An American academic and political analyst has said that Washington’s insistence on NATO enlargement to Ukraine has made the country “a victim of unachievable US military aspirations.”
In an article, titled “The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace,” Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs wrote that the Ukraine war was provoked by the United States and President Joe Biden played a personal role in it.
“The Biden administration has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the Ukraine War started with an unprovoked attack by Russia on Ukraine on February 24, 2022,” he wrote in the article published this week.
“In fact, the war was provoked by the US in ways that leading US diplomats anticipated for decades in the lead-up to the war, meaning that the war could have been avoided and should now be stopped through negotiations,” he added.
Sachs, who is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, commented that “the relentless US push to expand NATO,” was one of the “two main US provocations” that precipitated the war.
“The first was the US intention to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia in order to surround Russia in the Black Sea region by NATO countries (Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia, in counterclockwise order),” he stated.
“The second was the US role in installing a Russophobic regime in Ukraine by the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014,” he added.
The Columbia University professor explained that the “shooting war in Ukraine began with Yanukovych’s overthrow nine years ago, not in February 2022 as the US government, NATO, and the G7 leaders would have us believe.”
Sachs wrote that “Biden and his foreign policy team refuse to discuss these roots of the war,” because it would expose that Biden played a “personal role in the war as a participant in the overthrow of Yanukovych.”
The academic added that before that Biden was “a staunch backer of the military-industrial complex and very early advocate of NATO enlargement.”
‘Who, exactly, are Biden's sponsors?’
Commenting to the Press TV website on Friday, New York-based journalist and commentator Don Debar said, “It would also raise the fundamental question, which is this: Who, exactly, are Biden's sponsors?”
“Who are the people who shepherded him to the pinnacle of the US government, despite the fact that he has never had a national constituency of support?” he asked.
“Who placed him in the Senate in 1973 and helped him find his way to the various committees that allowed him to help bring us to this point of war with Russia, following the most aggressive foreign policy towards Russia and China and any other targets of US corporate imperialists? DeBar further asked.
Russia began what it described as a "special military operation" in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 as part of a national security measure against the persisting eastern advance of the US-led NATO military alliance.
Moscow also said the military operation was aimed at defending the pro-Russia population in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk against persecution by Kiev, and also to "de-Nazify" Ukraine.
“The key to peace in Ukraine is through negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality and NATO non-enlargement,” Professor Sachs wrote.
“The Biden administration’s insistence on NATO enlargement to Ukraine has made Ukraine a victim of misconceived and unachievable US military aspirations. It’s time for the provocations to stop, and for negotiations to restore peace to Ukraine,” he concluded.