Mad or bad? Behind President Putin's justifications for war

"To know your enemy, you must become your enemy" – Sun Tzu, The Art of War
"In war, truth is the first casualty" - Aeschylus
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you." ― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

War rages in Ukraine. According to UN officials, as of May 12th, "About 14 million Ukrainianshave been forced from their homes—including more than six million who have fled the country—and at least 3,496 civilians have been killed since Russia began its invasion." Those numbers, even then, were considered an undercount, writes Joseph E Fallon..

WHY?

Is this war an act of Russian aggression launched without justification by a mad, bad, ageing, ill
President Putin? Or is it something else? On March 3 rd 2022, in an interview with the Italian
newspaper, Corriere Della Sera, Pope Francis suggested a something else. It was a response to
NATO provocation. "Maybe it was 'Nato barking at Russia's gate' that compelled Putin to
unleash the invasion of Ukraine. I have no way of telling whether his rage has been
provoked...but I suspect it was maybe facilitated by the West's attitude".

In his February 22, 2022 address to the people of Russia, President Putin stated: "It is a fact that
over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading
NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response
to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and
blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and
concerns. Its military machine is moving and, as I said, is approaching our very border ....[A]fter
the disintegration of the USSR, given the entire unprecedented openness of the new, modern
Russia, its readiness to work honestly with the United States and other Western partners, and its
practically unilateral disarmament, they immediately tried to put the final squeeze on us, finish us
off, and utterly destroy us."

Do the actions of the West, which Putin cited -- actions he later expanded to include alleged acts
of "genocide" against ethnic Russians in Ukraine, the threat posed by U.S. funding of Ukrainian
biological research on dangerous pathogens, and the allegation the U.S. has contingency plans to
employ migratory birds as biological weapons to carry such pathogens into Russia – contribute a
rational justification for a Russian pre-emptive strike on Ukraine?

Amongst relevant questions from a Russian point of view are :
"Is Russia's western border vulnerable to attack?"

Russia lacks any natural barriers that can protect its western border. The plain between the Baltic
Sea and Carpathian Mountains has provided a corridor through which Western powers have
invaded Russia -- the Poles in 1605, the Swedes in 1707, the French in 1812, and the Germans in

1914 and 1941. To Russia's south is Ukraine where enemy forces would have a 2,000 mile wide
"flat route straight to Moscow." Therefore, were Ukraine to be a member of NATO, there
would be a significant potential military threat to Russia's exposed agricultural, industrial, and
demographic heartland.

"Is the West's demand that Russia respect the inviolability of Ukraine's borders disingenuous?",

A joint statement issued by the European Council and European Commission in response to
Russia's invasion of Ukraine included: "We condemn in the strongest possible terms Russia's
unprecedented military aggression against Ukraine...We call on Russia to immediately cease the
hostilities, withdraw its military from Ukraine and fully respect Ukraine's territorial integrity,
sovereignty and independence."
Respect for the territorial integrity of states is a fundamental principle of international law. But
member states of the European Council and European Commission have violated that principle.
They were the ones to repudiate the 1975 Helsinki Accords by which "all states of NATO, the
then Warsaw Pact, and the neutral and non-aligned states of Europe agreed on...respect for the
sovereignty and territorial integrity of states; non-interference in their internal affairs and the
inviolability of borders." In the 1990s, these states violated the sovereignty, territorial integrity,
and inviolability of the borders of Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet
Union.

Western disingenuousness continued when NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg falsely
asserted: "Once again, despite our repeated warnings and tireless efforts to engage in diplomacy,
Russia has chosen the path of aggression against a sovereign and independent country."

As detailed in Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, "NATO-Russia Tensions: Putin Orders
Invasion of Ukraine", 01.03.2022: "On 17 December 2021, Moscow submitted two draft treaties
to stop the continuation of NATO's eastward expansion. At the same time, it wanted to prevent
the alliance from stationing troops on Russia's borders or deploying in European states long-
range missiles that could threaten Russia. To this end, Moscow demanded that NATO withdraw
its 2008 summit declaration, in which it held out the prospect of Ukraine and Georgia joining the
alliance. Instead, it should declare in legally binding terms that it will renounce any future
expansion -- especially in the post-Soviet space -- and withdraw troops stationed in Eastern
Europe after May 1997. In doing so, Moscow was invoking the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding
Act [in which NATO pledged it would not undertake any 'additional permanent stationing of
substantial combat forces.'] and the European Security Charter. In January 2022, the proposals
were discussed bilaterally with the US in Geneva as well as multilaterally in the NATO-Russia
Council and with the OSCE. The West rejected Russia's calls for an end to NATO
enlargement..."

