back >140 years).
Assuming the US (and its Deep State) are the true Power behind this project lost its believability after the very speedy immobilisation of the Deep State, its tax-funding (US-AID, NED, corruption) and its bureaucracy and now has become doubtful.
Following my sensing, including more than just these factors, i dare say, that the US has been a vassal of the Monster in 'The City of London', which started with the US joining the British Empire in WW-1, against Germany and the taking over of the FED and the creation of a Zionist Colony in Palestine (in the defeated Ottoman Empire).
The Murder of US-Presidents is part of the battle and the build-up of the US Deep State continued until Biden proved who was the True Power behind him as he showed in the way he prepared the road for London to take over as much as possible and is shown by the weird sudden desire of London and the EU (+ NATO in Brussels), to build a huge army, a 4th Reich and the Nazification of Europe.
I see the Ukraine flags in the UK again. This is very dangerous. The media with the BBC at the helm are parroting Starmer’s message, that Russia and Putin are the enemy who can’t be trusted over agreements.
The US, UK and NATO lost in Ukraine. Trump is merely formalising the surrender agreement and calling it ‘Peace’. If Harris had won, she would have had to do the same, though it would probably not have been a formal agreement ending the proxy war, rather a de facto one.
Trouble is Trump has riled up the EU to buy arms, from the US, to balance his trade deficit so that he can pivot to China. If we foolishly go into Ukraine and get slaughtered, under US manipulation (the EU is a puppet of the US, they only do what they’re told, including potentially vetoing the peace agreement at the UN and even accepting tariffs because of it) then Trump gets to both keep his cake and to eat it. He gets the nobel peace prize, MAGA support but also gets to continue to over-extend Russia by proxy, which he can pivot back to at any time (the West constantly reneges on agreements, look at Gaza).
A great article that lays out the hard, incontrovertible facts, certainly within the framework of past agreements.
We need more of this historical oversight because when we have the facts at our disposal, we begin to map out causes and their potential cures. Then, and only then, can phoney political rhetoric and moral posturing be exposed: we see the ‘wizard’ behind the curtain; all is revealed.
The stand out moments in this article is the role the extreme nationalists played in the disaster. It appears Europe and the US have effectively bankrolled fascists - not noble, national sovereigntists, as they claim. How else can it be seen?
One day the history of this tragedy will be written and the current cabal that mismanage Europe will be exposed for the craven wretches they most surely are.
Thanks Ian - great work!
Thanks Kieran,
Like you I crave real insight and context when making sense of events over the past decade and more. So many people, especially in the west, fall back on slogans and unhelpful tropes, rather than engaging with real events and their causes. Glad that my article added in a small way to our collective understanding.
I think the value of your Substack articles is that you aren’t doctrinaire or full of the kind of rhetorical swagger that is the hallmark of polarising and populist alternative sources. Your grounding in diplomacy - ‘what the world needs now, is diplomacy, sweet diplomacy’ - is a real strength.
One of the reasons I have subscribed to your Substack is because I don’t always agree with you - and why should we? After all, how on earth are any of us ever going to learn anything new if we kick around with those who assent to all our ideas and opinions?
We have to seek common ground with those who are governed by a realistic desire for peace and fraternity. This must become a sincere wish shared by all who care for our matchless world.
Personally, I think political struggle is only a grubby, brutal thing if we fail to approach it in the right spirit. However, if we put aside our egos and step beyond the safe boundaries of our ideological fortresses, we can begin to meet those who share a similar desire for a more equal, just and decent life for all.
In this sense, political struggle has a spiritual core. Not in an institutionalised, formal sense - churches, doctrine, ritual, etc - but in the deeper sense of our life’s finite realities and how this transience connects with the eternal forces of nature and the remarkable cosmos we are all born into. If seen in this way, why would anyone want anything other than health, happiness and prosperity for all? If we seek justice, then we must try and be just, not only to those who are confederate with ourselves and our own interests. Why? Because time is short; the only thing we leave this world with is the love, kindness and humanity we share.
Perhaps diplomacy can then be seen not only as a practical vehicle for the resolution of conflicts but also as a foundational pillar that supports a mutual polis - a true senate of the people, for the people - and one that can help secure societal bonds in a time of extraordinary change and the challenges therein.
This has been obvious to anyone who actually understands the origins of the original 'civil war' in Ukraine, these people are the real driving force behind the well polished PR of the Kiev regime, they are the ones that provided the muscle for Maidan. If you want to see who these folks are and how absolutely contemptuous they are of mainstream politicians from the Ukraine side then just watch the excellent 'Russian Roulette' by Vice News, Simon Ostrovsky interviews them and they openly say on camera that they call the shots, not Poroshenko. The problem now is that Nuland, Biden, Sullivan and Blinken have created a very well armed monster that will not be tamed easily inside Ukrainian politics.
