By Robert BRIDGE: For
many years, and despite all evidence to the contrary, the Western media
has forwarded the inane idea that Vladimir Putin ranks in the same club
with some of history's most loathsome creatures, up to and including
Hitler.
The
reality is that the Russian leader has done more to promote the cause
of global peace and security than any other Western leader in recent
times. That explains why he is the object of such intense scorn.
Putin's
rise as a statesman of the first magnitude began, oddly enough, with
the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 on the United States. Since that
day, Washington has taken advantage of that national tragedy to achieve
specific geopolitical ends, the majority of them - coincidentally or not
- diametrically opposed to Russia's own national security. Moscow, for
its part, was expected to
serve as nothing more participatory than a captive audience to the US
war machine as it began its destruction tour through the Middle East,
most notably in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In late 2013, the tide began to turn, as the violence began to roost on Russia's doorstep. Kiev had suddenly erupted in protests against
the government of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, whose
only crime had been to suspend the implementation of an association
agreement with the European Union.
This
was the moment when Washington's long-term investment in Ukraine
started to pay off handsome dividends (Victoria Nuland, the US Assistant
Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, shamelessly
admitted at the time that Washington had invested more than $5 billion since 1991 to help Ukraine achieve “the future it deserves").
With
the blessing of myriad US-backed NGOs and think tanks, protesters took
to the streets in the so-called Maidan uprising, barricading themselves
in the capital and attacking police, eventually forcing the
democratically elected president to flee the country.
As John J. Mearsheimer observed in
the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs, "the United States and its
European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov echoed that
frank assessment last month when he told the UN General Assembly: "The
West constructed its policy on the basis of a principle, ‘If you are not
with us, you are against us,' having chosen the path of reckless
eastward NATO expansion and provoking instability in the post-Soviet
space.... This policy is precisely the root cause of the protracted
conflict in Southeastern Ukraine."
Does
Putin deserve a Nobel Peace Prize just because it was the West, and not
Russia, to blame for the Ukrainian crisis? No, but the story does not
end there. Although Western media continue to regurgitate the delusional
psycho-babble of a 'Russian invasion' of Ukrainian territory, such wild
conspiracy theories have never been documented by a single legitimate
photograph or satellite image. Or are we now expected to believe Russia
owns invisible tanks and artillery, too? The reality is not so
complicated: it was the Americans who launched their own Ukraine
invasion in the early stages of the protests that only served to fan the
flames of discontent. And yes, there is proof.
Victoria
Nuland, for example, was photographed on the streets of Kiev, happily
handing out cookies to anti-government participants, some of them
outright fascists who eventually went on to fill top positions in the
new government.
As Mearsheimer argued:
"The new government in Kiev was pro-Western and anti-Russian to the
core, and it contained four high-ranking members who could legitimately
be labeled neo-fascists."
And
the political intrigue went far beyond stale pastries. In a leaked
phone call with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, Nuland
mentioned Arseniy Yatsenyuk as a candidate to lead the Ukrainian
government. Was anybody surprised when Yatsenyuk became prime minister
on February 27? In the course of that famous phone call, Nuland also
expressed some incredibly candid sentiments toward America's foremost
ally when she remarked, “F*ck the EU”.
Meanwhile,
US Senator John McCain, Washington's preeminent hawk, also crashed the
party in Kiev at the height of tension, agitating the anti-government
protesters in Independence Square by telling them "the destiny you seek lies in Europe.”
It
should be remembered that no Russian politician had the sheer audacity
to show up anywhere in Ukraine to tell the people where their destiny
was to be found.
As
the Western media continued to spin the mythical yarn of a "Russian
invasion", the Kremlin was working assiduously to clean up the mess in
Ukraine caused by many decades of behind-the-scenes horseplay, much of
it seeded by foreign-backed NGOs and assorted think tanks. Putin played a
significant role in mediating and bringing together the leaders of
Ukraine, Germany, and France to ratify the Minsk Agreements (Feb. 11,
2015) designed to end the violence in the Donbass region of Ukraine.
Despite international recognition of the demands set down by Minsk (which include the
"immediate and full ceasefire in particular districts of Donetsk and
Lugansk oblasts of Ukraine and... Pullout of all heavy weapons by both
sides to equal distance with the aim of the creation of a security zone
on minimum 50 kilometers (31 miles)..."), there have been numerous
reports of gross violations.
Last
month, Putin called for a UN peacekeeping mission to be sent to the
war-torn eastern regions of Ukraine. The peacekeepers would be deployed
on the demarcation line to protect the OSCE [Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe] mission, which monitors the ceasefire between
the government forces and rebels.