"Did the West promise Gorbachev and Yeltsin that NATO would not expand eastward?"

A massive trove of documents reveals the governments of the U.S., the U.K., France, and
Germany lied repeatedly to Soviet President Gorbachev and later to Russian President Yeltsin
when they assured both men NATO would not expand to the east.

According to a 2009 investigative report by the German magazine, Spiegel: "After speaking with
many of those involved and examining previously classified British and German documents in
detail, SPIEGEL has concluded that there was no doubt that the West did everything it could to
give the Soviets the impression that NATO membership was out of the question for countries
like Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia."

In 2017, this was corroborated by the National Security Archive at George Washington
University. "Declassified documents from U.S. and Russian archives show that U.S. officials led
Russian President Boris Yeltsin to believe in 1993 that the Partnership for Peace was the
alternative to NATO expansion, rather than a precursor to it, while simultaneously planning for
expansion after Yeltsin's re-election bid in 1996 and telling the Russians repeatedly that the
future European security system would include, not exclude, Russia."

In the January 10, 2018 issue of The Nation, Dr. Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of
Russian Studies and Politics at New York University and Princeton, wrote: "...the invaluable
National Security Archive at George Washington University has established the historical truth
by publishing ...not only a detailed account of what Gorbachev was promised in 1990–91 but
the relevant documents themselves. The truth, and the promises broken, are much more
expansive than previously known: All of the Western powers involved—the US, the UK, France,
Germany itself—made the same promise to Gorbachev [NATO would not expand east of the
border of a reunited Germany] on multiple occasions and in various emphatic
ways...[implanting] in at least one generation of the Russian policy elite the conviction that the
broken promise to Gorbachev represented characteristic American 'betrayal and deceit.'...Putin
put it bluntly: 'They duped us, in the full sense of this word.'"

In 1999, NATO began a 20 year eastward expansion to the western border of Russia,
incorporating former Warsaw Pact countries and the three Soviet Baltics republics. Bringing
NATO within one hundred miles of St. Petersburg; Russia's second largest city (population 5
million).

This was complemented by the EU in 2004 when it initiated a separate decade long expansion to
Russia's western border economically integrating into the West the former Warsaw Pact
countries and Soviet republics politically and militarily incorporated into NATO.

At the same time, NATO and the EU also extended their influence across the southern border
of Russia with "partnership" programs with the three former Soviet Transcaucasian republics
(1994), the five former Soviet Central Asian republics (1994, Tajikistan 2002), and Mongolia
(2012).

With the U.S. and Canada to Russia's north and the U.S. and Japan, "NATO's longest-standing
partner outside Europe" to Russia's east, NATO encirclement of Russia was complete.

"To outside observers,...Russia's retreat and surrender to post–Cold War, post-Soviet realities
seem complete. Some even wondered whether there would soon be a 'world without Russia'".

Is this then NATO's objective in its relentless drive to the east -- create a "world without
Russia"?

"Has the West called for abolishing Russia?"

In The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic
Imperatives, the late Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had inter alia been President Carter's
National Security Advisor, advocated Russia, while weak and vulnerable, be erased from the
map.

Dr. Brzezinski believed even after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia remained an eternal
enemy, an existential threat to the West. His solution -- a variation on a Carthaginian peace --
eliminate the threat by eliminating the country. He proposed Russia be replaced by a loose
confederation "composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern
Republic...A sovereign Ukraine is a critically important component of such a policy..."

"Would an independent Ukraine aligned westwards destroy Russia and a Russian identity?"

Dr. Brzezinski envisioned an independent Ukraine as the means to abolish the Russian nation as
well as the Russian state. For an independent Ukraine would undermine 1,000 years of Russian
history compelling "all Russians to rethink the nature of their own political and ethnic identity".
The "redefinition of 'What is Russia and where is Russia' will...require a wise and firm Western
posture. The political and economic stabilization of the new post-Soviet states [in particular,
Ukraine] is a major factor in necessitating Russia's historical self-redefinition."
Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski's geostrategic concepts are shared and promoted by other individuals
and institutions in the West . He was "active in many establishment foreign policy institutions,
such as the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Bilderberg meetings...with the backing of
David Rockefeller, he helped to found the Trilateral Commission..."
"Overextending and Unbalancing Russia", is a 2019 report issued by the RAND Corporation, a
U.S. think tank that "operates three federally funded research and development centers
sponsored by the Department of Defense and one sponsored by the Department of Homeland
Security." It states "Despite...vulnerabilities and anxieties, Russia remains a powerful country
that still manages to be a U.S. peer competitor...Th[is] work builds on the concept of long-term
strategic competition developed during the Cold War...The new report applies this concept to
today's Russia.
A team of RAND experts developed economic, geopolitical, ideological, informational, and
military options and qualitatively assessed them in terms of their likelihood of success..." It

"comprehensively examines nonviolent, cost-imposing options that the United States and its
allies could pursue across economic, political, and military areas to stress -- overextend and
unbalance -- Russia's economy and armed forces and the regime's political standing at home and
abroad."