Thank you Ian for this very helpful article. Perhaps even more helpful to those we know who blame Russia aka Putin for the entirety of the war. Boris Johnson has 'blood on his hands'.
"Boris Johnson has 'blood on his hands'."
I'm sure he thinks that's a badge of honour. A right laugh. A jolly good spiffing wheeze.
I'm inclined to believe Dominic Cummings' account that when told about the scale of covid deaths Johnson said "Let the bodies pile high."
He's a psychopath.
If he wasn't protected from prosecution by the UK's archaic laws, he'd be behind bars.
Thanks Timbo.
Thanks for putting this together, Ian. I've been wanting some sort of reference document like this for ages. I hope it is shared far and wide...
It is a source of great shame in the West, or at least it ought to be, that we can no longer rely on our encyclopaedias as they have been completely hijacked by political (and 'intelligence') forces. Shittypedia's page on the so-called 'Bucha massacre' is just a collection of unproven allegations by Western 'journalists', probably cascading out from one original lie. It is pitiful.
You get presented with a photo of what you are told are people killed by the Russians. The photo could be anywhere. The people might not even be dead, they might be actors, there is a distinct lack of blood everywhere considering these people have supposedly been shot. Even if they have been, they could have been shot by anyone. There is literally not an iota of proof.
Bucha was closed to outsiders for 3 days. During that time I saw video of notorious Ukrainian Nazis, known murderers, stalking the streets of Bucha looking for 'Russian collaborators' to kill. They were so unafraid of being caught, knowing the Ukrainian authorities (and the West) had their backs, that they actually filmed themselves in the act, and then put it out on social media.
Dead bodies, instead of being respectfully treated, were put in black bin bags and then left to decompose in the streets for days until a photoshoot could be organised with von der Leyen.
Unfortunately, people in the West have been so brainwashed over the last 3 or 4 (or 11) years that I suspect that when finally presented with the truth they will simply refuse to believe it.
How many people in the West will be aware of the massacre of around 50 pro-Russians in the trade union building in Odessa on 2nd May 2014 by Ukrainian 'nationalists'? Almost nobody.
A very useful and comprehensive summary of the events of 2014 et seq. Thanks for setting the record straight Ian.
Thanks Roger.
An excellent article, I truly hope the US take the time to study it and understand the complexities. Without solving the ultra nationalist problem in Ukraine it’s going to be a tenuous peace I fear.
Indeed!
As everyone keeps harping on about NATO expansion as the primary cause behind Putin's "unprovoked, full-scale invasion" of Ukraine, this is an extremely important article to remind everyone that it was in fact Ukraine's failure to comply with the terms of all Minsk agreements and the collective failure of the key European powers (namely France and Germany) to facilitate that compliance, which ultimately culminated in Russia's Special Military Operation in Ukraine.
It's as if the western world has forgotten that today's Kiev is screaming about defending the very people that they have been bombing and shelling since 2014! Their own fellow citizens about whom Zelensky's predecessor Poroshenko said that their children would be hiding in the basements while other Ukrainian children would be at schools!
The political class in Europe has seemingly become so lazy and so badly educated that I am starting to believe now that they actually all genuinely believe the propaganda fed to them by Kiev because they simply cannot be asked even to read, let alone investigate anything that's not been said, written or read to them by some Ukrainian journalist, official, social media influencer or another.
And this was already the case in 2014/15 when none of the European "leaders" could be bothered to verify the reports relating to the presence of Russian troops in Ukraine. There was no tangible evidence to support that but plenty of evidence to suggest that in fact the Ukrainian troops joined the LDNR fighters and brought their equipment with them. Given that inevitably those Ukrainian troops had plenty of the old Soviet equipment, it was easy enough to present them as Russian to the western governments with no further questions asked by either France or Germany but plenty of decisions made on the basis of unchecked lies and unverified false claims.
Today, in the context of the renewed effort to negotiate peace, the most important question to ask would be "what can and will be done differently to avoid repeating the failure of all Minsk agreements for the sake of lasting peace?"
One thing is clear: Trump is not going to have an easy time negotiating peace in Ukraine because today lasting peace in Donbass is much more important to Russia than it has ever been before since the Ukrainian and the Russian population of LDNR overwhelmingly voted to join Russia and has become Russia's citizens. If previously Russia's responsibility to protect looked like Putin's propaganda to the West, today it couldn't be more real.
Thank you for laying out this much needed and detailed diplomatic history.
You cannot understand any conflict without knowing the history, and western media and politicians have made matters considerably worse with their childish and dangerous sloganeering.
As well as Ukraine’s internal conflict there is the factor of NATO expansion and the US driven coup in 2014. It would be very interesting to hear your views on how that relates to the war.