German
Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel embraced the idea, urging member states
to “openly discuss with the Russian Federation the conditions of a UN
mission.” Washington and Kiev, however, flat out rejected the proposal.
In
the context of the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, there is one major
footnote that cannot be overlooked, and that involves the Crimea
Referendum, which eventually brought the peninsula into the Russian
Federation.
Although
Western pundits regularly speak of a Russian "Crimean invasion" as
loosely as they talk of a Ukrainian one, nothing could be further from
reality. The Supreme Council of Crimea considered the ousting of
President Yanukovich as a coup and the new government in Kiev as
illegitimate, stating that the referendum was a response to these
developments, as well as to the breakdown of civil order that was
sweeping the country.
In
Crimea, a largely Russian-speaking republic that was an integral part
of Russia until it was gifted to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954,
the official results of the referendum were impossible to dispute: 96.77
percent of Crimeans voted in favor of integration of the region into
the Russian Federation.
The
Russian State Duma ratified the reunification with the Republic of
Crimea and the city of Sevastopol on March 20, 2014. Western
condemnation came fast and furious, but Putin reminded the critics the situation mirrored that of the Kosovo referendum for independence.
"In
a situation entirely the same as the one in Crimea they recognized
Kosovo’s secession from Serbia legitimate while arguing that 'no
permission from a country’s central authority for a unilateral
declaration of independence is necessary,'” Putin said, adding that the
UN International Court of Justice agreed with those arguments.
“That’s
what they wrote, that's what they trumpeted all over the world, coerced
everyone into it – and now they are complaining. Why is that?” he
asked.
Although
few would admit it, Vladimir Putin's peacekeeping efforts in Ukraine
brought about a drastic reduction in violence at a time when many
Western observers were predicting that Russia would launch a full-scale
invasion of Ukrainian territory. Image their disappointment when just
the opposite occurred?
Vladimir Putin's peacekeeping efforts, however, did not stop at Russia's borders.
Syria Intervention
Many
people have probably already forgotten Russia's immense contribution to
securing peace in the Arab Republic of Syria, which has been suffering
internal strife since 2011. And no, I am not talking about Putin's
decision to assist President Bashar Assad from eradicating ISIS
terrorists in the country, although that is certainly a momentous event.
I
am speaking about that day, almost exactly fours ago, when then-US
President Barack Obama - a Nobel Peace Prize winner, mind you - was just
about to give the signal to
launch an all-out military assault against the sovereign state of
Syria. The reason? Washington said the Assad government had used
chemical weapons to attack a Damascus suburb just weeks earlier. Never
mind that Assad would have known full well that to carry out such an
attack would mean political and national suicide, and that the use of
chemical weapons would only have assisted the cause of the
anti-government rebels, who were praying for American airstrikes on
Assad. But I digress.
When
the British House of Commons refused to give then-PM David Cameron
permission to join the Americans in their latest war game, Obama
suddenly got very cold feet. In a bid to save face, then Secretary of
State John Kerry reportedly 'misspoke' when he said the US would call
off an attack on Syria if Assad agreed to surrender all of his chemical
weapons within a week.
Enter Russian diplomacy at its finest hour. What followed was a marathon series of
meetings in Geneva, Switzerland between Foreign Ministers John Kerry
and Sergey Lavrov that eventually resulted in an agreement that not only
deterred the threat of war, but removed chemical weapons from Syria.
Lavrov
said the agreement removed any potential use of force against Syria,
while underscoring that deviations from the plan, including attacks on
UN inspectors, would be brought to the UN Security Council, which would
decide on further action.
At
the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, then Secretary General, gave a glowing
account of the US-Russia-Syria agreement, which also made Syria a
signatory to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
(OPCW).
This
premier example of diplomacy on the part of Vladimir Putin and his
administration shows that war can always be diverted so long as their
exists the will between men and nations. Sadly, the United States has
gone on to demonstrate an insatiable determination to interfere -
illegally - in the internal affairs of Syria, going so far as to even
launch brazen attacks on the Syrian military (perhaps most disturbingly,
the US media actually praised Donald
Trump following such attacks). Although Russia has also become involved
militarily in Syria, it has only done so at the expressed invitation of
Damascus to help President Assad rid his country of terrorist forces
that the US-led Western forces failed to destroy.
In
summary, given Vladimir Putin's extraordinary efforts to bring about
the conditions of peace both in Ukraine and in Syria, it would seem that
he is the most fitting candidate to win a Nobel Peace Prize. Of course,
the Western capitals would never see things that way, which only
highlights the great schism that now separates Russia from the West,
which has lost its ability to judge right from wrong, truth from
deception.
The Nobel Peace Prize is presented by the King of Norway on December 10 each year.
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