"Were the 2004 and 2014 'revolutions' in Ukraine coups against internationally recognized pro-
Russian Ukrainian governments?"

In his 2007 book, The New Cold War: Revolutions, Rigged Elections and Pipeline Politics in the
Former Soviet Union, Mark MacKinnon, "writes, 'with the Ukrainian opposition—jointly led by
Tymoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko, the former central banker—signaling clearly at the end of
2003 that it wanted western help in overthrowing Kuchma, ["Washington had become unhappy
with President Leonid Kuchma who was viewed as too independent." For one thing, he
"extended the lease for Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Crimea."] George Soros and the various
groups funded by the National Endowment for Democracy went to work making it
happen'...With the approval of the [Canadian]Prime Minister's Office, Liberal MP Borys
Wrzesnewskyj, a Canadian election observer, promised the deputy head of Ukraine's Central
Elections Commission, Yaroslav Davydovych, and his family safe passage to Canada if he did
'the right thing' by disputing the results showing Yanukovych winning by a mere 2.7 percentage
points."
Viktor Yushchenko thus cecame president of Ukraine. "But Ukrainians soured quickly on
Yushchenko's neoliberal policies and his bickering with former ally Tymoshenko. Yanukovych's
[pro-Russian] Party of Regions won parliamentary elections in 2006 and he was elected president
in 2010.
Yanukovych had been "elected in balloting that international observers considered reasonably
free and fair—about the best standard one can hope for outside the mature Western
democracies." But in November 2013 when he "rejected an explicitly anti-Moscow EU
association agreement" accepting a Russian offer instead.
On March 1, 2013, as Eric Zuesse reported in 2018 in Modern Diplomacy, "the first 'tech camp'
to train far-right Ukrainians how to organize online the mass-demonstrations against
Yanukovych, was held inside the U.S. Embassy in Kiev on that day..... over nine months before
the Maidan demonstrations to overthrow Ukraine's democratically elected President started, on
20 November 2013."
In Foreign Affairs, (September/October 2014), Professor John Mearsheimer, R. Wendell
Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago,
wrote: "Washington backed the coup. [Obama's Assistant Secretary of State for European and
Eurasian Affairs, now Biden's Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria] Nuland and
Republican Senator John McCain participated in antigovernment demonstrations...As a leaked
telephone recording [January 27, 2014] revealed, Nuland had advocated regime change and
wanted the Ukrainian politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk to become prime minister in the new
government, which he did."
In his report, Eric Zuesse pointed out the phone call, during which Nuland quipped "Fuck the
EU", "occurred 24 days before Ukraine's President Victor Yanukovych was overthrown on
February 20th, and 30 days before the new person to head Ukraine's Government, Yatsenyuk,
became officially appointed to rule..."

In his analysis of the coup, Professor Mearsheimer commented on the composition of the new
regime. "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 labelled neofascists.
Then there was, as Eric Zuesse reported, "the 26 February 2014 phone-conversation between
the EU's Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton and her agent in Ukraine investigating whether the
overthrow had been a revolution or instead a coup; he was Estonia's Foreign Minister, Urmas
Paet, and he told her that he found that it had been a coup and that 'somebody from the new
coalition' had engineered it ...but they proceeded immediately to ignore that matter".
On September 1, 2014, seven months after the coup, Radio Liberty, "a United States
government funded organization that broadcasts and reports news, information, and analysis to
countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Caucasus, and the Middle East", posted an online
article by Dmytro Sinchenko -- "In anticipation of World War III. How the world will change".
The article called for the West to launch a war against Moscow for the purpose of completely
dismembering Russia. It provided a map of a future Russia with all of southern Russia east to
the Caspian Sea going to Ukraine.
It asserted "The world powers, in fact, have only one option - war within Russia itself. People's
uprising, democratic revolution and national liberation wars of various republics. Putin will not
fire nuclear weapons on his territory. There are many territories in Russia that would like to gain
independence from Moscow, or even join another state. The collapse of Russia will finally put an
end to the bipolar system of the world, but will give birth to a multipolar system...Over time,
the EU will include the states formed on the site of the European part of Russia."

