Putin's rise as a statesman of the first magnitude began, oddly enough, with the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 on the United States. Since that day, Washington has taken advantage of that national tragedy to achieve specific geopolitical ends, the majority of them - coincidentally or not - diametrically opposed to Russia's own national security [...]
For many years, and despite all evidence to the contrary, the Western media has forwarded the inane idea that Vladimir Putin ranks in the same club with some of history’s most loathsome creatures, up to and including Hitler.
The reality is that the Russian leader has done more to promote the cause of global peace and security than any other Western leader in recent times. That explains why he is the object of such intense scorn.
Putin’s rise as a statesman of the first magnitude began, oddly enough, with the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 on the United States. Since that day, Washington has taken advantage of that national tragedy to achieve specific geopolitical ends, the majority of them – coincidentally or not – diametrically opposed to Russia’s own national security. Moscow, for its part, was expected to serve as nothing more participatory than a captive audience to the US war machine as it began its destruction tour through the Middle East, most notably in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In late 2013, the tide began to turn, as the violence began to roost on Russia’s doorstep. Kiev had suddenly erupted in protests against the government of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, whose only crime had been to suspend the implementation of an association agreement with the European Union.
This was the moment when Washington’s long-term investment in Ukraine started to pay off handsome dividends (Victoria Nuland, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, shamelessly admitted at the time that Washington had invested more than $5 billion since 1991 to help Ukraine achieve “the future it deserves”).
With the blessing of myriad US-backed NGOs and think tanks, protesters took to the streets in the so-called Maidan uprising, barricading themselves in the capital and attacking police, eventually forcing the democratically elected president to flee the country.
As John J. Mearsheimer observed in the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs:
“the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov echoed that frank assessment last month when he told the UN General Assembly:
“The West constructed its policy on the basis of a principle, ‘If you are not with us, you are against us,’ having chosen the path of reckless eastward NATO expansion and provoking instability in the post-Soviet space…. This policy is precisely the root cause of the protracted conflict in Southeastern Ukraine.”
Does Putin deserve a Nobel Peace Prize just because it was the West, and not Russia, to blame for the Ukrainian crisis? No, but the story does not end there. Although Western media continue to regurgitate the delusional psycho-babble of a ‘Russian invasion’ of Ukrainian territory, such wild conspiracy theories have never been documented by a single legitimate photograph or satellite image. Or are we now expected to believe Russia owns invisible tanks and artillery, too? The reality is not so complicated: it was the Americans who launched their own Ukraine invasion in the early stages of the protests that only served to fan the flames of discontent. And yes, there is proof.
Victoria Nuland, for example, was photographed on the streets of Kiev, happily handing out cookies to anti-government participants, some of them outright fascists who eventually went on to fill top positions in the new government.
“The new government in Kiev was pro-Western and anti-Russian to the core, and it contained four high-ranking members who could legitimately be labeled neo-fascists.”
And the political intrigue went far beyond stale pastries. In a leaked phone call with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, Nuland mentioned Arseniy Yatsenyuk as a candidate to lead the Ukrainian government. Was anybody surprised when Yatsenyuk became prime minister on February 27? In the course of that famous phone call, Nuland also expressed some incredibly candid sentiments toward America’s foremost ally when she remarked, “F*ck the EU”.
Meanwhile, US Senator John McCain, Washington’s preeminent hawk, also crashed the party in Kiev at the height of tension, agitating the anti-government protesters in Independence Square by telling them “the destiny you seek lies in Europe.”
It should be remembered that no Russian politician had the sheer audacity to show up anywhere in Ukraine to tell the people where their destiny was to be found.
As the Western media continued to spin the mythical yarn of a “Russian invasion”, the Kremlin was working assiduously to clean up the mess in Ukraine caused by many decades of behind-the-scenes horseplay, much of it seeded by foreign-backed NGOs and assorted think tanks. Putin played a significant role in mediating and bringing together the leaders of Ukraine, Germany, and France to ratify the Minsk Agreements (Feb. 11, 2015) designed to end the violence in the Donbass region of Ukraine.
