(statue of Bogdan Khmelnitsky in Sophia Square, Kiev)
Taking a look back on the 2019 Trump 'Ukraine-gate' impeachment hearings, we should be struck by something that is incredibly strange.
Regardless of Trump's wrongdoing (and it is pretty clear he was culpable even though there is no direct proof) the primary narrative that the entire proceeding hinged on was a complete fiction. Russia had never attacked Ukraine, Russia was not at war with Ukraine, and Russia was not (and still is not) attempting to expand its territory anywhere on the planet. Therefore Ukraine did not need US military aid to somehow defend itself from Russian so-called 'aggression' which had never happened - and which only happened in 2022 to specifically thwart Kiev's sudden and devastating expanded attacks on ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine. (See details and links below.)
Yet, though the Republicans would have gained immensely by pulling back the curtain on these facts, and showing that there was no Russian expansion or aggression, none of the Republicans said even one word to correct that false narrative.
In fact, some Republicans even used the hearings to amplify false narratives about Russia and Ukraine, while peddling US fossil fuel interests. See as a prime example, at the following link, a C-Span clip of Mike Conaway's 2019 impeachment questioning of National Security Council operative Fiona Hill. https://tinyurl.com/Conaway-Hill-Impeachment-Qs
Republicans were deftly dancing around and denying the culpability of Trump in this narrative, while at the same time leaving unchallenged, and even promoting, long lived Russophobic fairytales from the US State Department.
Why?
Was this impeachment proceeding (which as expected failed in a GOP controlled Senate) really about Trump, or was it about something completely different - specifically, to convince nearly every American that Russia is somehow an expanding imperial aggressor, and is somehow our 'enemy' against whom we must 'defend' ourselves by cynically using Ukraine as our weapon?
This narrative was even bizarrely echoed by US Representative Joaquin Castro, during the second 2021 Trump impeachment. In his impeachment presentation to the US Senate, Castro claimed without any evidence, that a January 6 Capitol occupation protestor had supposedly stolen a laptop from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office with the intent of sending it to Russia. Castro went on to suggest that Russian agents had been actively involved in coordinating the Capitol occupation. Subsequent fact checks found no basis for Castro's claims.
With that public theatre background established, let's look at the actual 21st century history of Russia and Ukraine, and the US role in that history.
Because of geopolitical competition over oil and natural gas, the US needs to control Ukraine in order to establish US managed pipeline routes, and to advance the US controlled NATO military 'alliance' to surround all of Russia's European borders.
To secure this control of Ukraine, in 2014, the Obama administration and the State Department (which Hillary Clinton had built up from 2009 to 2013) completed a many years long, orchestrated, undemocratic coup in Ukraine which was led by neo-Nazi aryan supremacists, who violently took over Ukraine, attempted to make it illegal in Ukraine to speak Russian, and who are still a major force in running the Ukraine government. (The bloody fingerprints of Clinton's right hand in Ukraine, Victoria Nuland, were all over the coup operation. In 2021, Nuland was approved by unanimous consent of both Republicans and Democrats in the US Senate, to become the Biden Administration's Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.)
Following the coup, then Vice President Joe Biden was assigned by President Obama to be the de facto controller of Ukraine. (Three months later Biden's son Hunter was installed as a board member of the corrupt Ukraine natural gas company Burisma, a position for which Hunter was paid $50,000 per month.)
The 2014 coup was intended in part, to gain for the US and NATO, strategic sea port control in the peninsula republic of Crimea (at that time part of Ukraine, bordering Russia and the Black Sea). A vast majority of residents in Crimea are ethnic Russians. The Crimeans, fearing the Nazi regime that had just taken over in Kiev, quickly voted to rejoin Russia and by agreement with no military action at all, Crimea legally rejoined Russia. There was no supposed ‘invasion’ of Crimea. It did not happen. (Yet both Republicans and Democrats are still claiming to this day, that it did.)
A similar vote, for independence from Ukraine, was then held in the majority Russian Donbas region, another key strategic border area between Russia and Ukraine, which includes the now autonomous republics of Luhansk and Donetsk. But because the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk would have ended US plans to dominate pipeline routes and control Russia’s border, the fascist government in Kiev immediately moved with its military, to by force squash the vote and stop the two republics from leaving.
This resulted in a 2014-2015 civil war in Donbas, in which Russia lent material military supports to Donbas and the US lent mirroring military supports to the regime in Kiev. Russia provided this support both to protect the Russian population in Crimea and Donbas from a threatened genocide, and because Russia’s seaport in Crimea, and the independent border republics of Donbas, are vital to preventing NATO from easily attacking Russia from Ukraine.
