After NATO provoked Russia with its expansion into Ukraine backed by an ultra nationalist illegal regime in Kyiv that was anti-Russian, Putin was being forced to protect Russians in Crimea, then in Donbas.
All we constantly hear from the Western media is the same old propaganda story ‘Putin Bad’ ‘Ukraine Good’.
Well done Ted Carpenter. Does anyone know about the warning that Putin gave to NATO over 15 years ago about extending it’s ‘territory of US and UK military influence on it’s southern flank’
In 2008, Burns, then the American ambassador to Moscow, wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”
Putin Munich speech 2007
NATO’s eastward expansion foments tension
Putin’s Munich speech: “NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself, or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.”
Evidence of CIA financial support in Kyiv 2013 2014 that led to a violent uprising by a fascist mob to overthrow a democratically elected Government. This is how the US extends its Empire using Europeans as lego blocks in building its hegemony in the name of ‘Freedom & Democracy’.