"Do 'Nazis' have influence over the Ukrainian government?"

In a 2019 article for The Nation, Lev Golinkin wrote "There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the
Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored
glorification of Nazi collaborators. These stories of Ukraine's dark nationalism aren't coming out
of Moscow; they're being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe
(RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal
Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House,
which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the
country as far-right gangs operate with impunity..." In 2019, Kiev announced "the neo-Nazi
unit [the National Squad] will be monitoring polls in next month's presidential election."
On April 13, 2022, in an interview with Ottawa Citizen, Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center in Israel said, "There is no question that there are neo-Nazis in different forms in
Ukraine, whether they are in the Azov regiment or other organisations.." Zuroff dismissed
claims these 'allegations' are part of a Russian disinformation campaign. "It's not Russian
propaganda, far from it," he said.

"Has 'genocide' been committed against ethnic Russians in Ukraine?"

Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
defines genocide to include acts "(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group."

On May 2, 2018, Stephen Cohen wrote in The Nation, "...the pogrom-like burning to death of
ethnic Russians and others in Odessa shortly later in 2014 reawakened memories of Nazi
extermination squads in Ukraine during World War II has been all but deleted from the
American mainstream narrative...storm troop-like assaults on gays, Jews, elderly ethnic Russians,
and other 'impure' citizens are widespread throughout Kiev-ruled Ukraine, along with torchlight
marches reminiscent of those that eventually inflamed Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s.
And that the police and official legal authorities do virtually nothing to prevent these neofascist
acts or to prosecute them."
The Ukrainian government did not orchestrate such acts, which violate Article II, section b, but
by not protecting victims or prosecuting perpetrators, they become complicit. A possible
explanation was provided by Radio Free Europe. On February 13, 2019, it reported "Across
social media, Ukrainian police and law enforcement officials are apologizing for one officer's slur
aimed at far-right ultranationalists and making it known: They, too, are "#Banderites." Or, to be
clear, supporters of militant Ukrainian nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis during
World War II. National Police chief Serhiy Knyazev says he is one. So does Interior Ministry and
National Police spokesman Artem Shevchenko. Interior Ministry adviser Zoryan Shkyryak is,
too."

"Did Ukraine renege on implementing the 2015 Minsk II peace agreement with Russia?"

The Minsk II agreement was signed in 2015 to end the civil war in the Donbass region of eastern
Ukraine that erupted in reaction to the 2014 coup in Kyiv. The agreement, the result of
negotiations among Russia, Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE), France and Germany, "...consisted of a package of measures, including a ceasefire,
withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line, release of prisoners of war, constitutional
reform in the Ukraine granting self-government to certain areas of Donbas and restoring control
of the state border to the Ukrainian government."
On April 18, 2022, independent journalist, Aaron Mate wrote, "The far-right threats to Zelensky
undoubtedly thwarted a peace agreement [implementation of the 2015 Minsk II agreement] that
could have prevented the Russian invasion. Just two weeks before Russian troops entered
Ukraine, the New York Times noted that Zelensky 'would be taking extreme political risks even
to entertain a peace deal' with Russia, as his government 'could be rocked and possibly
overthrown' by far-right groups if he 'agrees to a peace deal that in their minds gives too much
to Moscow.'"
The West apparently did nothing to protect Kyiv from the threat of a coup and ensure Ukraine
implemented the Minsk II agreement. In Responsible Statecraft, April 9, 2022, Ted Snider wrote,
"in the words of Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of
Kent, '...neither the U.S. nor the EU put serious pressure on Kyiv to fulfil its part of the [Minsk
II] agreement... Instead, now the U.S. is clearly not interested in peace negotiations — it is
waiting for a Russian defeat, however many Ukrainian lives are lost in the process.' Though the
U.S. officially endorsed Minsk, Anatol Lieven, senior research fellow on Russia and Europe at
the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told this writer, 'they did nothing to push
Ukraine into actually implementing it.'"

"Does the U.S. fund biological research laboratories in Ukraine?".