Despite international recognition of the demands set down by Minsk (which include the “immediate and full ceasefire in particular districts of Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts of Ukraine and… Pullout of all heavy weapons by both sides to equal distance with the aim of the creation of a security zone on minimum 50 kilometers (31 miles)…”), there have been numerous reports of gross violations.
Last month, Putin called for a UN peacekeeping mission to be sent to the war-torn eastern regions of Ukraine. The peacekeepers would be deployed on the demarcation line to protect the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] mission, which monitors the ceasefire between the government forces and rebels.
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel embraced the idea, urging member states to “openly discuss with the Russian Federation the conditions of a UN mission.” Washington and Kiev, however, flat out rejected the proposal.
In the context of the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, there is one major footnote that cannot be overlooked, and that involves the Crimea Referendum, which eventually brought the peninsula into the Russian Federation.
Although Western pundits regularly speak of a Russian “Crimean invasion” as loosely as they talk of a Ukrainian one, nothing could be further from reality. The Supreme Council of Crimea considered the ousting of President Yanukovich as a coup and the new government in Kiev as illegitimate, stating that the referendum was a response to these developments, as well as to the breakdown of civil order that was sweeping the country.
In Crimea, a largely Russian-speaking republic that was an integral part of Russia until it was gifted to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954, the official results of the referendum were impossible to dispute: 96.77 percent of Crimeans voted in favor of integration of the region into the Russian Federation.
The Russian State Duma ratified the reunification with the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol on March 20, 2014. Western condemnation came fast and furious, but Putin reminded the critics the situation mirrored that of the Kosovo referendum for independence.
“In a situation entirely the same as the one in Crimea they recognized Kosovo’s secession from Serbia legitimate while arguing that ‘no permission from a country’s central authority for a unilateral declaration of independence is necessary,’”
Putin said, adding that the UN International Court of Justice agreed with those arguments.
“That’s what they wrote, that’s what they trumpeted all over the world, coerced everyone into it – and now they are complaining. Why is that?” he asked.
Although few would admit it, Vladimir Putin’s peacekeeping efforts in Ukraine brought about a drastic reduction in violence at a time when many Western observers were predicting that Russia would launch a full-scale invasion of Ukrainian territory. Image their disappointment when just the opposite occurred?
Vladimir Putin’s peacekeeping efforts, however, did not stop at Russia’s borders.
Syria Intervention
Many people have probably already forgotten Russia’s immense contribution to securing peace in the Arab Republic of Syria, which has been suffering internal strife since 2011. And no, I am not talking about Putin’s decision to assist President Bashar Assad from eradicating ISIS terrorists in the country, although that is certainly a momentous event.
I am speaking about that day, almost exactly fours ago, when then-US President Barack Obama – a Nobel Peace Prize winner, mind you – was just about to give the signal to launch an all-out military assault against the sovereign state of Syria. The reason? Washington said the Assad government had used chemical weapons to attack a Damascus suburb just weeks earlier. Never mind that Assad would have known full well that to carry out such an attack would mean political and national suicide, and that the use of chemical weapons would only have assisted the cause of the anti-government rebels, who were praying for American airstrikes on Assad. But I digress.
When the British House of Commons refused to give then-PM David Cameron permission to join the Americans in their latest war game, Obama suddenly got very cold feet. In a bid to save face, then Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly ‘misspoke’ when he said the US would call off an attack on Syria if Assad agreed to surrender all of his chemical weapons within a week.
Enter Russian diplomacy at its finest hour. What followed was a marathon series of meetings in Geneva, Switzerland between Foreign Ministers John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov that eventually resulted in an agreement that not only deterred the threat of war, but removed chemical weapons from Syria.
Lavrov said the agreement removed any potential use of force against Syria, while underscoring that deviations from the plan, including attacks on UN inspectors, would be brought to the UN Security Council, which would decide on further action.