In addition to the civil conflict in Ukraine, consider this sequence of US actions:
1994: Clinton co-signs Budapest Memorandum enshrining Ukrainian neutrality;
2001: Bush withdraws from Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia;
2003: Bush oversees overthrow of the Georgian government;
2003-2008: US begins arming and training Georgian forces;
2008: In April, Bush invites Ukraine to join NATO in violation of the Budapest Memorandum;
2008: In August, Georgian forces attack Russian peacekeepers triggering Russian-Georgian war;
2009: Under the Obama adminstration Secretary Clinton organizes a "reset" with Russia;
2011: Following the "Arab Spring," US Senator McCain claims Russia is next;
2014: Obama oversees overthrow of the Ukrainian government;
2014-2019: US begins training Ukrainian forces;
2019: Trump withdraws from the INF Treaty with Russia;
2019: Trump begins arming Ukrainian military;
2022: US trained and armed Ukrainian troops begin intensifying operations in the Donbass along Russia's border followed by the start of Russia's Special Military Operation;
2022-2025: US exhausts arms/ammunition in proxy war with Russia;
2025: Trump seeks "reset" with Russia while proposing Western troops enter Ukraine to freeze conflict as the West expands arms/ammunition production
[credit to original unknown poster]
Let's hope the cycle doesn't keep ratcheting around..
I read your headline and immediately thought “yes but which decade are we talking about?” 😁
Thank you, Ian for this piece. There can never be enough opportunities for those who were in positions where they were confronted with the actual facts, and who can articulate the truth, to do so.
The mind-bending machine of Western media and political discourses will be defeated in time, it is imperative if we are to find our way to sensible diplomacy and international relation policies again. But we need every such piece we can get to achieve this.
Thank you, Mr Proud, for doing the job that the media should have done.. I will save this excellent summary to pass on to others that are wilfully in the dark about the timeline of this conflict. Incidentally, Bojo’s revelations (similar to a previous one he made to the telegraph about Ukraine being a proxy war) will go the way of Iraq’s WMD scenario.. even after they admit it was all a lie, they will neither be held accountable nor even questioned by the complicit media. Can you blame intelligent people for their mistrust of the political and media class??
Excellent! There have been basically no truthful & unbiased accounts of this matter by any authoritative sources. Many thanks!
Articles such as this one have been sorely needed for quite some time.
To reach a wider audience, perhaps it could be published by Responsible Statecraft, or by the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy?
Thank you very much! That seems to be a very important point. The nationalists turned out to be the only organised and even armed force capable of systematically influencing the government. There were simply no other organised political movements and forces. The Russian government apparently tried to create something, but as is obvious, it was also very unsuccessful.
Ukrainians as a whole have not succumbed to the siren song of nationalism, and they traditionally look pale in parliament. But nationalists have regularly frightened presidents and prime ministers in Kiev. This is a very important aspect of all the events of the last few decades. Thanks again!
Thank You...
Very complete and true.
An important piece of controllable facts in understanding the True provocation of Russia that started in 2008 (and was planned before that date, going back >140 years).
Assuming the US (and its Deep State) are the true Power behind this project lost its believability after the very speedy immobilisation of the Deep State, its tax-funding (US-AID, NED, corruption) and its bureaucracy and now has become doubtful.
Following my sensing, including more than just these factors, i dare say, that the US has been a vassal of the Monster in 'The City of London', which started with the US joining the British Empire in WW-1, against Germany and the taking over of the FED and the creation of a Zionist Colony in Palestine (in the defeated Ottoman Empire).
The Murder of US-Presidents is part of the battle and the build-up of the US Deep State continued until Biden proved who was the True Power behind him as he showed in the way he prepared the road for London to take over as much as possible and is shown by the weird sudden desire of London and the EU (+ NATO in Brussels), to build a huge army, a 4th Reich and the Nazification of Europe.
Sander from Occupy Schagen.
PS. Schagen:
->https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gi0YOvvXcAAY-sH?format=jpg
Schagen, a small town in the middle of flat green farms, dikes and water in West Frisia, North-Holland in the Netherlands.
We run an 'X' News account on Geopolitics and some info about Science (Physics and Autism).
I see the Ukraine flags in the UK again. This is very dangerous. The media with the BBC at the helm are parroting Starmer’s message, that Russia and Putin are the enemy who can’t be trusted over agreements.
The US, UK and NATO lost in Ukraine. Trump is merely formalising the surrender agreement and calling it ‘Peace’. If Harris had won, she would have had to do the same, though it would probably not have been a formal agreement ending the proxy war, rather a de facto one.
Trouble is Trump has riled up the EU to buy arms, from the US, to balance his trade deficit so that he can pivot to China. If we foolishly go into Ukraine and get slaughtered, under US manipulation (the EU is a puppet of the US, they only do what they’re told, including potentially vetoing the peace agreement at the UN and even accepting tariffs because of it) then Trump gets to both keep his cake and to eat it. He gets the nobel peace prize, MAGA support but also gets to continue to over-extend Russia by proxy, which he can pivot back to at any time (the West constantly reneges on agreements, look at Gaza).