Prelude to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

"There is not an inherent contradiction between a Ukraine that has longstanding historic and cultural ties to Russia and a modern Ukraine that wants to integrate more closely with Europe... This need not be mutually exclusive."

"This comes as violence has erupted in Ukraine over the last week, killing 82 protesters who were upset that former President Viktor Yanukovych blocked the country from joining the European Union amidst pressure from Russia. "They protested peacefully, and they were met by violence," Rice said."

"Russia feels bound by no international legal constraints on its actions in Ukraine, least of all the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, by which Russia and western states pledged to respect Ukrainian territorial integrity in return for Kiev's surrender of its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal. Putin dispensed with that particular piece of paper in a couple of lines."

"That in turn brought up the burning question of whether the ambition of current military options ranged further than Crimea to the largely pro-Moscow, Russian-speaking industrial east, potentially slicing Ukraine in two. Putin clearly, very deliberately, left the option open."

"Speaking of the sanctions, they are not just a knee-jerk reaction on behalf of the United States or its allies to our position regarding the events and the coup in Ukraine, or even the so-called Crimean Spring. I’m sure that if these events had never happened... they would have come up with some other excuse to try to contain Russia’s growing capabilities, affect our country in some way, or even take advantage of it... However, in this case I would like to speak about the most serious and sensitive issue: international security. Since 2002, after the US unilaterally pulled out of the ABM Treaty, which was absolutely a cornerstone of international security, a strategic balance of forces and stability, the US has been working relentlessly to create a global missile defense system, including in Europe. This poses a threat not only to Russia, but to the world as a whole – precisely due to the possible disruption of this strategic balance of forces."

"The 2014 invasion [of Crimea] marked the start of the Russian war on Ukraine; the subsequent annexation warned Ukrainians that the international legal system would not protect them."

"Our problem is that we do not fully understand Putin’s calculus, just as he does not understand ours. In Putin’s view, the United States, the European Union and NATO have launched an economic and proxy war in Ukraine to weaken Russia and push it into a corner. As Valery Gerasimov, chief of staff of the Russian armed forces, has underscored, this is a hybrid, 21st-century conflict, in which financial sanctions, support for oppositional political movements and propaganda have all been transformed from diplomatic tools to instruments of war. Putin likely believes that any concession or compromise he makes will encourage the West to push further."

"The Revolution of Dignity and the war brought about a geopolitical reorientation of Ukrainian society. The proportion of those with positive attitudes toward Russia decreased from 80 percent in January 2014 to under 50 percent in September of the same year. In November 2014, 64 percent of those polled supported Ukraine’s accession to the European Union (that figure had stood at 39 percent in November 2013). In April 2014, only a third of Ukrainians had wanted their country to join NATO; in November 2014, more than half supported that course. There can be little doubt that the experience of war not only united most Ukrainians but also turned the country’s sympathies westward."

"The significance of neo-Nazism in Ukraine and the at least tacit official U.S support or tolerance for it should be clearly understood."

"In 2010 the pro-Russian leader of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, opposed any move to take the country closer to NATO or the EU, but within four years he was ousted by pro-western parties in Kiev, precipitating an open civil war in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking eastern provinces, the latter supported by Moscow. Tension was further increased when in 2014 Putin annexed the formerly Russian territory of Crimea, granted to Ukraine in the 1950s. Europe replied with a barrage of economic sanctions, which had no political effect beyond entrenching Russia’s siege economy and bringing Putin closer to his oligarchic associates. The economy switched to import substitution, including the manufacture of domestic mozzarella and camembert. NATO reopened its invitation to Ukraine and conducted military exercises in the Baltic countries. Russia did likewise. Europe slid back into brinkmanship mode. Misjudging Moscow had long been the occupational disease of European diplomacy. It cursed alike Swedes, Poles, Napoleon and Hitler. It now blighted a western alliance divided on how to respond to this newly aggressive Russia."

"We see that our colleagues from the NATO countries are pursuing a policy of containing Russia, increasing their military activity on our borders, creating a military infrastructure on the “eastern front”, as they say, and resorting to unsubstantiated accusations instead of diplomatic methods..."

"In 2014, our Western colleagues “swallowed” the anti-constitutional armed coup in Ukraine, and since then they’ve been unable to hold that government accountable, although they have long since understood who they are dealing with. Having once branded them democrats and partners, they cannot publicly criticise them now. That's the problem."

"I would like you to do us a favor though."

"We ‪assess that Russia does not want a direct conflict with US forces. Russian officials have long believed that the United States is conducting its own ‘influence campaigns’ to undermine Russia, weaken President Vladimir Putin, and install Western-friendly regimes in the states of the former Soviet Union and elsewhere. Russia seeks an accommodation with the United States on mutual noninterference in both countries’ domestic affairs and US recognition of Russia’s claimed sphere of influence over much of the former Soviet Union."

"It may just be grandstanding for domestic purposes, but the effort poses grave implications for American and international security... No politician or member of the U.S. foreign and security establishment has ever even attempted to explain why Russian involvement in Ukraine — with its territorial issues, its huge Russian minority, and deep historic, cultural, and emotional ties to one another — somehow implies Moscow’s desire to attack Poland or Romania, which contain no Russian minorities or territorial disputes."

"Moreover, as far as Ukraine itself is concerned, the suggestion of a resemblance between U.S. “deterrence” there and deterrence in Poland and Romania is based on a very dangerous misconception. Romania, Poland, and the Baltic States are NATO members, covered by the Article 5 guarantee in the NATO Treaty whereby the United State is legally obliged to fight for them if they are attacked. Ukraine is not a NATO member, and even if a U.S. administration were willing to make an immediate offer of membership, this would certainly be blocked by the other European NATO partners... A promise of U.S. “deterrence” in Ukraine is therefore essentially a lie — and a very dangerous one, if a Ukrainian government were to believe it and act accordingly."

"The GOP senator has swapped his hold on Biden’s ambassadors for a vote on more sanctions for Russia over Nord Stream 2. Both Senator Ted Cruz’s bill to sanction the Russia-Germany Nord Stream 2 pipeline and the process by which it has been introduced are poster-children for the dysfunctionality of America’s present system of government when it comes to the formulation of foreign policy. Senator Cruz’s bill, which is to be introduced to the Senate in early January and is considered likely to pass with bipartisan support, would place sanctions on Russia and on companies involved in the construction and management of the pipeline, which is designed to carry gas under the North Sea from Russia to Germany and Western Europe. This pipeline would partly replace existing pipelines from Russia to Germany and the European Union across Ukraine. In the past, Russian attempts to pressure Ukraine either to pay its unpaid gas debts or to ally with Russia by cutting off Ukrainian gas led to Ukraine taking gas bound for the EU for itself, thereby disrupting supplies to Western Europe."

"Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, warned on Friday that the Kremlin perceives the United States and its allies as stoking the war in eastern Ukraine... “The civil war in Ukraine, ongoing for eight years, is far from over,” Mr. Lavrov said, in remarks carried by the Russian Information Agency. “The country’s (Ukraine's) authorities don’t intend to resolve the conflict” through diplomacy, he added. “Unfortunately, we see the United States and other NATO nations supporting the militaristic intentions of Kyiv, provisioning Ukraine with weapons and sending military specialists,” Mr. Lavrov said. After Russian troops massed near the Ukrainian border over the fall, officials in Moscow repeatedly characterized the eastern Ukraine conflict as a pressing security concern for Russia, though it has been simmering for eight years now between Ukraine’s central government and Russia-backed separatists."