At the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, then Secretary General, gave a glowing account of the US-Russia-Syria agreement, which also made Syria a signatory to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
This premier example of diplomacy on the part of Vladimir Putin and his administration shows that war can always be diverted so long as their exists the will between men and nations. Sadly, the United States has gone on to demonstrate an insatiable determination to interfere – illegally – in the internal affairs of Syria, going so far as to even launch brazen attacks on the Syrian military (perhaps most disturbingly, the US media actually praised Donald Trump following such attacks). Although Russia has also become involved militarily in Syria, it has only done so at the expressed invitation of Damascus to help President Assad rid his country of terrorist forces that the US-led Western forces failed to destroy.
In summary, given Vladimir Putin’s extraordinary efforts to bring about the conditions of peace both in Ukraine and in Syria, it would seem that he is the most fitting candidate to win a Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, the Western capitals would never see things that way, which only highlights the great schism that now separates Russia from the West, which has lost its ability to judge right from wrong, truth from deception.
The Nobel Peace Prize is presented by the King of Norway on December 10 each year.
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.
Read our Disclaimer/LegalStatement!
DonatetoSupportUs
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban upped the ante in his political fight against George Soros, the mega-rich financier and philanthropist who reportedly just ploughed $18 billion into his “Open Society” foundation, the controversial NGO that is seldom shy about manipulating domestic policy in Western capitals.Last week, Orban commented in an interview with Kossuth Radio that he has instructed his intelligence agencies to expose Soros-backed initiatives, which include opening up EU borders to mass migration, and the Hungarian nationals who support them both in Budapest and in Brussels.“By employing the national security services, the Soros network that strives to influence European ...
During the early 1960s, apartheid South African diplomats were increasingly concerned their country’s plummeting reputation would affect relations with America. In one notorious incident, of March 1960, South African police shot dead 69 black protesters in Sharpeville, a township about 40 miles from Johannesburg.Such atrocities sparked protests against the racist regime on the streets of England, America’s great ally, which surely did not go unnoticed in Washington. Aware of the changing climate, South Africa’s dignitaries pleaded with their American counterparts for continued assistance. They need not have worried that the earth’s dominant power would desert them.As long as the United ...
During the Albanian Muslim secessionist and separatist war in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija, Kosovo Serb civilians were targeted for murder and expulsion. December 14, 2010 marked the 12th year anniversary of the mass murders of six Kosovo Serbs in 1998 by Kosovo Albanian secessionists and separatists. The cold-blooded murder of the six youths was a horrific and shocking mass murder. The killers were Albanian Muslim separatists, suspected members of the KLA, which U.S. special envoy to the Balkans Robert Gelbard described in 1998 as “without any question, a terrorist group”: “I know a terrorist when I see ...
A former Islamist fighter in Syria recalls why he went to Syria, how easy it was to get there – and why he would go again, if he could.On his first trip abroad, he left with 400 euros in his pocket, a printed map from the internet and the belief that he was fulfilling his destiny in eyes of Allah. The destination was the frontline of the war in Syria, but his jihad ended faster than it started.Two years later, in a bar full of people in his hometown in northern Albania, Ebu Merjem stands out with his long beard ...
America is a country in which dollars count far more than voters do, and that’s what all of the data shows. And that’s a dictatorship by the richest.This kind of country, this kind of country, and this kind of country, get this kind of President. And the rulers blame it on the public, instead of on the billionaires, the actual rulers themselves (the behind-the-scenes rulers). These rulers selected the politicians and offered those to the public to select from in ‘elections’ — and they then blame the public for the choices that the public make, from amongst these bad final ...
Norway is a member of NATO and has close ties to the United States and Great Britain. The political, economic and bureaucratic elites are firmly integrated in transatlantic networks, a nexus of economic connections, think tanks, international institutions, media and a thousand other ties that bind. They tend to identify with the liberal wing of the empire, (i.e. the Democrats, not the Republicans), but will work with any US administration. The members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee are selected by the Norwegian parliament, and the Committee is nominally independent.Despite being considered – and where the population considers itself – a ...
