The war between Russia and Ukraine, which was launched on February 23rd, is the culmination of tensions that have been building over the United States’ insistence that Ukraine be admitted to NATO. Russia opened a military operation in Ukraine on Wednesday with air and missile attacks on Ukrainian military facilities before troops and tanks rolled across the borders from the north, east and south.
NATO, while supposedly a “defensive” military alliance, has operated as a tool of US imperialism since its inception in 1949. Since the late ’90s, NATO has steadily added new members, including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and several Baltic states. The expansion of NATO serves America’s interests, adding to its arsenal of vassal states that have traded subservience for military protection. Many of these new admissions have been encroaching further and further toward Russian territory. The threat of Ukraine’s admission to NATO was the the final straw for Russia, as the countries share a border, as well as close linguistic, cultural and historical ties.
Russia’s attack on Ukraine was clearly provoked by this NATO expansionism, and the hypocrisy of US corporate media and politicians in decrying Russia’s invasion of a sovereign nation is appalling when considering their support for America’s invasions and military attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and Libya in recent years. The United States often cloaks its imperialist aggression under the guise of humanitarianism, while acting as the world’s self-appointed police force, spreading the values of white supremacy by force and massacring Black and Brown people in the name of a “war on terror.” America’s invasions have been justified by egregious lies, as in the case of the so-called “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq that never really existed.
The CIA training of Ukrainian paramilitaries also echoes the US’s covert operations to ensure the establishment and continuation of “friendly” right-wing regimes in countries around the world, while orchestrating coups, assassinating democratically elected leaders and training death squads in countries like Chile, El Salvador, Congo, Nicaragua, and Honduras. The CIA secret intensive training program for Ukrainian special forces began in 2015, and has intensified under the Biden administration. Many of Ukraine’s paramilitaries, including the Azov Battalion, are overt neo-Nazis. The Azov Battalion, who wear Nazi symbols on their uniforms, are officially enrolled as a unit of the Ukrainian National Guard.