The man who destroyed Ukraine

Ukraine reminds me of a vulnerable youngster who has been groomed by an older, sexual predator in order to fulfil their own perverted and twisted desires. The abuse is often only revealed after the event has caused irrecoverable damage to said victim. Like all grooming cases, the relationship between predator and victim is completely one sided and benefits only one party.

This is where we found ourselves today with modern day Ukraine, with the USA playing the part of groomer.

Let's turn the clock back all the way to 2014. The President of Ukraine was Viktor Yanukovych. Realising that aggravating Russia would be a big mistake, Yanukovych made the smart move not to become a NATO appendage, which was (and still is) a red line for the Russian leadership.

Obviously, this did not please the US State department. Enter Victoria Nuland. In 2014 she was the Assistant Secretary of State, she helped to orchestrate the Maidan colour revolution which removed Yanukovych from power and replaced him with the more Western leading Petro Poroshenko. Nuland was famously caught on mic saying "Fuck the EU", in response to possible concerns by European countries.

Problems started in 2014, when Ukraine started shelling the Russian speaking Donbas region. Russia showed restraint, despite this obvious provocation. As part of the Minsk 2 agreement, which was comprehensively approved by the UN, a peace settlement was supposed to be in the offing, yet the US confidently ordered Ukraine to simply ignore the deal.

Again Russia did nothing...all this time, their demands and concerns were systematically being ignored. Fast forward to December 2021 Putin put forward a plan to enshrine Russian security guarantees, thereby preventing any further escalation in the already volatile situation. The American's response? Zero, zilch, nothing. It was a calculated move, designed to goad Russia into a preemptive attack, framing them to be the aggressor. Simply put, Putin had no choice, Ukraine had been taken over by a far right, Neo Nazi ultra nationalist faction that was extremely anti Russian in nature. All the while, it was being armed, funded and trained by NATO. What else was Russia to do?

The rest as they say is history. In the early phase of the conflict, Zelensky apparently offered neutrality to Russia to end the conflict, but this was overruled by the Americans. How true this is I don't know.

Even if the US had instructed Zelensky to backtrack, he would have done better to ignore that request. Perhaps NATO had convinced him that with enough backing, he could win the war against the much bigger military machine of Russia.

Zelensky missed a huge chance when he became president. Rather than pander to the Neo Nazi/NATO faction, Ukraine could have become the Switzerland of Eastern Europe. Just imagine, a neutral state, that could have done plenty of business with both Russia and the EU, they could have been twice as rich. Picking sides was a fatal mistake, not only for Ukraine, but also potentially for Zelensky himself. He may well soon be ousted as the leader of his country.

Ukraine, or what's left of it, has been completely destroyed. The economy is in tatters, the armed forces decimated, and tens of thousands of Ukrainian (and foreign mercenaries) troops have been slaughtered in the Russian meat grinder. This isn't Iraq, or Syria or some other weak enemy NATO took on. Unfortunately, Ukrainians are now learning, as Professor Mearsheimer warned a decade ago, that they have well and truly been led down the garden path with nothing to show for their sacrifices.

The real tragedy is that all of this could have been avoided had Zelensky stuck to his guns and ignored American pressure. Rather than sue for peace while he still can, he somehow thinks he can still recover from a catastrophic loss. The longer he holds out, the less leverage they will have at the negotiating table. Zelensky will go down as one of the worst leaders in post Soviet Ukrainian history.

By the time the dust settles in this conflict, his country will be a shell of what it once was. Around 70,000 dead (optimistic estimates) and $50 billion in aid that has either been destroyed by Russia or outright stolen by corrupt officials. Together with Afghanistan and Iraq, Ukraine completes the hat trick of most pointless wars ever fought by the United States in the 21st Century.