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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.resumen-english.org/2022/02/ukraine-they-played-with-fire/">resumen-english.org</a>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Ukraine: They Played with Fire</h1>
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<p>By Ángel Guerra Cabrera on February 23, 2022</p>
<p><em><img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2-25-angel-ukr-img.jpg?resize=300%2C207&ssl=1" alt="" width="300" height="207"><br></em></p><p><em>This
article, written just prior to the Russian military intervention into
Ukraine, provides some important background of recent history leading up
to the crisis – Editorial</em><span id="gmail-more-19758"></span></p>
<p>Looking at it in strict terms, one could say that Russia’s
recognition of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s
Republics violates international law; as it was with the reincorporation
of Crimea into the Slavic country in 2014 that I wrote about. But this
serious situation today has come about because the other side, led by
the United States has not tired of incurring what it now reproaches
Moscow for, in Ukraine itself.</p>
<p>This is the case of the 2014 coup d’état in Kiev, which has been
proven to have been directed, organized and financed by the US, which
established there a vassal gangster state full of weapons and rampaging
gangs, often composed of Hitler admirers. Were not NATO’s operations in
the former Yugoslavia, the merciless bombing of Serbia and the blatant
proclamation of the independence of Kosovo, then an autonomous republic
of the Balkan country, also a flagrant violation of international law?
It would be impossible to enumerate in this space the violations
perpetrated by the US of international law, against the sovereignty and
independence of peoples. To start with it would take the meticulous and
dedicated Argentine researcher Gregorio Selser’s four volumes just to
compile chronologically their interventions in Latin America and the
Caribbean.</p>
<p>The US, the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU) are playing
with fire in Ukraine and by assuming a provocative, arrogant and
adventurous attitude towards an offended and threatened Russia, they
could push the world into a conflict with an unknown conclusion. It is
hard to believe, but the growing unpopularity of U.S. President Joseph
Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is acting as a major
driver and catalyst for this conflict. Both seek to boost their
popularity by escalating the hair-raising tension with Moscow and,
blinded by banality, have underestimated President Vladimir Putin and
the imperative need to pay attention to the security guarantees for
Russia that he and the Kremlin’s diplomacy have been insistently
demanding from the US-NATO for years, but in particular since November
2021. Biden and Johnson, followed by the EU’s servile and mediocre
sidekicks, are opportunistically resorting in Ukraine to the old ploy of
escaping serious domestic problems by exacerbating a foreign policy
conflict to the maximum.</p>
<p>Biden’s leadership crisis is such that the Democratic defeat in the
November elections and the return of Trumpism to the White House in the
2024 presidential elections, with or without Trump on the ballot, are
already taken for granted. Johnson was living a terminal crisis due to
the scandals over the parties at his official residence during the
coronavirus quarantine and the remodeling of his luxurious apartment
with Conservative Party funds until he saw in Ukraine the way to get rid
of the impeachment by his own followers. Saving Kiev from an alleged
Russian threat and an imminent invasion announced three months ago for
the next day is the mantra with which the inhabitant of the White House
and that of 10 Downing Street try to divert attention from their
internal political crisis. From almost nothing political to the
appearance of leaders of the “West”, strong statesmen capable of uniting
in the face of the Russian bear an EU and an EU that -except in the
hegemonic media spaces- are in the lowest hours of their entire history
in terms of leadership and hegemony.</p>
<p>There is a root cause behind this conflict and it is the policy of
destabilization, balkanization and harassment pursued by Washington
against Moscow since shortly after the collapse of the USSR. We have
already explained in this space the advance of NATO towards the East
back in 2012 in total opposition to the promise made by word of mouth by
then US Secretary of State James Baker and German Chancellor Helmut
Kohl to Mikhail Gorbachev, prior to the reunification of Germany and the
withdrawal of Soviet troops from the German Democratic Republic in
1989. Only those who promised to reform the USSR, but instead destroyed
it, could be so astonishingly naïve as not to demand the signing of a
treaty embodying the commitment of Washington and Berlin in such an
important matter. They lied to Russia and since then they have added to
the warmongering Atlantic alliance the great majority of the former
socialist countries of Europe and several former Soviet republics, such
as Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia to expand its encirclement of Russia.
Thus, the distance and flight time of US nuclear missiles to their
eventual targets in Russia have been successively shortened to a point
already intolerable for Moscow. It is imperative to negotiate seriously
with Russia, not to apply electoral sanctions that continue to increase
tension.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="https://lapupilainsomne.wordpress.com/2022/02/23/ucrania-jugar-con-fuego-por-angel-guerra-cabrera/">La Pupila Insomne</a> translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English</p>
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