US still considering military option against Russia: Analyst

The United States is still considering the military option against Russia over Ukraine, according to an analyst in Belgrade, Serbia.

Joaquin Flores, geostrategist and director at Center for Syncretic Studies, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Sunday while commenting on US President Barack Obama’s claim that Washington is not seeking a military confrontation with Russia over the Ukraine crisis.

“I’ve been very clear that it would not be effective to engage in a military conflict with Russia on this issue,” Obama said during his visit to India on Sunday.

Flores said, “At first this might sound like a positive development.”

But “it must be understood in context,” he added. “Peeling back the layers of doublespeak and hypocrisy, we find that since the coup that the US launched in Ukraine about a year ago, it has been the US that has spearheaded the present military conflict there today.”

“It has been the US that has been funding and supporting the various extremist elements…in Ukraine,” he added.

Last year, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland disclosed that Washington has “invested” about $5 billion in “promoting democracy” in Ukraine over the past two decades.

In February 2014, Nuland visited Ukraine and held meetings with anti-Kremlin politicians who organized anti-government protests that led to the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych, the country’s democratically-elected president.

“It has been not only the $5 billion at the start of this, publically admitted by US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, but much much more.” Flores said.

He added that the so-called nonprofit US organizations, such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and private NGOs are using color-revolution tactics in Ukraine.

“From all of this we can see that the military option is not only off the table, it is an option, and not the last the option, but for the US often the first option,” he stated.

The US and its allies accuse Moscow of sending troops into eastern Ukraine in support of the pro-Russian forces. Moscow has long denied involvement in Ukraine's crisis.

The Kremlin has described Washington’s foreign policy on Ukraine as “aggressive” which “fails to meet present-day realities and demonstrates that the United States actually wants to dominate the world.”

According to the commander of United States Army Europe, the US military plans to send troops to Ukraine this spring to train four companies in the Ukrainian National Guard.

The US has already earmarked $19 million to help build the Ukrainian National Guard. Lt. Gen Frederick Ben Hodges led a US command delegation to Kiev on Wednesday to begin evaluating the situation in Ukraine’s restive south-eastern regions.

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