On March 11, 2022, the U.S. Defense Department released a Fact Sheet entitled "The
Department of Defense's Cooperative Threat Reduction Program - Biological Threat Reduction

Program Activities in Ukraine". It states, "The United States, through BTRP, has invested
approximately $200 million in Ukraine since 2005, supporting 46 Ukrainian laboratories, health
facilities, and diagnostic sites... to reduce the risk posed by the former Soviet Union's illegal
biological weapons program..."
If the purpose for the past 17 years has been biological threat reduction, why on March 11, 2022
did Reuters report "The World Health Organization advised Ukraine to destroy high-threat
pathogens housed in the country's public health laboratories to prevent 'any potential spills' that
would spread disease among the population..."?
The answer is given on the U.S. Embassy website. "The U.S. Department of Defense's
Biological Threat Reduction Program...accomplishes its bio-threat reduction mission through
development of a bio-risk management culture; international research partnerships; and partner
capacity for enhanced bio-security, bio-safety, and bio-surveillance measures." Not destruction
of dangerous pathogens - just management of biological agent production.
Released December 2, 2015 under a Freedom of Information Act request, the CIA document,
"The Biological Chemical Warfare Threat", states "Virtually all the equipment. technology. and
materials needed for biological agent production are dual use....Because of the dual-use nature
of BW [biological warfare] research and equipment, any BW program could be easily disguised as
a legitimate enterprise."
Furthermore, Article VII, Section B, of the 2005 Agreement between the Defense Department
of the United States and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine Concerning Cooperation in the Area
of Prevention of Proliferation of Technology, Pathogens and Expertise that could be Used in the
Development of Biological Weapons requires "Information marked or designated by the U.S.
Department of Defense as 'sensitive' should be withheld from public disclosure by the
Government of Ukraine".
Testifying to Congress on March 11, 2022, Biden Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs,
Victoria Nuland, stated "Ukraine has biological research facilities, which, in fact, we are quite
concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working
with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into
the hands of Russian forces should they approach."
As U.S. Senator Marco Rubio asked, how can there be things in the labs that are dangerous, but
they not be weapon labs?

"Has the U.S. military sought to use migratory bird as biological weapons?."

The U S Embassy website states its active research projects include: "Risk Assessment of
Selected Avian EDPs [embryonic developmental period] Potentially Carried by Migratory Birds
over Ukraine"
According to the National Institute of Health, "Wild birds are important to public health
because they carry emerging zoonotic pathogens, [an infectious disease that is transmitted
between species from animals to humans] either as a reservoir host or by dispersing infected
arthropod vectors. In addition, bird migration provides a mechanism for the establishment of
new endemic foci of disease at great distances from where an infection was acquired.."

Research on dangerous pathogens does not necessarily make such research a weapons project.
As a 1998 working paper of the Center for Counterproliferation explained, "A biological agent is
not necessarily a biological weapon. Only if there is a mechanism for spreading the agent is it
transformed into a weapon. Thus, a pathogen growing on a petri dish is not a weapon, or even a
threat, because it is unlikely to infect anyone...In some cases, the release method need not be
very sophisticated. If the agent is highly contagious, infecting a single person or animal may be
sufficient to start an epidemic."
"Operation Starbrite" was a secret U.S. military biological weapons program concealed within a
private, ecological research project. From 1961 to 1970, the U.S. Defense Department funded
the Smithsonian Institution's "Pacific Ocean Bird Project". As detailed in The Washington Post,
May 12, 1985, it "spanned eight years, cost the Pentagon $3 million, and involved dozens of
Smithsonian staffers and Defense Department workers. From the first, the Smithsonian knew
the contract was with the controversial Fort Detrick biological warfare research centre in
Frederick, Md. And even that fact was classified secret. The Smithsonian was prohibited from
divulging anything about its work without clearance from Fort Detrick."
"The leaders of this scholarly band of curators and ecologists reported their findings to military
scientists whose interest was not birds but biological weapons...to know if sea birds could be
used as carriers of biological weapons, winging deadly disease across borders..." The Pentagon
found: "Some Pacific oceanic birds...can 'migrate tremendous distances and reach target areas
with about 97 percent accuracies'...In military terms, birds could be 'avian vectors of disease.'"

CONCLUSION

Twenty-four years ago, in a 1998 interview with The New York Times, George F. Kennan,
former U.S. Ambassador to Stalin's Soviet Union and architect of the U.S. policy of Soviet
containment, warned NATO expansion would be a "strategic blunder of potentially epic
proportions...I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was
threatening anybody else... Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then
[the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are.''
On March 7, 2022, two weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ted Galen Carpenter of the
Cato Institute wrote how "In his 2014 memoir, Duty, Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary
of defense in both Bush's administration and Barack Obama's, conceded that 'trying to bring
Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching.' That initiative, he concluded, was a
case of 'recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests.'"

Perception is reality. The answer to the eleven questions, answers which come from Western
sources, is the perception of reality being acted upon by Moscow. Those answers make a
negotiated peace in the near future seems unlikely.

Joseph E Fallon is a Senior Research Associate with the U K Defence Forum