Trump’s attempts to initiate a peace process designed to bring an end to the war in Ukraine have been met with hysteria by Starmer and EU leaders. On Sunday Starmer met with EU leaders to frantically draw up a “ceasefire” plan which actually seeks to continue the proxy war in Ukraine.
Starmer’s “ceasefire” plan is full of contradictions. On one hand, it announces billions more to support Ukraine and increases in defence spending, while committing UK/EU troops to act as “peacekeepers” once Russia has agreed to a ceasefire. However, there is no mention at all of how a “ceasefire” is to be achieved. Starmer’s plan is completely oblivious to the fact that Russia has repeatedly stated that under no circumstances will it tolerate UK/EU troops in Ukraine. Further to this, Russia has stated that it is not willing to engage in peace negotiations with bad faith actors such as the UK and the EU.
Let us put to one side the fact that Russia is quite clearly winning its attritional war with Ukraine. Don’t take my word for it. The Ukrainian war mapper, Deep State, who has close links to the Ukrainian high command, produces daily reports which reveal Russian forces advancing on every sector across the 1,000km front. Let’s put to one side the fact that Russia’s military industrial complex can outproduce the whole of NATO when it comes to critical armaments such as artillery shells and air defence missiles. The 2023 leak of Pentagon papers by a US airforce man revealed this to be the case.
Let’s focus on the key issue which is Russia’s refusal to ever trust the UK/EU ever again. This stems from the fact that between 2014 and 2022 there were numerous occasions when the war in Ukraine could have been stopped. Sadly, the Europeans chose to encourage Kiev in its war against the Russian speaking people of the Donbass. At this point, some readers may say that’s just not true and Putin is an evil warmonger who seeks to conquer all of Europe. However, the historical record reveals that the war in Ukraine was started by the Kiev regime in April 2014 and then proceeded to ignore all attempts at ending the conflict with the connivance of EU/UK leaders.
Let us go back to the Maidan coup of February 2014 and examine facts that the Western media does not want you to remember or know at all. On February 21st 2014, a day before the coup, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanakovich and the opposition, mediated by Germany, Poland and France, reached an agreement intended to stop the bloodshed and pave the way for a political solution to the crisis. After Yanakovich ordered the withdrawal of police from the centre of Kiev, neo-Nazis groups such as the Right Sector and Svboda led the storming of government buildings. The next day the armed opposition on Maidan Square announced the removal of Viktor Yanakovich as President and that a “government of the victors” would be formed. The West turned a blind eye to all the violations of the previous das agreement and hurried to declare a “change of power” in Ukraine.
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State flag of Ukraine behind a wall of anonymous protesters in Kyiv, Ukraine. Events of February 18, 2014 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)
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On February 24, 2014 the new “government” through the Rada revoked the law which gave protected status to the Russian language. This one act led to a sharp polarisation of Ukrainian society creating the pre-conditions for an armed civil war. The Russian-speaking regions of Southeastern Ukraine reacted with great fear and initiated occupations of government buildings in cities from Kharkov down to Donetsk. Alongside this, was the spontaneous formation of popular militia units.
Kiev responded to this uprising of the Russian-speaking regions by declaring the inhabitants of the region to be being guilty of “state treason and terrorism”. On the 13th April 2014, the Kiev authorities launched the so-called “Anti-Terrorist Operation” in the East of the country. The Kiev government ignored the demands of Russian speakers in the Donbass to speak their native language and to teach their children in it. Kiev sent thousands of troops, led by neo-Nazi units such as the Azov Brigade, and war planes to attack the Russian-speaking cities of the Donbass. Throughout the rest of 2014 a blood civil war raged in the Donbass which led to thousands of civilian casualties
During the course of the fighting in 2014, the Ukrainian army (AFU) suffered a series of drubbings which culminated in the devastating defeat at the battle of Debaltsavo. This defeat led to the EU demanding that there be a ceasefire in order to save the AFU from annihilation. On the 12th February 2015, the leaders of France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia signed “Minsk Two” aimed at resolving the civil war in Ukraine. Following this, the UN Security council on 17th February 2015 endorsed the peace treaty and called on all parties to ensure their full implementation, “including the comprehensive ceasefire providing for their in”.
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The leaders of Belarus, Russia, Germany, France, and Ukraine at the 11–12 February 2015 summit in Minsk, Belarus (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)
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The OSCE sent ceasefire monitors to the Donbass. Its daily reports from 2015 to late February in 2022 revealed hundreds of ceasefire violations by the Ukrainian armed forces. Both former French President Francois Hollande and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel have admitted that the Minsk agreements were never meant to bring peace to Ukraine. There were a way to give Ukraine time to build up it’s military power. In an interview with the German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgeneniezeitung, Hollande said “the time given to Ukraine by the Minsk agreements allowed it to increase its combat readiness.”
So from 2014 to February 2022, civil war raged unabated in Eastern Ukraine. During this savage fighting over 10,000 civilians died mainly in Russia speaking cities such as Donetsk and Lugansk.
In 2021, Zelensky announced his withdrawal from the Minsk agreements and ordered the Ukrainian army to amass over 100,000 troops on the borders of the Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts. On 24th February 2022, Russian troops entered Ukraine from multiple directions. A week later Zelensky entered the Istanbul negotiations to bring the war to a close. The Istanbul Agreements would have enabled Ukraine to retain control over the Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts in their entirety. However, in April 2022, Zelensky at the behest of Joe Biden and Boris Johnson withdrew from the Istanbul Agreements
This paved the way for full scale attritional war between Russia, Ukraine and it’s Western sponsors. When you take all of this into account, it is no surprise to hear the Kremlin say it is unwilling to engage in peace negotiations with the E/UK nor will it accept European troops on Ukrainian territory. Starmer’s “ceasefire” plan is totally divorced for the aforementioned historical realities and thus it is condemned to be not worth the paper it’s been written on. If Starmer and the EU have their way the war in Ukraine will continue indefinitely.
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Dr. Leon Tressell is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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