Thousands of people were killed in that civil war, which after 2015 became a smouldering stalemate that was reduced in intensity, but still caused hundreds of deaths every year. Importantly, these deaths resulted from attacks by Kiev on Donbas, not from any Russian 'war on' Ukraine. As noted above, Russia is not engaged in any expansion whatsoever, anywhere on Earth.
The civil war was ended on February 21, 2022 when, to prevent escalating attacks from Kiev, and possible future attacks from the US itself, Russia formally recognized the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk, and moved troops into the two republics to defend them. Three days later, Russia expanded its intervention with attacks on the US allied west Ukraine, intending to remove Kiev's capacity to continue attacking Donbas, eliminate Nazi elements controlling the Ukraine military, and strategically landlock Kiev away from Black Sea access on Ukraine's south coast (where there is also a sizeable ethnic Russian population).
What if the American people who followed the impeachment hearings had known these details, and that Ukraine had become an undemocratic, fascist, puppet coup regime, wielded by the US as a weapon in unprovoked attacks to gain control of oil and natural gas assets? What if they had known that the ongoing US military support of Ukraine has nothing to do with either protecting 'democracy' or protecting US security (other than that 'security' of controlling fossil fuels)?
There is little doubt that far fewer Americans would have supported the impeachment of Trump for withholding military aid to Ukraine. In fact many, and perhaps even most Americans, would insist on an end to US military aid to Ukraine, just as they have demanded an end to US support of Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen.
And yet, on these crucial points, which would have easily ended the farce of the impeachment of Trump for 'Ukraine-gate', the Republicans have been completely silent.
And the reason of course, is that the corporate fossil fuel and arms manufacturing interests which control both the Democratic and Republican parties do not want legislators to speak up, and will not fund their campaigns if they break the truth to the American public.
To read an in-depth analysis by Consortium News Editor-in-Chief Joe Lauria, detailing the reasons for Russia's military intervention in Ukraine in February 2022, go to: https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/24/what-putin-says-are-the-causes-aims-of-russias-military-action
For details on Luhansk and Donetsk and their votes for, and declarations of independence, and on how Ukraine purposely manipulated to perpetuate ongoing war with them by undermining an internationally negotiated peace deal, search the word ‘Ukraine’ at: https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/23/diana-johnstone-us-foreign-policy-is-a-cruel-sport
To see many of the details above in a 2015 report by internationally respected war correspondent John Pilger, search 'Ukraine' at: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/27/why-the-rise-of-fascism-is-again-the-issue
To see award winning journalist Robert Parry's 2015 report confirming that there was no 'invasion' of Crimea, go to: http://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/22/crimeans-keep-saying-no-to-ukraine
For some deeper triangulating details on all of this see CIA whistleblower Ray McGovern's report on the Ukraine crisis at: http://consortiumnews.com/2016/03/18/behind-the-crimearussia-reunion
To review Obama White House briefing documents showing hundreds of millions of dollars in US military aid and $30 billion in US and western wartime loan guarantees to Kiev, see:
2014: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/21/fact-sheet-us-assistance-ukraine
2016: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/06/15/fact-sheet-us-assistance-ukraine-february-2014
Please share these details with everyone you know who is not aware of them.
Eric Brooks
San Francisco, CA
Note: This essay has been periodically updated to keep it in sync with current events, and to add clarity. The most recent edits were 1) on February 20, 2021 to include a paragraph about US Representative Joaquin Castro's 2021 impeachment remarks, 2) on May 30, 2021 to reference the C-Span clip of the Trump Ukraine-gate 2019 impeachment hearings, 3) on May 31, 2021 to add detail about State Department operative Victoria Nuland, 4) on February 24, 2022 to add a note about Joe Biden's role in post-coup Ukraine, add a map and details on the republics of Luhansk and Donetsk, and add an update and a reference link to explain Russia's move in February 2022 to secure the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk, 5) on February 26, 2022 to add a reference article explaining in more depth the independence declarations of Luhansk and Donetsk, 6) on March 3, 2022 to remove a referenced link to a graph tracking deaths during the previous civil war in Donbas, which was no longer up to date and did not reflect dramatic changes resulting from the 2022 Russian intervention, and 7) on March 9, 2022 to add a note describing Russia’s expanded intervention into west Ukraine.