Much to the chagrin of Obama and Cameron, the governments of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France concluded a peace agreement in Minsk on 12 February.
That it was concluded at all was down to three factors. First, the Kiev government was desperate for a ceasefire. The eastern Ukraine resistance forces have pushed the Kiev forces, fascist militias and mercenaries out of the Donbass/Donetsk region.
Second, the main warmongers – the EU Commissioners and the US, British, Polish and other Eastern European governments – were not invited to the peace talks.
And lastly, the peace agreement came about because Russia called for the meeting. It is Russia that wants peace.
The US wants to isolate and weaken Russia, and to achieve that it is willing to fight to the last European. It wants a war on the cheap, waged by others.
So it spreads the big lie that Russia is an aggressor, in a continuation of the cold war rhetoric that characterised the second half of the 20th century.
But just look at the facts. Even the Chief of Ukraine’s General Staff, Colonel-General Viktor Muzhenko had to admit on 29 January, “Currently the Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian army.”
All NATO’s surveillance has been unable to find evidence that Russia has sent “hundreds of heavy weapons across the frontier”, as alleged by human rights warmonger Samantha Power, the US Ambassador to the UN.
ʻThe US wants to isolate and weaken Russia, and to achieve that it is willing to fight to the last European. It wants a war on the cheap, waged by others.ʼ
The US, meanwhile, has been stoking the flames of war. President Obama signed into law a Ukraine Freedom Support Act on 19 December. This provided for increased sanctions against Russia. It also authorised $350 million of military aid to Ukraine. It designated Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia as major non-NATO allies, to speed up the transfer of military equipment. And it authorised $10 million a year for 2015, 2016 and 2017 to “counter Russian propaganda” in the countries of the former Soviet Union.
Now, in a further move, 30,000 NATO troops are to be deployed in the region in what NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called “the biggest reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the cold war”.
Meanwhile, Kiev’s assaults have driven an estimated 1,500,000 Russian-speaking Ukrainians from their homes. Kiev has blocked all Eastern citizens’ social security and pensions, frozen their bank accounts and cut off their electricity.
The agreement hasn’t stopped NATO from expanding military aid for the junta in Kiev. A US State Department spokesperson said the Obama administration was still prepared to arm the Ukrainian regime.
This is the intentional and immediate sabotage of the peace agreement, already violated by the EU and the US allowing their client regime in Kiev to ratchet up tensions. Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko bluntly stated, “there is no ceasefire, and so there is no precondition for a pull-back of heavy weapons.” Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh announced that his private army and the Azov Battalion will ignore the agreement and fight on.
The US has few enough allies in its warmongering. Now it is reduced to relying on Cameron, a humiliation in itself. Cameron for his part once again has gone red in the face and “warned” Vladimir Putin that there will be “consequences”. Defence secretary Phil Hammond has had meetings with US vice president John Kerry. They share the same objective: finding someone else to die for their strategic ambitions.