As we can see from the local conflicts of the past few decades, terrorist groups are able to control large territories only if they get outside support and gain initial access to military infrastructure. During the 1990s, Chechen separatists were receiving weapons from Soviet troops stationed in the Chechen Republic, as well as assistance coming from across the Georgian border until the Russian forces managed to cut it off. The Kosovo separatists enjoyed the open support of the West and received regular arms supplies from Albania. The Syrian "liberation movements" have been fighting the legitimate Assad regime and its allied ...
Dechani monastery in Metochia - one of the most important shrines of Serbian Orthodox Church (14th century)The region of Kosovo & Metohija was a political center of mediaeval Serbia and makes the very essence of Serbian spiritual and cultural identity and statehood since the Middle Ages up today. The biggest and the most important number of Serbian Orthodox mediaeval monasteries and churches (for instance, Gračanica, Pećka Patrijaršija, Bogorodica Ljeviška and Visoki Dečani) are built exactly in Kosovo & Metohija and the headquarters of the Serbian Orthodox Church – Patriarchate established in 1346 was located (till 1766) in the city of ...
When most people think of Sweden, they think of IKEA furniture, depressing murder mysteries and a foreign policy of strict neutrality.Yet 400 years ago, Sweden was a major military power. Indeed, it was even an empire, a fact that must make today's Swedish leftists cringe.Under young King Gustavus Adolphus, a brilliant and innovative military commander, Sweden in the early 1600s became a sort of Nordic Israel (which must also make Swedish leftists cringe). Sweden was a poor, thinly populated nation that couldn't match the resources of larger rivals such as France and Russia.So, Gustavus Adolphus had to devise a more flexible, mobile ...
The full extent of the damage to international peace and security caused by the US-led Syrian strikes will take some time to become clear. But its impact on the very concept of legality in international affairs is already evident.Simply put, the most powerful county in the world and its chief satellites, the UK and France, have thrown the rule of law into the trash can. The only "law" now is the law of the jungle. There is no going back.Ironically, the attack itself was claimed by its perpetrators as enforcement of legality, not of its obliteration. For example, NATO Secretary-General ...
Is it a coincidence?In recent history, from the Vietnam war to the present, the month of March has been chosen by Pentagon and NATO military planners as the “best month” to go to war.With the exception of the War on Afghanistan (October 2001) and the 1990-91 Gulf War, all major US-NATO and allied led military operations over a period of more than half a century –since the invasion of Vietnam by US ground forces on March 8, 1965– have been initiated in the month of March.The Ides of March (Idus Martiae) is a day in the Roman calendar which broadly ...
History and geopoliticsThe extreme geopolitical importance of Russia in global politics and international relations is seen as the best from the very basic facts about Russian geography.Russian Federation is a state in North East Asia and East Europe which is bordering Norway and Finland in the north, Poland in the north-west, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the Baltics, Belarus, and Ukraine in the west, Georgia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus, and Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, and North Korea in the south. Russia’s maritime borders meet the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Arctic, and finally the Pacific Ocean. ...
Within 40 years, given current demographic trends, the white population in France and the rest of old Europe will recede, creating a Muslim majority, a French researcher says.Charles Gave, an economist, fund manager and political commentator, published his conclusions this month on the webpage of his think tank, Institute des Libertes. He writes of the “disappearance of the European populations” as native populations shrink and Muslims continue to exhibit a robust fertility rate.Mr. Gave, president of Gavekal Research, acknowledges that his decidedly unpolitically correct view may bring him scorn and possibly censorship. The political left generally protects Islam from criticism. ...
If the Trump phenomena showed anything, it showed the consensus reality the mainstream media attempted to create concerning Hillary’s certain victory, as well as the consensus reality erected for decades, is not omnipotent.In fact, the earliest days of mass print media were erected on a famous fraud known as the “Great Moon Hoax” of 1835 – something researcher Chris Kendall has long called attention to – wherein the “educated,” “elite” widely accepted the mainstream publications’ claim bat people inhabited the lunar surface.In our day, a similar hoax still reigns, as mainstream media is literally as credible as Weekly World News’ Bat Boy ...
The grandees of the Republican Party are on the ropes. Donald Trump has them by the balls, but, even without Trump, they would be in what Bush the Father would call deep “do-do.”Any Republican candidate for President whom two-thirds of the electorate could abide would be anathema to the one-third that Republicans have recruited into their rank and file. Mitt Romney was the final straw.The establishment’s situation is so pitiful that even Chris Christie is starting to look good to them. If his candidacy survives into the Spring, late night TV comedians will rejoice; others, not so much.Ted Cruz remains ...
Six Years Later, Kosovo Still WrongIn the early hours of March 24, 1999, NATO began the bombing of what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. For some reason, many in the targeted nation thought the name of the operation was “Merciful Angel.” In fact, the attack was code-named “Allied Force” – a cold, uninspired and perfectly descriptive moniker. For, however much NATO spokesmen and the cheerleading press spun, lied, and fabricated to show otherwise (unfortunately, with altogether too much success), there was nothing noble in NATO’s aims. It attacked Yugoslavia for the same reason then-Emperor Bill Clinton enjoyed a ...
With rare exception, the question of whether the atomic bombs were necessary to end World War Two is debated only deep within the safety of academic circles.Could a land invasion have been otherwise avoided? Would more diplomacy have achieved the same ends without the destruction of two cities? Could an atomic test on a deserted island have convinced the Japanese? Was the surrender instead driven primarily by the entry of the Soviets into the Pacific War, which, by historical accident, took place two days after Hiroshima—and the day before Nagasaki was immolated?But it is not only the history of the ...
On January 19th, 2016 on the bilateral meeting between Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and the official representatives of the European Jewish Congress the latter applied to Putin to take necessary steps for the sake to improve the generally bad position of the Jewish community on the Old Continent. Surprisingly, the President, not so much as a joke, invited both all the present-day European Jews and those Jews who left the USSR simply to immigrate to Russia.At the first glance, one can say – very gentle and even democratic move by the President. However, lets a little bit to analyze the ...
Greater Albania under Nazi GermanyDuring World War II, 35,000 to 40,000 Kosovo Albanians were recruited by Nazi Germany as part of the German occupation forces and security formations in Greater Albania, a state created by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini that included Kosovo-Metohija, western Macedonia, and territory from Serbia and Montenegro. In Albania, there were 30,000 Albanians who were in the German occupation forces. In 1941, the German occupation forces created a Kosovo Albanian Gendarmerie with headquarters in Kosovska Mitrovica. In 1944, these forces were incorporated into the Skanderbeg Nazi SS Division. In 1942, Balli Kombetar organization battalions were established ...
US President Theodore Roosevelt, a staunch imperialist and expansionist, engineered the illegal dismemberment of Colombia in 1903.The illegal US dismemberment and annexation of Serbian territory, the detachment, and dismemberment of Kosovo in 2008, parallels what occurred when the US illegally dismembered Columbia in 1903 in order to construct the Panama Canal.Outrage, shock, and uproar followed Roosevelt’s illegal detachment of Panama from Columbia in 1903. Many American leaders were outraged at the illegality, cynicism, and immorality of the dismemberment of Columbia.In the March 2, 1912 New York Times article “Hit at Roosevelt in Panama Inquiry; Senate Calls on Taft for All Records ...
Putin’s rise as a statesman of the first magnitude began, oddly enough, with the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 on the United States. Since that day, Washington has taken advantage of that national tragedy to achieve specific geopolitical ends, the majority of them – coincidentally or not – diametrically opposed to Russia’s own national security. Moscow, for its part, was expected to serve as nothing more participatory than a captive audience to the US war machine as it began its destruction tour through the Middle East, most notably in Afghanistan and Iraq.
known full well that to carry out such an attack would mean political and national suicide, and that the use of chemical weapons would only have assisted the cause of the anti-government rebels, who were praying for American airstrikes on Assad. But I digress.
